Android takes a 14% bite out Apple's pie

Shipments of Apple iPads have declined 14% compared with Q2 2012 according to th latest market share data from analyst Canalys.

Apple's market share dropped to 43% while Samsung, Amazon, Lenovo and Acer each grew annually by over 200%, driven by increasing demand for smallscreen tablets. Canalys estimates that 68% of tablets shipped in Q2 had a screen size smaller than 9".

iPad.jpg
The analyst expected Apple would compete by bringing out cheaper tablet devices, as it did with the introduction of the iPad Mini. But the price of a smallscreen tablet is being driven down by low-cost Android devices.

Tim Coulling, Canalys senior analyst said the market for full-sized tablets has stalled.

“Microsoft’s inventory issues with the Surface have been well publicised. Heavily-discounted Surface RTs will fly off the shelves. Expect prices to continue to fall though, as the starting price of $350 is still too expensive to spark an HP TouchPad-style buying frenzy.”

iPad.jpg Canalys worldwide tablet shipments Q2 2013
According to Canalys Android still lags far behind iOS in the availability of fully-optimised tablet apps and tablet app downloads from the Apple App Store dwarf those from Google Play. However, the analyst expected Google to put more focus on high-quality Android apps in the Play App Store.

The analyst's Q2 2013 tablet market share data showed that over 34 million tablets shipped, a 43% year-on-year increase. Tablets now account for 31% of worldwide PC shipments.

Design: ‘Baby BMW’ Takes On an Entirely New Meaning

But there is an automotive connection at Maclaren: its new BMW Buggy model, developed jointly with the German carmaker, even bears small windows in the shape of a BMW kidney grille on the canopy — the hood, if you will.

Baby strollers and carriages carrying the brand names of automakers are new territory for some of the companies that market to nameplate-conscious parents. Even the most famous baby of the moment may ride one soon: Silver Cross, long a supplier of strollers to the royal family, is producing an Aston Martin model that may be just the thing for Prince George, the new royal infant. (Black-and-white film of the young Prince Charles shows him in a Silver Cross stroller.)

The brand marks on the Maclaren BMW model, under license from the automaker, are tasteful and discreet: there are BMW roundels on the hub caps of the auto-style wheels and one on the buckle for the seat belt. The BMW stroller is part of a series of strollers called Objects of Design that have included models branded Burberry, Juicy Couture and Lacoste.

The original Maclaren, according to the company history, was designed for a grandchild by Owen Maclaren, an aeronautical engineer and test pilot who had designed the landing gear for the Spitfire fighter plane. The BMW Buggy was designed by Carolyn Komminsk, Maclaren’s chief of design, and comes with a reclining seat and removable seat pad.

The designers visited BMW studios and even the automaker’s museum in Munich, Ms. Komminsk said in an e-mail, noting shapes and materials.

“The Maclaren BMW Buggy is meant to reflect the sleek design and efficient maneuvering of the BMW and the innovation, design, style and safety of Maclaren,” she said.

Maclaren, once among the most prestigious stroller brand in the United States, has encountered challenges, not the least of which was a 2009 recall for finger injuries caused by the hinges of folding models. Informal sidewalk surveys in Brooklyn neighborhoods thick with young parents revealed an abundance of hot brands and models like the Uppababy Vista or the all-terrain Bugaboo Buffalo.

The BMW link may draw attention back to Maclaren, especially among fathers.

“I believe we’ve captured the enthusiasm of car, design and style enthusiasts,” Ms. Komminsk said. “The audiences we are after, in addition to mothers of course, are fathers. Our buggies have VIN numbers, like a car, so we can trace a unique part all the way back to its origin.”

Accessories include an expandable foot muff, a park blanket, an umbrella and, of course, a cup holder. The BMW Buggy is available in black, silver and blue for $385.

Even more prestigious child transport is Aston Martin’s new Silver Cross Surf stroller — make that pram, British style — built, like a Vanquish or Rapide, on an agile, athletic chassis of aluminum and magnesium. Inside is Aston-level Alcantara fabric and leather. The name Aston Martin is rendered on the push bar handle in gleaming metal letters so large no passing rival nanny is likely to miss the association.

Aston Martin cars are favorites of Prince Charles and his son Prince William, the proud new father. William and his wife, Kate, were seen leaving their 2011 wedding in a 1969 Aston Martin DB6 MKII Volante, lent by Charles.

The shape of the wheels on the new pram echoes the twin-spoke configuration of the wheels on the Aston Martin One-77 supercar. That model, priced around $1.4 million, was limited to 77 examples; the pram is limited to 800. It is priced around $3,000 and is available through Harrods.

