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Analysis and Comment
Sources:
Read/WriteWeb | Weblog
The Economist | The Internet | News
Telegraph | Technology | Features
NPR | Technology | News
PC Magazine | Commentary
PC Magazine | John C. Dvorak | Commentary
Digital Communities | Magazine | Features
BBC News | Programmes | Click | World Edition
ZDNet | iGeneration | Web log
Texas Opens Inquiry Into Google Search Rankings
NPR | Technology | News 04 09 2010
Java - It's not Dead, Folks - It's Doing Just Fine
Read/WriteWeb | Weblog 04 09 2010
China's Baidu Refocuses on Mobile and Apps
Read/WriteWeb | Weblog 04 09 2010
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Read/WriteWeb / Weblog
Web Technology news, reviews and analysis.
Java - It's not Dead, Folks - It's Doing Just Fine
04 09 2010 Java.jpgJava gets a bad rap. It's considered old-school. People say that young developers prefer Ruby-on-Rails and other Web-based hot stuff. True - but these are not bad times for Java at all. James Governor of RedMonk wrote a post that provides several good reasons why Java is really doing quite well. Elance shows the current demand for people with Google App Engine skills is greater than those knowledgeable about Amazon Web Services. Audrey Watters of ReadWriteCloud saw the news and posted on the topic of IT Jobs as the question for our weekly poll.

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The reason why Google App Engine is doing so well? It's all about the enterprise. VMware's Spring Platform is based upon SpringSource, which has become the dominant platform for launching Java-based apps. It now integrates with Google App Engine, a primary reason for the growing success of the platform. Governor makes some points that are worth noting: NoSQL is one of the hottest trends in tech right now. Many of the technologies built on the platform are written in Java. It was born on the Web but will eventually move to the enterprise. MapReduce? It's what Google and Yahoo! use to get fast responses over large data sets. It is built on Java. Hadoop is based on MapReduce. It has its own ecosystem developing around the technology. And then there's this from Governor:

Of course we're also seeing innovation from the new hotness - thus Erlang underpins CouchDB and RIAK. But Java is certainly core to the innovation. Lets look at RabbitMQ for example - which though written in Erlang was acquired by SpringSource as a messaging engine to underpin a Java-based programming model.
Governor goes on to provide a number of other examples to make his point. And we have to agree. Java is not dead. it still has plenty of room for innovation.Discuss
IBM at the US Open - Analyzing Every Volley, Serve and Overhead Smash
04 09 2010 US Open Live - USOpen.org.jpgOne quote from an IBM executive stands out in the post that Chris Cameron wrote today about IBM's augmented reality app for the U.S. Open. Rick Singer, IBM's Vice President of Sports Technology Partnerships said it all comes down tthe information generated with every tennis stroke, volley and serve:
"This is all about data. It's about how you take data, aggregate it and make it simpler to use," says Singer. "This is like having your best friend with you that knows everything about the Open right by your side because you can take all of that data and you can make better decisions."

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IBM is using the U.S. Open to demonstrate its commitment to cloud computing. For example, according to eWeek, IBM implemented its analytics platform to use real-time and historical information to deploy services to "media organizations, tournament officials, the public, tennis players on different platforms such as broadcast, the Web, mobile devices and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. At the U.S. Open, IBM has deployed sensors to the radar guns, the umpire chairs and throughout the tennis grounds to collect data that can be analyzed and visualized. It has partnered with the U.S. Tennis Association to provide its PointStream technology, which pull intelligence from the data around scores and match statistics. It is supposed to then present that information in real-time. ibmusopen.png According to MediaPost, online viewers may also use IBM's Momentum Meter to see which player has a statistical edge. That provides a range of different possibilities for viewers. They can watch the matches on television and get stats from their smartphone, iPad or laptop. Images can be seen visually, which makes sense as following charts and graphs can be a bit cumbersome. Analytics provide a different viewing experience for people watching the U.S. Open. The experience also provides a view of what we can expect as more "TV" plays venture online. For example, Google TV will be offering its own ways to analyze data to provide contextual information. What we are seeing really is the start of a technology match that will last far longer than the last smash and volley at the U.S. Open. Discuss

China's Baidu Refocuses on Mobile and Apps
04 09 2010 baidu.pngBaidu is the most-visited website in China and has captured 70% of search revenue in that country. Alexa's Top 500 Global Sites list puts it at number 6. But with virtually no penetration outside Asia, can it really be considered a global company at all, or just an awfully big one? Until it reaches beyond its shores in an appreciable and sustained fashion, it probably won't be considered a global player of consequence. But its latest move may do just that. It is refocusing a great deal of its enormous resources into the mobile and app markets.

