It's just one among many,
but the headlining case in the Apple v. Samsung global war is finally
drawing to a close. Today, each party attempted to persuade the jury of
nine one last time with their closing arguments, and with the rebuttals
complete, it is time for deliberation. Starting at 9AM tomorrow morning,
the jury's job is to sift through the mountains of evidence proffered by each side,
decipher the verdict form provided and reach a unanimous decision on
the patent and trade dress claims at issue. Will Apple emerge victorious
or will Samsung's arguments carry the day? Could a hung jury and a
mistrial be the result? Tune in tomorrow (and maybe the next day, and
the next...) to find out.
Were you curious about what Google was going to do with Motorola?
The search giant is making its first major move since fully acquiring the company in May, which will be to cut about 20% of jobs at Motorola Mobility Holdings, or roughly 4,000 employees.
A “person familiar with the matter” told Bloomberg Businessweek that two-thirds of the cuts will be outside of the U.S. Google will also close one-third of Motorola’s facilities.
“Motorola is committed to helping them through this difficult
transition and will be providing generous severance packages, as well as
outplacement services to help people find new jobs,” Motorola Mobility
said in an email statement.
Though the matter is still private, the unnamed source said the news will be announced within the coming weeks.
Google’s acquisition of Motorola was its largest ever takeover to date, for which it paid $12.5 billion.
The relatively young search giant obtained Motorola’s steep patent
portfolio, and made it a stronger competitor against other hardware
manufacturers.
$2.5 billion is a lot of money, and it's the low end of what Apple
says Samsung should pay for selling products that look and feel like the
iPhone and
iPad.
But just how did Apple reach that tally?
To explain, Apple today called on Terry Musika, a certified public
accountant who has been involved with more than 200 intellectual
property cases, including this one between the two tech giants.
In short it's complicated.
"The calculation had to be done on a phone by phone,
tablet
by tablet basis," Musika said. "Each phone, each tablet, deserves or
gets its own damage. That calculation had to be done on each of those
products."
To add to the complexity, Apple has targeted a string of Samsung
devices released at different points in time. While some of these are
accused of the same things, others were only infringing on certain
patents. Also, some patents were still pending, and some allegedly
infringing features were added later.
All the data comes from Samsung's own sales numbers for smartphones
and tablets, which was unearthed earlier this month. Musika also
cross-referenced that with marketshare from both companies as tallied by
research firm IDC.
When it actually came time to crunch the numbers, Musika says he
formed a team of 20 people comprising of programmers, statisticians and
CPAs to create a computer program. That group spent about 7,000 hours
working on the tally, which cost $1.75 million.
"I can assure you, it's not me sitting at a desk with a calculator, doing calculations," Musika joked.
The end result is the $2.5 billion number, which reaches all the way
up to $2.75 billion on its high-end. During his testimony Musika went
through how this calculation included reductions from ineligible sales,
and costs.
The damages tally is especially important given that U.S. District
Judge Lucy Koh, who is presiding over the case, has the power to triple
it if she rules that Samsung willfully infringed on Apple's patents.
That could happen as early as next week, when both sides are scheduled
to make their closing argument and the jury heads into deliberation.
That Unbaby.me extension for scrubbing infants from your feed
is about to get a lot more useful. Today Facebook launches a new
Timeline event that lets you share that you’re expecting a baby,
the due date, and whether it’s a boy or girl. Baby announcements appear
in the Celebration sidebar beside birthdays on the day the kid is
expected to pop out, along with showing up in the news feed.
This new life event for babies is another sign that Facebook is maturing as its original user base of college kids in 2004 start hatching users who can join Facebook 13 years down the line.
You can add a baby life event by selecting the announcement from the Life Events drop down in the publisher on your Timeline.
Then on the due date it will appear in the Celebration sidebars of friends.
Today’s feature release follows the added ability to announce the date of your upcoming marriage on Facebook. And who knows, maybe the push is Zuck’s subtle way of saying him and new bride are expecting.
When
I asked Microsoft officials back in late June for a list of vendors
making Windows RT tablets and PCs, they declined to provide one. But as I
noted at that time, Asus, Toshiba and Acer had all announced plans to provide Windows RT devices. Dell was rumored to be making a Windows RT machine, as well. Last week, ABCNews reported that Lenovo would be making two versions of its IdeaPad Yoga convertible machine: One running Windows 8 and one running Windows RT.
"You
will need to stay tuned for more details; PC manufacturers will be
unveiling their products as we approach the Windows 8 and Windows RT
launch," said Mike Angiulo, the vice president of our Ecosystem and
Planning team, and author of today's blog post. (We know Microsoft is
planning to have its Surface RT system available on October 26, but we do not know exact dates for the other OEMs.)
Microsoft officials also wouldn't comment on whether Windows RT had released to manufacturing (RTM'd) when Windows 8 did on August 1. But Microsoft officially is acknowledging Windows RT also has RTM'd, thanks to a mention in today's blog post.
In
today's post, Microsoft also shared some rough guidelines about battery
life expectations for Windows RT machines. When a Windows RT PC is not
in use (on connected standby), it will not require a battery charge for
days, Angiulo said. He also mentioned Windows RT machines' ability to
deliver "all day battery life" on "thin and light" machines. More
specifically, he said Microsoft has seen 8 hours to 13 hours of HD video
playback time on Windows RT PCXs, and 320 hours to 409 hours (more than
13 to 17 days) battery life when in connected-standby mode.
Anguilo
said Microsoft and partners built "thousands of reference design
hardware systems" and seeded more than 1,500 Windows RT reference
machines to software and hardware vendor partners to prepare for launch.
He also said Microsoft has found more than 90 percent of the RTM
applications in the Windows Store support Windows RT, and that there
will be printers, webcams and mobile broadband modules certified for
Windows RT.
Here's a photo provided by Microsoft of a prototype Windows RT system next to an actual, ready-to-ship model:
Microsoft's new blog post also repeated some facts about the upcoming
Windows RT operating system that Microsoft previously divulged, but
which are worth repeating. Windows RT includes a "siginificant amount"
of shared code with Windows 8, but is not identical to it. There is one
Windows RT binary that supports Windows RT SoC platforms from NVIDIA,
Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments. Windows RT software will not be sold or
distributed independent of a new Windows RT PC; it will be preloaded
only.
Last week, we found out about Apple's offer to license a bundle of IP -- including its iPhone and iPad design patents -- to Samsung back in 2010. Today, Reuters
reports that Apple proposed a similar deal to Microsoft, and the folks
in Redmond took them up on the offer. Details of the license itself are
scarce, but the deal did, naturally, include an provision expressly
prohibiting iDevice copies. So, for folks figuring that Microsoft might
face a litigious future similar to Samsung's, think again. Looks like
Ballmer and friends had the foresight to buy the rights to those rounded
corners, edge-to-edge glass and black bezels on their forthcoming
Surface tablets.
Now we know that Apple came to Samsung to offer it a deal to license its
patents, but it's not that simple. There were "untouchables."
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Whether or not you agree that Samsung copied the
look and feel of Apple's products, it's now clear that Apple put the
company in a difficult position when it first accused Samsung of
copying.
In testimony here today, Boris Teksler, Apple's director of patent licensing and strategy, noted that while Apple initially approached the company to accuse it of copying
its products and infringing on a multitude of its patents, Apple would
not outright license any of those main patents to another company.
"We were clear we weren't offering a license to everything," Teksler
said. "We had yet to discuss some what we termed 'untouchables,' if you
will."
As Teksler explained during his testimony last week, those
"untouchables" comprise a tier of patents it would not share with others
-- something it considered made up its "unique user experience."
With that said, Teksler claimed that the company wanted to make a deal.
"We were trying very hard to come up with an amicable resolution with
Samsung," he said. "We wanted to get properly compensated for that
which was infringed, and with respect to our unique user experience.
That's exactly what we were trying to do with this presentation."