Silver Cross is a noted brand in the world of prams, citing origins dating to 1877 when, it claims, William Wilson, an inventor, created the first baby pram.

A Silver Cross served the infant Princess Diana. One model is called Balmoral, like the royal family’s Scottish castle.

More affordable are Jeep-branded strollers, which come in many models, found at Babies “R” Us and other stores or online at such sites as allthingsjeep.com. Strollers are part of the lucrative licensing of the brand’s rugged, go-everywhere image. (No separate stroller figure is available, but sales of licensed Jeep products totaled about $550 million in 2008.)

Jeep strollers include the tough Jeep Liberty Limited Urban Terrain and the Jeep Liberty Sport X All-Terrain. Parents who want to keep in shape while spending time with the baby can try the Jeep Overland Limited Jogging Stroller. They are often sold at Walmart and other stores and at several online retailers for about $200. 

Crossbar takes on DRAM and flash storage with super fast, super long-lasting RRAM tech

Startup Crossbar emerged from stealth mode Monday to announce its version of RRAM (resistive random-access memory), a new type of memory that could be a successor to flash storage and DRAM.

The company, founded in 2010, will make and license its RRAM, a nonvolatile memory, which will be smaller, faster and more power-efficient than NAND flash and RAM, said George Minassian, CEO of Crossbar.

"It is higher density ... and the current is much lower," Minassian said, adding that the memory's physical and power attributes make it a suitable replacement for storage in smartphones, tablets, PCs and servers.

Crossbar is claiming RRAM will deliver 20 times faster write performance, 20 times less power consumption and 10 times more durability than NAND flash. The memory chips will be stacked, and a 1TB module will be roughly half the size of a NAND flash module with similar storage, Minassian said.

He could not estimate the price of a 1TB RRAM module, but said it will cheaper than NAND flash partly because RRAM is less expensive to manufacture.

Crossbar
Crossbar will also license the technology to third parties. It could be two or three years before the memory shows up in products, but that depends on demand for the product, Minassian said.

"It's a matter of what company appears at what time," Minassian said.

RRAM differs from the way NAND flash and RAM operate. Unlike NAND flash, Crossbar's technology does not use transistors or trap a charge. Instead it uses a layered approach to store data. An RRAM cell has three layers, with a switch in the middle that helps determines whether the cell is storing a 1 or a 0. The top layer has a metallic electrode, while the lower layer has a nonmetallic electrode. The top layer passes metal ions into the switching media and into the lower layer, which creates a filament to keep the electrodes connected, what Minassian called a "short wire." Applying a negative charge breaks the wire and leaves a gap between the electrodes, which leaves no resistance, changing the status of the memory cell.

"This is not a gate you use in standard NAND and NOR. This is resistive, which is where RRAM comes from," Minassian said.

RRAM uses existing material and can be made in factories. Prototypes are being made in factories of TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.), Minassian said.

Crossbar's RRAM doesn't contain transistors, so it is easy to make as chips become smaller, Minassian said.

Crossbar
Crossbar's technology is very interesting and could be useful as manufacturing technologies improve and chips get smaller, said Jim Handy, principal analyst at Objective Analysis, in an email.

"It's generally accepted that something is going to replace NAND and DRAM someday, since these technologies have scaling issues. When that will occur is unclear," Handy said.

It is becoming more complex to make NAND and DRAM as manufacturing technology improves at a rapid rate, Handy said. Intel, which has the world's most advanced chip factories, will soon move to the 14-nanometer process to make its chips. Manufacturing smaller chips with more features requires more attention to detail, and chips could be vulnerable to a wider class of defects.

"With that in mind, and with the advent of 3D NAND as a successor to today's planar NAND, there may be another five process generations, or even more, before alternative memory technologies have a shot at replacing NAND flash. The story's probably the same for DRAM," Handy said.

Once a scaling limit has indeed been reached, technologies like Crossbar's RRAM will rapidly take away market share from the entrenched players, Handy said.

Other RRAM designs are being researched by academics and research institutions. Alternative forms of memory to NAND and DRAM also include Everspin's MRAM (magnetoresistive RAM) and PCM (phase-change memory), a memory type being pursued by Micron and Samsung Semiconductor. Hewlett-Packard is making a memory type called memristor.

Canonical takes Ubuntu forums offline in wake of password breach

Canonical, makers of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, recently announced that its Ubuntu help forums suffered a security breach over the weekend. Attackers were able to harvest an estimated 1.82 million user names, email addresses, and passwords from the site. Canonical says it isn’t sure how hackers were able to breach its systems and the company has taken the forums at Ubuntuforums.org offline as a precaution.

Canonical is warning anyone with an Ubuntu Forums account about the hack via email. The company is also advising users to change their security credentials on other sites, especially email, if they used the same password and username/email for other online services.

