Consumer Electronics Daily News

Dell Named Chairman of Technology CEO Council

Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell, has been named as chairman of the Technology CEO Council, the information technology industry's public-policy advocacy organization comprising Chief Executive Officers from America's leading information technology companies. Dell is taking the reins of the group for the second time, having previously served as its chairman from 2001 to 2003.

Dell is a long-time member of the group, which was created in 1989 to advance policies to promote innovation and U.S. competitiveness through technology leadership. The CEOs regularly visit Washington D.C. to meet with policymakers about issues of importance to the high-tech industry. The group of CEOs met last week with leaders in Washington to discuss the economic challenges facing the country and the role technology and the high-tech industry can play in helping solve them.

"At this time of economic uncertainty and challenges, it's more important than ever that the business community work closely with elected leaders and policymakers to help our economy grow and prosper and create jobs for Americans," said Dell, who begins a two-year term as chairman. The previous chairman was Samuel J. Palmisano, the Chairman and CEO of IBM. Besides Dell and Palmisano, the Technology CEO Council includes Steven R. Appleton, Chairman and CEO of Micron Technology, Inc.; Greg Brown, Chairman and CEO of Motorola Solutions, Inc.; Ursula M. Burns, Chairman and CEO of Xerox Corporation; Paul S. Otellini, President and CEO of Intel Corporation; Michael R. Splinter, Chairman, President and CEO of Applied Materials, Inc.; and, Joseph M. Tucci, Chairman, President and CEO of EMC Corporation.

Technology CEO Council companies generate $250 billion in annual revenues and employ more than 700,000 workers. Currently, The Technology CEO Council's innovation agenda includes:

•Structural tax reforms that encourage investment and growth in America and enable U.S. companies to best compete around the world;

•Trade and investment policies that expand U.S. innovators' access to global markets and level the playing fields on which American workers and companies compete around the world;

•Strategic use of technology to increase productivity, improve quality and decrease costs in health care, government and energy systems.

•Robust efforts to enhance America's human capital through education reforms, high-skilled immigration reform and lifelong learning / reskilling systems.

Will Samsung Buy WebOS?

In the wake of Google's decision to purchase Motorola, rumors are starting to spread that Motorola competitor Samsung has its eye on WebOS, the operating system originally developed for the Palm line of handheld devices and recently left in a lurch after current owner Hewlett Packard decided to get out of the PC-manufacturing business. As Marguerite Reardon explains:

WebOS has always been considered a strong operating system with innovative features. The products unfortunately never took off. But Samsung could use the software to help differentiate itself not only from is fellow Android handset makers, but also Apple and Nokia, which is it tied to Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 software.

Samsung may also find WebOS's intellectual property useful in protecting itself against a wave of growing legal challenges in the mobile market. Many experts say that Google wants to buy Motorola not for the products, but for the patents the company holds so it can defend itself from lawsuits aimed by Apple, Microsoft, and others.

Writing elsewhere, Ethan McKinney thinks that the move could turn Samsung into a major player in the mobile environment, not just as a manufacturer but as an operating-system provider:

Conceivably, the market volume of Samsung phones could enable Samsung to establish its own platform with WebOS, if it is willing to make a financial sacrifice and drive WebOS into the market by giving it away for free and building an entire platform that includes phones, tablets, appliances and PCs. Samsung certainly has the means and breadth to challenge Google, Apple and Microsoft/Nokia.

Of course, it's important to note that this is all speculation. Samsung and HP have each offered a firm "no comment" to questions on the subject from the tech press, which could well mean anything. Still... intriguing idea, isn't it?

Meet Tim Cook, Apple's new CEO

Left: Steve Jobs. Right: Tim Cook.

 

As reported last Friday, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO, and COO Tim Cook will replace him in that role. Jobs will stay on as Chairman of the Board, but relinquishes the day-to-day running of Apple to Cook. So who is Tim Cook? The obvious place to begin answering that question is, of course, with his biography on Apple's website:

Before being named CEO in August 2011, Tim was Apple's Chief Operating Officer and was responsible for all of the company’s worldwide sales and operations, including end-to-end management of Apple’s supply chain, sales activities, and service and support in all markets and countries. He also headed Apple’s Macintosh division and played a key role in the continued development of strategic reseller and supplier relationships, ensuring flexibility in response to an increasingly demanding marketplace.

