Google Invests $102 Million More Into California’s Alta Wind Energy Center

According to an official company blog post today, Google is increasing its investment into California’s Alta Wind Energy Center (AWEC) by $102 million, bringing its total investment in the renewable energy facility to $157 million.

The AWEC is being developed by Terra-Gen Power, primarily. The first development within the massive facility is the Alta-Oak Creek Mojave Project. Google’s latest funding commitment would go to build an extension at the facility. The AWEC has a transmission line, the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project, dedicated to it which makes it distinct from many, large-scale renewable energy projects that have been proposed in the U.S.

Over the years, Cape Wind faced challenges winning public opinion and regulatory approvals due to a lack of a transmission line that can send power generated offshore back to Nantucket or Boston, two large markets nearby. In 2010, as reported by Reuters then, Google, along with cleantech investment firm Good Energies and Japans’ Marubeni Corp., agreed to take an equity position in Cape Wind’s transmission line.

This year, Google has invested about $700 million into renewable energy projects, according to press statements by Rick Needham, the company’s director of green business operations.

Google also recently dedicated funds to financing SolarCity residential solar development, and to other large-scale solar and wind projects including at Ivanpah a solar power tower project in Nevada, and Shepherd’s Flat, the wind farm in Oregon.

A hearty tax appetite is partly responsible for Google’s move to become a clean energy financier of this magnitude. Google will reap the benefits of many tax credits currently available to investors in clean energy in the U.S.

Supporting clean energy and new additions to the grid could also help Google maintain a stronghold in search and big data; users will inevitably search for and process bulk amounts of information about energy production and use via Google, its APIs and apps as new sources of energy get plugged into the grid, and as utilities are forced by regulators to report more carefully on their environmental impact.

Google Shuts Down Medical Records And Health Data Platform

Google is shutting down Google Health, which enables you to store and manage all your health information in one place on the Web. Google says the platform simply wasn’t having the ‘broad impact’ necessary to sustain the product.

From Google’s blog post: There has been adoption among certain groups of users like tech-savvy patients and their caregivers, and more recently fitness and wellness enthusiasts. But we haven’t found a way to translate that limited usage into widespread adoption in the daily health routines of millions of people. That’s why we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue the Google Health service.

Google says that it will continue to operate Google Health until January 1, 2012, will allow people to export their health data for an additional year beyond that. Any data that remains in Google Health after that point (January 2013) will be permanently deleted.

Google Health launched in 2008 as a central repository for all of your health information, including prescriptions, medical history, medical records, and more.

One of the key contributors to the overall success of Google Health were partnerships with insurance companies, hospitals and other medical institutions to make data more available to consumers. As last year, Google Health still needed to sign up hundreds of insurers in the U.S. Google announced some key deals (i.e. a partnership with CVS to import prescription data into the platform), but couldn’t gain traction elsewhere.

Google also started transitioning Health into an overall wellness platform, allowing users integrate data from FitBit and CardioTrainer, but clearly this didn’t get enough traction amongst users.

Microsoft’s competing product HealthVault looks to be still alive and kicking.

Opera Founder Jon S. von Tetzchner Resigns Over Differences With Board

Opera founder Jon S. von Tetzchner has resigned from the company.

In an email to Opera employees, von Tetzchner said that “It has become clear that The Board, Management and I do not share the same values and we do not have the same opinions on how to keep evolving Opera. As a result I have come to an agreement with the Board to end my time at Opera. I feel the Board and Management is more quarterly focused than me.” You can read the full email below.

Von Tetzchner co-founded Opera Software in 1995, and led the company up to 2010, when he resigned as CEO. He then became a full-time strategic advisor to the company.

As for what’s next, Opera says that von Tetzchner has “ideas about new projects, but is not ready to reveal any of his ideas as of right now.”

It’s unclear what values Opera’s founder and the board disagreed upon. The independent mobile and web browser tens of millions of users, and seems to be growing at a fast clip.

Dear All,

It is with a heavy heart that I send this message. Next week will be my
last at Opera. It has become clear that The Board, Management and I do not
share the same values and we do not have the same opinions on how to keep
evolving Opera. As a result I have come to an agreement with the Board to
end my time at Opera. I feel the Board and Management is more quarterly
focused than me. I have always worked to build the company for the future.
I believe the foundation we have is very solid to build further upon.

I do believe strongly in Opera as a company, and in all of you working
here. Our products actually make a difference for a lot of people in the
world, and I wish you all the best of luck moving forward. I will be
following the company closely and rooting for you all.

Yours truly,
Jon.

Angry Yahoo Shareholder Confronts Bartz And Asks For Her Head (Audio Clip)

ahoo CEO Carol Bartz got an earful yesterday at the tail end of the company’s annual shareholder meeting. An angry shareholder, who identified himself as Steve Landry—an advisor to institutional investors with “millions of Yahoo shares”—stood up at the end of what was up until then a surprisingly feel-good affair, given the total underperformance of the stock for the past three years, and asked for her head. We’ve uploaded the audio clip below.

He goes through a list of issue and concerns, calling Yahoo a “debacle” and a “circus.” He starts out by addressing “the elephant in the room”: the search for Bartz’ successor.