Ubuntu.com services such as Ubuntu One are not believed to be affected by the hack since they do not share the same login account as the Ubuntu forums.

Fans of the Ubuntu forums began reporting that the site had been defaced on Saturday. The hacker or group of hackers who breached the site posted an image of a penguin (the Linux mascot is a penguin) holding an AK-47.

The message underneath the image suggested the hackers were more interested in exposing a poorly secured site than anything else. “None of this ‘[you got hacked] by albani4 c3bir 4rmy’ stuff,” the message on Ubuntu’s forums site said. “Straight up, you dun goofed. It's as simple as that.”

It’s not clear if the hackers plan on exposing the database of user names and passwords online. Nevertheless, there is a definite possibility these account credentials could begin circulating around the less reputable areas of the Internet.

For now, the hack doesn't appear malicious, but users should take caution.
Canonical says forum user passwords were not stored in plain text and were hashed and salted. A hash uses a mathematical algorithm to convert plain text passwords into a series of numbers and letters. A specific hash will create the same string of letters and numbers each time for the same input (in this case a password). To make hashes more secure they are further obscured by “salting,” a process that inserts random bits into the hash making it harder to guess the original password.

Canonical had not returned our request for comment at this writing, so it’s not clear which hashing algorithm the company was using. However, a report from Ars Technica says Canonical was using the md5 hash. MD5 is a popular hashing algorithm that is often used by software companies as a security check to let users ensure downloaded executable files were not tampered with or corrupted. But md5 is not considered to be a secure choice for hashing passwords.

Reports of password breaches are always a good time to reevaluate your own online security practices. Always make sure you are using unique passwords for every site you visit online. For tips on generating your own passwords check out PCWorld’s “Learn to use strong passwords” or “Passwords: You're doing it wrong. Here's how to make them uncrackable.”

Use a password manager such as LastPass or Password Safe to store all your various passwords for different online sites. These programs can also create new passwords for you and can automatically fill out login forms for you.

Finally, activate two-factor authentication for any services that support this security measure such as Battle.net, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, and Outlook.com. Two-factor authentication requires you to enter a second, shorter temporary password that is usually generated by a smartphone application or small key fob.

Many services that offer two-factor authentication allow you to set trusted PCs so that you only have to enter your credentials once on new PCs or browsers.

Canonical has not said when Ubuntu forums will be back up. In the meantime, any Ubuntu user looking for support can check out sites such as Stack Exchange’s Ask Ubuntu or Ubuntu Discourse.

Microsoft stumbles in Q4, takes $900M Surface RT charge

Microsoft closed its fiscal year with a less-than-stellar earnings report, missing Wall Street's revenue and profit expectations and taking a gigantic charge related to its Surface RT tablet sales.

Revenue came in at US$19.9 billion for the fourth fiscal quarter ended June 30, up 10 percent compared with $18.1 billion in the same quarter last year. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had expected, on average, revenue of $20.7 billion.

Net income was $4.97 billion, or $0.59 per share, compared with a net loss of $492 million, or a loss per share of $0.06, in 2012's fourth quarter.

The results include a charge of $900 million, or $0.07 per share, related to Surface RT "inventory adjustments," a clear sign that the much-maligned tablet has had serious problems gaining traction among consumers and has been unable to compete well against the iPad.

The results also reflect the recognition of $782 million of previously deferred revenue related to the Office Upgrade Offer.

Adjusted for the Office Upgrade Offer item, pro-forma revenue would have been $19.1 billion and earnings per share $0.52, Microsoft said in a statement Thursday. Analysts had expected earnings of $0.75 per share.

That compares unfavorably with pro-forma revenue of $18.6 billion and earnings per share of $0.73 in 2012's fourth quarter, which excluded a huge charge for goodwill impairment of $6.2 billion related to Microsoft's Online Services Division.

CFO Amy Hood said in the statement that fourth-quarter results were affected by the PC market's continuing decline, but that the company is seeing continued strong demand for its enterprise and cloud computing products.

Other products that experienced strong demand during the quarter were Office 365, Outlook.com, Skype and Xbox Live, she said.

CEO Steve Ballmer said in the statement that the company is "working hard to deliver compelling new devices and high value experiences from Microsoft and our partners in the coming months, including new Windows 8.1 tablets and PCs."

The Microsoft Business Division, which includes Office sales, had revenue growth of 14 percent year on year, or 2 percent when adjusted for the recognition of the Office Upgrade Offer deferred revenue. Office 365, the cloud suite of Office desktop and server products, is now on a $1.5 billion annual revenue run rate, the company said.

