Americans spent over $15 billion on video games in 2010

Fingerprints Go the Distance

Over the years, fingerprinting has evolved from an inky mess to pressing fingers on sensor screens to even a few touch-free systems that work at a short distance. Now a company has developed a prototype of a device that can scan fingerprints from up to two meters away, an approach that could prove especially useful at security checkpoints in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The device, called AIRprint, is being developed by Advanced Optical Systems (AOS). It detects fingerprints by shining polarized light onto a person's hand and analyzing the reflection using two cameras configured to detect different polarizations.

Joel Burcham, director for projects at the Huntsville, Alabama-based company, says AIRprint could help make authorization more efficient in lots of settings. Instead of punching a keypad code or pressing fingers to a scanner, individuals could simply hold up a hand and walk toward a security door while the device checks their identity. "We're looking at places where the standard methods are a hassle," says Burcham. For instance, AIRprint could be linked to a timecard system, he says, to help avoid a logjam at manufacturing plants at the start or end of the workday.

Slightly smaller than a square tissue box, AIRprint houses two 1.3 megapixel cameras and a source of polarized light. One camera receives horizontally polarized light, while the other receives vertically polarized light. When light hits a finger, the ridges of the fingerprint reflect one polarization of light, while the valleys reflect another. "That's where the real kicker is, because if you look at an image without any polarization, you can kind of see fingerprints, but not really well," says Burcham. By separating the vertical and the horizontal polarization, the device can overlap those images to produce an accurate fingerprint, which is fed to a computer for verification.

The prototype device, which scans a print in 0.1 seconds and processes it in about four seconds, can handle only one finger at a time. Also, the scanned finger must remain at a fixed distance from the device. But by April, Burcham expects to have made significant improvements. By then, he says, the device should be able to scan five fingers at once even if a person is moving toward or away from the cameras, and the processing time ought to have dropped to less than a second.

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Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=9a4ef5f79cc41a3dcf41200cd83c6e07

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Solving the Climate Crisis At a Profit

A decade ago, environmentalist Hunter Lovins published Natural Capitalism, coauthored with her ex-husband, Amory Lovins. The book influenced some business leaders to embrace what was a counterintuitive notion: that going green could be a way to save or make lots of money. Since then, she has gone on to establish Natural Capitalism Solutions, a Colorado-based firm that helps businesses and governments become more energy-efficient and better prepared for the global threats of climate change. She recently wrote Climate Capitalism, a book due out this spring that presents the climate crisis as a giant business opportunity.

TR: If you look back at the thesis of Natural Capitalism, what has changed and what has been surprising since then?

HL: Ten years ago, we were observing what the few best companies were doing to implement sustainability profitably. And we derived a set of four principles of natural capitalism, the first of which is to use energy resources dramatically more productively. In the intervening years, this is what most businesses that manage themselves as green or sustainable or responsible have been doing, and with massive savings. One surprise is how many savings still remain.

What are some examples of those kinds of savings?

My team walked into a company last year that had 6,300 computers and monitors that they left on 24/7 because of some urban myths: that it shortens the life of the computer to turn it off and turn it on. Well, no, that's not true. Or IT needs them left on [to do maintenance]. No, that's not true either. One night a week would do fine. In that company, just publishing a policy to turn the darned thing off when you're not sitting in front of it could save them $700,000 in the first year. This is free money.

What company is that?

I can't tell you, but it is endemic throughout society. In the United States alone, we waste something like $2.8 billion each year leaving computers on that have nobody in front of them. So a surprise is that even though we and a lot of other people have been saying this for 10 years, the opportunities still exist, and if anything, they are getting better.

So principle number one remains valid.

Yes, although a change in Climate Capitalism is that we've redefined the first principle to be: Buy time by using resources dramatically more productively.

What do you mean by "buy time"?

What the world is shortest in is the time to deal with the challenges facing us. Things like the climate crisis. Some scientists are saying it's too late.

Do you believe it's too late?

The short answer is we don't know. Maybe I'm just being an optimist, but in looking around, I believe that if the world's businesses did what is manifestly in their own economic interest, implemented all the available, cost-effective efficiency improvements, we could solve the climate crisis?and at a profit.

That is the thesis of Climate Capitalism. Suppose the climate crisis is a hoax. Frankly, don't go to Vegas on the odds of this being true. But if all you are is a profit-maximizing capitalist, you would do exactly the same thing as you would do if you were scared to death about climate change.

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Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=378702b49d2e8dba9467aece3ad87d8c

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Silicon Valley Uncovered: Foodspotting celebrates 1 year and $3 million, but why is the Android app still in beta?