“It came out earlier this week in a blog that the board is secretly talking to other CEO candidates,” he said. “I have heard similar details. I believe it is true. The last thing Yahoo needs right now is a lame duck CEO. The buyout talks over your contract need to start today.”

Hmm, I wonder which blog he’s talking about

Landry also brings up the Hulu acquisition rumor (which was wrong) and suggests Jason Kilar could be a good CEO candidate for Yahoo. But he thinks buying Hulu would be a bad idea.

He finishes by calling on the board to break up or sell the company. “The status quo is no longer working,” he says.

To all of which, Bartz responds: “You’re welcome, and thanks for your opinion, the bloggers’ opinions and the rumors. What else? Wonderful. That was certainly a downer.”

Listen to Landry’s entire diatribe below.

Inspired By Wikipedia, Quora Aims For Relevancy With Topic Groups And Reorganized Topic Pages

Quora has just announced a redesign of its Topic Pages and the introduction of Topic Groups, aiming to make information discovery and navigation on the site a little bit easier. The motivation behind these changes is a thrust towards ease of search and content relevancy on Quora, as there is currently a ton of content on the site that people need to figure out how to navigate.

Now, instead of a chronological stream on Topics Pages (which you can get to via the tags in questions), users will see Best Questions, Open Questions as well as Featured Questions and Frequently Asked Questions depending on the topic.

A Topic Page can also correspond to a Topic Group which will be focused on all the activity on the Topic Page and can roll up multiple topics into one, giving users a way to self-organize and share info. For example this Movies Group corresponds to this Movies Page.

Quora co-founder Adam D’Angelo likens the difference between and Topic Page and a Topic Group to the difference between a Wikipedia article and a Wikipedia Talk page, where the Talk page features the activity of a group behind the page that is committed to the topic, moderates questions and features content. The page is just an outpost of the total sum of the group’s knowledge.

“If you’re someone who doesn’t know about a topic, now you can get a general overview of what the topic is about on a Topic Page,” D’Angelo tells me, saying that the Topic Groups will be the space for people who want to delve deeper.

Some Topic Groups will be official (you can see a list here) i.e. moderated by a group of admins with topical expertise, while others will simply consist of all incoming activity to a Topic Page.

D’Angelo writes, “We’ve had a lot of activity on Quora recently with screenwriters and other people in Hollywood. Now there’s a well-defined space for them to focus on movies without being distracted or interrupted with everything else that they’re interested in on Quora. In general, this structure will let us have deeper communities and topic areas.”

Says power Quora user Semil Shah, “[On Wikipedia] you have topics and you move from page to page, like nodes. Here, in Quora, the topics are organized in a way one can eventually drill down and explore, investigate. It’s genius.”

Despite having no user numbers to announce, D’Angelo tells me that the design and organizational changes were the result of having to look closely at what worked and what didn’t after Quora grew faster than expected last winter. The service’s eventual goal is to get more knowledge on to the Internet, get more questions and get more answers, D’Angelo said.

Also in the information discovery and relevancy vein but on the opposite end of the spectrum is the delightful newly launched Quora Shuffle Button, which lets users view random content on Quora a la StumbleUpon. You can find the unassuming Shuffle button at the bottom of each Quora page. Baby steps.

In-Stream Ads Are Coming To Twitter, Will A User Revolt Follow?

After nine months of testing in-stream Promoted Tweets on third party client Hootsuite, reports have surfaced today that Twitter’s head of monetization Adam Bain has been pushing a new in-timeline Promoted Tweets product during this week’s advertiser-heavy Canne Lions awards.

To the two of you that this comes to as a shock, one word: Inevitable. Twitter has made no secret of the fact that in-stream Promoted Tweets have been an eventual business model goal since April of 2010, when co-founder Biz Stone outlined a plan to launch them first on search on Twitter.com, later in 3rd party search and eventually in the user timeline.

“We’ve been talking about Promoted Tweets in the timeline since we launched Promoted Tweets …” Twitter’s Sean Garret tells me. “We have and will continue to take a measured and thoughtful approach to how we may display them.”

So while there should be little doubt that in-stream Twitter advertisements are imminently on the horizon, the question is whether users will take to them, or whether they’ll revolt a la #Dickbar, the controversial overlay to Twitter mobile that displayed Promoted Trends and eventually ended up being removed after much backlash.

A brief informal poll I conducted on, of course, Twitter revealed that despite the initial resistance many users were willing to support the in-stream ad model as long as Twitter gave them the opportunity to pay to get rid of it. Apparently people like having options.

Then again, actual user reaction will depend on the execution, look and feel of the final in-stream as product, which we know very little about. If the Promoted Tweets blink and take up your entire screen and look like crap then sure, users will be angry. However the guiding hand of an even partially returned Jack Dorsey leads me to believe that this will probably not be the case.

Twitter has also said that again that the Promoted Tweets will only be for brands that you follow or that are “relevant” to you based on whom you follow, but I really can’t see that philosophy being very profitable or holding up for very long, especially since I don’t really follow any brands and don’t know any one else who does.

The dilemma of Twitter advertising is a case of too much demand and not enough supply, which is why the prices on these things keep going up (Promoted Trends are now at $120K). From what I’m hearing advertisers are clamoring for Twitter to give them something to buy and the company has an ambitious and eager salesforce, tasked with selling the promise of one day being able to monetize most of its 300 million users.

