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Submission + - HTML5 Poses Threat to Flash and the App Store (wsj.com) 1

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "Few outside the techie world were aware of HTML5 before April 2010 when Apple CEO Steve Jobs declared iPhones and iPads would never support Adobe Flash. Instead, he said, Apple would implement other technologies for video and games, based around HTML5. It was either strange or ironic when, a little over a year later, the Financial Times announced it had developed an app using HTML5 which would allow it to bypass payments to Apple for its use on the iPad or iPhone. That led to HTML5 being discussed as a technology that could kill Apple’s highly profitable App Store. The problem is HTML5 is not scheduled for official approval by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) until 2014. Developers, meanwhile, want to run the latest technology now. So they will either use proprietary plug-ins such as Flash or protocols that could become standards. So where does that leave the would-be app developer now? Paul Fifield CEO of iPad publishers Ceros, believes: “If you’re not looking to monetize your app then, absolutely, you should go for HTML5. If you’re looking to monetize it. then native coding for the App Store is still the way to go.”"
Entertainment

Submission + - BBC iPlayer European Launch Disappoints (wsj.com)

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "There was a gnashing of teeth amongst Anglophiles and British expatriates mixed with a certain amount of relief for virtual private network suppliers as the U.K.'s national broadcaster, the BBC, announced details of the long-awaited international expansion of its iPlayer. This service has for over five years allowed viewers in the U.K. to catch up with broadcasts on demand using a growing number of devices including computers, mobile handsets, cable services, games consoles and internet-connected televisions. Brits abroad and other fans of BBC programming have long found workarounds to beat the territorial restrictions [and breach the terms and conditions] of the service in order to keep up with their favorite shows. Generally this has meant using a virtual private network (VPN) with a UK IP address so it appeared the user was in Britain. It has become a thriving little industry for suppliers. For months, however, visitors to the BBC website (where no subterfuge is required to view) have been tantalized with teaser advertisements for a new international iPlayer service. The obvious inference was that it would replicate what was available in the UK, but with charges. The reality is rather less."

Submission + - Adobe Closes Its App Stores (wsj.com)

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "Without offering much of an explanation beyond saying it comes from “developer feedback”, Adobe has pulled the plug on its AIR Marketplace and InMarket app stores. However, the Apple Intelligence blog “9to5Mac” is quite clear as to what has happened: “Another win for Apple here,” it says."
Cloud

Submission + - U.K. Officials Put Classified Info in the Cloud (wsj.com)

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "U.K. government policy makers will be able to work securely on classified documents across departments for the first time thanks to a deal with cloud computing and content management service provider Huddle. Previously the only way for policy makers to share documents across departments, said Huddle CEO Alastair Mitchell, was via secure email: "Try working on a 500 page document to be shared by 20 people. It is a nightmare." Some 70% of government departments have been using a version of Huddle for some time, said Mr. Mitchell, but anything with a classification of "oerestricted" or above was prohibited. So the government commissioned a special secure version, called Huddle IL3, to allow it to handle more sensitive documents up to restricted level. According to a government spokeswoman a large amount of government work is done at the restricted level.
Cloud-based solutions help tackle the issue of users, when faced with obtrusive security procedures, using their insecure Gmail or Hotmail accounts. Surely London-based Huddle has just made itself a target for every hacker in the world wanting to crack into the U.K. government’s secrets? Not so. “It is running on the government secure intranet on their servers in their data center” said Mr. Mitchell. He added that because they were running on the government servers, they were in theory authorized to work to higher levels. He said they were hopeful to be cleared to handle the next level of security, confidential (IL4), next year."
Security

Submission + - Vodafone Mobiles Targeted by Hackers (wsj.com)

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "Hackers gained access to unauthorized information from Vodafone mobiles and its network after exploiting security loopholes in a femtocell—devices aimed at plugging small holes in their network coverage—the group has claimed. In a statement Vodafone has said that it was aware of the hack the group alleged it had used and had already patched the vulnerability. “The only time a customer could theoretically have been at risk was if they were registered on, and within 50 metres of, a box which the owner had tampered with,” the company said in the statement. “This would have required that person to dismantle the device and solder additional components onto it, as well as taking the conscious decision to prevent the device from receiving our automatic software updates.” “Eduart Steiner” (a pseudonym), a spokesman for The Hacker’s Choice group, said: “That is exactly what we did.”"
Cloud

Submission + - Spotify Will Find U.S. Tough to Crack (wsj.com)

