Since the iPhone 4 went on sale Thursday, numerous reports have begun to appear online about consumers having strange issues with the antenna. Namely, that if they put their hand over the new steel band that encases the iPhone, they lose reception.
Apple has responded with a statement:
"Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases."
We did a test call today, and found that yes, indeed, put your hand on the bottom of the iPhone (something most people tend to do) to hold it while chatting, and reception takes a nose dive. Then we tried putting one of Apple's new "Bumper" products, similar to a case, over the phone, and reception improved. The bumpers come in several colors, and sell for a whopping $29.99 each. All it is is a plastic strip that goes around the iPhone. But if it lets you hold the phone while speaking, it is worth considering as an investment.
Buh-bye Blockbuster, hello Google! The search giant — and owner of YouTube — is reportedly negotiating with Hollywood studios to launch a pay-per-view service by the end of the year.
The Financial Times reports that Google will launch the service first in the United States, but in its talks with studios has emphasized the “international appeal of a streaming, on-demand movie service pegged to the world’s most popular search engine and YouTube, according to several people with knowledge of the situation,” the FT said.
“Google and YouTube are a global phenomenon with a hell of a lot of eyeballs — more than any cable or satellite service,” one executive “with knowledge of the plans” told the FT. “They’ve talked about how many people they could steer to this . . . it’s a huge number.”
While DVD rental service Blockbuster is struggling — Blockbuster may be filing for bankruptcy in the weeks ahead — companies that stream movies and TV shows to customers’ personal devices, from phones to computers to TVs, are looking to bulk up their offerings.
Netflix is the king of such efforts right now — with an iPhone and iPod Touch app introduced last week — and Hulu and Apple may not be far behind.
Apple is likely to announce an improved Apple TV offering, rebranded “iTV” on Sept. 1, and Bloomberg has reported that the company has some content deals in the works that will allow iTunes users to rent TV shows for 99 cents.
Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion in stock, and has yet to find a way to make it profitable. This might just be the ticket, so to speak. Viewers would pay about $5 to stream newer movie titles to their devices, according to the Financial Times.
The good folks at Google have published a very cool multimedia showcase for what’s possible in HTML5. Using music by Arcade Fire (the 21st century hipster equivalent of ELO), filmmaker Chris Milk has made an interactive video of sorts that spans multiple browser windows.
Eliot Van Buskirk has a full write-up, including an interview with Milk, over on Wired’s Epicenter blog.
“The Wilderness Downtown,” features HTML5 native video and audio, canvas-animated birds that fly away from your mouse clicks, interactive SVG fonts, and photo panoramas from Google Maps Street View. You enter in the address of where you grew up and it pulls the images for that neighborhood. The neighborhood of my childhood home wasn’t available, so I opted for the section of Burlington, Vermont I lived in throughout college. It was creepy to see my old house in an Arcade Fire video.
Being Google-produced, the experiment works best in Google Chrome, of course. It had problems playing back properly in Firefox 4 beta.
If you have Chrome and can watch it, it really strikes a chord. It goes beyond all the HTML5 vs Flash dogma and presents what’s possible with these new technologies in a way which resonates on a level that’s more emotional and immediate than nerdy and intellectual.
So who do I talk to at Google about getting them to do one of these things for my band?
"Proclaiming the web dead seems to be something of a trend. First pop legend Prince announced its imminent demise, and now we get the same prediction from a more expert source, tech magazine Wired. In its September cover story, the journal says it’s only a matter of time before the web as we know it disappears. According to research from Cisco, HTML traffic visible through a browser is currently only about a quarter (23%) of the overall traffic, down from nearly 50% ten years ago.
Planet of the Apps
One cause of its dramatic drop is people like us. Yes, the web is on a downward spiral in large part due to the huge popularity of mobile computing and apps. If you’ve got a smartphone, think of how pervasive apps are in your life.
You probably use an app to check your email, to browse your social media stuff, to listen to online radio. You discover what’s happening in the world through RSS feeds and news apps. You communicate using Instant Messaging apps and you chill out with music apps. The list is endless and there are more and more apps for every aspect of our lives coming out all the time. All of these bypass the web.
Billions of nails in the coffin
Nonetheless, it’s still hard to believe that apps can have such a dramatic effect on something as central to our lives. That is until you look at some of the figures.
According to a Juniper Research report out in July, the number of “consumer-oriented handset downloads” is expected to rise from less than 2.6 billion per-year in 2009 to more than 25 billion in 2015.
In March this year, Ovi Store was getting around 1.5 million downloads each day — which works out to 22 applications downloaded every single second!
This year it took less than three months for web and mobile instant messaging (IM) aggregator eBuddy Mobile Messenger app to zoom past a million downloads on Ovi.
By 2012 it’s estimated that the mobile apps market will be worth an estimated $17.5 billion.
World Died Web?
If mobile computing carries on growing at such a pace, maybe the end of the web is nigh after all. What do you think? Will the World Wide Web eventually become the World Died Web or is news of its demise premature?"