But is charging brands $100K to have their tweets show up higher in the Twitter streams of consumers who are already their loyal followers the best solution?

Well Twitter’s got to start somewhere, and expand from there. As the Financial Times points out, Twitter is expecting a modest $100 million in revenue this year compared to Facebook’s awe inspiring $3.5 billion in projected display ad revenue. “They are going to get much more commercial,” one agency executive told the FT which also reports that the company is dabbling in Groupon-type deals, the final desperate frontier of monetization for many.

And will this inevitable thrust toward commercialization interfere with user experience to the point where users will be turned off from Twitter? Said one person familiar with the matter, “Users already have such a high tolerance for bugs, errors and latency on Twitter.com, they’re going to live with Promoted Tweets too.”

Number one technology News

New Facebook App to Notify Users about Malicious Content

At a time when the virtual space, especially social networks are rife with spam attacks, and hackers on the loose, an attempt by a bunch of students surely seems to be a force to reckon with.


Keeps it safe!


Students belonging to the University of California’s graduate class, Md. Sazzadur Rahman and Ting-Kai-Huang, and a company run by the school’s alumnus, put their heads together and developed a free Facebook application called MyPageKeeper.org, which the founders claim is capable of detecting spam, malware that are found on the walls, and news feeds of the user’s Facebook account. The app, according to the founders aims at delivering real-time protection from viruses, spam to the users. Web protection service, StopTheHacker.com encouraged the construction of the app.

The recent spate of malware attacks on Facebook, and other web domains have given more than enough reasons for attempts like these. Facebook, at present has over a staggering 700 million members, and miscreants have found it to be a place where it was easy to target people into letting spam into their profiles. Contradicting this, MyPageKeeper.org once installed into one’s profile, begins actively scanning the user’s wall posts, news feeds to see if any malicious content was posted. If found any, the app would immediately notify the user of the same and prompt him to remove the malicious content. The app, for now can be downloaded for free off www.MyPageKeeper.org. Although just recently started, the app already has won the confidence of several users.

Number one technology News

Samsung’s Galaxy S II passes screen test

Samsung’s Galaxy S II passes screen test by Number one technology news



After Apple’s second-generation iPad launched earlier this year with dual-core processors, it was inevitable that the technology would trickle down to mobile phones as well. Beating Apple at its own game, Samsung is among the first manufacturers in India to sport a dual-core processor in its Google A ndroid handset, Galaxy S II.

Weighing a light 116g and 8.5mm in thickness, the Galaxy S II is big but hardly cumbersome. Its huge 4.3-inch screen sports a resolution of 800x480 pixels, but that’s hardly the best thing about it. Samsung has generously equipped the phone with a ‘Super AMOLED Plus’ screen. As opposed to conventional LCD displays, AMOLED screens offer greater colour accuracy and black levels while going easier on battery life.

Although the phone’s all-glass front may fetch it swoons, the plastic body isn’t that impressive. There’s a solitary power button on the right side and a volume rocker on the left. Towards the bottom of the screen are two touch-sensitive buttons and a regular ‘Home’ button that will take you back to the home screen whenever you press it.

The next disappointment arrives when you switch on the phone. Although this Galaxy sports Google Android Gingerbread v2.3.3, Samsung has added its own user interface layer called Touchwiz 4.0. As compared to HTC’s Sense 3.0 interface, Touchwiz doesn’t look as polished where menu animations, icons and widgets are concerned. Certain tweaks are convenient — the lock screen shows missed calls and SMSes. Pressing the Home button for over a second invokes the task manager, which displays what applications are running in the background and lets you close them to free up the phone’s 1GB memory.

Samsung has loaded a host of applications on the phone such as a file manager to access the microSD card, a voice command app and Readers’ Hub – where you can read e-books, newspapers and magazines.
|
The Galaxy S II packs in top-notch hardware such as an ARM 1.2GHz dual-core processor, an eight-megapixel camera, full HD 1080p video recording and 16GB of built-in memory. Connectivity includes 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS. Additionally, you can also use the phone as a Wi-Fi router with the Portable Hotspot feature and connect to other similar devices via Wi-Fi direct.
The 8MP camera shoots clear and well-focused photos even in low light. You can choose from a variety of scene modes, include macro and face detection. Videos, too, are sharp and accurate.

What we like
1.Glorious AMOLED screen
2.Dual-core processor

What we don’t like
1.Tacky build quality
2.User interface is average

Verdict
The powerful processor make using the phone a piece of cake. You won’t see any slowdowns regardless of whether you’re viewing the photo gallery, surfing the net or playing Angry Birds.|

Battery life at over 1.5 days puts the Galaxy S II at the top of its game. Unfortunately, the Galaxy S II just doesn’t feel like a premium phone. The plastic body and tacky user interface betray its Rs 30,999 price. For those migrating from a high-end HTC or Apple device, this is a step down in terms of eye-candy. But if you’re looking for firepower, this phone is brimming with it.

My Rating: ***1/2

First Nokia WP7 Phone In October?

