Some universities and schools in the USA considered the use of Kindle a year ago but the reaction was lukewarm, to be optmistic. A major complain was the lack of an interface making it usable by a disabled student.

After a year, according to Business Week,

 the Kindle is gaining traction in the classroom. Education publisher School Specialty (SCHS) plans to sell interactive content on the device. Rick Holden, who runs the unit of Greenville (Wis.)-based School Specialty that focuses on children with learning disabilities, says he has been in discussion with Amazon about bringing K-12 content to the Kindle for the last six months. He plans to have the first application available on the device by April.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2010/tc20100124_046362.htm
This is an interesting news because it may open up the way to many trials in the USA and along with them the development of content designed to leverage on the peculiarities of the eBook Reader creating a virtuous spiral leading to mass adoption.

The US Department of Energy and IBM have signed a partnership to build a 20 petaflop machine (that is a computer crunching 20,000,000,000,000,000 instructions per second)by 2011-2012 and to follow up with an Exaflop machine (a 1 followed by 18 zeros), providing the processing power of one billion PC of today.

This machine will be able to process the ExaByte of data that are expected to be generated everyday by the Square Kilometre Array telescope project www.skatelescope.org . The project includes the development of a new form of solid data storage, the “Racetrack Memory”.

Clearly this is a starting project and many obstacles will need to be tackled and solved. Also, it is focussing on highly scientific objective and the solutions are likely to be very expensive. Nevertheless, we have learnt that major scientific endeavour generates a fall out of results applicable to the lay man world. I expect that a project aiming at managing Exabytes of data day in day out will create amazing opportunities for our communities in managing and understanding the data they produce.

In 2008-2009 IBM delivered machines sporting a Petaflop processing power. The short term target is multiplying by 20 that power and the 10 year term multiplying by 1,000. This processing power is awesome, however it is what it takes to process the huge amount of data created by the new telescope (and other physical experiments like the LHC are not joking either). It is definitely too much for our everyday needs but also in this area we will see a tremendous growth in data and we will surely benefit from more processing power, may be available on demand in a “cloud” through pervasive, distributed computing. Just think about the personalised medicine where our genome will be used to create the right drug to cure or prevent a desease. What today would take a few months (decoding the genome, analysing its various genes and loci and creating the right protein) should take only a few hours. Even then, we will still require much less processing power than the one targeted to support the SKA telescope.

Major breakthrough are needed in power consumption. Today it will require a nuclear plant to power such a computer. Data transfer will also be a major challenge. Moving around an Exabyte of data per day is equivalent to all data moved around the globe through all telecommunications networks in the year 2000 (voice included, of course).

Researchers are looking into stream computing, a technique to analyse and sort out data on the fly as they are moved around on networks, storing only those that are needed and discarding the rest. Although storage density keeps increasing there is a need for radically different storage technology when you aim at storing EB.

A promise comes from spintronics memories, being studied by IBM, http://www.almaden.ibm.com/spinaps/research/sd/?racetrack

For more info on these futuristic computers take a look at:

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/319128/ska_telescope_provide_billion_pcs_worth_processing

Nowadays there’re many online data backup services on the web and usually these services are considered as safe, useful, and easy to store all data into the cloud and take them off when it’s necessary. But we must consider that these services are provided by somebody else. Even if you feel safe after you stored your data and information into the cloud as backup, you must realise that these data are not in your hands, these are in the cloud where you cannot reach sometimes. Services are provided by somebody else and if they suddenly close this service? On the internet, everything could be possible…

Awesome Notes (http://bridworks.com) is an iPhone application that I bet will soon become another essential tool for any user to manage notes, recording things and lists of activities.
Compared to the native application for taking notes on iPhone, Awesome is much more ergonomic and practical. The graphical interface is very simple like to point out post-it notes.

When you open the application you can choose between writing a note or a memo fast. Next, you can organize your notes according to topics. I found very important that Awesome supports password, useful for sensitive information, such as credit card numbers!

In summary the features are: security with a code, adding images to notes, customizable cards, transfer to Evernote and Google Docs. This is another idea of a useful tool leveraging on user’s recorded life; Awesome Note will change the way users organize their life using it for their daily diary, homework for school, email box, travel diary, shopping list, wish list, scheduler, journal and anything else an individual wants to record and remember…
Are maybe these services the killer application for entering the magic world of exploitation of users’ digital real data?