Samsung's lawyers were keen to point out that Apple had not made
mention of its design patents at the time it came to Apple with the
presentation -- the same point it made last week. Teksler responded by
saying that some of those patents were still pending at the time of the
meeting, and were granted between that time and when the two companies
filed suits against one another.
Of note, Teksler said that Apple's long-running cross-licensing deal
with Microsoft allowed the Windows maker access to all the patents in
this case, including the design patents. With that said, there are
specific rules in place with that deal to keep the two sides in check so
that they don't make what Teksler referred to as a "clone" product.
"There's a clear acknowledgment that there's no cloning," he said. Samsung's turn This week marks a turning point in the
trial, with Samsung scheduled to take the reins. The trial began with
Apple on the offensive, calling up a list of witnesses that included
company designers, top executives, and various experts of design and
marketing. Apple's main message: Samsung stole our designs, and profited
off it.
Next it's Samsung's turn. The company has its own list of witnesses
to help make its case, though it's already burned up more of its
allotted time than Apple. Both sides get 25 hours, and at the end of
last week Apple was up about 11.5 hours, with Samsung pushing beyond 12.
Unlike the two previous weeks of trial, in which court was in session
three days out of five, this week goes all five days. According to U.S.
District Court judge Lucy Koh, who is presiding over the case, that
means the trial will wrap up by the end of this week or early next week.
Both sides are expected to begin their closing arguments next Tuesday.
After that, the jury gets its instructions and has time to deliberate.
Judge Koh says she is "disappointed" in final jury-instruction discussions and orders attorneys to meet face to face.
Apple and Samsung are battling over the look and feel of their devices, as well as what the jury is told.
The federal judge presiding over the Apple-Samsung patent infringement
trial has apparently grown weary of the quibbling attorneys in the case
and has ordered them to meet in person today to hammer out joint jury
instructions.
"The Court is disappointed by the parties' respective reports regarding
their meet and confer efforts on final jury instructions," U.S. District
Judge Lucy Koh said in her order today, according to the Foss Patents
blog. "Lead trial counsel shall meet and confer in person today and
file joint and disputed final jury instructions by Monday, August 13,
2012 at 8 a.m."
The order comes after the two companies reportedly accused each other of
impeding the jury instruction process. Foss reports that an Apple
filing late Friday claimed that "although [it] has tried diligently to
advance the process, Samsung has stymied those efforts." Samsung
reportedly responded by saying it had "agreed to more than twenty
revised instructions proposed by Apple and is continuing to review
Apple's remaining disputed instructions for any common ground," while
Apple had "agreed to only two complete instructions drafted solely by
Samsung."
Their disagreement over what the jury should be told when the companies
rest their cases is just the latest courtroom row in the high-stakes
trial. The two tech giants butted heads over destroyed evidence and whether the jury would hear disparaging comments the late Steve Jobs made about
Android, the mobile operating system that powers Samsung devices. (Koh ultimately ruled that the jury would not hear the comments.)
Apple went so far as to ask the court to keep jurors from seeing the Samsung logo
on video equipment in the court to avoid the impression among jurors
that Samsung equipment and the company itself are somehow favored by the
court.
The rectennas use smartphone radio waves to communicate
Researchers in Korea have devised a cheap way of transmitting data from objects to mobile phones when swiped.
They have printed small "rectennas", a cross between an
antenna and an AC/DC current converter, onto plastic foils using
electronic inks.
The rectenna uses radio waves emitted from a smartphone to transmit data to it from a tiny chip.
The printed rectennas cost less than one penny per unit to produce and could be used as an alternative to QR codes.
The technology behind them, Near Field Communication (NFC),
is already used in devices that enable shoppers to make card payments by
touch.
They make their debut in the journal Nanotechnology, published by the Institute of Physics (IoP) this month.
The rectenna is printed using five different electronic inks.
Researchers from Sunchon National University and the Paru
Printed Electronics Research Institute spent four years developing the
printed rectenna.
"What is great about this technique is that we can also print
the digital information onto the rectenna, meaning that everything you
need for wireless communication is in one place," co-author of the study
Gyoujin Cho told the IoP.
"Our advantage over current technology is lower cost, since
we can produce a roll-to-roll printing process with high throughput in
an environmentally friendly manner.
"Furthermore, we can integrate many extra functions without huge extra cost in the printing process." Augmented alternatives
Augmented reality platforms are also providing alternatives to
QR codes, although management consultancy firm Greenwich Consulting
says that in America QR code usage has increased by 40% year on year.
Marketing company Adido says it is now using Aurasma, an
augmented reality application based on visual recognition, rather than
QR codes in its campaigns.
"There are quite a lot of limitations as to what a QR code
can do - you can only make it do one thing at a time, it can only
contain so much data," said Andrew Moore, business development
co-ordinator.
He admitted that when presented with an augmented reality logo, people did not necessarily know what to do with it.
"With QR codes this has also been an issue but now there is a
much more clear course of action. As the AR industry ages that call to
action will also appear."
"What I've found is that people who do download the Augmented
Reality app are proactively active in finding content that is AR-able,"
he said.
Fred Huet from Greenwich Consulting UK also believes that QR codes may have a shelf life.
"The QR scanning process is inherently inconvenient for the
user, compared to other technologies such as Near Field Communication
(NFCs)," he said. "There is a risk of being replaced in the future by
more accessible alternatives."
The newest version of the Google Translate app can now translate text from photos, according
to Android Central. The image feature works with all languages
available in Translate, and allows users to highlight the text they want
to convert to another language.
In the app, users take a photo of their foreign blurb of choice, and
then swipe their fingers to highlight the text in the photo that needs
to be translated. Google sends the image off to its servers and gives
the user back the translated phrase. It can't auto-detect what language
it's trying to read, however—that's your job.
The new functionality is similar to an iOS app released in December 2010 called Word Lens,
which can translate text picked up by the iPhone's camera. Word Lens
could display the translated text right in the viewfinder itself, but is
still restricted to only three language packs for translating to and
from English (Spanish, Italian, and French), each of which cost $4.99.
The new Google Translate is available now in the Google Play store for Android phones running 2.3 Gingerbread or later.
We've already heard that Microsoft was temporarily using "Windows
8-style UI" as a substitute for "Metro" now that the latter is on the outs, and it looks like may now have a permanent replacement. According to some unnamed sources speaking to ZDNet's
Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft has decided to simply use "Windows 8" as a
name for all things once known as Metro. That means "Metro-style
applications" will now be known as "Windows 8 applications," and that
the "Metro user interface" will now be the "Windows 8 user interface."
What's more, Foley also notes that the phrase "Windows 8 apps" has
already turned up on the promo page for Lenovo's new ThinkPad Tablet 2,
which also indicates that the traditional Windows 8 apps will simply be
known as "desktop" apps to distinguish the two. We'll keep you posted
if we hear more on the change from Microsoft itself.
As HP writes down $8 billion from its acquisition of EDS in 2008, a certain a Wall Street analyst gets to say, "I told you so!" if he wants to.
HP's $13.9 billion purchase of EDS was then HP-CEO Mark Hurd's
signature deal. On the day that he announced it, he faced analysts.
(Here's a full transcript on Scribd.)
About halfway through the call, Bank of Montreal analyst Keith
Bachman points out that EDS is no great catch. It had been its own
"restructuring story over the last couple of years" with flat revenues
and a stock that had fallen by 30% over the last 18 months.
"So clearly you are making a bet that you
can perform better than how EDS has executed." Bachman said and then
asked Hurd what exactly will HP be "bringing to the party"?
Hurd's answer: HP brought its good brand name to the party:
'When you combine our position, our
brand, our outsourcing business, their position, their capabilities,
listen, we need to go to the market and compete and be able to grow at
market rates," Hurd said.
Bachman wasn't having it.
"But Mark, sorry to push back, would you
agree, looking at the characteristics, I would think at a minimum this
is going to slowdown HP's revenue growth," Bachman replied.
Naturally Hurd disagrees, but then he hedges -- just a little.
