May 19th, 2012
The World at Work is powered by GE. This new series highlights the people, projects and startups that are driving innovation and making the world a better place.
Name: Raspberry Pi
[More from Mashable: 5 Ways Teachers Can Evaluate Educational Games]
Big Idea: Raspberry Pi is a small, lightweight computer that runs on Linux and costs next to nothing — the Model A retails at $35, while the forthcoming Model B will be priced at $25.
Why It’s Working: By far the cheapest computer on the market, the creator of Raspberry Pi hopes to get the gadget in the hands of children all over the world.
[More from Mashable: 4 Steps to Cultivating Online Trust]
Growing up in the ’80s, Eben Upton spent a lot of time in his bedroom learning to code. And in 2006, when Upton became a talented and successful mobile chipset developer, he began to realize that not everyone has the opportunity to immerse themselves in the world of programming.
“Many [kids] just don’t have computers at all,” Upton explains. “If they do, it’s a family computer, and you don’t want to mess with it.”
So, he began the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Registered as an official UK charity, the organization had a single goal in mind: to put cheap computers in the hands of youth and encourage them to expand their programming horizons. Upton says that the first Raspberry Pi computer had the capacity similar to the original computer he learned to code on, but he decided through multiple iterations that it would be more attractive with a modern spin and a Linux OS. And in order to keep production costs low, Upton says that the hardware for the flashcard-sized Raspberry Pi is decidedly no-frills — simply a core computer running on a mobile phone chipset developed and provided by Upton’s employer, Broadcom. The results of many prototypes were the Raspberry Pi Model A and Model B.
“What we’ve ended up with is something that’s very powerful from a multimedia level,” Upton explains. “We’ve styled the user experience to a recognizably modern thing while staying at the same price point.”
And that price point is shockingly low. Cost-efficient parts and minimal overhead contributed to the Model B’s jaw-dropping $35 MSRP — and sent geeks from all over clamoring to get their hands on it. Upton says that even as early as January, the organization only expected to sell 10,000 units. Instead, the Model B’s February launch on Leap Day of this year crashed the websites of the vendors who sold out in minutes.
“I think the numbers that are kicking around now are well over a quarter of a million units ordered so far,” Upton says of the Model B’s sales. “We’re very pleased.”
And it’s not just geeks looking to get a piece of the action. Upton says that the foundation has been approached by commercial companies, hospitals, museums and others looking to integrate the Raspberry Pi’s low-cost computing systems into their own everyday services. He adds that while the company is maintaining a strict role as a distributor of materials, the foundation has given special consideration to orgs looking to do good with the tiny computer.
“We’ve been helping people by making sure they get early access to boards and making sure that they’re getting a little support to put them in the right direction,” Upton adds.
But this is just the first step toward Upton’s larger goals. He says he hopes to debut the even cheaper Model A, which will be priced at $25, sometime before the end of the summer. Looking ahead, Upton says he’s excited to implement specialized software, tutorials and sample codes to encourage kids (and adults) to tackle the world of home programming.
“We’re trying to put the fun back into the computing,” Upton explains. “So now we have things going out the door. The goal is to refocus and make a polished educational offering around the device.”
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May 19th, 2012
NEW YORK (TheStreet) — If you want to buy Apple(AAPL) but think you missed the boat, another chance to climb on is approaching.
Apple traded $100 off the all-time high of $644 put in last month. After slipping through the 60-day moving average a couple of weeks ago, Apple is staring at a test of the 90-day average as support.
An entry target this week based on the moving averages is $512, using a relatively small $15 closing price per share stop-loss.
An even better risk-to-reward position is selling put options as a synthetic covered call. Selling a put option has a very similar profit and loss graph as a covered call. The advantage of cash covered puts is fewer transactions and accompanying costs.
I know some out there will claim valuations no longer apply and it’s a changing world with disrupting forces never before seen. As I become older, require reading glasses, and increasingly have difficulty keeping up with my children, I have gained market wisdom. What may appear as a certainty today can become absurd tomorrow.
Looking at Sprint(S) and Apple, you would be forgiven for not noticing how much they have in common.
After all, Sprint’s shares trade for about $2.40 — much closer in price to Apple option than an Apple share.
But both Sprint and Apple are technical buys, albeit for very different reasons.
Although Sprint’s shares have plummeted to about one half of their price from a year ago, the moving averages averages are rounding out or are on the upswing. Sprint has strong support at $2.32 and no major resistance until $2.70.
Apple is also a technical buy just under its current price.
In addition, both companies have attractive long-term fundamentals. Apple is a legal cash printing press, while Sprint is likely to either buy others in the space or get bought out.