Prior to his stint at Apple, Cook spent 12 years at IBM and a period as the Vice President of Corporate Materials for Compaq. But, of course, it's his career at Apple—past, present and future—that has set industry analysts to reading tea leaves and pouring over YouTube videos of corporate presentations, in search on some sort of clue as to how he'll attempt to fill Jobs' oversized shoes.

In building a portfolio of evidence, Exhibit A is probably Cook's letter to Apple employees, following the announcement that Jobs was stepping down:

I want you to be confident that Apple is not going to change. I cherish and celebrate Apple’s unique principles and values. Steve built a company and culture that is unlike any other in the world and we are going to stay true to that—it is in our DNA. We are going to continue to make the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do.

I love Apple and I am looking forward to diving into my new role. All of the incredible support from the Board, the executive team and many of you has been inspiring. I am confident our best years lie ahead of us and that together we will continue to make Apple the magical place that it is.

Exhibit B may well be the confidence that Apple has in Cook, as best demonstrated by the very generous compensation package given to him by Apple's Board of Directors:

"In connection with Mr. Cook's appointment as Chief Executive Officer, the Board awarded Mr. Cook 1,000,000 restricted stock units," Apple said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Half of the 1 million "restricted stock units," or RSUs, will be awarded to Cook in August 2015 if he is still with Apple, while the second half will be given to him in August 2021, again only if he is still employed by the company.

At Friday's closing price, the 1 million shares would be worth over $383 million.

Hardly the sort of incentive one would give to a temporary caretaker: Apple's executives clearly plan on Cook holding onto his new assignment for quite some time to come. As for the industry analysts, there's no shortage of commentary and free advice for Cook floating around the ether, at the moment. Should you have a few minutes to kill—undoubtedly a few minutes more than does Apple's new CEO, right now—you might want to read Larry Dignan, Johnny Major, Robert Dutt, Christina Bonnington, John Baldoni, and Adam Satariano and Peter Burrows.

Apple briefly passes Exxon as largest U.S. company

Apple Inc briefly edged past Exxon Mobil Corp to become the most valuable U.S. company on Tuesday, displacing an old economy stalwart and heralding an era where technology holds sway.

Although Apple slipped back to the No. 2 spot after the close, market watchers said it is simply a matter of time before the company that defined the smartphone and tablet markets with the iPhone and iPad ascends the top.

The technology giant's market value rose on Tuesday to $341.5 billion in severely choppy afternoon trading, just above Exxon's $341.4 billion, even though the oil major's annual revenue is four times that of Apple's.

Exxon quickly regained the No. 1 spot as its shares rose and Apple's shed some of their gains, with stocks globally remaining volatile because of soft economic data and the downgrading of the United States' sovereign credit on Friday.

Exxon ended on Tuesday with a market cap of $348.3 billion followed by Apple at $346.7 billion.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/09/us-apple-exxon-idUSTRE7784RX20110809

WIMM Labs unveils wearable Android-based computing platform

Los Altos-based WIMM Labs has unveiled its WIMM Wearable Platform, an Android-powered computing system designed to provide a basis for a variety of portable touchscreen portable such as smartphone-connectible watches, bike computers, or digital assistants.

Developed in collaboration with Foxconn, the platform is a scalable system integrating hardware and software components that's designed to enable customization and integration into other products. "It can quickly take you from product incubation and testing to full-scale manufacturing and sales," WIMM Labs says.

Initially, a prototype module device has been unveiled, which comes with a 1.4-inch 160x160 pixels capacitive touchscreen, up to 32GB memory, accelerometer and magnetometer. It's also WiFi- and Bluetooth-enabled, and water resistant. Future devices built on the basic module may either work standalone, or as an extension of other products. While running an Android OS, WIMM-based devices will be reportedly compatible with iOS and BlackBerry as well.

The company plans to launch an application store for WIMM-powered devices, thus a Software Development Kit (SDK) will be made publicly available in Q3 2011, enabling to develop WIMM-tailored Android apps called "Micro Apps." Initially, the company has worked with "handpicked set of developers," and there's a limited number of Developer Preview Kits that now can be applied for. The module device comes pre-loaded with a number of apps including Caller ID, SMS Preview, Lost Phone Warning, Calendar, Weather, or World Clock.

WIMM Labs says potential devices utilizing its turnkey Wearable Platform could find applications in such fields as health and sport performance monitoring, mobile payments, enterprise use, travel assistance, entertainment or communications. While none of the above is something completely new, WIMM Wearable Platform hopes to earn its success by making things simpler for developers and manufacturers.