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At the annual Baidu developers conference yesterday, CFO Jennifer Li reiterated the company's dedication to the mobile space. The 10-year-old company started focusing on mobile last year with the development of a texting language and mobile mapping. At that point it also established a dedicated mobile department. As for apps, last night its Box Computing Open Platform went live. The BCOP allows users to run apps, including games, videos and e-books, through the Baidu website using any platform. Wuxi_China.jpgA lot of our coverage of China focuses on Google's issues there. Among those issues are the lack of stability: what can a company or developer expect, day to day? With China's shifting censorship regime, it is hard to anticipate what might be disallowed. Mobile apps are dependent on the robustness of their developer community. Will non-Chinese developers be willing to put time and money into developing on Baidu's platform? Can Chinese developers develop on Baidu for Western users compellingly enough to attract them? Or will the future of China's global influence be on the Internet of Things, leaving Baidu a strictly Chinese concern? This isn't a rhetorical question. We sent it to a couple of our friends with first-hand knowledge of the Chinese web industry. But if you've got knowledge of your own, share it why not? Discuss

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The Economist / The Internet / News
Mobile internet in emerging markets: The next billion geeks
02 09 2010 How the mobile internet will transform the BRICI countries BUYING a mobile phone was the wisest $20 Ranvir Singh ever spent. Mr Singh, a farmer in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, used to make appointments in person, in advance, to deliver fresh buffalo milk to his 40-odd neighbours. Now his customers just call when they want some. Mr Singh’s income has risen by 25%, to 7,000 rupees ($149) a month. And he hears rumours of an even more bountiful technology. He has heard that “something on mobile phones” can tell him the current market price of his wheat. Mr Singh does not know that that “something” is the internet, because, like most Indians, he has never seen or used it. But the phone in his calloused hand hints at how hundreds of millions of people in emerging markets—perhaps even billions—will one day log on. Only 81m Indians (7% of the population) regularly use the internet. But brutal price wars mean that 507m own mobile phones. Calls cost as little as $0.006 per minute. Indian operators such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications sign up 20m new subscribers a month. ...
Online television: Hogging the remote
02 09 2010 Old-media firms are firmly in control of internet video LIKE stallholders in a busy market, technology companies hawked their online-video services this week. In Berlin, Sony announced it would begin selling films over the internet to Europeans. In San Francisco, Apple unveiled a smaller, cheaper Apple TV, a set-top box designed to play videos. It also said some television shows would be available a la carte for 99 cents. YouTube, a video-streaming website owned by Google, is trying to cut deals with studios that would allow it to rent newly released films. Amazon too is reportedly trying to build a subscription service. But while technology companies are making all the noise, old-media firms are quietly steering the market. The main reason for all the activity is the abrupt appearance in shops of televisions that can plug into the internet, either through cables or wirelessly. NPD, a research firm, reckons that 12% of all the flat-screen televisions sold in America in the first seven months of this year were “connected”. That share is likely to soar. Technology firms spy an opportunity to bypass old-fashioned distributors and bring online video directly to the living room. ...
The future of the internet: A virtual counter-revolution
02 09 2010 The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it THE first internet boom, a decade and a half ago, resembled a religious movement. Omnipresent cyber-gurus, often framed by colourful PowerPoint presentations reminiscent of stained glass, prophesied a digital paradise in which not only would commerce be frictionless and growth exponential, but democracy would be direct and the nation-state would no longer exist. One, John-Perry Barlow, even penned “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”. Even though all this sounded Utopian when it was preached, it reflected online reality pretty accurately. The internet was a wide-open space, a new frontier. For the first time, anyone could communicate electronically with anyone else—globally and essentially free of charge. Anyone was able to create a website or an online shop, which could be reached from anywhere in the world using a simple piece of software called a browser, without asking anyone else for permission. The control of information, opinion and commerce by governments—or big companies, for that matter—indeed appeared to be a thing of the past. “You have no sovereignty where we gather,” Mr Barlow wrote. ...