"We’re often told not to believe everything we read in the newspapers. When it comes to smartphones, you can see why. Certain devices, it seems, are always in the news. But is the huge amount of media coverage a reflection of their sales? The simple answer is no. In the 2nd quarter of 2010, Symbian smartphones had a whopping 47.2% of the market. More Symbian devices are being shipped than ever. According to the research company Gartner, over 80 million Symbian devices were sold worldwide in 2009. Whatever way you look at it, Symbian is the world’s most popular mobile operating system.
A labour of love
Symbian^3, the latest version, was officially completed on June 17th. In the months since, Nokia’s brainboxes have been busy testing and refining to ensure it works brilliantly in the soon to be released Nokia N8 and the devices to follow. According to the Symbian Foundation there are more than 250 new features in this latest release, all of which are documented at the Forum Nokia Library. There are hundreds of pages to get through, but rather than have you trawl through them, we’ve found three developments that we think will make you fall in love with Symbian^3.
Graphics you’ll adore
Everyone loves fantastic graphics, and the Symbian^3 delivers with new graphics architecture that combines hardware acceleration and speedier software. That means an even more responsive interface, with cool added features like kinetic scrolling that’s sure to dazzle your buddies when you show off your phone. Add to that the fact the interface is programmable and you can expect developers to go crazy creating fantastic themes and apps to make your phone unique.
Multimedia you’ll lust after
Now more than ever before, our devices are multimedia centres. Symbian^3 takes this to a whole new level by supporting output to HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface). Imagine, you’ll be able show your pics or videos on television and hear sound on Dolby Digital Audio. Steven Spielberg eat your heart out! And that’s not all: the music player includes a home page widget for faster control of your song list and there’s a new Fusion Player for stored and streaming video.
Multitasking you’ll cherish
If, like us, you never seem to have enough hours in the day, you’ll know how important Symbian’s multitasking is. Well, with Symbian^3 your life is set to get even more efficient. Thanks to improved memory, you can run even more apps at the same time without running out of space. Plus, you’ll be able to use an ‘Alt-Tab’ style task switcher to move between the applications you’ve got open."
"The much anticipated Nokia N8 was handed to many of the World’s largest press publications for review earlier this week.
Following the recent releases of some high profile competitor devices of late, it’s been great to see how some of the world’s most high profile journalists think the Nokia N8 will stack up against the rest.
To give you a taste of what the experts are saying, we’ve put together a brief round up on some first impressions of the device’s key features – starting with a comment on the Nokia N8’s camera.
There’s been plenty of hype about the 12MP snapper… so does it deliver? Vladislav Savov at Engadget says:
There’s no getting around it, this phone is indeed a terrific performer when it comes to video, and a 30-second clip we recorded took no longer than a couple of seconds to process and return us to a position where we were ready to film again.
The camera is similarly snappy (we had to do it), with Nokia claiming a half-second delay between shots. Our unscientific experience seemed to corroborate the claim. That says a lot about the processing power encased within the N8, but Nokia also notes that this handset has the biggest sensor that’s yet been integrated in a phone.
Another crucial feature to the Nokia N8 is its HDMI capability. Why is this so important? Andrew Orlowski at The Register hits the nail on the head, so we’ll leave it to him to explain:
It’s a cameraphone first, second and third, and features an HDMI port and Dolby Digital Plus surround stereo. This is a subtle but overlooked point – Nokia envisages people hooking the N8 up to the family flat panel TV as often as they hook it up to the PC. Given that new TVs have HDMI ports to spare, this is no longer Jetsons territory.
We’ve had a fair few comments on the Nseries Blog and on Twitter @Nseries asking why the Nokia N8 won’t be out until Q3. We’ve always explained that this is to ensure that the device has the best possible user experience once it hits shelves. Flora Graham at CNET UK backs this decision:
Nokia is taking its sweet time with the N8, which we think is a great idea — this is a good-looking phone with plenty of potential, and it needs a smooth, easy user interface to polish it off. Expect to find the N8 is shops sometime in the autumn.
Another exciting facet of the Nokia N8 is its brand new Symbian^3 UI – which we think is a significant step forward from its predecessor. It should be noted that the version of Symbian^3 presented to the Media was still unfinished, and it will a more polished version that hits the shelves in Q3. However, the guys at Pocket Lint are impressed with the debut:
Another nice touch with Symbian^3 is the visual multitasking panel that appears when you hold down the homescreen button. This feature allows you to see a decent sized snapshot of all the apps that you have open on your device. Browsing is nice, especially so because it handles Flash with no problems.
So hopefully that’s given you a taste of what to expect from the Nokia N8. All in all, we’ve been delighted with how it has been received so far. What’s even more exciting is the prospect of everyone else getting the device in their hands… so bring on Q3!"