Software nudges frozen computers out of infinite loops

There are few things as maddening as being in the middle of a task on a computer, and having the software freeze up on you. This can be particularly enraging if you haven't backed up your work recently, and you know that the only way of "thawing out" the program will be to execute a force quit - your work will be lost, all because the (insert word of your choice here) computer didn't know what to do next. Fortunately, however, researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a tool that jolts stalled programs back into action.

Programs commonly contain thousands of loops, that allow the computer to perform the same task over and over, such as systematically comparing each letter in a document to those in a search term. Should there be a slight error in the code, however, the computer can get stuck in an infinite loop, performing the exact same function indefinitely - it could keep comparing the same letter, for instance, instead of moving on to the next one.

In order to get computers out of infinite loops, MIT computer science professor Martin Rinard and his graduate students Michael Carbin, Sasa Misailovic and Michael Kling have created a software tool that is appropriately named Jolt. When activated by a user who thinks their computer might have frozen up, Jolt takes a series of "snapshots" of the computer's memory after each run of a loop. If all of those snapshots are identical, then the machine is indeed stuck in an infinite loop.

Jolt then instructs the computer to move on to the next instruction within the program. In order to be able to do that, however, Jolt must first be aware of the beginning and end points of all the loops within the program's source code. This requires it to also be used by software developers, when their complex programming language is being compiled into computer-friendly binary.

Getting developers to use Jolt could be asking a lot, however, plus it causes programs to run 7 to 8 percent slower. To get around these limitations, Rinard and his team are now working on a binary edition of the software, called Bolt. It is able to work directly on compiled, binary versions of programs. One of the challenges in the development of Bolt is the identification of the beginning and end points of loops in binary code - whereas such points are relatively easy to spot in programming language, they can difficult to locate within the strings of numbers that make up binary.

Kling has addressed this problem by developing an algorithm that allows Bolt to identify the highest-level function that is running in a program at any one time. If that still doesn't provide enough information, then Bolt could conceivably even just start searching for new instructions at random, until it finds one that allows the program to move on. Although going to that next instruction might not be the perfect choice for the smooth running of the program, it would at least get the computer out of the loop, so that the user's work could be saved.

The MIT team presented Jolt at the 25th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming in Lancaster, England, last month.

 

German official scolds Facebook on privacy

BERLIN — A leading German privacy official on Wednesday accused Facebook of using face recognition software in a manner that violates German and European law.

Johannes Caspar, a data protection expert with the city of Hamburg, called on the US-based social networking company to delete from its site the individual biometric data it has collected.

"If the users' data falls into the wrong hands, it would be possible to compare and identify anybody captured in a photo taken with a mobile phone," Caspar told the Hamburger Abenblatt newspaper.

The programme allows Facebook users to locate new "Friends" after discovering their identity through a biometric data scan.

The programme tries to match data captured in a picture with the trove of data it has already collected from its hundreds of millions of users.

"This is what's most problematic. The programme feeds off a stock of data designed to physically identify millions of users," he said.

He further scolded Facebook for collecting and storing biometric data without users' consent, insisting the practice violates privacy laws.

Germany, which is considered a leader on Internet privacy issues, has criticised Google for its "Street View" programme, which makes street-level images freely available online.

German officials also previously urged Facebook to beef up its privacy protections, notably over its Friend Finder feature, which allowed the site to register or even import users' entire email address books without notifying them.

In January, Facebook agreed to inform its members that it had obtained email addresses in their accounts.

Report: iTunes 'Replay' streaming service nears

The long-rumored service from Apple that would let users grab movies and TV shows from the cloud as opposed to relying on downloaded files is said to be on the verge of launching.

Blog AppAdvice today said Apple is "on the edge" of rolling out iTunes Replay, a feature that was originally expected to make it into iTunes 8 in 2009 as a way to stream movies and TV shows, negating the need to fill up local storage with those files.

At the beginning of this week, a software update to the Apple TV and back-end changes in iTunes on the desktop and iOS devices let users re-download and stream purchased TV shows that might have been lost due to hardware failure or accidentally deleted. Movies were notably left out of the equation, and the re-downloading feature was not given any name.

According to AppAdvice's report, Apple is giving content that's been licensed for replay a special icon to denote that it can be re-downloaded, since not all content is expected to be included at launch. The report also claims that there could be additional rules that limit the number of times content can be downloaded, presumably to require that users purchase another license if they abuse the system.