"If we can't turn that into an
opportunity to go to the market and compete and be able to compete at
roughly market rates, then I think that we would have to say we are all not going to be thrilled," he answers.
Funny thing is, now that Hurd is working for HP's competitor, Oracle, he probably is thrilled.
Pinterest announced Wednesday that it began open registration, dropping its invite-only approach.
Users can now sign up for the social photo sharing website without waiting for an invitation, according to Pinterest’s official blog. Now, prospective pinners can register using their email addresses, or log in with their Facebook or Twitter accounts.
“We’re really excited to have the capacity to offer Pinterest to more
people and if you’re a Pinner with friends who’ve been waiting on the
sidelines, we hope you’ll let them know,” the blog said.
Prior to opening up, users had to click “Request an Invite” on Pinterest.com, and enter their email address.
The California-based company announced in late July the addition of
new categories, including, “Quotes,” “Tattoos” and “Weddings,” which
joined old standbys, “Food and Drink,” “Architecture” and “Home Decor.”
Some category names were tweaked: “Pets” became “Animals,” and “Prints
and Posters” is now “Illustrations and Posters.”
Pinterest also reported that it had improved old categories, so users see less miscategorized pins as they peruse boards
The site, a virtual pinboard where members organize and share photos
of their favorite things, is one of the fastest-growing social networks
online. Reports
suggest that Pinterest is the third-largest social network in the U.S.,
behind only Facebook and Twitter. It is currently looking to expand into overseas markets, such as France, Germany and Japan.
In May, Pinterest raised $100 million in a round of funding that values the company at $1.5 billion.
Despite Acer berating Microsoft for its venture
into the tablet space, Lenovo said it isn't fussed by it. In response,
it dished out a brand new tablet: the ThinkPad Tablet 2, aimed for
business and enterprise users.
Why is Lenovo content with the Surface, while Acer cries foul?
Because Acer has a lot more to lose than PC market share leader Lenovo.
And Acer should be worried.
In a nutshell (you probably don't need reminding): Microsoft's
Surface tablet is the software company's first venture into the tablet
market. Despite its "Microsoft" branding, it's likely that Asus is
building the device, which has around 7 percent of the global PC
building market share, according to IDC and Gartner.
Acer, which stands in fourth place behind HP -- which will soon be overtaken by Lenovo as the world leader in PC building -- Dell and Lenovo, kicked up a storm that Microsoft's Surface will push out its existing OEM partners.
But as ZDNet editor-in-chief Larry Dignan explained, Acer's position is "laughable" at best, and remarked that the PC ecosystem "needs some disruption."
The overall global PC market is stagnant and struggling to maintain
healthy levels. Jefferies analyst warned earlier this year that PC unit
sales could drop by as much as 10 percent in the third-quarter. Ouch.
Lenovo is in a strong position. Its rapid growth and targeted markets
are lifting the company to the pole podium position in PC
manufacturing. With close to 13 million shipments in the second quarter,
the remaining PC makers are quaking in their boots.
Speaking to ABC News' Joanna Stern: "Microsoft
is a strategic partner for us. The Surface has brought more excitement
to the marketplace. The ThinkPad tablet is focused after the business
individual; the Surface is more geared towards the consumer offering,"
said Dilip Bhatia, vice-president for Lenovo's ThinkPad business division.
(ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has more on the technical specs, and James Kendrick has the product image line-up. With the announcement comes two new ultrabooks -- ready for the enterprise.)
Of course, Lenovo isn't even remotely bothered by the Surface tablet;
it's too high up in the chain for Microsoft to come close to touching
it. Plus, the firm is working with Microsoft to get Windows 8 on the
tablet in the first place.
Acer, further down the line, will see Surface as a direct competitor.
It's a tale of two fronts: Microsoft is trying to get its software on
as many tablets as it can, while OEMs like Acer and Lenovo want to sell
as many tablets as they can, irrespective of software.
The trouble is, the operating system alone will sway the decision in what the business consumer wants.
Microsoft will likely see a similar market share figure to its
Windows Phone platform: high enough to be in the top five manufacturers,
but eclipsed in numbers by its competitors. Microsoft will will likely
see a bump in Windows 8 on tablet shipments, and Lenovo will help with
this -- just as Samsung helps Google in operating system market share by
using Android, and vice-versa.
Microsoft is right to shake up the PC ecosystem. It's what it relies on. Surface isn't a threat to the PC ecosystem at all; it's a cleverly designed disruptor.
Ever wondered why those crazy fools at Facebook think it's a good idea to meddle with the timeline,
or how you chat? Well you can blame yourself. Probably. The social
network's Director of Engineering, Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, reveals all in
a recent blog post. By first explaining that the site evolves in a
two-step process, "technology pushes people to move forward and then
people move past technology and it has to catch up," we can start to
understand why constant user testing of new, often multiple, solutions
is required. Boz goes on to explain that by using select groups, or even
nations, the efficacy new features can not only be quickly, and solidly
determined, it can actually supplant the need for weeks of boardroom
debate. He goes on to say that the odds are that everyone on Facebook
has been part of a test at some point. Curious to know more about the
process, or just feeling a little bit used? Head over to the source link
for the full post / comment thread.
Seriously, Samsung, what the heck is with the scented cellphone patents?
This isn't the first, or even the second time you've thought to put
pockets of perfume in a handset. This latest patent is slightly
different from earlier concepts,
we suppose. We see this one has a scent refilling station built into
the charging dock. So, when you set the phone down to charge the
battery, it also "charges" the aromatic sponge in the body. It's also
notable that this isn't a passive scented strip or a spraying mechanism.
Instead the "absorbant material" is heated, either by the battery
directly or by circuitry triggered as part of an alert. So, every time
your hippy buddy calls, your phone could blast Phish and fill the air
with the scent of patchouli (or, something else...).
Facebook, in its first ever 10-Q filing with the SEC, admitted one of
the algorithms it uses to calculate the average revenue per user in its
largest market, the U.S. and Canada, was wrong.
The 10-Q restates the revenue breakdown and adjusts some of the
numbers and columns in its reporting of revenues (most of which comes
from ads) by geography.
Here's what Facebook said:
In June 2012, we discovered an error in the algorithm we used to
estimate the geographic location of our users that affected our
attribution of certain user locations for the first quarter of 2012. The
first quarter of 2012 ARPU amount for the United States & Canada
region below reflects an adjustment based on the reclassification to
more correctly attribute users by geographic region.
Here are the two charts affected by the change (and apologies for the
image quality). We've highlighted the restated sections in red. First,
the Q2 2012 chart, on which revenue per user in North America is $2.90:
SEC
Now here's the old chart from Q1, where revenue per user was incorrectly listed as $2.86:
SEC
In all, it's not a huge error and it doesn't affect Facebook's top or
bottom lines. But it is interesting to know that Facebook's accounting
isn't completely perfect.
Google has announced that a new “field trial” of Gmail results within
Google Search results, a Google Now-like app for the iPhone and the
iPad is coming in a few days and the Knowledge Graph is going worldwide
for English searchers.
The news came at a special press breakfast today. We’ll have individual articles on each of these items. Here are some now:]
New: Gmail Results Embedded In Google Search Results
Google’s Knowledge Graph Now Worldwide & Adds Carousel
My live blogging of the event is below:
I’m here at Google San Francisco, where an array of press and
bloggers (about 25 of us) have been called together with only a few days
notice to get an update on what’s new with Google Search. Big news to
come? We’ll see. I’ll be live blogging what happens.
Google does these search events from time-to-time. Sometimes there
really is no big news but only a few features combined into one event to
help the company get an oomph out of search whenever it feels the need.
I heard one rumor about what might come, so I am kind of expecting at
least one major announcement.
Everyone is here involved with Google search. All the senior people,
as well as very senior corporate communication folks. And donuts with
chocolate dipping sauce. Mmm.
Anyway, it’ll all get going probably around 9:45am PT. Watch this space.
OK, Amit Singhal is up, head of Google search and welcoming us.