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Telegraph / Technology / Features
Science, technology and internet news from telegraph.co.uk
Are programs like BizSpark actually any good for start-ups?
03 09 2010 Milo Yiannopoulos wonders how much value corporate programs bring to the start-up ecosystem.
Broadband advertising 'misleading consumers'
03 09 2010 Misleading advertising of broadband speeds is confusing and frustrating consumers, a survey has warned.
IFA 2010: Panasonic to offer 3D movies direct from TV set
03 09 2010 New Vieracast web TV services will include 3D movies to rent or buy on demand, Panasonic announces at Europe's largest technology fair
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NPR / Technology / News
National Public Radio produces and distributes more than 130 hours of original programming each week, and local NPR stations also broadcast many programs which are produced by stations and other radio networks.
Texas Opens Inquiry Into Google Search Rankings
04 09 2010 The antitrust inquiry disclosed by Google late Friday is just the latest sign of the intensifying scrutiny facing the company as it enters its adolescence. The review appears to be focused on whether Google is manipulating its search results to stifle competition.
Bidding War Over 3Par Ends, HP Wins
03 09 2010 The high stakes bidding war between HP and Dell is over. HP will pay more than $2 billion for a California company called 3Par that specializes in digital data storage.
Studying Computers To Learn About Ourselves
03 09 2010 Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford University, has been studying the ways humans interact with computers to tease out some of the intricacies of how people relate to each other. He talks about those findings in his new book The Man Who Lied to His Laptop.
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PC Magazine / Commentary
Apple TV: It's the Content, Stupid
02 09 2010 Movie and TV studios seem determined to prevent Apple TV from doing too well in the marketplace.
Apple's Rumored iTV Plans Would Face Uphill Battle
01 09 2010 The buzz is that tomorrow Apple will reinvent Apple TV, add Netflix, and take on the connected TV market. That's cool, but it better be ready for a fight.
Note to Self: Chips Are Out, Apps Are In
01 09 2010 Writing essay after essay about new instructions within the x86 chip would get me zero readers.
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PC Magazine / John C. Dvorak / Commentary
Note to Self: Chips Are Out, Apps Are In
01 09 2010 Writing essay after essay about new instructions within the x86 chip would get me zero readers.
Stop the Tech Consolidation
31 08 2010 Thanks to buyouts, mergers, and the like, the tech world is getting smaller—and it isn't a good thing.
E-mail is Broken. Let's Turn it Into a Pay Toilet
26 08 2010 People have stopped responding to their e-mail. Systems like Facebook aren't the answer. One does exist, however.
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Digital Communities / Magazine / Features
Information technology (IT) case studies, applications, news and best practices by and for international, state, city and county government.
Boston Launches a Mobile Version of its Website to Align With Various Ways People Access the Web
04 09 2010 The development and deployment of a mobile version of Boston's website is set to influence how the city conducts business in the future.
New State Tests Coming to Schools
04 09 2010 Standardized tests, the focus of many teachers' complaints, are getting a federal makeover.
NewsWatch: Public Safety -- Jail Gets Bow-and-Arrow Cell Phone Delivery
04 09 2010 Mosquito Noise for Loitering, Top Speed Trap City, First Female Police Officer in the U.S., Marijuana Program Hijacked by Criminals, Gun Buyback, Jury Policy Taints Drug Case.
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BBC News / Programmes / Click / World Edition
How to work anywhere in the world
27 08 2010 Digital technology is making it easier than ever to escape the office but does the reality of being able to work anywhere live up to the dream?
Virtual reality asks tough questions
20 08 2010 Virtual reality is allowing scientists to ask difficult questions about human behaviour that were previously not possible.
Online gaming takes it to the next level
14 08 2010 Online services are allowing gamers to play big titles without paying big bucks. Is the game over for the games console?
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ZDNet / iGeneration / Web log
Mac vs. PC: Playing Russian Roulette at college
03 09 2010 Would you buy your student kid a Mac at three or four times the price of a non-Apple laptop if you knew it might not last the year?
Should public Wi-Fi access be 'free'?
02 09 2010 Public Wi-Fi is there as a benefit, more often provided by larger franchises who can afford to offer it. But with legality, cost and piracy issues, should public wireless access be free?
Next generation HD calls to hit UK mobile network
01 09 2010 Mobile network Orange will be the first cell provider in the UK to begin the roll-out of high-definition call quality for all users on their network.
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