You can expect the first Nokia WP7 handset, sometime during the end of this year. If new reports are to be believed, Nokia could unveil the device even a lot earlier than that. The company is holding a Nokia World event in London on October 26 and 27. This is the time when Windows Phone's Mango update, which is said to change the way WP7 performs, is scheduled to come out. Naturally, this is a good occasion to launch the new device. With the arrival of this update, all media attention will be focussed towards the platform.

The alleged Nokia Windows Phones

Having said that, Nokia could alternatively launch the device during the end of the year (in December perhaps) as earlier reports had suggested. We think that the company would make the announcement during October about a launch date of December. As of now, the Nokia World seems like the best bet to show off the device. However, it was expected that Nokia could announce the device during the already concluded Nokia Connection event, which was held in conjunction with the Nokia CommunicAsia 2011. Everyone will be eagerly awaiting the announcement of the "market disrupting device" or the Nokia N9, so we think that it was wise of Nokia to keep the suspense alive.

Apple iPad 2 Display Ranks the Best in Face-Off Against Android Hordes

Testing shows that the Apple iPad 2 surpasses other contenders in display quality, but it still has room for improvement.


The first thing you notice about a tablet is its display. Even when a tablet is powered down, its display is what jumps out first, since the screen is the most dominant part. The quality of the display is a critical component of a tablet, just as image quality is essential to any screen, be it for a laptop, a monitor, a smartphone, or even an HDTV.

I've had dozens of tablets cross my desk, and their display quality has varied dramatically. When I look at a tablet's display quality, I judge it on a number of criteria: brightness, color accuracy, contrast, and image clarity. The last point is a tricky one, as it covers image sharpness and detail as well as text sharpness, areas that can be influenced by how well a mobile operating system renders those elements in software.

Rewind to the debut of the first Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets--those early models running Android 3.0 all suffered from a bug that caused digital images to render improperly in Google's Gallery app, the default program for viewing pictures. Images looked fuzzy, with little detail. Google quietly fixed the bug later, in Android 3.1; nevertheless, image reproduction could be better, and the Gallery still natively displays images in just 16-bit color.

So where does that leave the discerning buyer hoping to get the best tablet display possible? To find out, the PCWorld Labs lined up eight tablets and compared their image quality side by side. Our testing is ongoing, and we will fold the results into our ratings for tablets in the future. Right now, we can offer a glimpse of our early findings.

Tablet Displays Tested

This first pass of our subjective testing focused on images and color, not text. Our jury reviewed four identical images on the eight tablets, with brightness settings on max for all. What we found was a bit surprising, in that the images varied dramatically and noticeably. During my earlier hands-on testing, in which I compared all comers with the standard-bearer, Apple's iPad 2, I had noticed some differences and issues--but to see the variety in a lineup was something else altogether.

In our comparison were the Acer Iconia Tab A500, Apple iPad 2, Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101, HTC Flyer, Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Samsung Galaxy Tab Wi-Fi (7-inch), and T-Mobile G-Slate. Many of the tablets we looked at run Android 3.0; only two of the five 10.1-inchers, the Motorola Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, had Android 3.1. (Click the chart below to view it at full size.)



The Apple iPad 2 was clearly and consistently the leader of the pack; it stumbled only on a photo with a variety of skin tones and colors, failing to strike the right balance. In another shot, the iPad 2 had the best color balance and accuracy, and it showed the best distribution of colors on our grayscale and color-bar images.

The two next-best displays were not on flagship Android Honeycomb tablets, but on tablets running Android 2.2 and 2.3--the Samsung Galaxy Tab Wi-Fi and the HTC Flyer, respectively. Each of these models did particularly well with skin tones and color balance in actual photos, although neither one quite nailed the balance in our color-bar shot.

None of the Android 3.x tablets we tested could compete with the iPad 2, or with the Android 2.x tablets. In our tests, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 did better overall than its next-closest competitor, the Motorola Xoom. But the Tab blew out colors with oversaturation, and crushed shades of black; this tendency was clear in our test photos as well as in the grayscale and color-bar images.

The Xoom's display never particularly impressed me, but in the end it did better on balance than some of the other Android tablets we tested. It suffered from washed-out skin tones, poor handling of brown hues, and a lack of sharpness--even with the Android 3.1 update. The touchscreen grid was evident on the Xoom, too.

Falling in between were the T-Mobile G-Slate and the Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101. The results from these two tablets were close, although in our detail shot the G-Slate appeared to have slightly better detail and color balance despite its tendency toward a greenish cast. The Transformer offered a great angle of view (which we expected given that it has an IPS display), and it did a reasonable job of reproducing browns, but its reproduction of reds was off-base.

The Acer Iconia Tab A500 consistently landed at the bottom. As with the Xoom, you can see the touch-panel grid on the Iconia Tab, but in this case it's clearly visible pretty much any way you hold the tablet, making the grid a viewing annoyance at best and a deterrent at worst. Running the Android 3.1 update, the Iconia Tab struggled with reproducing skin tones and browns, and it tended to give a slightly bluish tint to images.

Common Tablet-Display Issues and Needs


As I mentioned at the outset, some of the questions surrounding displays are hard to pin down. So much about how an image looks can be tweaked in software. Even more can happen in subpixel rendering, or in aggressive software algorithms aimed at optimizing the image (I've seen some hints of how this approach can work in the upcoming Toshiba Thrive). But some issues, such as angle of view and high reflectivity, are physical in nature, and as a result no software fix can address them.