Everyone asks him what’s new in search. He’s now explaining by telling
us about how he watched Star Trek and wanted to be Captain Kirk. “The
destiny of search…” is to be like the Star Trek computer. Always by your
side, answering things.
First challenge is that you have to get all of the information
online. So far, seen 30 trillion URLs online and on an average day crawl
over 20 billion of those and Google answers 100 billion searches per
month. By the way, Google hasn’t given out a number of searches they
handle per month figure for ages, that I’ve seen. So nice news nugget
there.
Now talking about the Knowledge Graph with 5 million things and 3.5
billion connection between those objects, it’s still a “baby step” in
understanding the world of ideas the way we understand the real world.
Next step in improving search is making it universally accessible.
And beyond that, to get the search of the future, need to solve
incredibly hard problems like speech recognition. “And the truth is, we
will have to build artificial intelligents. We’re not there yet.”
Says Google’s done a lot of baby steps that add up and brings up
Shashi Takur, technical lead for the Knowledge Graph, to talk more about
that.
What would it take to make a Star Trek-like computer? You need to
understand real things, which means having a model of connections.
Google’s Knowledge Graph is the largest collection of connections like
that, and it’s still a baby step.
By the way, Google Launches Knowledge Graph To Provide Answers, Not Just Links, is our past article about what the Knowledge Graph is.
He’s doing a search for Rio and how it could be interpreted in
various ways. But if you search for Rio 2011, the movie Rio shows in the
Knowledge Graph in the box. One reason they can predict this is by
seeing how people search and what they click on.
Now searching for Anne Hathaway. He’s saying something, but I’ll I
see is Anne Hathaway in Batman. She was so good. Les Mis will be
awesome, too.
It’s hard to make predictions because the same word can mean
different things. Cookies in the US are called biscuits in India, and
biscuits mean different things in the US. Oh, how I’ve lived that. Same
issue in Britain. Ask for a biscuit, you ain’t getting a biscuit.
Now searching for “chiefs” and how there are different teams in
different sports that it could be relevant to. See, this stuff is hard.
First news: tomorrow, the Knowledge Graph will expand to be worldwide, if you’re searching in English.
Jack Menzel, director of product management for the Knowledge Graph
is now up. Telling how his friend wants to go to an amusement park, to
Cedar Point. But it’s so far away, Jack says. But his friend says, do
your research — best rollercoasters in the world.
So now doing a search for Cedar Point on Google. And he could search
for each ride, but that’s time consuming. But if you search for Cedar
Point, the Knowledge Graph shows a collection of rides right there.
“Imagine if Google could help with this” and he shows a
“knowledge carousel” that lets you flip through:
Now says his wife likes lighthouses and shows some examples of using the carousel:
Don Draper is off in the corner, ready to take over the carousel
pitch and related it to memories in a moment. No news that I caught on
when we get the carousel or if it’s live yet.
Now Sagar Kamdar, director of product management for universal search
comes up. And he gets to the rumor I heard. There’s going to be a
“field trial” of Gmail integrated into Google search. So you can search
and find matches from your email in your own search results.
Demo time. He’s got a search for amazon up and talking about how he
doesn’t like to shop. But his daughter wants a wagon. Does a search that
brings up Gmail results on the right side, info collapsed so you can’t
see it all, but apparently stuff relating to his order appears.
Some quick snaps:
Got a flight coming up? Google’s got the smarts to parse your
confirmation email so a search for “my flights” will display the
results:
OK, want to sign-up? You can apply here.
Scott Huffman now up, engineering director of mobile. He’s talking
the challenges of understanding natural language when spoken and
relating it to real world information.
Now showing latest version of Google Search for iPad and iPhone with
voice-based searching. Screenshots coming, but basically, hey, it’s Siri
with pictures and video (speak play the Spider-Man theme song, there it
launches playing off YouTube). Or speak how much you want to add, say
2+2, and you get the answers with a calculator.
The app will be in the Apple App Store within a few days, he says.
A US federal appeals court has given the green light for warrantless
wiretapping. That means federal government can now spy on communications
between America citizens without any warrants—and without fear of being
sued, either.
The ruling came Tuesday, Wired reports,
in the process reversing the original ruling from the first and only
case to successfully challenge the Terrorist Surveillance Program. A
three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote:
"This
case effectively brings to an end the plaintiffs' ongoing attempts to
hold the executive branch responsible for intercepting telephone
conversations without judicial authorization."
The
case centered around two American attorneys who struggled—but managed—to
prove they were spied on without warrants. The court ruled that the
pair could "bring a suit for damages against the United States for use
of the collected information" but are unable to "bring suit against the
government for collection of the information itself." Speaking to Wired,
Jon Eisenberg, the lawyer working on behalf of the two attorneys, explained:
"This
case was the only chance to litigate and hold anybody accountable for
the warrantless wiretapping program. As illegal as it was, it evaded
accountability."
All of which means that, from
today, federal government can happily spy on anybody's communications
without warrants or fear of the consequences.
As much as Apple would love for Kwon Oh-hyun
to turn up at court and tearfully confess to being a copycat, that's
probably not going to happen. Instead, Cupertino's lawyers are burrowing
through Samsung's history in search of a legal smoking gun, and one of
their latest submissions has been presented as just that. It's a
132-page document written in 2010 by Sammy engineers that directly
compares the iPhone against the Galaxy S
and makes recommendations about how the latter should be more like the
former. The excerpt shown above, which focuses on the aesthetics of
icons on the rival handsets, even appears to contain advice about how
Samsung should copy Apple without appearing to copy them so
much, whereas the full document embedded after the break reveals how
all-encompassing the internal guidance was. On the flip-side, Samsung
may well argue that any responsible company should compare itself to its
competition in this manner, and you can bet there's an army of lawyers
beavering away right now to make that sound convincing.
Electron microscopes can produce incredibly detailed and even 3D views
of sub-cellular structures, but often at the cost of losing the bigger
picture. Researchers at Liedel University in the Netherlands, however,
have leveraged a technique called virtual nanoscopy that enables
researchers to observe the whole of a cell and its intricate details in a
single image. With the method, the team stitches together nanometer
resolution photographs of what's gone under the scope to create a map
with adjustable zoom a la Google Maps.
Their study created a 281-gigapixel image (packed with 16 million
pixels per inch) of a 1.5-millimeter-long zebrafish embryo. If you'd
like to take a gander at the ultra-high resolution fish or read up on
the group's findings for yourself, check out the source links below.
Update estimates for what are literally Samsung's biggest phones have emerged, tipping the Galaxy S3 to get Android 4.1 Jelly Bean in several months, with the Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Note to follow in the winter.
While Samsung remains tight-lipped on the subject, SamMobile cites mysterious
"insiders" who have spilled the beans regarding the latest version of
Google's mobile operating system. The flagship of the Samsung fleet --
the Galaxy S3 -- is apparently nearly there, with software tests having
been completed. The wait now is for the final version and approval from
Google.
The Galaxy S2 is reportedly undergoing Jelly Bean testing,
with Samsung apparently keen to get the latest software onto the former
king of Android smart phones.
There are worrying whispers of a
'value pack' update for the Galaxy S2, which would bring some of the new
features from Jelly Bean but not a full software upgrade, though so far
it would seem there's no reason to think that'll happen. The Galaxy
Note is apparently in the same situation, and is being tested at the
moment.
According to the site, it's unclear whether the Galaxy Note 2, which Samsung recently confirmed will be shown off later this month, will land running Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean.
The
rumour goes that the S3 will get Jelly Bean in late Q3 or early Q4,
which means the end of September or the beginning of October. The S2 and
Note are tentatively pegged for an update between October and December.
Samsung's
muddled attempts at updating the Galaxy S2 to Android 4.0 proved to be a
shambles and left phone owners fuming, so here's hoping the next round
of major updates goes a little more smoothly.
Just a few weeks after introducing its first mobile ad unit, Facebook has launched another one, this time designed to help mobile app developers market themselves.