"NEW YORK – DELL said on Sunday it was assessing its bid for 3PAR after the data storage company’s board of directors late on Friday said Hewlett-Packard’s $2 billion (S$2.7 billion) offer was a ’superior proposal.’ The Fremont-California based 3PAR had also notified Dell of its intention of terminating its merger agreement. Dell has three business days to match HP’s offer under its merger agreement with 3PAR.
‘We will make a decision in the best interest of our customers and shareholders and make that known when it becomes appropriate,’ said Dell spokesman David Frink. A HP spokesman decline to comment.
The move is the latest volley in an intense bidding war between technology giants HP and Dell for the high end data storage company 3PAR.
On Aug 27, HP raised its bid to $30 per share, or $2 billion, less than 3 hours after Dell announced 3PAR had accepted its bid of $27 per share, which matched HP’s previous offer.
‘We have an existing agreement with 3PAR that gives us the right to match any competitive offer. We are assessing it at this time,’ Frink added.
The bidding war, a rare occurrence in the tech sector, started last week when HP bid $24 a share for 3PAR, topping Dell’s previous $18-per-share deal. — REUTERS" source
"Apple's iAd mobile advertising platform is getting favorable reviews from the companies whose advertisements were the first to run on the new system, including Dove soap-maker Unilever and Nissan. App makers like Dictionary.com and CBS Mobile have said iAd is allowing them to charge more for ad space in their applications.
Though neither Apple nor the advertisers would share revenue or traffic numbers, they noted that their pilot iAds tended to pull in users and keep them interested for significantly longer than other kinds of digital ads.
Nissan, which created a multilayer interactive ad for its electric LEAF car, said customers spent an average of 90 seconds with the ad -- 10 times longer than interaction times for comparable online ads. Moreover, people chose to "tap" on the Leaf iAd five times more frequently than they clicked on regular online display ads for the Leaf.
Like the other iAds from major players like Nike and Dove's campaign, the LEAF ad resembles something closer to an informational game, allowing users to manipulate the car with their fingers, change its paint job and chart its fuel efficiency in comparison with other cars.
"We feel pretty strongly that this is the way to capitalize on where the mobile Web is heading," said Chad Jacoby, a senior manager of Nissan's media operations. "What iAd promises is the most progressive thing I've seen to date" in digital advertising.
Dictionary.com said on Wednesday that the amount it could charge for its ad space had increased 177% since it enabled iAds in its iPhone app, and CBS Mobile Senior Vice President Rob Gelick said the company's six apps -- including apps for CBS Sports, CNET, and GameSpot, were seeing up to $25 CPMs (the cost advertisers pay for an add to appear a thousand times.)
Apple has said it secured $60 million in advertising commitments for 2010 -- or about half the nascent U.S. mobile display advertising market, according to market research from J.P. Morgan.
Rob Master, the North American media director for Unilever, which put out one of the first iAds for its Dove shower products -- said his company would soon launch a second iAd for its Klondike dessert bar. The company's Dove ad featured videos and trivia games about baseball players Albert Pujols and Andy Pettitte.
The Dove ad resulted in a "double-digit" percentage of users seeking further information about the product, with 20% of viewers returning to check the ad out again. (Repeat viewers are marketers' favorite kind -- it indicates a clear interest in their brand.) That's a good start, Master said.
Moreover, he added, producing the first ad brought with it a useful "learning curve," both for its producers and for Unilever at large.
"The ad served to help rally the organization at large" to see the value of iAds. "And now that we've been through one, the amount of time and team dedicated [to producing an ad] drops dramatically."
Other Apple iAds are forthcoming from partners like Campbell Soup, DirectTV, General Electric and Sears."
"If you like the minimal lines of an all-in-one desktop, but need true quad-core power for multimedia and 3D tasks, then the Apple iMac 27-inch (Core i5) ($1,999 list) should be at the top of your list. It gives you speedy performance scores, better 3D graphics, and the same large screen as the previous 27-inch (Core i7)—all for a couple hundred bucks less. All this earns it our Editors' Choice for high-end multimedia-oriented all-in-one desktops.
Design
Like its most recent predecessors, the Apple iMac 27-inch (Core i7) ($2,199 list, ) and iMac 27-inch (Core 2 Duo) ($1,699 list, ), the new iMac 27-inch (Core i5) looks like a metal and glass monitor suspended above your desk surface by a graceful arm. The screen pivots on a hinge, so you can find a comfortable viewing position whether you are seated or standing. This feature makes the iMac 27-inch (Core i5) a great PC for high visibility work areas, like reception or inside a design studio. There is also a spot for you to slip the wireless keyboard and mouse under the iMac when not in use, making for a clutter-free work surface. A similarly slim-wired keyboard and mouse are no-cost options, but you'll have to shell out extra cash for Apple's Magic Trackpad ($69 list, ).