Revenue at Server & Tools grew 9 percent, helped by strong growth of SQL Server and System Center.
Windows Division revenue grew 6 percent, but excluding the impact of the Windows Upgrade Offer revenue deferral last year, quarterly revenue actually dropped 6 percent.

Microsoft plans to ship Windows 8.1, which is intended to address a number of issues for which Windows 8 has been loudly criticized, later this year.

The Online Services Division, which includes the Bing search engine, grew its revenue 9 percent.
The Entertainment and Devices Division had an 8 percent revenue increase, helped by Xbox Live sales growth of almost 20 percent.

Last week, Ballmer unveiled a broad reorganization that he described as a "far-reaching realignment" of the company, intended to transform Microsoft and lead it to innovate faster and operate in a more cohesive manner in order to better compete against rivals that include Apple, Google, IBM, Oracle and Cisco.
Ballmer's plan is designed to shift Microsoft's focus away from providing packaged software and toward supplying devices and services for personal and work use.

The reorganization also seeks to foster a more collaborative, collegial corporate culture at Microsoft, which has been criticized for internal conflict, and to create "one Microsoft."


"This is a big undertaking. It touches nearly every piece of what we do and how we work. It changes our org structure, the way we collaborate, how we allocate resources, how we best empower our engineers and how we market," Ballmer said in a statement last week.

Bits Blog: A Tech Veteran Takes on the Skills Gap

Lynn Holmlund Gary J. Beach Gary J. Beach has long been a close observer of technology, a frequent speaker on the conference circuit and a confidante of senior technology executives. He is a former publisher of Computerworld, Network World and CIO Magazine, where he is currently publisher emeritus.

More than six years ago, Mr. Beach decided to begin studying in earnest a much-debated issue, and a subject of ritual complaint among technology executives — the apparently lagging skills of the American workforce. The result, published on Thursday, is his book, “The U.S. Technology Skills Gap: What Every Technology Executive Must Know to Save America’s Future” (John Wiley & Sons).

Much of the book is an illuminating, idiosyncratic history of education in America, dating back to 1941. “The skills gap is really an education gap, and it affects us all,” Mr. Beach explained in an interview on Thursday.
Today’s headlines about the sorry state of math and science proficiency of American children are nothing new. In 1964, Mr. Beach writes, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement tested the math skills of eighth graders in 13 countries, and the American students came in next to last.

A scathing indictment of the United States public education system came in 1983, from an expert commission appointed by Ronald Reagan, “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.”
Then, America’s formidable economic challenger was Japan, a nation of high achieving math and science test-takers. Today, the ascendant power is China, which produces engineers at a torrid rate.
The Japan challenge faded. What’s different this time?

One difference, Mr. Beach suggests, is the historical moment. And he makes the argument by showing off his research chops, pointing to a fascinating if obscure source: the Yuasa Phenomenon. This is a theory expounded by a Japanese physicist and historian, Mitsutomo Yuasa, in the 1960s. Since 1540, he declared, the mantle of global scientific leadership has moved from one country to another every 80 to 100 years. The United States, by his reckoning, became the leader in science in 1920.

 Gary Beach’s new book, which was published on Thursday.

America, Mr. Beach writes, cannot compete with China or India in churning out engineers. Instead, the Untied States can thrive by being more innovative. Stronger math and science skills are needed, he writes, but so are other skills, which he calls the “5C’s — critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity and confidence.”

“A nation,” Mr. Beach writes, “whose citizens excel in the 5C’s, but not math and science, is a nation of liberal arts majors! A nation of math and science wizards who can’t think, communicate, collaborate or create, is a nation of machines. The successful countries of the 21st century will, and must, do both well.”
Mr. Beach has some reasonably fresh recommendations for improving education in America. He would nearly double the starting salaries of bright young teachers to both attract more of them and place American starting salaries on a par with Finland and South Korea, two high-achieving nations in education.

To pay for that proposal, Mr. Beach suggests the creation of state education trust funds, modeled after the “Highway Trust Fund,” the Eisenhower creation to finance the construction and maintenance of the nation’s interstate highway system with a tax on gasoline.

Under the Beach plan, businesses would pay a yearly tax of $10 a worker and parents would pay $10 for each child between the ages of six to 17. That would raise $4.3 billion a year and pay for hiring 143,000 new math and science teachers.

Now, the whole notion of a skills gap has been challenged recently by some academics, notably Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at the Wharton School. They point to stagnant wages; if there were real shortages, businesses would pay more.

Mr. Beach sees a different world, based on his conversations with technology executives. “The skills gap is not fiction,” he said. But in the technology industry, he said, there is a global market for skills — a market accessible to workers anywhere with the know-how and an Internet connection. The online worldwide labor pool, Mr. Beach suggests, slows wage growth for many technology jobs.