All of the tablets we've seen, including the ones with IPS displays, have angle-of-view limitations--some are worse than others. And all of them have an air gap between the glass and the LCD layer beneath; that gap increases reflectivity, which causes the mirror effect that makes tablets terrible for use in bright sunlight. (The sole exception is not marketed primarily as a tablet: Barnes & Noble's Nook Color employs a bonding process that minimizes, but doesn't eliminate, reflections.)

Our look at tablet displays is a subjective experience, putting real images to a real-world test. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate also published findings today from quantitative-measurement tests of the iPad 2, Motorola Xoom, and Asus Transformer displays. His findings delve deep, and echo much of what we've seen in our lab subjectives. In his tests, the iPad 2 was on top, with the Transformer besting the Xoom. I'd wager that the result came in part from the Transformer's Android 3.1 update; for our early wave of tests, we still had the original software on the Transformer.

We're in the process of revisiting our testing, with the latest Android and firmware updates applied where appropriate. Stay tuned for our second wave of tablet-display tests in July.

See more like this: apple ipad, android, tablet pc

Facebook to launch music service

NEW YORK: Social network Facebook will launch a new music service on its website in partnership with other online music services, a media report said.

The launch is likely to be announced at a conference in August, Xinhua reported citing US media.

Technology blog GigaOM said users will find a new tab called Music in the left-hand column on their pages, right where Facebook lists Photos, Friends, Deals etc, and clicking on the new tab will open a page called Music Dashboard.

The dashboard will feature friends' recommended songs, top songs, top albums and a "happening now" ticker that shows songs friends are playing.

The blog said that Facebook had reached a partnership with European music streaming service Spotify, which is gearing up to enter the US market.

Nokia unveils MeeGo-powered N9 smartphone

SINGAPORE: Finnish cellphone maker Nokia unveiled its N9 smartphone in Singapore on Tuesday, its only bet on the MeeGo platform.

The commercial launch will be later this year, CEO Stephen Elop said. Nokia dumped plans to use MeeGo in its future smartphones when in February it picked Microsoft's Windows Phone as its future software choice, but it decided to unveil one of the models it was working on before closing the business line.

The N9 model, Nokia's first and last to use MeeGo, comes with a large touch screen and is available in black, cyan and magenta. The MeeGo platform -- a newcomer in the market dominated by Google and Apple -- was born in February 2010 when Nokia and Intel unveiled a merger of Nokia's Linux Maemo software platform with Intel's Moblin, which is also based on Linux open-source software.

After Nokia pulled back from the project four months ago other vendors have become more interested in the technology as Nokia's dominant role in the project had held back others from adopting it.

Specs
* Touch-only interface based on "swipe" gestures

* 3.9-inch AMOLED display

* 8-megapixel Carl Zeiss camera with HD video capture

* Supports 16:9 widescreen video playback and Dolby decoding

* Built-in near field communication (NFC) chip

* Free turn-by-turn drive and walk navigation

How Facebook's loss is Huawei's gain

BEIJING: Huawei Technologies Co, China's largest maker of phone equipment, got word out about its new MediaPad tablet computer by creating a page on a site where Web users in the Asian nation are forbidden to go: www.facebook.com.

The Facebook Inc page links to a video the Chinese company posted on another site that the country's Internet censors block domestic users from accessing: Google Inc's YouTube site. Social networks are "very important" for Huawei as it seeks to overcome the "huge difficulties" of building a global brand, Victor Xu, Huawei's chief marketing officer for devices, said in an interview yesterday in Singapore.

The prominence in Huawei's global marketing campaign of social media like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter Inc that are banned by China shows the growing importance of overseas markets in Europe and the US as the company aims to more than triple annual sales to about $100 billion in the next five to 10 years. International business surpassed Huawei's China sales for the first time in 2005, and rose to 65 percent of revenue last year, from 60 percent in 2009, according to its annual report.

"If China doesn't let exporters access these networks, it's basically like a tax on Chinese companies," said Duncan Clark, chairman of Beijing-based BDA China, which advises technology companies. "Through social media, Huawei can reach tech-savvy bloggers, people who tweet a lot, and that makes an impact. It's also cheaper than massive advertising everywhere."

China censorship
China, the world's largest Internet market with 477 million Web users, bans pornography, gambling and content critical of the ruling Communist Party. Wang Lijian, a spokesman for China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, declined to comment on the country's Internet censorship policies.

"The issue of censorship in China is irritating, and there is definitely a cost" to local companies, Clark said. Still, Huawei is "ahead of the rest of China in its internationalization," he said.

Huawei created the Facebook page for its MediaPad tablet on Facebook on June 11, nine days before the company unveiled the device at a press conference in Singapore. Tags at end of the YouTube video point users to the company's accounts on Twitter and Facebook: www.twitter.com/huaweidevice, and www.facebook.com/huaweidevice.

"Around social networks, it's very important," Huawei's Xu said in an interview in Singapore after the company unveiled the MediaPad tablet. "The Internet makes the world closer, between vendors and consumers. Our target audience is young and around social networks, from the ages of 18 to 34 years old. They are very active."