Today is the “Data Protection Day”, the 4th European initiative in the field – the first one was in 2007 – that aims to deepen awareness of the risks associated with a too confident use of personal  data and to inform of what citizens’ fundamental  rights and responsibilities are, within data protection legislation.
Like the year before, in order to engage teenagers on privacy and to understand their behavior and concerns about this sensitive theme, a video competition called “Think Privacy” took place during last weeks. Students had to make a short movie about the privacy risks online, and the winning videos will be shown at the conference today.
Viviane Reding, the neo-elected European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship – she has been the Commissioner for Information Society and Media – is going to present her priority list of things-to-do in the online privacy field and will discuss about the so waited revision of the Data protection directive. It’s a must-do to bring that directive up to date, since it’s a 15-year-old law thought before truly entering the Digital Era, with the social and environmental changes that this new way of life brought and is still bringing. Ok, the Digital Era germination dates back to 1932, with the statement of the digital sampling theorem by Harry Black at Bell Labs. But, obviously, that germ evolved through decades of scientific and technological innovations, day by day, to become the immersive digital habit through which (or in which?) we are living nowadays.
“The need for global cooperation has never been more obvious. In addition to the European institutions, both APEC and the OECD are taking major initiatives to enable cross-border enforcement of privacy law, and ISO is developing standards to promote privacy enhancing technologies. After all, privacy protection is vital to ensure that modern business can function efficiently: the clients and employees of those businesses need to know that their information will be appropriately treated, no matter where in the world it might be.” Said the Privacy Commissioner, Marie Shroff.
I am looking forward to the Asia Pacific Privacy Awareness Week, that this year, as Mrs Shroff announced, is to be held from May 2nd to May 8th. It will be another great opportunity to reflect on the global risks to privacy and the need for global responses.

Apple is coming up with Apple Tablet. The Beta version has already been tested and here we have a feedback from the tester. How is it like?

“Apple tablet is OLED + back has solar pad for recharging, but (the charger) really doesn’t work quickly. More a gimmick. Verizon+att, wifi yes!

Apple Tablet has thumbpads on each side for mouse gestures, reads fingerprint for security. Up to 5 profiles by fingerprint for family.

Yes, there are 2cameras: one in front and one in back (or it may be one with some double lens) so you record yourself and in front of you.

I can tell u the battery life is great in ebook reading mode but not great when on wifi or playing games. 2-3hrs.

Yes, the apple tablet is running an iphone os flavor with ability to have multiple apps running at same time (ie pandora, browser).

The price will be $599, $699 and $799 depending on size and memory in apple tablet. Also, wireless keyboard + monitor connection for TV.

Also, the apple tablet is really amazing for newspapers. Video conferencing is super stable, but nothing new.

The best part of the apple tablet as beta user has been the built in HDTV tuner and pvr, and the chess game.

Yes, it’s true… I’ve been beta testing the Apple tablet for the past two weeks and it’s amazing!”

Really seems to be an useful tool. But despite all its functionality we should concern about all the critics related to the solar panel. Would it be efficient enough???

Talking about the “Future of Retail” why not imagine this device as a way for people to interact with the retail stores in a sense that they will be able to reach more information and be updated to the latest news of the market enlarging business opportunities?!

Apple is building a real always-connected, share-everything future, with personal broadcasting feature. All the bricks are just ready and Apple is building a huge data center in North Carolina with high bandwidth enabling ubiquitous streaming video. Apple’s devices have a video camera embedded and now even live video-streaming functionality have been approved and are available for download in the App Store.
It is clear Apple wants to enter the consumer video market: the company’s new personal-media strategy is to improve iTunes into a streaming video service.

The goal for Apple is: personal broadcasting, or sharing personal experiences. YouTube and Flip are just the key players in this market, and for Apple the only possibility is to make personal media deliverable and accessible anytime, anywhere through its devices. In the next decade, we will see video cameras with live-streaming software built into new generation iPhones, iPods and touchscreen tablets; everything will be integrated in iTunes, that Apple wants to use like a social experience with real-time sharing services.

All these steps are the Apple path towards the creation of an always-connected, share-everything future.
So if users have live-video capability in a phone, they can use it everywhere and broadcast live from anywhere and this huge creation of personal content will be easy to share and tag opening up a new world of collecting individual’s digital life.