DC Takes 'Before Watchmen' to Times Square with Jumbotron Ad

In Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons; groundbreaking graphic novel, the story climaxes with the appearance of something unexpected in New York's Times Square. Here in the real world, something almost as surprising is showing up in the same location: A jumbotron ad for Before Watchmen, DC Entertainment's series of prequels to the 1985 classic.

The 30-second advertisement is the first time any comic book or graphic novel has been promoted on the Jumbotron, and after its broadcast to hundreds of unsuspecting New Yorkers starting July 16, it's going to go national; airing during commercial breaks on cable channels including IFC, TNT and TruTV according to a report in the New York Post.

RELATED: 'Watchmen,' 'Walking Dead' and '30 Days of Night' Creators Help Launch Black Mask Comics (Exclusive)

Showcasing art from Jae Lee, Adam Hughes, JG Jones, Amanda Conner, Andy Kubert, Darwyn Cooke and Lee Bemejo, the ad links the various Before Watchmen collections not only to the original comic, but also to Zack Snyder's 2009 movie adaptation, perhaps in light of his current Man of Steel success.

This isn't the first television commercial that DC Entertainment has created for its comic output; when the company relaunched its core superhero line in September 2011 as "The New 52," that launch was also promoted with television ads, along with radio spots and widespread mainstream media coverage.

Big World Pictures Takes Karlovy Vary Winner 'The Almost Man'

"The Almost Man" will be Big World's first theatrical release.
COLOGNE, Germany – Newly minted Brooklyn-based distributor Big World Pictures has picked up U.S. rights to Norwegian feature The Almost Man as its first theatrical release.

The debut feature from Norwegian director Martin Lund won the Crystal Globe best picture award at last year's Karlovy Vary film festival.

FILM REVIEW: The Almost Man

The dramedy focuses on Hendrik, a 35-year-old man child who finds out he is about to become a father and is forced to give up his own childish behavior. Star Henrik Rafaelsen won best actor at Karlovy Vary for his performance.

“The Almost Man is one of the finest -- and most enjoyable -- films I’ve seen in the past year. We’re proud to have it leading the inaugural slate for Big World Pictures,” said Big World’s Jonathan Howell in a statement.

The Almost Man will be Big World's first release. The specialty distributor plans 3-4 theatrical bows per year. The deal for The Almost Man was signed with sales group LevelK. SF Norway released The Almost Man locally last September.

Review: Otterbox's Defender series for iPad mini takes the ugly out of rugged

If you’re looking to protect your device—looks be damned—look no further than Otterbox’s rugged $70 Defender series case for iPad mini. This case certainly isn’t going to win any prizes in the “sexy and sleek” department, but it will protect your mini better than most. It’s a four-part case with a heavy duty cover that doubles as a stand, so it’s also pretty usable. Getting it on and off can be tricky, but Otterbox provides a simple-to-follow instruction video.

The Defender comes in several parts. First, there’s a slim, two-piece plastic shell that snaps onto the device. This shell features soft strips to cradle the back of your mini, as well as a thin plastic screen protector. The shell leaves all of the iPad’s ports and buttons open, giving you access to everything—there’s even a small cutout at the top for the microphone.

Next, there’s a black silicone layer that fits around the plastic shell. This piece is stretchy and flexible, so it’s easy to put on. It locks over four protrusions on the shell, and covers the mini’s Home, volume, and Sleep/Wake buttons with rubbery press-through overlays. It also features rubber flaps that cover the mini’s Lightning port, headphone jack, and mute switch. The silicone layer is well made—it’s rigid when it’s stretched over the shell, but the button covers are easy to press and the flaps are easy to remove when you want to access the ports.

Finally, there’s an additional piece to the Defender: a thick, hard plastic cover that doubles as a stand. The cover is the easiest to get on and off, as it only attaches at the four corners of the mini. It can go on the back or front of your iPad, but it seems to make the most sense on the front for added screen protection when your iPad is not in use. Inside the cover, there’s a stand that pops up and allows you to prop up your mini in landscape orientation, at an upright, movie-viewing angle, or a lower typing angle.

The Defender definitely offers protection, and it’s relatively sleek compared to a lot of other rugged cases. The two-material construction means that the case is better at withstanding drops, since the silicone layer absorbs the shock, while the plastic layer protects from dings. The built-in screen protector is a nice touch, and the mini’s screen is still responsive through it. However, since it’s not attached to the mini’s display, there is the issue of dust getting trapped underneath it.

If you’re looking for a rugged case to protect your iPad mini, the Defender series will do an admirable job. It’s not the prettiest case I’ve seen, but it looks and feels sturdy, and the extra-sturdy cover/stand combo is actually quite usable. Of course, if looks are what you care about, this is not the case for you.