The system has 4 USB 2.0 ports and a FireWire 800 port on the back, along with audio jacks and a Mini DisplayPort. The Mini DisplayPort has input/output, which is very convenient for connecting the iMac to an external monitor. The input can be used to hook up a laptop or Apple Mac mini ($699 list, ), extending your investment by letting you use the iMac 27-inch (Core i5) as a monitor long after the CPU and graphics become too slow. You could also connect an external device, like a cable box or Blu-ray player via HDMI with a third party adapter. I just wish Apple had included these adapters for free like they do with the Mac mini's HDMI-to-DVI adapter. As with the Mac mini, the iMac 27-inch (Core i5) includes an improved SD card slot, which now supports larger capacity SDHC and SDXC cards. Unfortunately, you'll still need an adapter for less popular formats like Compact Flash, xD, and Memory Stick.
Features
The iMac 27-inch (Core i5) comes fitted with a quad-core Intel Core i5-760 processor, 4GB of DDR3 memory (expandable up to 16GB), 1TB hard drive, ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics, 802.11a/b/g/n (2.4GHz/5GHz) Wi-Fi, and DVD burning SuperDrive. You still can't get a Blu-ray drive in the iMac 27-inch (Core i5), but you can hook up an external USB drive for data or a regular Blu-ray player for movies, using HDMI. It seems that Apple really wants you to buy HD content from iTunes or watch it via streaming over the Internet (like You Tube or Hulu). The Core i5-760 processor is a true quad-core processor, since it has four individual processor cores in the CPU. The less expensive and less capable Core i3 and Core i5 processors use two physical cores and Hyper Threading to act like four cores. The Core i7 found in the top-of-the-line iMac (Core i7) adds Hyper Threading to four physical cores to get eight processing thread capabilities.
Like all Macs, the iMac 27-inch (Core i5) comes with Mac OS X 10.6 and iLife (iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, and iWeb). The iLife suite lets users to view and share photos, music, and home videos the instant you turn the system on. Together with Front Row, they make the iMac 27-inch (Core i5) into a highly sophisticated, yet simple to use media PC. There isn't any bloatware (ads, trialware, etc.) aside from a quick offer during initial setup to sign up for mobileme, Apple's online service. The iMac 27-inch (Core i5) features EPEAT Gold certification, Energy Star 5.0 certification, green manufacturing, and recyclability.
The iMac 27-inch (Core i5) can be equipped with a 256GB solid state drive (SSD) and a 1TB or 2TB spinning hard drive simultaneously, but you have to configure it that way from the factory. Though theoretically possible, the iMac 27-inch (Core i5) is too complex for the average user to upgrade on their own, and the parts needed to mount the SSD aren't included and can't be bought from Apple. The SSD is a pricey option, at a $750 upgrade price for the 256GB SSD plus 1TB data drive.
Performance
The iMac 27-inch (Core i5)'s processor, speedy DDR3 memory, and ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics let it score higher almost across the board when put up against the previous top-of-the line iMac (Core i7). The iMac 27-inch (Core i5) has the same screen and chassis, but is measurably faster on multimedia, day-to-day, and 3D gaming tasks. It took 1 minute 47 seconds to complete the PhotoShop CS4 test in Mac OS X, while the iMac (Core i7) was a smidge faster at 1:40. On all the other tests in Windows 7 Boot Camp, however, the iMac 27-inch (Core i5) was faster. This can be chalked up to the faster DDR3-1333 memory and much more powerful ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics.
In fact, the iMac 27-inch (Core i5) was faster than all the all-in-ones we've recently tested, and actually did just as good, or even better than the traditional tower PC Dell Studio XPS 7100 ($1,149 direct, ) in some test. In the past, traditional towers used to beat all-in-ones regularly. This time the iMac 27-inch (Core i5) is more than competitive. Bottom line is that the iMac with quad-core Intel Core i5 is a power users' system that's ready for just about any task you throw at it.
So how does it do against the previous Editors' Choice, the iMac (Core i7)? The iMac 27-inch (Core i5) is faster, better at 3D games and tasks, can be equipped with more options like an SSD, and has a cheaper base price. As such, the iMac 27-inch (Core i5) succeeds the iMac (Core i7) as our high-end all-in-one desktop Editors' Choice and cements the Apple iMac as the all-in-one desktop to have and to beat."
"Open Source Android Apps for Developers: Android-wifi-tether Apps Description Android-wifi-tether (Wireless Tether for Root Users) is an opensource Android app which enables tethering (via wifi and bluetooth) for “rooted” handsets running android (such as the Android DevPhone 1). Clients (your laptop for example) can connect via wifi (ad-hoc mode) or bluetooth and get access to the internet using the 3G, 2G mobile connection or (in case you are using bluetooth) the wifi connection which is established by the handset."
"Google doesn’t confuse me very often. Like most people, I find the company’s products very easy to use; and generally easy to learn too. But once in a while they make me scratch me head.
Earlier this week, Google announced that it was integrating voice and video chats into Gmail. The company apparently confused others too, as the New York Times wrote: “Google entered a new business beyond Internet search … with a service within Gmail to make phone calls over the Web to landlines or cellphones.” The Times even asserted that the service “will thrust Google into direct competition with Skype.”