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "If everyone in the U.S. is as excited about Spotify as Britney Spears is, then their worries are over. The excitable Ms. Spears tweeted to her 8.5 million fans last night: "So excited Spotify is FINALLY coming to the US tomorrow! Getting my playlists ready now -Brit". In reality the U.S. market is going to prove a lot tougher to crack: “They have done a very good job in Europe, but the U.S. is a very tough music market,” said Ben Rumley, an analyst at Enders Analysis. “You have had subscription services there for a long time. Spotify was new when it launched in Europe; it was offering something that was done very well. But in the U.S. you have had Rhapsody for many years and Napster was around. These services have struggled to capture the imagination.” Alongside Rhapsody, a joint venture between MTV and Real Networks, and Napster there are services such as Pandora, Mog, Rdio and even the controversial Grooveshark. And of course, its biggest rival, piracy."
Piracy

Submission + - Fines Levied by French Piracy Watchdog: € Zer (wsj.com)

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "Earlier this week, France’s anti-internet piracy police, Hadopi, presented the fruits of nine months of scanning the Web for intellectual property thieves. That works out at 470,000 first warnings, no fines, and not one Internet connection cut off. Some copyright holders, whose industry associations pay to harvest the IP addresses of alleged miscreants, are wondering whether they are getting any bang for their buck.

When it was launched in 2010, Hadopi was viewed as the big stick the music industry would use to beat French Internet pirates into submission. Now Hadopi is putting pressure on the music industry to offer up a correspondingly juicy carrot: cheap and easy to use Web sites where songs can be downloaded legally."
Security

Submission + - Is the Military Prepared for Cyberwarfare? (wsj.com)

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "If you think that combatting cyber criminals is hard in your organization, imagine doing it in an enterprise with some 18 or so layers of management between the top man (and it is always a man) and the most junior employee. Now imagine that in that organization there is a form for everything, that it can take literally decades to buy new equipment, and that you can be jailed for having dirty footwear. But that same organization is charged with helping to defeat shadowy hacker groups who are faster, have better equipment, almost certainly are better funded and don’t have to salute every time someone senior walks past them.
The modern military is used to operating in what is known as an asymmetric environment, with a distinct imbalance between the two opponents. The problem for the military is that they like to be the big guy. According to a senior officer speaking at the 2011 Annual Defense Lecture in London, when asked if the military was capable of operating at the same speed as their opponents, he admitted they were not."
Businesses

Submission + - New Business Models for Industries In Crisis (wsj.com)

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "In Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams' 2006 book Wikinomics, the authors looked at dozens of companies that have used the Internet to transform their business models and achieve tremendous success. However, they noticed something striking: the rate of business model innovation has not accelerated. Increasingly it’s becoming difficult or even impossible for companies to achieve breakthrough success without changing their entire industry’s modus operandi. For example, despite the advancements of modern medicine, healthcare’s business model has remained unchanged for centuries. Doctors wait for sick people to come to them and tell their patients what to do, one-on-one, face-to-face. Patients play little or no role in deciding their own treatments plans. Patients are passive recipients. The entire industry needs to reinvent itself around the Internet and recast the doctor-patient relationship. Patients should use the Internet to become informed. Every citizen, including newborns, would have a personal health page. Think of it as a patient’s personal window into his or her own health and the basis for participation in a broader health social network."
Technology

Submission + - Women & Children First: Technology And Moral P (wsj.com)

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "Why is it that some technologies cause moral panic and others don'(TM)t? Why was the introduction of electricity seen as a terrible thing, while nobody cared much about the fountain pen? According to Genevieve Bell, the director of Intel Corporation’s Interaction and Experience Research, we have had moral panic over new technology for pretty well as long as we have had technology. It is one of the constants in our culture. "oeI like the fact that moral panic is remarkably stable and it is always played out in the bodies of children and women," she said. There was, she says, an initial pushback about electrifying homes in the U.S.: "oeIf you electrify homes you will make women and children and vulnerable. Predators will be able to tell if they are home because the light will be on, and you will be able to see them. So electricity is going to make women vulnerable. Oh and children will be visible too and it will be predators, who seem to be lurking everywhere, who will attack. "oeThere was some wonderful stuff about [railway trains] too in the U.S., that women's bodies were not designed to go at 50 miles an hour. Our uteruses would fly out of our bodies as they were accelerated to that speed.""
Science

Submission + - Telemedicine Fertility Monitor As Successful As IV (wsj.com)