Huawei, ZTE
Huawei's press office has maintained a Twitter account since December 2009. A separate account for Huawei Device, which sells consumer products including smartphones and tablet computers, was set up last July. The main Huawei Press Twitter account had 4,401 followers as of June 20, while the Huawei Device account had 1,385 followers.

"They have to run effective consumer marketing campaigns in regions where they are still relatively unknown as a consumer electronics brand," said Mark Natkin, managing director of Marbridge Consulting Ltd, a Beijing-based market research firm. "They have come a long way up the learning curve in terms of how to effectively use outside public relations firms and consulting firms to penetrate foreign markets. That's something five or six years ago they were not so adept at doing."

Establishing brands
Huawei's cross-town competitor, ZTE Corp, China's second largest maker of phone equipment, has also begun using social media. ZTE's press office set up a Twitter account in November and has 665 followers so far.

ZTE's Twitter account is maintained by an outside public relations firm in Hong Kong, Fan Jiongyi, vice president of terminals, said in a May 25 interview, without elaborating.

Both Huawei and ZTE have made handsets for carriers globally and are now trying to establish their own brands to reach consumers directly, BDA's Clark said. The rising popularity of Google's Android operating system, combined with stumbles in the smartphone area by Nokia Oyj, have provided an opportunity to build a consumer device business for low-cost phones that can surf the Web, he said.

Huawei aims to boost handset sales to $20 billion within five years, from $5 billion last year and $6 billion this year, the company said in April.

Overseas sales jumped 34 percent at Huawei to 120.4 billion yuan ($18.6 billion) last year, according to the company's annual report. That was more than triple the pace in its home market, as sales in China gained 9.7 percent to 64.8 billion yuan. China accounted for 35 percent of the company's sales last year, down from 40 percent in 2009.

The company is owned by its employees, and the Chinese government holds no shares, its website says. Huawei employs 110,000 people worldwide, according to its annual report.

As it markets its brand abroad using social networks that are blocked at home, Huawei may become the best proof of the shortcomings of China's current restrictive Internet policies, BDA's Clark said. "The government wants companies to be innovative and to have Chinese brands go forth," Clark said. "These blocks on social media are an impediment to that."

Now, hackers claim attack on FBI partner

HARTFORD: Hackers who claimed responsibility for online attacks of Sony Corp and the CIA said they compromised the security of more than 1,000 accounts of a Connecticut-based FBI partner organization, hours before releasing a web manifesto calling for "war" on governments that control the Internet.

The online collective Lulz Security said it attacked a local section of InfraGard, a partnership between the FBI and the private sector to share security information. Connecticut InfraGard's website was down Monday afternoon.

The FBI was aware of the attack and that the website had been shut down as a precaution, agency spokeswoman Jenny Shearer said. She declined to comment on the extent of any damage.

Lulz tweeted Sunday night that its Connecticut attack had "compromised 1000+ FBI-affiliated members." The group said it would not leak the user information but would embarrass the FBI with "simple hacks." It did not provide details on the information it said was compromised.

InfraGard is an association of businesses, academic institutions and law enforcement agencies dedicated to sharing information to prevent hostile acts against the United States, according to its website. Business representatives who participate get access to security information from government sources such as the FBI and Department of Homeland Security and can participate in discussions with others in the IT-security field.

This month, the Atlanta chapter of InfraGard said hackers stole 180 passwords from its members and leaked them online. Lulz also claimed responsibility for that attack, saying it was a response to a report that the Pentagon was considering whether to classify types of cyber-attacks as acts of war.

After announcing the Connecticut attack, the group issues its statement calling for a united hacker effort against governments and organizations that control the Internet.

"Our Lulz Lizard battle fleet is now declaring immediate and unremitting war on the freedom-snatching moderators of 2011," the group said in the statement, which was written in its characteristic rambling speech.

The group said it was teaming with another hacker collective, Anonymous, and encouraged others to fight corruption and attack any government or agency that "crosses their path" including banks and other "high-ranking establishments."

Anonymous is a group of online activists that has claimed responsibility for attacking companies online such as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal over their severing of ties with WikiLeaks following that group's release of troves of sensitive documents. Anonymous also led a campaign against the Church of Scientology.

Anonymous and similar hacker organizations are notable for their leaderless, diffuse construction that maximizes secrecy but can lead to mixed or unclear messages.

Lulz has taken credit for hacking into the PlayStation Network of Sony Corp., where more than 100 million user accounts were compromised, and defacing the PBS website after it aired a documentary seen as critical of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The hackers also say they are responsible for attacks on the CIA webpage and the U.S. Senate computer system.