In reality, Google has been in the phone business for quite some time — and has been directly competing with Skype, whether it admits it or not. It has been offering voice calls; and has been in the video business too, although in a somewhat different way — through the company’s ubiquitous YouTube.
It’s almost impossible while watching TV or reading the paper (or even your own U.S. Postal mail) to avoid Verizon commercials featuring Droids, phones based on Google’s own Android software. You don’t even need an Android phone to use Google for voice communications, because it can be added to some Blackberry, Palm, Nokia, Windows Mobile smart phones, and even iPhones.
Google’s latest offering is to integrate the voice and video conferencing service through Gmail. That’s a good thing if you’re a Gmail user who wants to dump a Skype account and maybe even Vonage or other IP phone — because it puts these capabilities at your fingertips within your Gmail account. But anybody who had been using GoogleTalk in the past was able to instigate a voice call.
The biggest difference that I can see so far is the ability to reach out to telephones that aren’t in your contacts — even landlines. Dial the number; then start talking. In GoogleTalk, you need a previous connection to the person through your GoogleTalk contacts.
That’s a big advantage because it means you don’t have to have a phone near you to reach somebody else’s home phone. But who doesn’t have a phone near them these days? Almost every adult I know has at least a cell phone — most of them seem to have these devices attached to their ears.
So beyond my “what’s the big deal?” thoughts, is my confusion over the way Google is offering the product. I installed the required software plug-in, called “voice and video chat,” and it did all the right things, I thought. But I can’t make a call.
The company says I can start making calls when the phone icon appears on my screen. But that hasn’t happened. Does that mean there’s a delay of hours or days to get it to appear? Or does it mean I’m in a waiting line to be accepted into the program?
Not a good start for a product with promise.
We can hope Google overcomes this bad start. I can see where I might use the service when I don’t want to walk across the room to grab a real phone. Still it depends on how much Google charges for calls. They’re free until the end of the year for domestic calls, but will cost you anywhere from 2 cents to 19 cents for international calls based on destination."
"Android phones accounted for 13 per cent of the market, tying for third with Microsoft’s 13.1 per cent. Apple dropped a point to 24.1 per cent with RIM still dominating the market with more than two out of every five handsets.
One third of mobile users downloaded an application in the last three months and almost tow third sent a text message. The strongest growth area in data use was accessing social networking and blogging sites, with one in five using their mobile phone for this by May.
Overall the smartphone market has grown 8.1 per cent over the last year the report found, with 49.1 million users in the US. The total US mobile market is estimated at 234 million users.
In this mass mobile market Samsung showed slight growth and remains the most popular manufacturer with 22.4 per cent of the market, but are virtually level with LG and Motorola. RIM and Nokia have around eight per cent of the market apiece."
The PayPal Mobile app for Android has received an update that features bump technology just like its iPhone counterpart. This means that Android users can now simply bump their devices together to send money.
There’s also a new feature “which lets you automatically calculate the total cost of a bill and then collect money directly from friends when out to dinner.”
The app is free and available on the Android Market now.
(JTA) — Google removed Nazi-related applications from its Android downloads following protests from Jewish users.
Google removed the apps from search results last Friday, according to PC Magazine. Google said in a statement that the apps were “upsetting” and violated the terms of service.
The apps came up in a search for the word “Jewish” in the Android App Marketplace. Anyone can post an application in the Google marketplace for download. Google receives a 30 percent cut of any application bought on the marketplace, according to Rachel Liebold writing in JWeekly. The Adolph Hitler theme app was selling for $2.99 a download.
Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, praised Google for its quick action.
"Apple has a new toy. It’s a materials company called Liquidmetal, and everybody’s talking! Problem is, nobody seems too sure what they’re talking about. So, Liquidmetal: What is this stuff? And what does Apple want with it?
Liquidmetal. It’s a subtly powerful name, invoking images ranging from self-healing Terminators to Alex Mack. It’s also an oxymoron: Liquid, metal. And while Apple probably isn’t getting into the T2000 business, they may have huge plans for our new mystery metal.
Liquidmetal piques our interest. Not because it’s brand new—it was first brought to market in 2003, and only after years of development—but precisely because it’s not. It’s been used before in golf clubs and baseball bats; it’s been sent to space; it’s been sent to work by none other than the maligned Deepwater Horizon drilling rig; it’s even been used in consumer electronics that you’ve probably come across yourself. (You know those SanDisk Cruzer Titanium USB drives, with the slide-out connectors? Yeah, those aren’t made of titanium.)
And yet suddenly, after all these years, Apple doesn’t just want to use Liquidmetal, it wants to own it, and to keep it from everyone else. Why? What do they see that everyone else hasn’t? And what does it mean for the future of Apple products, and for everyone else in the industry?