Sprint could still engineer a takeover of MetroPCS Communications(PCS) after Sprint finishes its network upgrades.
Or perhaps MetroPCS Communications(PCS) could try to acquire Sprint.
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May 17th, 2012
Over 1.25 million app downloads! bit.ly In this video, Mahalo expert Sean Hewitt provides some safe practice tips to ensure you maintain your computer properly and don’t damage it. A Few Computer Hardware Tips ——————————————————————— It’s always nice to install new hardware in your computer to make it run faster, but it’s a good idea to follow these best practices so you don’t damage your computer in the process. To open your case and access its internal components, remove the screws along the back outer edge. Some cases come with thumb screws that can be removed with your bare hands. Other cases require you to use a screwdriver. You’ll need a non-magnetic screwdriver if such is the case. When the screws are removed you can either slide the entire cover off the top of the unit or slide each side off individually. Use an ESD (electrostatic discharge) wrist strap connected to an anti-static mat to ground yourself and keep from shocking any of the electronic components inside the computer case. Even the slightest unintended shock can completely fry one of the many processing chips and cause great harm, requiring you to possibly replace many parts. Also, when handling the hardware components, you’ll want to grab them by the edges to avoid your fingers touching any of the important electronic chips located on them. Use an air can to blow out any dust that has accumulated inside your computer. You’ll definitely want to make sure you <b>…</b>
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May 17th, 2012
Hardware and software provided by foreign suppliers, particularly those suppliers with strong government connections, can compromise the security of Canada’s telecommunication systems and leave them vulnerable to attack, computer experts warn.
“If you buy equipment or software that’s essentially produced by the government of another country, then you have no control over what that software or hardware might be doing that you can’t see,” said Prof. David Skillicorn at the school of computing at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.
“It’s the reason we don’t buy fighter planes from the Russians. If you’re running on hardware that somebody else built, and you don’t trust the somebody else, then it’s never going to do, securely, what you want it to do.”
Other experts agree that sensitive buyers need to know exactly what it is they are purchasing.
“You can hide things in software. You can hide things in hardware,” says Thomas Dean, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at Queen’s.
“Hardware components can do all sorts of things. They can record things. They can transmit things. They can also be a back door for disabling” parts of a system.
In recent days, concerns have been raised over the Harper government’s decision to allow China’s Huawei Technologies to participate in large Canadian telecommunication projects with companies like Bell, Telus and WIND Mobile.
The company has been blocked by the U.S. and Australia when it attempted to participate in similar projects in those countries. Some have accused Huawei of engaging in espionage on behalf of the Chinese government, an accusation Huawei has vehemently rejected.
Intelligence officials have long been worried that foreign-controlled technology companies could potentially hide digital “back doors” in telecommunication networks that might steal Canadian secrets or disrupt operations.
“It means that if you buy a switch from a company it [could] take a copy of everything that passes through it and send it off to some other place,” Skillicorn said.
“It would have to be transmitted in a covert way, but that’s not all that difficult a problem if you control the whole ball game.”
Skillicorn said the problem with hardware is that it’s difficult to inspect the equipment that you’re getting because so much of it is “working down at the very, very small scale.
“So you would have to tear the chips apart and look at them in incredible detail.”
Skillicorn noted that when it comes to intelligence sharing between Canada and its allies, Ottawa would never consider using anyone else’s equipment for the top, most secure levels of communication.
However, at the next level down, governments are starting to use encrypted communication over shared channels that are basically part of the public infrastructure.
“So now you have to rely on how strong you think your encryption is rather than concealing the traffic completely from people who might be your enemies.”
“There’s always been rumours that there are encryption back doors that are known to government intelligence organizations that let them get into encrypted stuff relatively easy.”
But Skillicorn warned that even if the data can’t be extracted, a hostile agent could use what’s called a kill switch to disrupt systems entirely.
“I can cut off your network completely and utterly at every level whenever I feel like it,” using such a switch, he said. “That of course would have a huge impact at every level including the military,” he said.
“They could have their switches turn themselves off on a particular date, for example. Once you have the potential, you can think up all sorts of ways to do very bad things.”
When it comes to manipulating telecommuncations systems, Dean said there is also the potential risk of modification, meaning the way in which a hidden program might change or redirect a particular communication, like an email for example, as it passes through.
“It’s not unthinkable to talk about something that could actually modify traffic. That’s a little bit more remote of a threat, but it’s certainly not unreasonable.”
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May 17th, 2012
Google uploaded a new Webmaster Help video from Matt Cutts, which addresses a question about the hardware/server-side software that powers a typical Googlebot server.