Apple in June took the wraps off iCloud, a cloud service that can both back up and move files between devices. An important part of that effort, and what was made available well ahead of its coming release this fall, was the capability to re-download previously purchased music tracks and applications. In the case of music tracks this was a landmark move since, like movies and TV content, users became responsible for that downloaded file following purchase, and were unable to re-grab previously purchased files.

In the run-up to iCloud, sources told CNET that Apple was in talks with the movie studios, but had run into several problems, including the so-called HBO window or HBO blackout. This exclusivity agreement between HBO and three of the top six film studios requires that other outlets halt sales or distribution of a title if it's currently on HBO, preventing others from distributing that product while in the HBO window.

As for AppAdvice's rumor track record, this particular report comes from Alexander Vaughn, who correctly pegged the iBooks pricing ahead of an official announcement.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20087603-248/report-itunes-replay-streaming-service-nears/#ixzz1U0AfbhnU

FCC measures actual Internet speeds

 

For the first time ever, the FCC has collected data (PDF) showing real-world speeds that Americans receive from their Internet providers. And the news is pretty good! Or, perhaps, it's pretty bad!

Advocacy group Free Press blasted the results, released today. "No matter how industry tries to put a positive spin on these results, the report shows conclusively that many Americans are simply not getting what they pay for," said research director S. Derek Turner in a statement."This study indicates Comcast, Cox, and Verizon FiOS largely perform well, but other companies like Cablevision, AT&T, MediaCom, and Frontier all fail to deliver their customers the quality of service promised.

“In every other industry, giving your customers less than what they paid for is a very serious offense. ISPs should be held to the same standard, no matter how much they try to spin their way out of it.”

Nick Feamster, a Georgia Tech professor who worked with the FCC on proper metrics, had a different take. "We found that the performance of US ISPs more consistently matches their advertised promises than the ISPs in other countries—they do a pretty good job."

As for the FCC, the agency largely stays away from subjective evaluation, though it does note that "actual download speeds are substantially closer to advertised speeds than was found in data from early 2009."

Instead, the FCC report is all about the data. And that data shows the major ISPs generally offer 80-90 percent of their advertised speeds, even during the peak hours of 7pm-11pm, with cable and fiber services actually offering higher-than-advertised speeds for much of the day.

But one ISP stood out, and not in a good way: Cablevision had absolutely atrocious download speeds, dropping to nearly 50 percent of advertised speeds during peak hours.

Researchers create smallest battery ever made

A team of scientists has created a battery so small that it fits into a "nanowire," a wire whose thickness is less than the wavelength of visible light. It's the smallest battery ever made, and it could end up powering a whole generation of nanotechnology.

The potential of nanotechnology—the practice of building machines so small that they can't even be seen—has been talked about for decades. In medicine, for example, the idea of creating tiny robots that could enter a person's bloodstream and target intruders or diseased cells has been touted as one of the most promising applications of the field, but it's remained purely theoretical.

One of the hurdles standing in the way of such wondrous nanodevices is their power supplies—making batteries at such a tiny scale is difficult. Now a team of engineers from Rice University appears to have solved that problem by creating a battery just 50 microns, or about the thickness of a human hair.

To create the battery (see the diagrom below), the researchers first coated a nanowire template with a thin layer of copper. They then filled the pores (which create the individual nanowires) halfway with a nickel/tin alloy to create the anodes. At this point, they put on a thin layer of polyethylene-oxide gel, which acts as both an electrolyte and an insulator from the other nanowires. Next they filled the remainder of the pore with a polyaniline material to create the cathodes. A layer of aluminium goes on top to complete the circuit.

Every nanowire is just 150 nanometers (nm) thin. To put that in perspective, the lowest wavelength of visible light is about 400 nm. However, the complete battery is about 50 microns tall, or about the width of human hair. The researchers ended up creating an array of nanowire batteries that was about 0.08 square inches in area, though it's theoretically scalable to even larger sizes.

With a larger array that includes several layers stacked on top of each other, the tech could theoretically lead to batteries with massive energy density. And since the electrochemical materials don't contain lithium, they're easy to synthesize and manipulate at room temperature.

The nanowire batteries aren't without their limitations, however. After being charged and discharged 20 times, they lose their ability to hold a full charge. The researchers are working on addressing this limitation, however, by playing with the polymer thickness and trying out different kinds of electrodes.

Although it's in the early stages, the new battery technology could help usher in an era of practical nanomachines. With a real microscopic power source, the science-fiction scenario of tiny machines acting as doctors, builders, and explorers just took a step toward reality.