NIH Takes Another Step Toward Retirement Of Research Chimps

Chimpanzees play at Chimp Haven, a retirement home for former research animals, in Keithville, La.

The National Institutes of Health says it will retire hundreds of chimpanzees that the agency had been using for research. Animal rights activists see the move as a big step towards ending the use of chimps in research, but it will be awhile before any of the research chimps find their way into retirement homes.

Right now, the NIH has some 360 chimps available to researchers. The vast majority of the animals are used in studies of things like genetics and behavior. But in recent years, the scientific community has begun to feel even these studies are unnecessary.

In 2011, the Institute of Medicine issued a report recommending that the vast majority of government chimps be retired. In January, an NIH working group agreed and issued specific recommendations on what to do with NIH's chimpanzees.

And earlier this month the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed designating all chimps, including lab chimps, as endangered. That would raise still another barrier to using them in research.

"Chimpanzees are very special animals," says Francis Collins, director of the NIH. "We believe they deserve special consideration as special creatures."

Collins says that the NIH will largely follow the plan issued by its internal working group. It will retire some 310 chimps to designated sanctuaries, leaving as many as 50 in labs and available for new research proposals.

The 50 or so will not necessarily stay in research forever. "We will revisit the decision about the need for those 50 in a small colony five years from now," Collins says.

The retired chimps will live out their lives in an environment similar to those in the wild. They will be in social groups of at least seven, and live inside enclosures where they can climb and forage for food. But the NIH won't follow a recommendation that each chimp be given 1,000 square feet of living space. Collins says: "We did not feel that there was adequate scientific evidence at present" to support that requirement. The cost involved with providing so much space was also an issue, he says.

Retirement won't come right away, however. Many chimps are still in research projects that will be allowed to run to completion in the next year or two. And the NIH has to work with Congress to change legislation regulating chimp retirement.

At present, the law caps the money the agency can spend on retirement at $30 million. NIH is expected to hit that limit soon, says Kathy Hudson deputy director for outreach and policy. The agency must also find additional space in sanctuaries for the chimps. That could involve expanding existing sanctuaries. But it could also mean recategorizing some laboratories as sanctuaries. "The [research] facilities are quite nice," Hudson says.

All of this is expected to take a few years, according to Collins.

Kathleen Conlee, the Humane Society's vice president for animal research, says that today's announcement is a big step in the right direction. "This is a moment we've all been waiting for," she says.

But, she says, more needs to be done. Conlee would like the NIH to reconsider the space requirements of its chimpanzees, and she bristles at the idea of turning labs into sanctuaries. "It's the culture of care," she says.

Above all, she says, she'd like to see the last 50 or so chimps designated to join their brethren. "I think we're moving in absolutely the right direction and we're going to keep pressing until the day when every government-owned chimpanzee is in a sanctuary," she says.

 

The Tao of Facebook: 'Social Graph' Takes New Path

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

 

 

Ever noticed that certain things on a Facebook page load faster than others? This is often the case with even the simplest of websites, but with a site the size of Facebook’s globe-spanning social network, the divide is in some ways more pronounced. Facebook, you see, serves information from two very different collections of data.

 

Most data is stored inside a good old fashioned database — the open source mainstay MySQL — but the social networking giant also uses a second system to house data that’s accessed with particular frequency. This system is known as Memcached, and it’s a common thing inside the massive data centers that underpin the world’s largest websites. Memcached stores data in the memory subsystems of the servers that drive Facebook, rather than good old fashioned hard disks. Facebook engineers call it “hot data.” Basically, this means that the data you’re more likely to visit is more likely to the load at speed.

 

The rub is that juggling both MySQL and Memcached isn’t the easiest of tasks for the engineers that build and operate the Facebook machine. But in recent years, the company has built a new system that seeks to ease the use of these two data stores. It’s called TAO, short for “The Associations and Objects,” and it’s been used on the site for “several” years now.

 

“It was important to build something that would help Facebook engineers move fast,” says Facebook software engineer Mark Marchukov. “Before, engineers had to understand the details of how both the cache and the MySQL data stores operated in order to write efficient code, and that slowed down the rate of development. With TAO, we put in an API [application programming interface] that they could use without thinking about the details.”

 

But TAO is more than just a new interface for Memcached and MySQL. According to Marchokov, the company also rebuilt the software that sits behind the API. “We wanted to build something that could do better than a hybrid system consisting of just Memcached and MySQL,” he says. In short, the system is specifically designed for the types of data structures used by Facebook — data structures that define what Facebook calls “the social graph,” the endless tangle of relationships among people and information on the site.