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "Shamus Husheer’s opening line as a speaker is guaranteed to get him a laugh: "My name is Shamus Husheer and my job is to get the women of Britain pregnant." Behind the laughs, though, Mr. Husheer has developed a technology that is helping thousands of women get pregnant without recourse to drugs or invasive techniques for a fraction of the cost of IVF. In the U.K. a cycle of IVF costs on average some £4,500 ($7,200). New Zealand born Mr. Husheer, who started his company, Cambridge Temperature Concepts, straight after being awarded a PhD from the chemistry department at Cambridge University says the fertility monitor, called DuoFertility, is as effective as conventional IVF. “We published a peer-reviewed paper that showed that six months use of the monitor has the same success rate as a round of IVF.” They are confident that unpublished research which uses additional data will show that a year of use is better than IVF. So confident is Mr. Husheer, that the company offers a money-back guarantee. If a woman is not pregnant after 12 month’s use, and has complied with the instructions, then the company will refund the £495. DuoFertility comprises a small sensor, slightly larger in diameter than a €1 coin, which a woman wears under her arm, affixed with medical tape. The sensor, which can take up to 20,000 readings a day, has to be worn all night and preferably during the day as well. It is designed to fit into the natural pocket under the arm. And in a great example of how data capture is transforming businesses, the monitoring data has proved to be a valued resource for sleep researchers. The monitor contains a three-axis accelerometer which it uses to determine when the woman is asleep"
Google

Submission + - Google to Make British Library Archive Available O (wsj.com) 1

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "The British Library today announced its first partnership with Google, under which Google will digitize 250,000 items from the library’s vast collection of work produced between 1700-1870.
The Library, the only British institution that automatically receives a copy of every book and periodical to go on sale in the United Kingdom and Ireland, joins around 40 libraries worldwide in allowing Google to digitize part of its collection and make it freely available and searchable online, at books.google.co.uk and the British Library website, www.bl.uk. As well as published books, the 1700-1870 collection will also contain pamphlets and periodicals from across Europe. This was a period of political and technological turmoil, covering much of the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the introduction of UK income tax and the invention of the telegraph and railway. All of these topics are covered, as are the quirkier matters of the day, such as the account, from 1775, of a stuffed hippopotamus owned by the Prince of Orange."
EU

Submission + - Marietje Schaake: Europe's Most Wired Politician (wsj.com)

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "She has been called the most wired politician in Europe. Marietje Schaake, is an MEP for the Dutch progressive liberal D66 party. Here at the two-day summit in Brussels which will help shape the E.U.’s agenda, she is seen by many as one of the few MEPs who really understands what is going on.

“I think many MEPs try [to understand], but they don’t,” she says with self confidence that never strays into arrogance. She gets it, they don’t. And she knows it. Ms. Schaake has long been, if not a lone voice, certainly one of very few, MEPs who have embraced new media and understood its significance. With admirable brevity, her election manifesto in 2009 was expressed in just 10 tweets. But as an MEP in Brussels, she faces an uphill struggle: “I don’t even have wi-fi in my office,” she says. “But you should see the amount of paper I get. Kilos of it.”"
Science

Submission + - Airbus' Vision for 2050. Where's the Cockpit? (wsj.com)

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "Airbus have shed light on what the aircraft of the future will look like and how that could change passengers’ experiences when they fly in 2050 with a flashy computer generated video. Of course, it’s a plane they hope one day to build. So, what does the future hold in the eyes of one of the world’s biggest aircraft manufacturers and would any airline actually buy into an idea where space is provided on an aircraft to play virtual golf? From the video it appears that the cabin crew which greet you and guide you towards the correct aisle have disappeared. Instead, they are replaced by hand-print scanners that check you in and then show images of where your seats are. Airbus believes the futuristic web-like roof, providing panoramic views, will be strong enough to withhold the pressures associated with flight. But have Aibus forgotten one really important feature? None of the video images seem to show where the cockpit may be situated. Perhaps there’s no need for them in Airbus’ eyes, but we think it might be quite important."
Government

Submission + - eG8 Publishes Report in Noninteractive, Nonquotabl (wsj.com)

Submitted by
pbahra
pbahra writes: "You could not come up with a better illustration of the clash of cultures that was the eG8 than the post-forum report. Was the output of the two-day gathering in Paris published on a website so people could link to it? Or perhaps a blog so that people could comment on it? Or even a wiki, so the people who attended could contribute and correct mistakes? No it wasn’t. The report is a book. Or rather it is an eBook. Except it isn’t even an eBook, in the sense of something that you can read on your Kindle or other eBook reader. It’s actually a Flash-based page turner, the sort of thing that was all the rage five years ago. It is a digital facsimile of a book. It is the triumph of design over access. Being Flash, you can’t even cut and paste what is in the file. And being Flash it gives complete and total control to the authors. As a user all you get to do is to read it, in exactly the way the authors want you to. It looks good, but you can’t do anything with it, except what the authors tell you to do. Metaphor anyone?"

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