Web apps get the ultimate endorsement: Windows 8

With the Internet's importance steadily gaining, it's not as if Web programmers needed an ego boost. But Microsoft has given them a major one anyway with a radical change coming in Windows 8.
The next-gen Windows will come with a new programming foundation, letting developers build native apps with the same techniques they use for Web applications. Microsoft calls this new variety "tailored apps."
It's a bold move for the company. Microsoft's financial fortunes have depended heavily on Windows sales, and Windows' continued momentum has depended heavily on the wide range of software written to use Windows' direct interfaces.
Tailored apps, in contrast, use a higher-level interface: a browser engine. Now we know why Microsoft has been so gung-ho on IE9 over the last year.
Why this sharp break from the past? Microsoft isn't commenting on its rationale beyond speeches earlier this month, but here's one very good reason: ARM processors.
Today's ARM processors, from companies including Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Nvidia, Samsung, Apple, and Freescale, are usually used in mobile devices. But they're growing up fast, and Microsoft is designing Windows 8 to run on ARM chips, too.
Windows has run on other processors besides x86 chips from Intel and AMD--Itanium, MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC. Although each of those versions has been abandoned over the years, Microsoft clearly has adapted the Windows code base for processor independence.
Getting programmers to come along is another challenge altogether, though.
It's a chicken-and-egg problem. Why should a Windows programmer create, say, an Itanium version of some product when there are so few Itanium computers shipping? And why should a person buy an Itanium-based computer if there is so little software shipping?
Web programming, though, is inherently cross-platform, as illustrated by the wide range of computers and operating systems that can be used to browse the Web. Windows 8's tailored apps will call upon browser interfaces: HTML (Hypertext Markup Language, for describing Web pages), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets for formatting), and JavaScript (for executing programs).
Once Microsoft issues its ARM version of Internet Explorer--Windows 8 will come with IE10--the tailored apps should become cross-platform. In contrast, ordinary native apps such as Adobe Systems' Photoshop or Microsoft Office that are written to Windows' lower-level interfaces would have to be created separately.
Mike Angiulo, vice president of Windows planning, demonstrated the approach in a Computex speech, playing a touch-screen piano app on two machines. "These are the same apps. This is running on x86, this is running on ARM," he said. "It's the same app, completely cross-platform, based on the new Windows 8 app developer model."
Microsoft already has a cross-platform programming foundation, .Net and Silverlight, and there has been fretting among its fans about Microsoft's Web-tech move.
But ultimately, Microsoft's position makes some sense. Windows remains a powerful force in the industry, but almost all the hot consumer-level programming action today is taking place either with Web apps or with mobile apps running on iOS and Android. Every now and again a new native app arrives for Windows--Angry Birds, say, or any number of other video games--but the hot platforms of the moment are mobile and the Web.

Windows 8 has a very different interface. These dynamically updated tiles represent apps.
(Credit: Screenshot by CNET from Microsoft video) "Over 60 percent of people's time is spent in a browser when they're using virtually any system," said Angiulo said.
There's already an army of Web-savvy programmers, a fact that helps ease with the chicken-and-egg problem of spinning up a new programming foundation. It's not clear how closely tailored apps will resemble Web apps, but it's likely that something like Facebook's interface could be repackaged without major difficulties. That could help flesh out the Windows 8 app store faster.
"This application platform is based on HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS--the most widely understood programming languages of all time," Angiulo said. "These languages form the backbone of the Web, so that on day one when Windows 8 ships, hundreds of millions of developers will already know how to build great apps for Windows 8."
In addition, Web programming is expanding beyond the Web already: Hewlett-Packard's WebOS uses Web technology, as do browser extensions written for Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, Opera, and the imminent Jetpack framework for Mozilla's Firefox. Note that Chrome extensions can be sold as full-on Web apps through the Chrome Web Store already, and that Web apps are what Google's Chrome OS runs.
Thus, in a way, Windows 8's tailored apps are close cousins to Google's Chrome OS apps.
With the fevered rush of standards development, the Web is getting more powerful. One of the hot areas today is in CSS, It's growing more advanced not just as a way to put drop shadows behind boxes with rounded corners, but also as a way to animate changes such as boxes popping up and even provide 3D effects such as windows flipping over.
Two Windows 8 apps can share the screen, but the usual approach is to devote the entire area to a single app.
(Credit: Microsoft) Other work is improving CSS Web typography and layouts. With Scalable Vector Graphics, more complex graphics are possible. HTML5's Canvas element provides a two-dimensional housing for such graphics.
Browsers haven't been known for their performance compared to native apps, but Microsoft is pushing as hard as it can to use hardware acceleration. It does so for Canvas, SVG, CSS, and even text rendering. It also is working on faster JavaScript, in part by spreading work across multiple processor cores.
Another Microsoft effort makes more sense in light of tailored apps: pinning. IE9 Web pages can be pinned to Windows 7's task bar the way native apps can. With Windows 8, this behavior makes perfect sense since the Web-style tailored apps will be full peers to native apps.
One big unknown is how closely Microsoft will adhere to Web standards and how broadly it will support them. After years in the wilderness, Microsoft has caught Web standards religion, participating in their development, promoting them, offering test cases to iron out compatibility problems, and most notably, building them into IE9. So it seems likely Microsoft will toe the line here, but given how fast the Web is changing, it's probably safe to expect compatibility problems between, say, Chrome OS apps and Windows 8 tailored apps.
But it's not clear just how far Microsoft will go in its support. Much of the development of Web standards takes place in browsers, not just in conference rooms at standards meetings, and browser makers are keen to move forward as fast as possible. Windows itself hardly moves at a breakneck pace.
One uncertainty is whether Microsoft will support IndexedDB, a database technology that a browser can use to store complicated data and could be helpful for applications that have to work when there's no Net connection. And it looks all but impossible that Microsoft would support WebGL, a new standard enabling 3D graphics on the Web that also can improve 2D apps such as games.
Windows 8 tailored apps resemble those using Windows Phone 7's Metro user interface. They're touch-enabled and use a lot of rectangles that slide and swing around.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET) Don't expect existing Windows interfaces to go away: Microsoft has a huge collection of existing software to support, and you can bet programmers who don't want to be confined to tailored apps' limits will keep demand high.
What's not clear, and won't be until Microsoft's Build conference in September, is when Microsoft thinks programmers should use the different programming foundations.
Here's one big difference between Web apps and native apps, though: state. It's an arcane technical subject, but in short, it refers to who's in charge. With Web applications in a browser, state is maintained on a server. That lets multiple people simultaneously edit a Google Docs spreadsheet, for example; the server handles connections to all the browsers. With native apps, though, it's the local machine that typically maintains state.
For a good illustration of state, think of what cloud computing means to Apple vs. Google. Apple's iCloud synchronizes data among different devices, but when you play a music track, it's playing from the local device's storage system. Google streams it from a server, and the browser is at its beck and call.
HTML is getting more powerful abilities to store information locally, though, so that a server isn't required. The browser increasingly is able to maintain its own state.
Here's another difference: programming tools. Microsoft has kept the loyalty of many programmers through highly regarded tools used to build software. Web programming is comparatively primitive.
It seems very likely, therefore, that part of Microsoft's news at Build will concern how programmers can quickly make tailored apps.
After all, while Microsoft has had trouble matching Apple and Google in mobile devices, it's stayed competitive with programming tools. Don't expect the company to throw that asset away any time soon