 

“We wondered what an infrastructure built by Facebook for Facebook would look like,” says Facebook director of engineering Venkat Venkataramani.

 

The system — which Facebook discussed for the first time this week — is yet another example of the company building entirely new software to streamline and accelerate its ever-growing online empire. Like Google and Amazon and even Microsoft and Twitter, Facebook has reached such an enormous size, it can no longer rely on software originally designed for much simpler sites.

 

Vert often, Facebook will “open source” its new software creations, sharing them with the world at large. But the company has yet share the code behind TAO. Venkataramani says the company is still considering whether it will do so. Though TAO helps drive the live Facebook site, he says, it is still under development.

 

 

2014: When the economy finally takes off

Economists think 2014 will be the year America finally shakes off the lingering effects of the Great Recession.

Things have been grim since the recession officially ended in June 2009. Job creation is barely outpacing population growth, and our GDP growth is sluggish.

But next year, economists foresee a convergence of several factors that could finally kick this recovery into high gear.

First on the list is the federal budget. After epic fights this year over the "fiscal cliff," the "sequester," and a bunch of other wonky stuff, lawmakers have finally managed to cobble together enough tax hikes and spending cuts to at least stabilize the country's credit rating.

Rising home prices are helping, too. Fewer Americans are trapped in underwater mortgages that leave them owing more on their home than the house is worth. Rising prices also boost the net worth of homeowners, adding to consumer confidence.

Related: Recession ended 4 years ago: How far have we come?

Businesses have been complaining for years about "uncertainty" in the public policy area. Next year, some of those unknowns will finally be resolved.

Companies have held off on hiring because they're waiting to see how they'll be affected by health care and finance reform laws, according to John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500). The implementation details of both of those laws will become clearer over the next year.

"Dodd-Frank and Obamacare need to be worked out, then employment takes off," Silvia said. He believes 2014 "could be a very good year."



Just how good? Steve Blitz, chief economist at ITG Investment Research, thinks GDP growth in the 3.5% to 4% range is possible for 2014, if the global economy doesn't deteriorate. Monthly job growth could peak in the 300,000 range, he believes.

Blitz anticipates a large numbers of Millennials entering the car-and-home-buying stage of life, giving an added boost to the economy. Plus, the drop in defense spending associated with the draw-down of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan should be largely behind us.

"All of these should add up to a better economy in 2014," Blitz said.

At Merrill Lynch, the economists' projections aren't quite as high -- the bank sees America's economic growth next year at 2.7%. But Merrill Lynch thinks the Federal Reserve will hike interest rates at the end of 2014, versus the 2015 timeframe it projected earlier this year. For that to happen, the bank believes, unemployment needs to fall to 6.5% from its current 7.6% rate -- a feat that would require job growth to accelerate to 300,000 new positions per month.

That's a number that looks more like a real recovery.

The Federal Reserve recently acknowledged that target was possible, when it lowered its unemployment forecast and said it believes the rate may hit 6.5% in 2014.

Stocks and bonds had a fire sale on the news, with investors fixated on the possibility that the Fed may stop pumping money into the economy.

Lost in the panic was the promising idea that 2014 may be the year when we finally put the Great Recession squarely behind us.

Karsyn Elledge takes next step in racing career

SONOMA, Calif. — Karsyn Elledge likes playing with her phone, computer and riding her bike.

When she’s not racing, of course.

Elledge, the 12-year-old niece of Dale Earnhardt Jr., is taking a big step up in her racing career this summer by heading west with her father. She unveiled Saturday at Sonoma Raceway the No. 3 mini outlaw sprint kart that she and Jimmy Elledge will take to 12 races across the West Coast during her break from school.

“It’s been really easy for her from the start. She hasn’t had to have a lot of guidance or direction,” Elledge said. “She won the first three races she ever drove, so the fourth race was really hard because she lost. So I felt like it was safe because of the full containment seats and the wings, and I thought it was going to be able to teach her a lot of life lessons about sportsmanship and competing and life in general.”

Elledge also wanted his daughter, who has won all but two races she’s competed in this year in her box stock car, to take a step up in competition.

“I figured out here, the competition level is so much higher,” Elledge said. “I figured if we could get her out here to compete in this class at the race tracks where Kyle Larson and Brad Sweet and a lot of those boys have competed, we can expose her to higher levels.”

Karsyn, who received a text message from uncle Dale to calm her nerves right before her news conference to unveil the car and announce Nickelodeon had signed on as sponsor, said she’s excited to take the next step.

“It’s very fun, and not just because it’s my family thing. It’s just interesting and so much fun. I love it,” she said. “I’m excited to compete at a higher level because it will only make me better and give me experience.”

The rising eighth grader has had several occasions to talk racing with her favorite driver, Danica Patrick.

