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Monthly Archives: July 2011

Too Much Safety Could Make Drivers Less Safe

July 27, 2011
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Link: Too Much Safety Could Make Drivers Less Safe

Back in 1908, when Mercedes-Benz was a startup and drivers had to navigate around horse-drawn carriages, signaling turns by rolling down an isinglass window and sticking out an arm, psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dodson first described a paradox that continues to plague would-be automotive automators. The Yerkes-Dodson law, as it became known, describes the relationship between arousal and performance. Give people too little to pay attention to and they’ll become complacent. Give them too much and they’ll become overwhelmed. For the best performance, the two researchers said, humans must work in the sweet spot where manageable tasks keep them interested. In automotive terms, this means drivers are at their best when they’re paying attention to their surroundings but they aren’t flummoxed. You’re just as likely to do a bad job driving down some lonely treeless straightaway in Kansas as you are merging onto the New Jersey Turnpike at rush hour, lost, with a scorpion on your shoulder. This is important because, as automakers pack their cars with more and more semiautonomous safety technology like adaptive cruise control and automatic braking, driving a car becomes easier and easier. We are, essentially, given less to pay attention to while we’re taught that our cars are watching out for us.

Today DOS is 30 years old. If only someone sent Microsoft free baked goods for milestones. What i

July 27, 2011
life, link

Today DOS is 30 years old. If only someone sent Microsoft free baked goods for milestones. What is fascinating, and perhaps scary, is that Hotmail is 15 years old. That means that from the naming day of DOS to today, half of the time has included Hotmail. It almost feels that innovation has slowed, doesn’t it? Whatever the case, on July 27th, 1981, Microsoft named a product MS-DOS that it had acquired from Seattle Computer Products. What is fun, from a historical perspective, is that what became DOS was written to handle Microsoft’s Basic coding language, so the product and Redmond were tied from the start.

Top Trends of 2011: HTML5

July 27, 2011
life

Link: Top Trends of 2011: HTML5

We’re reviewing the first half of 2011 and in particular 5 trends that have helped shape the year so far. Earlier this week we looked at online privacy and group messaging. Today we get a bit geeky and review the continuing growth of HTML5. HTML5 is the next version of HTML, the markup language that all web pages are written in. HTML5 is more interactive than the current version of HTML – it offers similar functionality to Flash technology – and is also much more suited to mobile devices. HTML5 was one of our top trends of 2010, after getting major support from Google and promising startups like Clicker. This year we’ve seen Microsoft jump on the HTML5 bandwagon, with strong integration into its IE browser and Windows OS (not without controversy). Also we’ve seen increasing talk in the developer community that HTML5 may be the elusive ‘write once, run anywhere’ code for the Web.

Smartphone Sales Will Hit 420 Million In 2011, To Take 28 Percent Of The Total Phone Market

July 27, 2011
life

Link: Smartphone Sales Will Hit 420 Million In 2011, To Take 28 Percent Of The Total Phone Market

Thanks to the rise of the popular, non-business smartphone – namely any phone that supports app creation – carriers can expect to sell 420 million units this year, taking over a quarter of total phone sales away from “traditional” phones. The winners in this race? Samsung and Apple. The loser – by a long shot? Nokia, with a fall from 40% to 24% in one year. IMSResearch writes: Of the traditional handset manufacturers, Samsung has demonstrated the best results in recent years. Capitalizing on its diverse portfolio – which includes devices using the company’s own bada operating system along with Android and Windows Mobile – as well as its highly popular Galaxy series, Samsung smartphone market share increased from about three percent in 1Q 2010 to over 13 percent in 1Q 2011. At the same time smaller, dedicated smartphone vendors such as HTC have seen their position rise dramatically.

Impressive: MIT Researchers Crack The Code On Cheaply Printing Solar Cells On Paper, Fabric

July 13, 2011
life

Link: Impressive: MIT Researchers Crack The Code On Cheaply Printing Solar Cells On Paper, Fabric

Researchers have long toyed with the idea of printing solar cells onto paper. But MIT researchers have taken the idea one giant step further with a process that cheaply and easily prints out solar cells on regular plastic, cloth, or paper—without the need for high temperatures or potentially damaging liquids. It’s still in the research stages at the moment—the cells barely produce enough to power a cell phone—but light, cheap, flexible solar panels could one day be revolutionary.

Google Plus to Hit 20 Million Users by the Weekend

July 12, 2011
life

Link: Google Plus to Hit 20 Million Users by the Weekend

According to independent analysis done by Paul Allen, founder of Ancestry.com, Google’s new social network Google Plus will hit 20 million users by this weekend. And he estimates that the current user base has already surpassed the 10 million mark. What’s most surprising about Google Plus, however, is how quickly it has grown. The size of the user base has increased by 350% in just 6 days, says Allen.