Japanese supercomputer is fastest in the world

For the first time since 2004, a supercomputer built in Japan can claim to be the fastest on earth.
That's according to the Top500 Supercomputing List, which is expected to be released today at the conference in Hamburg, Germany. The new leader, Japan's K Computer, makes its home in Kobe's RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science. K Computer sped to the front of the class by achieving more than 8 quadrillion calculations per second (petaflop/s), which pushed it ahead of last November's winner, the Tianhe-1A at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China, which in the latest round achieved 2.6 petaflop/s.
K Computer was built by Fujitsu, and contains more than 80,000 CPUs with eight cores each. The last time Japan sat at the top of the supercomputing world was with NEC's Earth Simulator, which was dethroned in November 2004, after two years as fastest supercomputer.
In the top five, following Tianhe-1A, in ranked order, is the Department of Energy's Jaguar, housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with 1.75 petaflop/s; China's Nebulae at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzen, with 1.27 petaflop/s; and Tsubame 2.0 at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, with 1.19 petaflop/s.
The benchmark used to rank supercomputers is called the Linpack. It tests the performance of a system for solving a dense system of linear equations and is measured in calculations or floating point operations per second, hence flop/s. Not everyone in this field agrees it's the best possible way to compare machines, but it is one way.
This is a list that reorders itself fairly quickly, evidenced by Los Alamos National Laboratory's Roadrunner, the first system to break the petaflop barrier in June 2008, having fallen down to No. 10 on the list. The new Top500 list has 10 systems that have surpassed the petaflop barrier.
The most common application area of the 500 supercomputers on the list is research, with which 75, or 15 percent, of the systems are tasked. That's followed by 36 of the systems working on finance, 33 on service, 23 on the World Wide Web, and 20 on defense.
IBM has the most systems on the list, with 42 percent of them, followed by Hewlett-Packard with 31 percent, and Cray with 6 percent. The U.S. leads as the country that's home to the most supercomputers on the list with 256, China is next with 62, Germany has 30, the U.K. 27, Japan 26, and France 25.

ICANN approves expansion of top-level domains

The Internet's primary governing body today approved the expansion of new top-level domains--one of the most dramatic changes in the Internet's history.
During a special meeting in Singapore, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted to dramatically increase the number of domain endings from the current 22. The move will allow domains to end in almost any word, allowing companies to turn their brands into Internet extensions.
"ICANN has opened the Internet's naming system to unleash the global human imagination," Rod Beckstrom, president and chief executive officer of ICANN, said in a statement. "Today's decision respects the rights of groups to create new Top Level Domains in any language or script. We hope this allows the domain name system to better serve all of mankind."
Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman of ICANN's board of directors, said the "decision will usher in a new Internet age. We have provided a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration."
ICANN said it would soon begin a global campaign to educate people about the changes and opportunities they afford. Applications for new top-level domains will be accepted from January 12, 2012, to April 12, 2012, ICANN said.
Hundreds of applications for these suffixes are expected, including .car, .love, .movie, .web, and .gay.
The battle over new top-level domains has been long and often contentious. Earlier this year, a rift developed between national governments and the nonprofit organization over how much influence government officials, and to a lesser extent trademark owners, will enjoy over the process of creating new domain suffixes.
Also, a U.S. proposal that would have given it and other governments the power to veto future top-level domain names failed to win approval. A group of nations rejected the proposal, concluding instead that governments can offer nonbinding "advice" about controversial suffixes but would not receive actual veto power. Proposed domain suffixes like .gay are likely to prove contentious among more conservative nations