“I’m a very big Danica Patrick fan. She’s like my idol,” Karsyn said. “She’s a girl and she races and she shows that girls can do it, too.”

The only drawback to Karsyn’s summer adventure is her admitted apprehension to traveling all across the coast with her father.

“It’s going to be interesting because I don’t like traveling in the car for a long time. I get really bored,” she said. “It’s going to be fun traveling with my dad, but also hard, boring, interesting. It’s going to be a lot of different things.”

 

Mac Gems: Startupizer takes control of login items

Startupizer 2.2 $10.00 Startupizer supercharges OS X's Login Items list by letting you determine the order in which login items load, as well as configure conditions that determine whether each item loads.

 

 

Gentle Bytes’ $10 Startupizer is one of those utilities that does one very specific thing, but does it well. The thing, in this case, is manage your login items—those apps and other nifty processes that you’ve opted to automatically launch or open every time you log in to your account on your Mac. Startupizer does this well by giving you greater control than OS X over exactly when and how those things launch. (Note that, confusingly, Startupizer doesn’t manage startup items, the system-level items that run when your Mac starts up. Rather, it manages only the user-level items that open when you log in.)

 

Normally, your list of login items sits buried a couple levels deep in the System Preferences utility (specifically, in the Login Items screen inside the Users and Groups pane). Once you find that list, there’s not a lot you can do with it: You can add items to it, and decide whether they should launch visibly or not, but System Preferences doesn’t let you otherwise control the login process.

Startupizer replaces the Login Items list in System Preferences with its own list.

Startupizer automatically detects any items (apps, files, menu-bar utilities) you already have in the official login-items list. You can then select which of those items should be managed by Startupizer. If you later add new items to OS X’s login-items list (say, by installing a new app and opting to have it launch at login), Startupizer detects that addition and alert you; you can then choose to move the new item to Startupizer’s list or leave it in System Preference’s list.

 

Once an item is in the Startupizer list, you define the conditions under which you want it to launch. Those conditions fall into three categories: date and time; modifier keys; and power source (battery or power adapter). So, for example, you could define a condition that says a particular app should launch whenever you log in between the hours of 9am and 5pm on weekdays. (You could call that condition Work.) Or you could define a condition that says don’t launch an app if you hold down the Option key at login. You can create as many of these conditions as you need, and then choose which ones apply to which apps.

 

As you’re configuring the conditions under which specific apps should launch, you can check your configuration using Startupizer’s launch-simulation mode, which shows you which items will launch when, for example, you log in at 10:00am on a Monday while holding down the Control key.

Startupizer lets you configure conditions for when a particular item should load.

Startupizer also lets you define the order in which items open at login by simply dragging items up and down the list. So, for example, I’ve configured my items so that Bartender launches first, followed by the rest of my menu-bar apps. You can also insert pauses in the launch sequence—say, to give you time to remember to press a modifier key. Alternatively, you can configure a standard delay between every item in your list. You can also tell Startupizer to launch App B only after App A has finished opening. It’s the kind of control that can make your login sequence a lot saner—but without driving you insane with details.

 

I have a couple of complaints about Startupizer, but they’re fairly minor. For one thing, Startupizer lets you move items from its main list to an Ignored Items list—you supposedly manage items in the ignored list back in System Preferences. But in my testing, items I put in the Ignored Items list didn’t reappear in the OS X’s Login Items list.

 

My other complaint is more of a wish: As I mentioned, you can tell apps to launch (or not) based on the time or day, the status of modifier keys, or the power source. I can think of a number of other conditions I’d like to be able to use, such as the type of network connection or my geographic or network location. The developer says he’s experimenting with such additions, so this complaint might be addressed in a future update.

 

Otherwise, I think Startupizer is a dandy little utility, and it’s one that’s made my everyday computing life just a little bit easier and more controlled.

 

Want to stay up to date with the latest Gems? You can follow Mac Gems on Twitter or on App.net.

 

 

Times Square takes yoga time-out

21 June 2013 Last updated at 16:41 GMT The event is into its 11th year New York's Times Square, one of the world's busiest crossroads, has come to a standstill to allow yoga enthusiasts to mark the summer solstice.

The Manhattan square became a sea of yogis exercising in time on their mats, beneath the billboards.

Tim Tompkins, co-founder of event, said part of its appeal was finding stillness and calm amid the city rush on the longest day of the year.

Into its 11th year, the event has grown from three people to more than 15,000.

Free yoga classes began at 07:30 local time (11:30 GMT) and were due to continue until sunset.

The oldest of the teachers in the square was 94, the AFP news agency reported.

"Yogis on the screens in Times Square!" one woman wrote on Twitter.

"Amazing way to start the summer!"