The Science
The scientific definition of Liquidmetal goes something like this: Liquidmetal is a member of a class of metal alloys known formally as bulk metallic glasses—because the material shares some properties most closely associated with glass, like impact brittleness, and, instead of a fixed melting point, a gradual loss of integrity at higher temperature. It’s a mixture of stuff you’ve probably heard of: copper, titanium, aluminum and nickel. So yeah, fundamentally, it’s just a type of stuff, like a polymer, an aluminum alloy, or a glass.
The secret’s in how it’s made: Instead of simply mixing the alloy and letting it cool, amorphous alloys are cooled more quickly. This changes their atomic structures, in turn altering their basic properties. Ordinary metals typically have crystalline, ordered atomic structures, and therefore tend to deform when struck or flexed; amophous alloys are made of chaotic, unordered atoms, which tend to spring back into shape, more like a liquid. (Most metals have directional grains, like wood. Liquidmetal doesn’t.)
What makes Liquidmetal special compared to other amorphous alloys is that it’s easier to make. To brutally simplify things, it doesn’t need to be cooled as quickly as other similar materials, and can be cooled—read: made—in greater quantities.
Like I said, you’ve probably heard something along these lines, either more precise or less, but unless you’ve got a degree in the physical sciences, descriptions like this don’t mean much. So it’s got a weird atomic structure. What does that matter?
What It Is
So you’ve got a piece of Liquidmetal in your hand. What does it look like? What does it feel like? “In terms of color and look, Liquidmetal alloy looks like a normal metal, more like stainless steel than aluminum, albeit with its own distinct metallic color.” That’s Dr. Atakan Peker, one of the researchers behind Liquidmetal. He worked with the company for more than 10 years, and now the Director of Advanced Materials at WSU. “In a thin card or rod form, it feels much more flexible than stainless steel or aluminum. However, as you bend it more, it feels much stronger and will require much more force to bend… One can think of Liquidmetal alloy as a much stronger plastic.”
The coolest thing about Liquidmetal is that, as circumstances get more extreme, so do its behaviors. From a NASA report on the substance:
In the experiment, three marble-sized balls made of steel were dropped from the same height into their own glass tubes. Each tube had a different type of metal plate at the bottom: steel, titanium, Liquidmetal. Once each ball was dropped they were left to bounce. The balls hitting the steel and titanium plates bounced for 20 to 25 seconds. The ball hitting the Liquidmetal plate bounced for 1 minute and 21 seconds. During the experiment, this was the only ball that bounced outside its tube
Hints of flubber here, no?
Dr Peker gave me an even more vivid image: “If one makes a paperclip from Liquidmetal alloy, it will stay quite flexible and one would likely hurt or cut a finger or two before deforming it permanently.” Try to bend that Liquidmetal, kid, and you’re going to hurt yourself.
But lest we get caught setting up a mythology here, we should point out that it’s had a limited success in real products. There was that SanDisk key. Samsung stuck some Liquidmetal parts in a few phones—screen frames and hinge parts, to be specific. And it’s telling that the specific models are pretty much indistinguishable from the ones that don’t.
But the further we get away from consumer electronics, the more exciting Liquidmetal’s story becomes. In earlier incarnations, it’s lived both inside golf balls on on the face of $600 clubs, where its extreme bounciness was a boon but its lack of refinement may have been a fault—some of the clubs where known to shatter, spectacularly and without so much as a “FOOOORRREE.” (This little fiasco pushed Liquidmetal, the company, into “substantial” debt.)
It’s been used in Rawlings baseball bats and Head tennis racquets; it’s been wrapped around the cores of a few skis. It was treated a lot like titanium: something that makes a product premium, and that looks good on paper, but which you might not notice if you weren’t told. Andre Agassi used a Liquimetal racquet for a while, but does anyone think he wouldn’t have won the 2003 Australian Open with another piece?
The military has molded it into tips of armor-piercing Kinetic Energy Penetrator (KEP) bullets, and it’s been used to make ultra-hard scalpels. It’s been built into replacement joints for humans. It has fans at NASA, which has sent it to space a handful of times for experiments, and once in solar wind collector tiles above the doomed Genesis probe. According to an old BP/Transocean drilling contract, it’s almost certain that the drilling rig that devastated the Gulf of Mexico used Liquidmetal—under the name Armacor—in its drill pipe. (Armacor hasn’t been implicated in the disaster.)
To sum it up: Liquidmetal is useful anywhere you could imagine an extremely hard, somewhat flexible, easily moldable piece of stuff to be useful. Which makes it all the more strange that Apple wants to own it—not just in part, but all the way. They’ve purchased the exclusive rights to a substance that, on the face of it, has been less successful in gadgets than in most other industries it’s been used for. Even weirder? It’s conceivable that Apple will soon be licensing technology to the military-industrial complex, to the areospace companies, and to deep-sea drilling companies. The movie villains.