“So one of the secrets of Google is that rather than employing these mainframe machines, this heavy iron, big iron kind of stuff, if you were to go into a Google data center and look at an example rack, it would look a lot like a PC,” says Cutts. “So there’s commodity PC parts. It’s the sort of thing where you’d recognize a lot of the stuff from having opened up your own computer,and what’s interesting is rather than have like special Googlebot web crawling servers, we tend to say, OK, build a whole bunch of different servers that can be used interchangeably for things like Googlebot, or web serving, or indexing. And then we have this fleet, this armada of machines, and you can deploy it on different types of tasks and different types of processing.”
“So hardware wise, they’re not exactly the same, but they look a lot like regular commodity PCs,” he adds. “And there’s no difference between Googlebot servers versus regular servers at Google. You might have differences in RAM or hard disk, but in general, it’s the same sorts of stuff.”
On the software side, Google of course builds everything itself, as to not have to rely on third-parties. Cutts says there’s a running joke at Google along the lines of “we don’t just build the cars oursevles, and we don’t just build the tires ourselves. We actually vulcanize the rubber on the tires ourselves.”
“We tend to look at everything all the way down to the metal,” Cutts explains. “I mean, if you think about it, there’s data center efficiency. There’s power efficiency on the motherboards. And so if you can sort of keep an eye on everything all the way down, you can make your stuff a lot more efficient, a lot more powerful. You’re not wasting things because you use some outside vendor and it’s black box.”
A couple months ago, Google put out a blog post discussing its data center efficiency, indicating that they are getting even more efficient.
“In the same way that you might examine your electricity bill and then tweak the thermostat, we constantly track our energy consumption and use that data to make improvements to our infrastructure. As a result, our data centers use 50 percent less energy than the typical data center,” wrote Joe Kava, Senior Director, data center construction and operations at Google.
Cutts says Google uses a lot of Linux-based machines and Linux-based servers.
“We’ve got a lot of Linux kernel hackers,” he says. “And we tend to have software that we’ve built pretty much from the ground up to do all the different specialized tasks. So even to the point of our web servers. We don’t use Apache. We don’t use IIS. We use something called GWS, which stands for the Google Web Server.”
“So by having our own binaries that we’ve built from our own stuff and building that stack all the way up, it really unlocks a lot of efficiency,” he adds. “It makes sure that there’s nothing that you can’t go in and tweak to get performance gains or to fix if you find bugs.”
If you’re interested in how Google really works, you should watch this video too:
Google says the average search query travels as much as 1,500 miles.
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May 15th, 2012
Opinion
We are now 12 years into the new millennium and technology has become a prime element of almost all English language teaching (ELT) conferences and journals around the world. Yet, when we look for real improvements in student performance and effective use of technology by teachers, I think that the results are pretty disappointing.
I have spent the past 10 years doing technology-focused training work, materials writing and conference presentations and it still saddens me to see how much resistance and cynicism exists among teachers to the introduction of technology. But is it their fault? I don’t think so. Even as an enthusiastic and experienced trainer, I can see that once technology gets into schools, things start to go wrong.
Investment in technology has often been equated with investment in hardware. In many ways this is the easy fix: throw money at the challenges that technology integration poses. For example, education ministries around the world have been willing to invest in expensive interactive whiteboard (IWB) technology without really considering the benefits inside classrooms. Having made the investment, teachers are often left to sort out how to use IWBs in a pedagogically effective way, often with very little training or support. Meanwhile managers can wash their hands of the problem and report back that they have done their part in integrating technology.
The willingness of many schools to invest heavily in this hardware is rarely matched by a similar, and comparably smaller, financial commitment to provide adequate broadband connectivity to classrooms. Without sufficient connectivity the investment in hardware is wasted because, as soon as teachers and students start accessing content-rich websites in any numbers, the connection grinds to a halt, leaving the teacher embarrassed and reverting to traditional paper-based resources.
There is also the problem of the IT gatekeeper. Very few IT support staff have any pedagogical training and they tend to see themselves as defenders of the IT infrastructure. So, rather than being a friendly doorman who invites teachers in and helps them realise their technological aspirations, they can be defensive and hostile. Often this is exacerbated by a breakdown in communication because both sides lack a common vocabulary for explaining problems.
Many schools have made the effort to try to put technology into the hands of students by creating computer rooms, but in most of the schools I have worked in these tend to be fixed, desktop computers built into rows of tables. These computers rarely have any of the peripheral devices such as microphones, headphones or webcams that would transform them into tools for communication and oral skills development.