Facebook is testing the new unit with a “limited set of beta
partners” Vijaye Raji, a software engineer at the company, wrote on Facebook’s blog
on Tuesday. The units drive users to new apps. If a user clicks on an
ad and they don’t have the app already, they’ll be directed to the App
Store or Google Play to download it.
The unit is automated; to buy an ad you merely have to fill out an
online form and delineate which demo you’re trying to reach and what
your budget is. Once you buy a unit, you can use Facebook’s analytics
tools to assess its performance.
As Raji notes, there is clearly an audience for such a unit: In the
past 30 days, Facebook has sent customers to the Apple App Store and
Google Play 146 million times.
The introduction comes after Facebook introduced Sponsored Stories for the News Feed in June. A few independent studies have deemed the ads more effective than traditional desktop ads. Despite such success, investors appear skeptical of Facebook’s odds of maintaining its revenues via mobile ads.
Microsoft is already moving on to the next generation of Surface products, as its jobs postings make pretty clear.
Microsoft is bulking up design teams for next-gen Surface devices, despite the pleas of PC partners like Acer.
Acer recently asked Microsoft to reconsider its Surface strategy, but Redmond seems to be doing just the opposite, as dozens of job postings on its career page attest. Some of the job postings seem to imply that Surface products are the true expressions of Microsoft's vision.
"The Surface Team focuses on building devices that fully express the Windows vision," a few of the job listings say.
And that's the whole point of Surface, isn't it? Microsoft needed to
build its own next-generation PC because it didn't see that vision being
expressed properly by its hardware partners.
Other oft-repeated phrases in the job listings are: "We are currently
building the next generation and Surface needs you!" and "you will
bring next generation Surface to life."
And not-too-subtle hints are dropped about upcoming devices.
"Responsible for investigating and developing new materials...to ensure
successful launch of products that utilize new materials."
The federal judge on the case wants to know if Google or Oracle (or
both) paid commentators and bloggers during the legal battle.
Not to be outshined by Apple v. Samsung, there is still digital paperwork floating around for Oracle v. Google.
Judge William Alsup issued a brief but specific order on Tuesday
afternoon from the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, demanding both
parties to basically fess up if they have kept any journalists and/or
commentators on the payroll during the duration of the case.
Here's the order, which much like Alsup's style in the courtroom, cuts right to the point:
The Court is concerned that the parties and/or counsel herein may
have retained or paid print or internet authors, journalists,
commentators or bloggers who have and/or may publish comments on the
issues in this case. Although proceedings in this matter are almost
over, they are not fully over yet and, in any event, the disclosure
required by this order would be of use on appeal or on any remand to
make clear whether any treatise, article, commentary or analysis on the
issues posed by this case are possibly influenced by financial
relationships to the parties or counsel.
Therefore, each side and its counsel shall file a statement herein
clear identifying all authors, journalists, commentators or bloggers who
have reported or commented on any issues in this case and who have
received money (other than normal subscription fees) from the party or
its counsel during the pendency of this action.
Samsung tells court not to buy Apple's excuses for why managers,
including Steve Jobs, generated so few e-mails relevant to the
companies' patent dispute. Samsung wants Apple penalized.
Apple didn't preserve e-mail evidence any better than us so they deserve to be penalized in the same way we were, Samsung lawyers told a federal court today.
In Apple v. Samsung,
the patent court case that is commanding the attention of the gadget
world, Samsung wrote to U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh and pointed out how
few e-mails that key Apple managers, including co-founder Steve Jobs,
turned over for discovery in the case. One interesting side issue is the
differences with Apple and Samsung's e-mail retention policy (we'll get
to that in a second).
Samsung lawyers allege that Apple failed to meet its obligation of
preserving relevant documents and this has harmed Samsung's case.
"Without question, documents that Apple destroyed contained product
comparisons and admissions that should have been preserved and produced
for Samsung's use in this case," Samsung told Koh in its filing.
Up to now, Samsung has been the party in the case accused most often of
litigation misconduct. Two weeks ago, a magistrate judge found that
Samsung had "consciously disregarded" a requirement to preserve evidence
by leaving an automatic e-mail deletion system operating when the
company should have been saving and collecting relevant e-mails. As a
result, the magistrate judge granted Apple's motion for "adverse
inference" and ordered that the jury be informed that Samsung destroyed
evidence favorable to Apple.
That was the fourth time in the case that Samsung has suffered some kind
of penalty. Now, Samsung wants the jury to be instructed that Apple
destroyed evidence favorable to Samsung.
The case began last year when Apple filed a patent suit and accused Samsung of building phones and computer
tablets that ripped off the "look and feel" of the
iPhone and
iPad.
Samsung responded by suing Apple for violating some of its patents. The
trial finally started last week and the tactics being used are getting
closer to the courtroom equivalent of hair pulling and eye gouging.
Last week, Samsung's lawyers released information to the media that the
judge had declined to allow into evidence and many observers said that
this was a backdoor attempt to get the information in front of the jury.
Samsung is skeptical that Steve Jobs, the late
Apple co-founder didn't generate a single e-mail relevant to the
company's patent suit between August 2010 to April 2011.
(Credit:
James Martin/CNET)
In response to Samsung's accusations about destroying evidence, Apple
trumpeted the fact that unlike Samsung, it does not implement any
automatic e-mail deletion systems. Employees are allowed to preserve
e-mails any way they wish and when it becomes clear that Apple may be
party to a lawsuit, managers send out notices to those involved to
preserve e-mails. Apple does, however, employ an e-mail system that
reminds employees to keep their e-mail accounts below certain limits.
Samsung told the judge that regardless of what kind of e-mail system one employs, the duty to preserve is the same.
"The question for the Court is not whether records were destroyed
pursuant to an 'automatic e-mail deletion system'," Samsung wrote. "It
is whether they were destroyed when there was an obligation to preserve
them, period."
Samsung argues that the court has held it responsible for preserving
e-mails a full 8 months before Apple acknowledges it issued its first
litigation hold on e-mails related to the case. Apple only began
preserving e-mails after it filed the lawsuit against Samsung in April
2011.
"Why was August 2010 the right date triggering Samsung's obligation to
preserve documents while the right date for Apple was not until April
2011?" Samsung said in its filing.
Apple said in a response to Samsung that it's doubtful important e-mails
were destroyed because many of the managers involved already had holds
on their e-mail as a result from other legal cases.
Samsung argues that the court shouldn't buy this. The maker of the
Galaxy mobile products wrote to Koh that it received only 66 e-mails
from Apple for the period between August 2010 and April 2011.
"Apple produced zero Steve Jobs e-mails from the key August 2010 to
April 2011 period (and 51 e-mails overall from Jobs)," Samsung said in
the documents. "The company received "nine e-mails from Mr. [Jonathan]
Ive (45 overall) from that period. These are absolutely critical
witnesses--it is inconceivable that Mr. Jobs, CEO of Apple during a
portion of the relevant time period and inventor of the '949, '678,
D'087, D'677, D'270, D'889, D'757 and D'678 patents, actually had so few
e-mails on issues in this case and none between August 2010 and April
2011".
Microsoft already has licensing agreements with the companies accounting for the vast majority
of Android devices on the market, but it's not done just yet. The
latest to come on board is Sharp, which has signed a deal that will
allow it to use Microsoft's Extended File Allocation Table file system
(otherwise known as exFAT) on its Android-based devices -- that's a
slightly more specific agreement than most others, where the contents
haven't been disclosed. While Sharp isn't exactly a major smartphone
player here in North America, it is in Japan, where it had a market share of
17.5 percent in 2011 (second only to Apple). As with other similar
deals, this agreement with see Microsoft receive royalties on all Sharp
Android devices sold, although neither party has commented on the
specific terms. You can find the official word after the break.
Microsoft Enters Licensing Agreement with Sharp
Microsoft licenses exFAT file technology to Sharp for use in products including Android phones.
REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 7, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft Corp. has
entered into an IP licensing agreement with Sharp Corp. to use the
latest Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT). The agreement covers the
use of exFAT in smartphones distributed by Sharp based on the Android
platform. Today's deal marks continued momentum by Microsoft for its
exFAT technology licensing program.
exFAT is a modern file
system that facilitates large files for audiovisual media and enables
seamless data portability for an easy interchange of files between
desktop PCs and other electronic devices. exFAT improves on its
predecessor, the FAT file system, and greatly expands the size of files
that flash memory devices can handle - by more than five times over the
previous technology. It also greatly increases the speed with which
those files can be accessed.
Today's agreement allows Sharp
to incorporate the latest file system from Microsoft in its product
portfolio and deliver faster response times and greater storage
capabilities to consumers around the globe.
"Consumers today
move from mobile phones, to PCs, to home entertainment systems
throughout their day - and they expect their media to move as seamlessly
across those devices as they do," said Horacio Gutierrez, corporate
vice president and deputy general counsel, Intellectual Property Group
at Microsoft. "This agreement allows Sharp to continue to stay ahead of
the curve and give people around the world entertainment and
productivity experiences that truly fit their lifestyles."
Microsoft's Commitment to Intellectual Property Collaboration
Microsoft offers flexible IP licensing programs that give companies
access to many of the foundational technologies in its own products,
allowing those companies to build devices, applications and services
that work seamlessly with one another.
Since Microsoft
launched its IP licensing program in December 2003, the company has
entered into more than 1,100 licensing agreements and continues to
develop programs that make it possible for customers, partners and
competitors to access its IP portfolio. The program was developed to
open access to Microsoft's significant R&D investments and its
growing, broad patent and IP portfolio.
Microsoft has entered
into similar exFAT patent licensing agreements with several leading
consumer electronics manufacturers through its IP licensing program,
including Panasonic Corp., SANYO Electric Company Ltd., Sony Corp. and
Canon Inc.
More information on Microsoft's IP licensing
program is available at http://www.microsoft.com/iplicensing, and
information specifically related to Microsoft's exFAT licensing program
is available at
http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/en/us/intellectualproperty/iplicensing/programs/exfatfilesystem.aspx.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in
software, services and solutions that help people and businesses
realize their full potential.
We have ad-supported e-reading today, but the ads always sit on the periphery
at most. That makes us more than slightly nervous about a newly-granted
Microsoft patent for contextual e-book ads. The development would make
the pitch based on not just targeted pages but the nature of the book in
question: a sci-fi novel might try to sell lightsabers,
and characters themselves might slip into the ads themselves if there's
a fit. Promos could be either generated on the spot or remain static.
Before anyone mourns the end of unspoiled literature, just remember that
having a patent isn't the same as using it -- Microsoft doesn't have
its own dedicated reading app anymore, let alone any warning signs that it's about to pepper our digital libraries with marketing. If the Newco partnership results in copies of War and Peace bombarded with Black Ops II ads, though, we'll know where to place the blame.
Summary:Microsoft is looking for developers to 'think
different' when developing apps for Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 and
their respective Stores.
In the new Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 worlds, add-ins are passe. Apps are in.
This is the crux of what Microsoft officials mean when they talk about the new "cloud app model" that the Office team has adopted with its coming products.
This
new model -- complete with new Office and SharePoint Stores for
marketing/selling/deploying apps from Microsoft and third-party
developers -- is "the most significant thing we've done with the
(Office) platform in 15 years" since the introduction of Visual Basic
for Applications (VBA), said Brian Jones, Group Program Manager on the
Office Solutions Framework team.
First things first: Developers
who want to build these new apps -- and take home 80 percent of the
revenues for paid ones (with Microsoft keeping the other 20 percent) --
need to think different. No more using VBA or VSTO or macros if you want
your app to be available via the new Office and SharePoint Stores.
While VBA, VSTO, macros and other legacy Office development concepts and
conventions will still work with the coming versions of Office and
SharePoint, Jones said, the way of the future for Office developers is
via the Web.
In the Apps for Office and Apps for SharePoint context, "via the Web" means, very simply, that apps be able to talk OAuth, REST and other Web protocols.
All that gets "embedded" in these new apps is a pointer to wherever an
app is hosted. That doesn't mean the app must be hosted in Windows
Azure, though, of course, it can be. It also could be hosted on a
vendor's on-premises server, on Amazon, CloudStack, or any other public
or private cloud site.
As a result of this pointer/Web structure,
apps can follow users when they are signed into Office. The apps a user
downloads "go with" the documents with which they are associated. (If a
user doesn't have a particular app installed that is required for
viewing/modifying an app, there will be some kind of cue or deprecated
view -- depending on what the app developer decides -- to allow such
interactions.) This new model also should improve the deployability,
updatability and manageability of the new generation of apps, as
compared with their plug-in counterparts.
For those who
appreciate architectural diagrams, here's Microsoft's picture of what
the internals of an App for Office looks like: There are two types of Apps for Office offerings: The task pane app and the content app. (These were codenamed "Agaves"
not so long ago.) Content apps let users extend apps with custom
content. Task pane apps also allow custom-content extensions, but this
content shows up in a task pane, side-by-side with an Office document.
There are also Mail apps, Access apps and Project apps which are part of
this new model. (Just to try to bring a little clarity to what I and
some others have found to be a confusing naming convention, none of
these new types of apps is the same as "Office Web Apps," which are the
Webified versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. And that's
it.) In the future, templates -- thousands of which are available today via Office.com -- also could potentially be remade as Apps for Office or Apps for SharePoint.
Apps aren't the only way to extend Office 2013, SharePoint 2013,
Outlook 2013, Access 2013 and Project 2013. Users also are going to be
able to combine these new apps with datasets from Microsoft and third
parties. There's a freely downloadable app that pulls in real-time data
about Olympic gold medals earned by each country known as "Medal Tracker" that shows off this capability. Microsoft is exploring ways to tie its Windows Azure Marketplace data feeds into these new apps, as well, officials said.
On
the SharePoint side of the house, there's a similar story. "Everything
is now considered an app," quipped Richard Riley, Director of Product
Management for SharePoint. It's not just third-party content that gets
designated as an app. Tasks in SharePoint also become apps; calendars
become apps. And all of these apps are available via the SharePoint
store, which is built directly into SharePoint 2013, and shares the same
back-end as the new Office Store, which is hosted on Microsoft's Office.com site.
Developers interested in building new Apps for Office and Apps for SharePoint can find more information on the Apps for Office and SharePoint blog. The dev.office.com
site includes information on provisioning a developer account for these
kinds of apps. And while devs can use tools of their choice (even
open-source ones) to build these new apps, they also can try out the preview of the new "Napa" tools from Microsoft.
Look up. Now down. Back up here again? Imagine having to do that every
time you wanted to unlock your phone, as this granted Google patent for
"Unlocking a screen using eye tracking information" possibly suggests.
Okay, it actually looks more like it's intended for the firm's super spectacles
-- which given their general hands-free nature -- makes more sense. The
claims are fairly straightforward, unlocking of a device would be
granted based on "determining that a path associated with the eye
movement substantially matches a path of the moving object". As long as
those moving objects aren't moving too fast, we think we can work with that.
It's been almost exactly a year since we first heard about NVIDIA's Maximus
technology, and today the firm's just announced an update. The second
generation of the platform is now supported by Kepler-based GPUs. This
time around computational tasks get ferried off to the SMX-streaming K20
GPU, leaving the 3,840 x 2,160 resolution-supporting Quadro K5000 GPU
($3,199) to tackle the graphical functions. Want to know when you can
get your hands on the goods? Well, NVIDIA says starting December, with
the Quadro K5000 ($2,249 MSRP) available as a standalone in October.
Head down to the PR for the full spin and forthcoming workstation
details.
NVIDIA Maximus Fuels Workstation Revolution With Kepler Architecture
Aug 07, 2012 (Marketwire via COMTEX) -- SIGGRAPH 2012 -- NVIDIA today
launched the second generation of its breakthrough workstation
platform, NVIDIA® Maximus™, featuring Kepler™, the fastest, most
efficient GPU architecture.
