Current news items regarding technology, tech companies, the Internet, the government, etc.
Ever had an idea for a great touchscreen product? Here’s your chance to make it a reality. TouchRevolution is a supplier of touchscreens of a variety of formats which can be used for almost any purpose with ease. It allows you to get your product idea off the ground without developing any touch hardware for it.
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Touch Revolution Lets You Build Touchscreen DevicesRead More »
Technology for blind people is advancing rapidly – recent new discoveries have been made that offer some degree of sight through a person’s tongue, but now imagine a car that can be driven, completely independently, by someone who has little or no sight.
The National Federation for the Blind (NFB) and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, College of Engineering have teamed up to create this. The car uses ‘non-visual’ signals to tell the driver the location of obstacles, such as cars in other lanes, or cars to the rear or front. This means the car can actually be fully driven by a blind person, and doesn’t have to rely on a computer to do any of the thinking or decision making.
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Hot on the heels of Internet Explorer’s v9 release, Firefox 4 is out. The highly anticipated latest version of the Mozilla Foundation‘s flagship product, Firefox has a slew of new features, and in particular touts its huge boost in speed that puts it back on par with Google’s Chrome browser.
What’s New?
Firefox 4 boasts a slew of new features and you can read the full list in the release notes, while we point out the highlights:
That is just a taste, and developers in particular will be chomping at the bit to test out some of the new HTML5 and CSS3 support, so look forward to even more websites moving into the new era as older browser fall by the wayside.
You can download Firefox 4 right now and add to the more than 11 million as of the time of this writing!
Google is running another contest of an almost philanthropic nature with the aim of having teens around the world ages 13-18 compete with each in a global Science Fair.
As a competitor, you will need to create either a 2-minute video or 20-slide presentation and submit it by April 4, 2011.
There are a whole host of prizes including National Geographic expeditions, scholarships (up to $50,000), and an ‘experience’ at one of the partner organizations: CERN, Google, the LEGO Group, or Scientific American.
Take a look at the entertaining promo video that was created for the contest – it’s a Rube Goldberg machine, and you know those are always fun!
If you’re a frequent reader of GfG, you already know we’re big into computer security, so we’re pleased to see when companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook who have such enormous numbers of users improve the security and privacy of users.
For example, Twitter now allows users to enable HTTPS as constantly on for their connection to the Twitter website. In the past, you could either manually type in https in the URL or use a browser extension or even more complicated tweak to do so.
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TaHomA (Total Home Automation) by Somfy Systems is a great-looking total home automation device that can be used to control HA products around your home.
It was initially built to control your motorized shades, blinds and thermostats but has been expanded to also control your lighting and climate control devices using Somfy’s proprietary Z-Wave and Radio Technology.
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TaHomA – Stylish Home Automation and Energy Saving GizmoRead More »
Microsoft has just released the latest version of Internet Explorer, version 9. IE 9 is a major release with significant improvements but still has some issues that Microsoft needs to tackle if it wants to continue competing with the likes of Google, Mozilla and even Apple.
What’s New
Performance: IE 9 is a major overhaul whose performance especially in the JavaScript rendering arena is now more on par with current products such as Google’s Chrome. This will naturally improve the responsiveness of JavaScript-heavy Web 2.0 sites.
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Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 9, Improves Performance & SecurityRead More »
It was almost 2 years ago that Oracle decided to purchase Sun Microsystems. And now in what seems like the final nail in the coffin, they will also be completely killing off the www.sun.com website.
Most of the content has already been transferred over to new Oracle websites, and trying to go to sun.com already redirects you to an Oracle page.
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Market intelligence firm, IDC, reported that almost 18 million media tablets, such as the iPad, were shipped in 2010. The number jumped dramatically from the 3rd quarter of 2010 from 4.5 million to over 10 million in the 4th.
Apple’s iPad accounted for 93% in the 3rd quarter, but then fell to 73% in the 4th pushed down by the popular Samsung Galaxy Tab.
The current target for 2011 is 50 million units.
The eReader market also continued to grow strongly, with over 6 million units shipped in the holiday 4th quarter.
Watch this 90 second clip of Paul Graham, of Y Combinator, Viaweb, etc., talking about how he worries about Apple and Steve Jobs becoming the ‘dictator’ types that they once mocked in the 70s and 80s when they were a young company.
I and others have been saying this for ages. It’s ironic, but also how human nature and corporations tend to play out given the circumstances.
Bloomberg has disabled embedding of the video, so just hit the link to watch directly on YouTube.
If you’ve never heard of Paul Graham, it’s worth checking out his fantastic essays on all things computer- and startup-related. He has also written and published a book, Hackers & Painters, which is also worth checking out.