The design of the desktop computer and the upright screen often mean that once students are on the computers and logged in it’s very difficult to get their attention away from the screen. It is almost impossible to start moving students around the class for more social interaction. Also, the fact that these are separate classrooms that teachers need to book out and take their students to for a specific time slot adds yet another obstruction.
Without doubt the biggest problem is the training that teachers receive, or the lack of it. The focus of much training is still on hardware and “office” applications or ELT specific software. Training for equipment such as IWBs often comes after the equipment has been introduced into the classroom and although there is some useful software for language learning, it is often simply a digitised version of standard coursebook content dominated by gap-fill and matching activities.
So what do we need to do to start moving forward with technology?
One of the biggest priorities should be to provide not just adequate but really high-quality, open-access high-speed internet connectivity, preferably through wireless, to every corner of the school. Students and teachers should be able to walk in and instantly access the internet with whatever device they happen to be carrying with them. This extends the potential for learning beyond the classroom and can effectively turn a school into a wall-to-wall learning zone.
A move towards open internet access will also encourage more students to bring their own devices such as mobile phones, laptops and tablets to class and should reduce the need to rely on computer rooms for accessing digital tools.
Providing teachers with tablet PCs such as iPads could actually save money as most of these devices can run low-cost or free interactive presentation applications that can take the place of expensive, proprietary IWB systems. Tablets can also be used for preparing and transporting materials and for producing and sharing video, audio and rich media content with students.
Most important is the need for a different approach to teacher development that focuses on helping teachers with their own digital literacies. These are the skills to integrate technology into our daily lives and practices. Technology use, just like the language our students learn, needs to focus on things that are useful and that enrich and enable lives.
If we are using technology that has been designed solely for language instruction it is unlikely to have any real and long-term impact on students. If we can help them to use applications, not because they help develop language, but because they are the tools that we genuinely use to socialise, study and develop ourselves, then we will be equipping both teachers and learners with the skills that we need to be successful 21st-century citizens.
Nik Peachey is a freelance ELT writer, trainer and consultant
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May 15th, 2012
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May 13th, 2012
NEW YORK (TheStreet) –
Even though Apple(AAPL) reported record second-quarter revenue and earnings, shares have given back all of their gains and then some. We now may have a reason why: It looks like the carriers are starting to fight back.
Apple depends so much on its iPhone for growth, which accounted for $22.7 billion in revenue, nearly 58% of quarterly revenue. It’s Apple’s largest product segment by far, and any dent in revenue could dent Apple’s stock.
U.S. carriers Verizon(VZ), AT&T(T) and Sprint(S) could either cut back on carrier subsidies or extend the life-cycle of their contracts, and evidence is mounting that it may happen.
There are signs across the industry that carriers are becoming more disciplined with subsidies, Credit Suisse analyst Jonathan Chaplin thinks.
“If this discipline holds, we believe there is upside to margins and earnings growth for all carriers,” Chaplin wrote in a research note. He upgraded AT&T and Verizon to outperform and raised his price targets to $36.50 and $45, respectively.
Most contracts for cell phone customers are about two years, and Chaplin noted that the upgrade eligibility has been pushed out over the past year, from around 13 months to around 20 months, while implementing upgrade fees to offset the subsidy paid to the handset makers. Apple’s subsidy is exceptionally high, given the iPhone retails for $649 without the subsidy. The average subsidy on phones is around $265, but Chaplin thinks it could go as low as $250 per phone, as fees are added and eligibility gets pushed out.
While this is a potential negative for all handset makers, Credit Suisse analyst Kulbinder Garcha cut his estimates for Apple as evidence mounts of a shift in subsidies.
Garcha noted that North America counts for 38% of total units over the past six months for Apple, and cut his earnings estimates for 2012 and 2013 as a result.
“We maintain our view that Apple will continue to gain smartphone share globally, driven by a compute advantage and its ability to drive distribution led growth, not to mention innovation. We now forecast iPhone volumes of 140mn/187mn in calendar 2012/2013 (implying global share of 21%/22%, up from 19% in 2011),” Garcha said in his research note. He reiterated his outperform rating and $750 price target.
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TheStreet Ratings updates stock ratings daily. However, if no rating change occurs, the data on this page does not update. The data does update after 90 days if no rating change occurs within that time period.
IDC calculates the Market Cap for the basic symbol to include common shares only. Year-to-date mutual fund returns are calculated on a monthly basis by Value Line and posted mid-month.
*Oil Data in Market Overview is Brent Crude Pricing
© 2012 TheStreet, Inc. All rights reserved.
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May 13th, 2012
Microsoft revealed some information last week that points to the next stage of evolution of the desktop computer.