After the earthquake in Haiti which happened in January 2010, as the phone line collapsed, Haitians tried to discover the fate of their family or relatives by using web and social networks. The major tools are Emailing and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

After that, an integrated mash-up website “Ushahidi” (http://haiti.ushahidi.com/) has been built to provide proper information about missing people, structural risk, lack of water and food, and also contains Twitter, photo tagging, person finder to exchange and provide information. The mapping system contains all the integrated information of the certain area such as Google maps.

Ushahidi made an agreement with local mobile phone operator Digicel and created a short code to which people could text their message. That message is received by “situation rooms” set up in Boston and Washington. A third one will be set up in Geneva to provide 24-hour cover. About 10,000 Haitians have volunteered to translate messages from Creole to English and ask for more information if needed. Other volunteers and experts try to verify the information and put it into the map.

During the past years, Apple included Google in its business integrating Google search into Safari, and Google Maps on the iPhone. And it made sense. Now Google is attempting to enter every kind of business and in particular it sells Nexus One, directly competing with not only the iPhone, but with all their own mobile phone hardware vendors. To face Google’s domination in the thing (and this means OS layer, browser layer, mobile platform, and many other applications), rumors talk about a possible deal between Apple and Microsoft.
As you know, Microsoft has tried for years to gain a strong presence in the online search business. In the early 2008 Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo, with a $47.5 billion acquisition bid. After this, the two companies just continued stealing each other’s traffic, without taking it from Google. In order to compete more effectively with Google, which dominates the online-search business with 67.3 percent of search traffic (Yahoo! and MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search just 14.4 and 9.9 percent respectively, according last Nielsen Co. survey), few days ago Microsoft and Yahoo! presented a partnership plan to the European Commission and now the talk passes to the European antitrust authorities that will decide within a month if the deal is in line with the competitive norms, or not.
According to some articles over the net, Apple and Microsoft made a deal. Even if it’s not new such a cooperation between the two old-age rivals (Microsoft builds Mac versions of its Office suite of business programs, such as Word), it’s undeniable that it sounds paradoxal. The two competitors, in fact, are going to replace Google Mobile, the actual default search provider for the iPhone, with Bing (it already has its own application on the App Store that allows voice search, location finder, maps access and more), as well as the Safari browser. Being the default search engine on the iPhone obviously carries benefits for Google, which gets revenue from ads placed alongside its search results, sharing a part of that with Apple.
Most of people who want a Mac don’t like Microsoft products. In addition, users see Google as the gold standard in search. So, is get-a-mac generation gonna appreciate this contamination? Do customers accept embedding of products they didn’t request? Analysts say that this agreement could bring Apple more risk than reward.
Personally, I see this nothing more than “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, a survey strategy adopted by an impressive top predator who can become a prey.

Scientist are telling us that by 2050 the Earth will consume (that is the human beings on Earth) twice as much the energy of today and by 2100 it will be three times as much.

In purely physical terms this is not a big deal, since the Sun is bathing the Earth over a thousands folds the energy we are using today (the Sun irradiates 3.846×10^15 GW). Of course this energy is used by oceans, plants and the overall ecosystem to be what it is today. Additionally, the bathing of energy is spread over oceans, deserts and isolated areas on our Planet. For the foreseeable future we will need other forms of harvesting energy to sustain our economy.

Economy is the crucial word: you can have plenty of energy around but if its cost (to harvest, store and distribute) is too high it won’t work in the present economic framework.

Having said that, it is very important to think about radically different ways to provision the energy we need and any innovation in this area is most welcome.

In the future scientists are forecasting a production shift from huge central generating stations to individuals producing usable personalised energy in their homes and community. An interesting report, just out, is the one published in the ACS Inorganic Chemistry on Solar Energy.

http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/ic901328v

This report will be discussed, along with several others at the Renewable Energy Forum – Cleantech Forum XXVI San Francisco. Network, learn, invest. Feb 2010. – www.cleantech.com

The report outlines the possibility to develop inexpensive storage systems usable in the home environment. Remember that solar energy is available for just few hours a day but we need energy all day (and night) along. The proposal is to use a catalyst that splits, using solar power, water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. These can be stored and used to produce electricity by a fuel cell. The catalyst developed works like photosynthesis in plants and produce clean energy using sunlight and water.

Distributed energy is likely to require communications infrastructure to better average the spikes of production and consumption. Sensors will be crucial and a new area for communications opens up.