Why Apple Bought It
There are only two ways to know what Apple would do with Liquidmetal. The most obvious, and least likely to work, would be to ask Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive or an Apple engineer. Ha. Alternately you could just see how they already have. Yup, it turns out that prior to their purchase, Apple presided over what could be one of the largest deployments of a Liquidmetal product in history: the iPhone.
Speaking to Leander Kahney at Cult of Mac, Dr Peker noticed something odd about the iPhone’s SIM ejector pin: “I recognized it immediately. Take it from an expert, that’s Liquidmetal.” So yeah, Americans (in other parts of the world the pins seem to be steel): go find your iPhone 3G/3GS box (sorry iPhone 4 owners, your MicroSIM’s ruining the fun. Again.), dig that pin out and feast your eyes: you are in possession of a tiny little piece of Liquidmetal.
This tells us… well, not much. It shows that the brass at Apple has been interested in Liquidmetal for longer than they’ve let on. It also tells us that they’ve found someone, somewhere, capable of turning out millions of small pieces of the stuff. Dr Peker notes that the reason Liquidmetal hasn’t taken off in consumer electronics likely has less to do with the inherent promise of the material than a “lack of a suitable manufacturing infrastructure.” Nobody’s truly thrown their weight behind it, so it’s simply been too expensive to make. But that’s not an insurmountable problem: All it would take is a company with patience, money and leverage over hardware manufacturers. It would take a company like… Apple.
So in a material scientist’s wildest imagination, what could Apple do with this stuff? Dr Peker points to the most obvious use for a hard, non-deforming, non-corroding and generally scratch resistant material: cases.
Plastics are flexible but not strong, and while metals are much stronger than plastics, they’re not as flexible. Liquidmetal alloys can provide a more durable casing, which is much more resistant to dents, nicks, scratches and breakage than hard plastics.
If you drop a plastic-encased phone, it cracks or scuffs. If you drop a metal-encased phone, it dents, or nicks. If you drop a Liquidmetal-encased phone, well, it should just bounce. For like, a minute and 21 seconds. Maybe. In theory.
Pekar also proposed a use that’s ripped straight from the headlines, talking again to Leander Kahney: It could be used for an antenna—and in fact already has been, in a Novatel wireless modem built for Verizon. That the last iPhone’s fraught antenna was also part of its case may be no small coincidence—Liquidmetal is easily moldable, and given all the shit Apple had to eat during Antennagate, it’s reasonable to think that they’re scrambling for an alternative. And this one wouldn’t have seams.
But the most realistic outcome of this purchase is, to use the word of the day, subtle. Like any other good material, Liquidmetal will be asked to disappear into a product at the service of design. An iPhone with a Liquidmetal antenna, for example, wouldn’t be marketed as a Liquidmetal iPhone—it would be marketed as a slightly better iPhone.
And let’s say it finds its way into the hinges of our MacBooks, under the assumption that it will loosen or wear less quickly; or that it makes up the body of the next iPod Shuffle, as cartoonishly tiny as that’s sure to be. These products will, if Liquidmetal’s various boosters are to be believed, be the kind of subtle improvements on their predecessors that we usually take for granted. It may be hard to notice.
What could be easier to notice is the edge the new material could give Apple. Remember, there was nothing wildly transformative about Apple’s unibody manufacturing process—it was just a bit better—it made their products feel more luxurious and structurally sound. It provided a distinctive look. Maybe it made them more durable; it’s hard to really know. In any case, this collection of subtle differences came to define the company’s laptop line, and shrewdly, Apple patented the hell out it. If—when—Liquidmetal oozes its way into the next generation of Apple products, you might not be able to point to it, but you’ll know it’s there."
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"So when Digg rolled out version 4 of its social aggregation site – or v4 as many have called it – many, including us, were excited, particularly because there have been rumors of Digg’s waning influence. The refresh promised to not only reinvigorate the platform, but also make it competitive with the massive influence of Facebook and increasing presence of Twitter.
Alas, not all is well with the new Digg. In fact, many people are downright angry at some of the changes and flaws with the new site. Complaints range from the design to changed functions. But not everything about the new site is bad, however; quite to the contrary, some of it is excellent.
We separate what new changes we like – and what Digg needs to change ASAP.
Things Digg Needs To Fix
Bugs. Like, Lots of Them
All new iterations of websites have problems. Unfortunately, for a site as high-profile as Digg, the amount of bugs the site is currently displaying is simply unacceptable.
Currently, comments either aren’t appearing correctly or are appearing sporadically. Links to sites sometimes work and sometimes don’t, particularly internal links for other mentions by that site. Search is borked. Digg buttons across the web are broken. And to top it all off, the site sometimes decides to just not load.
These are core functions of Digg, and unless the site fixes them soon, they may lose users to competition already breathing down their neck.
Resurrect Bury
Did you get it? ‘Resurrect’?! Ah, nevermind…
Anyway – the new version of Digg has done away with ‘burying’, which allowed users to down-vote articles they either didn’t like or felt were suspect. But more generally, burying performed two functions: a) it was a kind of filter for pieces that would appeal only to particular people – such as highly anti- or pro-Apple stories – that would rise to the front page of Digg quickly, but maybe didn’t belong there; b) it was also a countermeasure for articles with sensationalist headlines that would get voted up quickly, but that upon reading, were found to be lacking in substance.
