65689301
submission
Z80xxc! writes:
The Gmail team announced Inbox this morning, a new way to manage email. Inbox is email, but organizes it differently. Messages are grouped into "bundles" of similar types, "highlights" pull out and display key information from messages, and messages can be "snoozed" to come back later as a reminder. Inbox is invite-only right now, and you can email inbox@google.com to request an invite.
65047721
submission
Z80xxc! writes:
CloudFlare, a cloud service that sits between websites and the internet to provide a CDN, DDOS and other attack prevention, speed optimization, and other services announced today that SSL will now be supported for all customers, including free customers. This will add SSL support to approximately 2 million previously unprotected websites. Previously SSL was only available to customers paying at least $20/month for a "Pro" plan or higher.
Browsers connect to CloudFlare's servers and receive a certificate provided by CloudFlare. CloudFlare then connects to the website's server to retrieve the content, serving as a sort of reverse proxy. Different security levels allow CloudFlare to connect to the website host using no encryption, a self-signed certificate, or a verified certificate, depending on the administrator's preferences. CloudFlare's servers will use SNI for free accounts, which is unsported for IE on Windows XP and older, and Android Browser on Android 2.2 and older.
60559275
submission
Z80xxc! writes:
Today at the first annual Code Conference, Microsoft demonstrated its new real-time translation in Skype publicly for the first time. Gurdeep Pall, Microsoft's VP of Skype and Lync, compares the technology to Star Trek's Universal Translator. During the demonstration, Pall converses in English with a coworker in Germany who is speaking German.Skype Translator results from decades of work by the industry, years of work by our researchers, and now is being developed jointly by the Skype and Microsoft Translator teams. The demo showed near real-time audio translation from English to German and vice versa, combining Skype voice and IM technologies with Microsoft Translator, and neural network-based speech recognition.
53751099
submission
Z80xxc! writes:
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed during a CBS 60 Minutes interview that the company is working on a service called "Prime Air" to deliver packages by autonomous octocopter drones within 30 minutes of hitting the "buy" button. The plan still requires more testing and FAA approval, but Bezos predicts it'll be available to the public in the next 4-5 years.
With a lot of backlash against drones, and some towns even offering bounties to shoot them down, will this technology ever take off, or is this just another one of Amazon's eccentric CEO's fantastical flight ideas ?
43512673
submission
Z80xxc! writes:
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy announced a "policy memorandum" today requiring any federal agency with over $100 million in R&D expenditures each year to develop plans for making all research funded by that agency freely available to the public within one year of publication in any peer-reviewed scholarly journal. The full memorandum is available on the White House website. It appears that this policy would not only apply to federal agencies conducting research, but also to any university, private corporation, or other entity conducting research that arises from federal funding. For those in academia and the public at large, this is a huge step towards free open access to publicly funded research.
6958472
submission
Z80xxc! writes:
After a comment by a Microsoft employee claiming in an interview that 'what we [Microsoft] have tried to do with Windows 7... is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics,' the Windows 7 team has issued an official rebuttal, saying that the comment came from an employee who was 'not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7,' and that it was 'inaccurate and uninformed.'
5217441
submission
Z80xxc! writes:
The Anchorage Daily News reports that a 15 mile-long blob of unknown, "gooey", probably organic material is floating past communities on Alaska's North Slope. The US Coast Guard sent pollution experts to investigate, who determined that it was not an oil spill or other type of pollution, but were unable to determine what it is. A sample is currently being analyzed by experts in Anchorage, while the blob is following the current northwards.
4285795
submission
Z80xxc! writes:
Paul Thurrott's WinSuperSite reports that Windows 7 will include a built-in virtual machine with a fully licensed copy of Windows XP Professional SP3. The VM runs in a modified version of Virtual PC, and applications running in the VM can interact directly with the host operating system as if they were running on the Windows 7 installation itself. While details are scarce for now, it looks as if this feature will only be available as a (free) addon for Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows 7. Also, a processor supporting hardware virtualization will be required, indicating that this is perhaps aimed more at power users and corporate users, rather than consumers.
3932319
submission
Z80xxc! writes:
Microsoft recently announced a new product, called "Expression Web SuperPreview" which lets developers view their web pages in any browser installed on their system, as well as different versions of IE, all from the same interface. The tool also has built-in tools for overlaying the rendering from one browser over another to compare, HTML debugging tools and other helpful tools for web devs. A beta version is available for download, however the current build only has support for IE. An internal build shows firefox and safari being used as well. The final product will be available as part of MS Expression Web Studio 3 when it is released later this year.
2997899
submission
Z80xxc! writes:
The Windows 7 Beta release is now available for download by the general public, in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Microsoft had previously announced availability around 3 PM PST on Friday, but after unexpected numbers of people interested in the download, had to postpone it to add more servers.
2915511
submission
Z80xxc! writes:
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) has officially announced the 2009 First Robotics Competition. The FRC is a competition, started by inventor Dean Kamen, where high school students design and build robots to compete with and against other FRC teams. The competition overview video is available from NASA. This year's competition has a moon theme, and is called 'Lunacy'. The main concept of this year's competition is getting various game pieces into trailers which the robots are attached to. Robots operate autonomously for the first 15 seconds of the game, and are operated by team members for the remaining 2 minutes of each match. For any readers who are interested in participating, FRC teams can always use more adult mentors.
477910
submission
Z80xxc! writes:
InfoWorld has reported that on February 12th, Microsoft will roll out Internet Explorer 7 through Windows Server Update Services to all systems regardless of whether or not the update had been requested previously. The article also mentions ways to prevent the update from occurring for sysadmins who do not want to use IE7 on their systems at this time. Microsoft claims that the decision was made due to "security concerns", however many businesses are still using IE6 exclusively, and do not want to be forced to "upgrade" to IE7.
351141
submission
Z80xxc! writes:
Some Mac users upgrading to Apple's new Leopard operating system are encountering what they liken to Windows' Blue Screen of Death. While some of the upgraders were able to access their computer after waiting for as long as several hours, others were forced to do a complete reinstall. Some suspect that an application called "Application Enhancer" by Unsanity LLC may be causing the problem, but there has been no official word from Apple at this point.