Windows big shot Steven Sinofsky wrote on a blog that the Windows Media Player included with the upcoming Windows 8 operating system will no longer play back DVDs.
Of course, Mr. Sinofsky tried to spin this as Microsoft listening to its customers.
“The media landscape has changed quite significantly since the release of Windows 7. Our telemetry data” (by this I suppose he means data collected from users’ computers) “and user research shows us that the vast majority of video consumption on the PC and other mobile devices is coming from online sources …
“On the PC, these online sources are growing much faster than DVD and broadcast TV consumption, which are in sharp decline …”
In other words, increasingly you don’t want to watch DVD content on your computer. But why not just leave the function there for those who do want it? (TechMan has lately been watching 1960s episodes of Julia Child’s PBS cooking show on DVD on his computer. That woman was a hoot.)
Could it have to do with money? Bingo.
“These traditional media playback scenarios, optical media (DVDs) and broadcast TV, require a specialized set of decoders (and hardware) that cost a significant amount in royalties,” Mr. Sinofsky said. And because Windows 8 is both a desktop and mobile platform, its different forms make the royalty problems even more complicated.
But do not fear. If you want to watch Julia Child on your computer, you still can — as long as you are willing to pay more to do it.
Microsoft will now offer something called Windows Media Center that can be purchased as an upgrade to Windows 8. It is different from Windows Media Player, which comes with Windows 8 — the main difference being that it allows DVD playback and watching live TV.
Hidden in all this kerfuffle about telemetry and reader feedback is the idea that Microsoft doesn’t think the DVD drive will be around much longer as standard equipment on your desktop or laptop.
“Globally, DVD sales have declined significantly year over year and Blu-ray on PCs is losing momentum as well,” Mr. Sinofsky said.
In fact, Apple’s lighter, slimmer Macbook Air does not include a DVD drive. Apple also offers a Mac mini without a DVD drive.
The morphing of desktop operating systems like Windows 8 into do-all systems that run on phones, tablets and desktop also spells death for the DVD drive.
A phone and a tablet and an Ultrabook don’t have a DVD drive; why should a desktop?
The loss of the DVD drive will be just another step toward the minimalist computer. Desktops, once bedecked with peripherals, have been stripped of their bangles.
HP and others now make touch-screen desktops. And Apple’s newest operating systems encourage use of a touch pad instead of a mouse. So a mouse becomes increasingly unnecessary.
The MacBook Air also introduced the idea that you don’t need a mechanical hard drive. Solid-state memory is faster, more reliable, sturdier and soon will match hard drives in storage capacity.
Again, beginning with Apple — the iMac specifically — desktops are increasingly one unit — computer, monitor and keyboard joined together. PC makers are following suit.
Good-bye to separate monitor and keyboard and computer tower. And as that all-in-one unit continues to get smaller, the difference between a desktop computer and a portable computer disappears.
So we’re down to one unit with keyboard, monitor and CPU.
In the future, those also will start to disappear.
Projectors are getting so small that there are cell phones with them built in. There goes the keyboard; just project it from your glasses. If you don’t like looking at your desktop on the inside of your glasses, project it on the nearest wall.
So it is obvious that in the not-too-distant future, you won’t have a computer on your desktop, you’ll be wearing it.
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May 11th, 2012
Posted on: 3:55 pm, May 10, 2012, by 5NEWS Web Staff, updated on: 06:57pm, May 10, 2012
The University of Arkansas’ chief financial officer said Thursday that hackers breached a third-party, Maine-based computer data server and exposed data stored for the University of Arkansas Computer Store, a university auxiliary unit that offers online shopping for computer-related hardware and software.
On Tuesday, the university determined that the breach could affect as many as 1,007 computer store customers who made online-only transactions at some time during the past four years, according to a news release from the university.
University officials believe that once it completes its analysis, the actual number of affected customers will be smaller.
At this time, a review shows that seven customers’ complete credit card numbers were located in the breached data server, with one customer being a unit of the university. Significantly, no security codes or other sensitive authentication data were stored on the server for any customers, officials said.
Donald O. Pederson, vice chancellor for finance and administration, said the security breach affected a computer server configuration maintained at the University of Maine in Orono, which for several years provided hardware and software support for online computer sales and related transactions on behalf of several universities.
Pederson emphasized that no servers at the University of Arkansas were involved or breached. The breach had no effect on in-store purchases at the University of Arkansas Computer Store.
University officials became aware of an alleged breach on Friday, April 27, and immediately consulted with the service provider, forensic investigators and law enforcement to determine what data, if any, might have been affected. The university will work to ensure that affected cardholders receive notice of the breach.
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