By getting rid of ‘Bury’, Digg has lost a powerful tool for balancing the kind of content that shows up there – which was one of the reasons for the redesign in the first place. Bring it back, Digg.
Easy AdSense by Unreal
Respect Users’ Habits
As Facebook has shown, changing the user interface – even when for the better – can provoke massive user outrage, whether justified or not.
But by eschewing really basic things like a thumbs-up and thumbs-down button and the upcoming section, Digg seems to be ignoring some fundamental aspects of both its identity and the habits its dedicated users have developed over years. Changes that make things better are always welcome. Changes like these on the other hand, may have actually made things worse.
What The New Digg Does Right
Design
Some people hate the new design, but the simplified look of Digg with a column of categories on the left is unarguably much cleaner and, I’d venture, a welcome improvement from the cluttered mess of the Digg of yesterday.
The font is also clear and readable and the whole site just now seems easier on the eyes.
Overall, the new design is more logically laid out and less distracting and intrusive.
Social Personalization
While ’social personalization’ sounds like the kind of web buzz-phrase that makes you want to stab yourself in the eye, the personalized aspect of Digg is actually pretty great. Though the holy grail of the ‘personally curated news site’ still feels like it’s a way off, the new Digg does a decent job of displaying news that’s relevant to you because it’s based on who and which organizations you follow. Be a bit careful about who you follow and it would be easy to get a constantly updated stream of news customized for you – without the cat pics and lunch descriptions you get on Twitter and Facebook.
Robbing Power Users of Their Power
Many Digg power users are complaining that they cannot perform more than 50 actions an hour.
Well, to them I say: tough.
For too long now, Digg has been plagued by a few power users who, through sheer commitment of time, are able to influence the site disproportionately. It was this imbalance that was behind the recent scandal in which Digg was gamed. By instituting new rules limiting how much an individual can participate, Digg will be closer to its original intent: a reflection of what people are reading on the web." source: http://www.techi.com/2010/08/three-things-digg-needs-to-fix-in-v4-and-three-it-doesnt/
"Google continues to expand its social expertise with the acquisition of Angstro, a small social networking start-up.
Angstro builds apps to easily exchange information among social services across the Web, pulling in data from social sites including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Its co-founder, Rohit Khare, said in a blog post on Friday that he had joined Google, presumably to work on a rumored social network project. Google, which is staying mum about its social ambitions, confirmed the acquisition and hiring of Mr. Khare but would not comment on which product he would be working on.
“While our work here may be done, the struggle for open, interoperable social networks is still only just beginning, and I’m looking forward to working on that in my new role at Google,” Mr. Khare wrote.
Google has spent the summer piecing together a puzzle of social networking companies, technologies and engineers.
Over the past few months, it has invested in Zynga, which makes online games that people play on social networks, and acquired Jambool, which builds apps, virtual goods and virtual currency for social networks.
Google also acquired Slide, which makes apps for social networks, and Max Levchin, a Slide and PayPal co-founder, now works at Google. Earlier this year, it bought Aardvark, for getting questions answered by people in your social network."
"Mozilla has just released the Fennec 2.0 Alpha for Nokia N900 and Android 2.0+ devices.
Fennec is the code name for Firefox () mobile and includes the ability to install browser add-ons and sync with the desktop version of Firefox.
The new version comes with built-in support for Firefox Sync (what was known as Weave), so that tabs, passwords and bookmarks that you use on your desktop can be easily synced and transferred to your mobile device.
The alpha also includes support for pinch-to-zoom on Android (), location-aware browsing, the ability to save a site as a PDF, and built-in site sharing via Facebook (), Twitter () or Google Reader ().
Like the pre-alpha, Fennec for Android, Fennec has been optimized for the Google Nexus One. However, other ARM 7 devices like the HTC EVO 4G, the Samsung Galaxy S and the Motorola Droid series should also support the alpha.
We installed the Fennec alpha on our Samsung Galaxy S Captivate and it was clear that the app is still very much in alpha mode — and is possibly not even evolved enough to be labeled “alpha,” to be honest. In our tests, the app was extremely slow and crashed frequently. This is very clearly still in development and is not in any way, shape or form ready for everyday usage.
The app needs 30MB of free memory to run, so be sure to close out any running apps before launching Fennec.
The release notes highlight some of the known issues, like the inaccessibility of FTP sites and non-working file uploads. Additionally for Android users, Adobe Flash and other plugins aren’t supported right now. Also, while multi-touch zoom works on some devices (like the Nexus One and the Samsung Galaxy S), it doesn’t work on all devices. The Motorola Droid, for instance, doesn’t support multi-touch zoom in Fennec.
Having said that, we do like the direction that the browser is taking.