The Maximus platform, introduced
in November, gives workstation users the ability to simultaneously
perform complex analysis and visualization on a single machine. Now
supported by Kepler-based GPUs, Maximus delivers unparalleled
performance and efficiency to professionals in fields as varied as
manufacturing, visual effects and oil exploration.
Maximus
initially broke new ground as a single system that handles interactive
graphics and the compute-intensive number crunching required to simulate
or render them -- resulting in dramatically accelerated workflows. With
this second generation of Maximus, compute work is assigned to run on
the new NVIDIA Tesla® K20 GPU computing accelerator, freeing up the new
NVIDIA Quadro K5000 GPU to handle graphics functions. Maximus unified
technology transparently and automatically assigns visualization and
simulation or rendering work to the right processor.
"With
the parallel processing capabilities enabled by NVIDIA Maximus systems,
we can now be 10 times more creative," said Alan Barrington, a designer
at the Mercedes-Benz Advanced Design Center California. "With the NVIDIA
Maximus-powered environment, we can continue to refine and improve our
design, right up to the last minute. We can stay efficient and
multitask. We no longer have to settle for less or to compromise on our
creativity."
Powered by the Kepler architecture, the second
generation of Maximus improves both the visualization and computation
capabilities of the platform.
Key NVIDIA Quadro K5000 GPU features include:
Bindless Textures that give users the ability to reference over 1
million textures directly in memory while reducing CPU overhead FXAA/TXAA film-style anti-aliasing technologies for outstanding image quality
Increased frame buffer capacity of 4GB, plus a next-generation PCIe-3
bus interconnect that accelerates data movement by 2x compared with
PCIe-2 An all-new display engine capable of driving up to four displays simultaneously with a single K5000 Display Port 1.2 support for resolutions up to 3840x2160 @60Hz
Key NVIDIA Tesla K20 GPU features include:
SMX streaming multiprocessor technology for up to a 3x performance per watt advantage1 Dynamic Parallelism and Hyper-Q GPU technologies for simplified parallel programming and dramatically faster performance
Here are some examples of how Maximus is transforming workflows across industries:
For the manufacturing and design industry, NVIDIA Maximus-powered
workstations enable professionals to design without limits on size of
assemblies, number of components, image quality, or resolution.
Designers can use real-world physics, lighting, and materials during
interactive design, and visualize with photo-realistic image quality.
"RTT DeltaGen offers custom features such as rapid raytracing,
rendering and scalability, automated layer rendering, and computational
fluid dynamics visualization and analysis," said Peter Stevenson, CEO,
RTT USA, Inc. "Maximus second generation is remarkable, forward-thinking
technology that will further empower our clients by providing them with
the ability to do interactive design and simulation, which will
accelerate their time to insight of their engineering data so they can
make final design decisions even faster."
For the media and
entertainment industry, Maximus gives digital content creators more
freedom and creative flexibility. Film editors and animators can work in
real-time on their most challenging projects, create complex
simulations and interactive visual effects, and work in 3D texture
painting workflows without being constrained by a maximum number of
textures.
Chaos Group provides state of the art rendering
solutions for visual effects, film, media and entertainment, and design
industries. V-Ray RT is a powerful, interactive raytracing render engine
optimized for NVIDIA CUDA® architecture that changes the way 3D artists
and visualization specialists approach the lighting and shading setup.
"We're constantly working to ensure we create the best tools for
customer workflows," said Lon Grohs, vice president, Business
Development at Chaos Group. "Our CUDA based V-Ray plug-in for Maya is
one of our latest developments to meet the needs of the most demanding
VFX and film studios around the world, and with a Kepler-based NVIDIA
Maximus system, 3D artists will spend less time waiting and more time
being creative."
Home of some of the industry's most talented
artists, a52 is an innovative visual effects studio located in Santa
Monica, CA that has created many impressive effects through the seamless
integration of 2D and photoreal CGI.
"We now have the
opportunity to produce more iterations of color and lighting to get to
where we want faster," said Chris Janney, VFX technical director, a52.
"With faster turnaround, we can submit shots much sooner for client
approvals. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend a Maximus setup particularly
for artists working in V-Ray RT -- the time savings alone are
significant, but it's also allowing our artists a better workflow in the
creative process, without long pauses for renders. That is where the
Maximus setup really helps our look development process."
For
geophysicists and seismologists, NVIDIA Maximus-powered workstations
give more accurate data, in less time, on the location of oil and gas
deposits around the world.
Paradigm is a global provider of
analytical and information management solutions for the oil and gas and
mining industries. Paradigm software enables users to locate new oil and
gas reservoirs, create dynamic digital models of the earth's surface,
and optimize production from new and existing reservoirs.
Its
Paradigm 2011.1, a comprehensive application suite of exploration,
development and production applications, provides accelerated
computation of seismic trace attributes through use of NVIDIA Maximus
technology.
"Paradigm software leveraging Maximus technology
is an innovative implementation that enables seismic interpreters to
calculate seismic trace attributes at their desktop in interactive or
dramatically reduced times," said Laura Evins, product manager of
seismic attributes, Paradigm. "This provides huge benefits to our oil
and gas clients, as they can now more quickly recover structural or
depositional features from seismic data. We believe the second
generation of Maximus will accelerate their time to discovery even
further, making our combined technology even more cost effective."
Second generation NVIDIA Maximus-powered desktop workstations
featuring the new NVIDIA Quadro K5000 ($2,249 MSRP, USD) plus the new
NVIDIA Tesla K20 GPU ($3,199 MSRP, USD) will be available starting in
December 2012. The NVIDIA Quadro K5000 will be available as a separate
discrete desktop GPU starting in October 2012.
Leading
software vendors certify and support NVIDIA Maximus-powered
workstations, including Adobe, ANSYS, Autodesk, Bunkspeed, Dassault
Systèmes, MathWorks and Paradigm.
Workstation OEM Support
The world's leading workstation OEMs -- including HP, Dell, Lenovo,
and Fujitsu, plus systems integrators such as BOXX Technologies and
Supermicro -- will offer second generation NVIDIA Maximus-powered
workstations.
New NVIDIA Maximus-powered HP Z Workstations will include the HP Z420, Z620 and HP's ultimate workstation, the Z820.
"HP customers lead their industries, pushing the limits of technology
to help bring consumers the next big blockbuster, alternative energy
resources and medical advancements that would otherwise not be
possible," said Jeff Wood, vice president, Worldwide Marketing,
Commercial Solutions, HP. "This next generation of NVIDIA Maximus
technology will provide the crucial horsepower and productivity demands
of compute-intensive modern workflows, increasing productivity and
ultimately ROI for our customers."
New NVIDIA Maximus-powered
Dell Precision T3600, T5600 and T7600 tower, and R5500 rack
workstations will be available worldwide early next year.
"Dell Precision workstations with the second generation of NVIDIA
Maximus make the promise of designing at the speed of thought a reality
for creative and design professionals," said Efrain Rovira, executive
director, Dell Precision Workstations. "NVIDIA's fast Kepler GPU
architecture combined with our most powerful tower and rack workstations
provides unprecedented visual design and simulation performance for our
customers."
New NVIDIA Maximus-powered Lenovo ThinkStation S30, D30, and C30 workstations will be available worldwide.
"Mission-critical design applications and simulation workflows are
being accelerated like never before with NVIDIA Maximus technology,"
said Rob Herman, director of Product and Vertical Solutions,
ThinkStation Business Unit. "With new, next generation NVIDIA
Maximus-powered ThinkStations, users have even more parallel processing
horsepower to boost their productivity, creativity, and time-to-market.
Our customers can look forward to improved computing and visualization
capabilities that empower them to achieve results faster than ever."
New Fujitsu CELSIUS M720 and R920 NVIDIA Maximus-powered desktop workstations will be available in EMEA, India and Japan.
"With the next-generation of NVIDIA Maximus technology powering our
Fujitsu CELSIUS desktop workstations, we continue to provide the most
innovative technology for accelerating modern workflows that utilize
high-performance 3D modeling, animation, real-time visualization,
analysis, and simulation applications," said Dieter Heiss, vice
president, Workplace Systems Product Development Group, at Fujitsu
Technology Solutions. "These new systems will provide the highest levels
of performance that professionals need."
The Chinese site WPDang uncovered two photos of what could be Nokia's next-generation Windows Phone. Nokia
is expected to announce new Windows Phones running Microsoft's upcoming
operating system, Windows Phone 8, in early September. However, those
phones likely won't launch until much later this year.
The phone pictured here appears to be running Windows Phone 8 and
sports a funky yellow color we haven't seen on a Lumia device yet.
Here are the photos, which were first picked up on The Verge:
The company says that the new design was built "from the ground up," and
will soon allow developers to register in four times as many countries.
A look at Microsoft's new Windows Phone Dev Center.
Microsoft has completely overhauled its Windows Phone Dev Center, and added some extra options for developers to get paid.
The company today announced the changes in a blog post,
saying that the site, which allows developers to do everything from
submit applications to download software development kits, was
completely rebuilt "from the ground up." The design itself comes with a
healthy amount of white space and a streamlined, basic feel. According
to Microsoft, the redesign aims "at providing faster access to common
tasks."
For developers, however, the key additions come byway of availability
and payments. According to Microsoft, it will soon allow developers to
register apps "in four times as many countries and regions" from the Dev
Center. In addition, Microsoft has added more payment methods,
including PayPal.
"For starters, we wanted to make it easier for you to get paid,"
Microsoft wrote today in a blog post. "So the Dev Center now supports
PayPal, something many of you asked for. If PayPal service is available
in your market, you can use it both to get paid and to pay for your
developer account."
Once those apps are made available, developers can head back to the
Dev Center to measure their performance. With the new design, Microsoft
has beefed up those analytics tools, allowing developers to view
downloads by several types, including free, paid, trial, and beta.
Microsoft has also taken measures to reduce latency in the app downloads
report.
Microsoft was quick to point out that all of the updates are currently designed for apps running on
Windows Phone 7.5 or earlier. The company recently announced Windows Phone 8,
the next iteration of its mobile software. The Dev Center overhaul was
timed to precede the launch of that operating system, which should be
made available later this year.
For tablets that want to compete with Apple’s iPad, proving superior
at productivity is seen as a holy grail, and true multitasking is the
key. If users can jump between apps with ease, the logic goes, the
tablet might attract users who think the iPad is only good for
consumption.
That’s why I’m suddenly interested in Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10.1,
an Android-based tablet that launches later this month. Although
Samsung first revealed the Galaxy Note 10.1 back in February, at the
time it looked like a rehash of the company’s earlier 10-inch tablets,
but with a stylus thrown in. Since then, Samsung has souped up the
tablet’s specs to include a quad-core processor and 2 GB of RAM. More
importantly, Samsung’s added some software features to help the new Note
stand out.
As you can see in Samsung’s demo video,
the Note 10.1 will let users run certain apps side-by-side on the
screen, including the web browser, a note-taking app, an e-mail app, a
video player and a document editor. As with Samsung’s earlier tablets,
the Note 10.1 will also come with “mini-apps” such as a calculator and
calendar, which can float on top of whatever else you’re doing.
Watching that video, I’m reminded of the aborted Microsoft project known as Courier,
a stylus-driven, dual-touch screen device that was meant to be a
digital sketchbook. Though Courier never escaped the prototype stage, it
generated buzz in the tech world a couple years ago as a productive
antidote to Apple’s consumption-minded iPad.
The iPad has proven to be a powerful content creation device
in some ways, but its laser-focus on the single task can be limiting.
Even basic Internet research gets frustrating on the iPad because you
must jump back and forth from the browser to whatever app you’re using
to take notes. Doing so requires you to double tap the home button, tap
on the app you want to open and wait for the app-switching animation to
play out, ad nauseum. Some third-party iPad apps such as Tapose and
Blogsy try to solve this problem by mashing several functions into a
single program, but none are as versatile as what Samsung has come up
with.
Other platforms have tried to tackle multitasking in their own ways. Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8,
for instance, will let users snap a second app into a narrow sidebar on
the left edge of the screen, so you can keep an eye on Twitter, e-mail
or other programs while focusing mainly on a single app. RIM’s
BlackBerry PlayBook and HP’s TouchPad–both commercial failures–allowed
users to quickly swipe from one app to the next with a simple gesture.
Samsung’s approach seems even faster for bouncing between tasks, with
the downside that it’s limited to a handful of built-in apps.
I haven’t actually used the Galaxy Note 10.1, so for now I can’t say
how its approach to multitasking works in practice. But I am interested
to find out.
The iPhone maker is up against another lawsuit in China by a man who
claims to hold a patent on a technology for a "voice network personal
digital assistant."
Apple's Facetime is the latest technology stirring up legal complaints for the company in China.
A Taiwanese man who claims to hold a patent on a "voice network personal digital assistant" technology has filed a lawsuit against Apple
over allegations that the technology is used in Facetime, says blog
site MIC Gadget. The Intermediate People's Court in Zhenjiang confirmed
the lawsuit and contacted Apple, but the company reportedly has not yet
responded.
The Taiwanese man, known only as Lee, said he discovered the patent violation after buying an
iPhone 4S.
Working for a tech company, Lee claims to have come up with the idea
for an Internet calling feature after he needed to contact people while
traveling, MIC Gadget said. He also claims to have applied for a patent
for the technology in 2003.
With so many companies trading patent infringement suits these days,
it's difficult to know which ones are legitimate and which ones are
specious. But either way, Apple has to deal with the suit, which kicks
off with its first hearing in September.
Lee hasn't specified any financial amount in damages but wants Apple to stop the patent violation.
This isn't the first time Apple has run into legal trouble in China. The company recently had to pay out $60 million to settle a dispute with Proview Technology over the
iPad trademark.
Samsung is giving you another reason to choose its smartphones — a rebate of up to $300 for your old smartphone.
The program, unveiled on the brand’s Facebook Page on Monday and on samsungupgrade.com,
promises a refund within 30 days for anyone who buys a new Samsung
smartphone and mails in their old one. A trade-in on an iPhone 4S 64GB
in perfect condition will fetch you the full $300, but the rebates fall
sharply from there. For instance, a 32GB version of the same model will
only get you $230 and the 16GB version will get you $215.
However, such a rebate will essentially render a new top-of-the-line
Samsung smartphone free or close to it: A Samsung Galaxy S III is $199
with a new contract and a Galaxy Note costs $249 with a new contract.
The push comes as Samsung’s sales far outpace Apple’s
on a global basis, but, like Microsoft, is viewed these days as an
underdog against the Cupertino powerhouse. The Samsung-Apple skirmish
isn’t just happening in the marketplace, though: The two are in the
midst of a protracted courtroom battle over Samsung’s alleged theft of Apple’s mobile phone intellectual property.
In addition, both Apple and Samsung look to be planning big
announcements over the next few weeks: Samsung has a mysterious event
planned for Aug. 15 that appears to be related to its Galaxy Note
devices. Apple, meanwhile, is reportedly planning to introduce a new
iPhone model on Sept. 12.
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Whether or not you agree that Samsung copied the
look and feel of Apple's products, it's now clear that Apple put the
company in a difficult position when it first accused Samsung of
copying.
The federal judge presiding over the Apple-Samsung patent infringement
trial has apparently grown weary of the quibbling attorneys in the case
and has ordered them to meet in person today to hammer out joint jury
instructions.
The rectennas use smartphone radio waves to communicate
Now here's the old chart from Q1, where revenue per user was incorrectly listed as $2.86:
In all, it's not a huge error and it doesn't affect Facebook's top or
bottom lines. But it is interesting to know that Facebook's accounting
isn't completely perfect.
Apple's Facetime is the latest technology stirring up legal complaints for the company in China.