Silicon Valley Uncovered: Foodspotting celebrates 1 year and $3 million, but why is the Android app still in beta?

Foodspotting, the app allowing you to share pictures and locations of your favorite food, had its one year-old birthday party last night.

The company, which recently announced $3 million in funding from BlueRun ventures, is popular not only amongst early adopters, but has 550,00 iPhone users worldwide and over 289,539 foods shared to date.

I sat down with the  cofounders Alexa Andrzejewski (Adaptive Path), Ted Grubb (Get Satisfaction) and Soraya Darabi (New York Times) and asked them how people sharing their favorite foods will amount to generating revenue. Alexa?s answer was that they are concentrating on making the product the best it can possibly be before thinking too much about revenue, but much like Foursquare and Gowalla the business model comes down to partnerships with food vendors and location deals.

Afterwards I asked some party revelers what they thought of the app, most loved it and were avid users, but some (like the couple at the end of the video) found the Android app (still in Beta) difficult to install. A year on and Android app still in beta? Why?

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/video/2011/01/17/silicon-valley-uncovered-foodspotting-celebrates-1-year-and-3-million-but-why-is-the-android-app-still-in-beta/

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WordPress 3.0 Surpasses 30 Million Downloads

WordPress 3.0 Surpasses 30 Million Downloads

WordPress 3.0, the most recent self-hosted version of the world?s most popular blogging platform WordPress has surpassed 30 million downloads today, crossing the barrier earlier this morning.

WordPress employs a counter on its website, counting each and every download of the WordPress software, and with WordPress 3.1 on the horizon its staggering to think just how many blogs there are in use, hosted in numerous countries around the world.

WordPress 3.0 broke the 20 million barrier in October, adding 10 million extra users in just under three months, but it isn?t the only WordPress property performing well for the Automattic, the company created by its founder Matt Mullenweg. WordPress.com, the commercially run arm of the popular blogging platform is growing incredibly fast, with 6 million new blog signups in the past year.

WordPress.com saw its total pageviews for the year stand at 23 billion, up an impressive 53% from 2009. Media uploads also doubled to 94.5 terabytes of new photos and videos, while new posts were up 110% to 146 million. Mobile WordPress blogging was as on the up also -the company?s userbase for its mobile apps increased 700% to 1.4 million in 2010.

We got in touch with Automattic after Royal Pingdom picked up on stats published in late December that revealed that the WordPress.com now accounts for half of all WordPress blogs around the world. The 30 million downloads of WordPress 3.0 helping to account for the other half.

The download counter isn?t necessarily indicative of the true amount of active WordPress blogs currently installed on servers worldwide but it is still a huge number. We have reached out to Automattic to see if it can shed any light on just how many WordPress installations are in use.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/us/2011/01/16/wordpress-3-0-surpasses-30-million-downloads/

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Weekend tech reading: Internet 2010 in numbers

Internet 2010 in numbers What happened with the Internet in 2010? How many websites were added? How many emails were sent? How many Internet users were there? This post will answer all of those questions and many, many more. If its stats you want, youve come to the right place. Pingdom

Nvidia's faulty laptop GPU settlement starts paying out, file your repair and reimbursement claims now Got an old Dell, HP or Apple laptop sitting around with a defective NVIDIA GPU? The company's finally ready to compensate you Engadget

BYOC: Should employees buy their own computers? You are at work. Your computer is five years old, runs Windows XP. Your company phone has a tiny screen and doesn't know what the internet is. Idling at home are a snazzy super-fast laptop, and your own smartphone is barred from accessing work e-mail. BBC

Police arrest 18 alleged movie, music and software uploaders This week, Japanese police have been carrying out raids all over the country against individuals alleged to have uploaded copyright works to the Internet. In total, 18 people were arrested for sharing movies, anime, music, games and software. TorrentFreak

Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building Those plucky quadrotors at UPenn's GRASP laboratory never cease to amaze. In this latest video, watch them autonomously build a structure. In the future, construction workers will be a buzzing, mildly disturbing haze of mechanical diligence. Gizmodo

IBM's Watson: 1. Human Jeopardy Contestants: 0. A common mortal might be able to best a computer in the strategic game of Chess, but when it comes to the TV game show Jeopardy, humanity is batting 0-for-1. PC Magazine

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41996-weekend-tech-reading-internet-2010-in-numbers.html

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Weekend tech reading: Internet 2010 in numbers

Internet 2010 in numbers What happened with the Internet in 2010? How many websites were added? How many emails were sent? How many Internet users were there? This post will answer all of those questions and many, many more. If its stats you want, youve come to the right place. Pingdom

Nvidia's faulty laptop GPU settlement starts paying out, file your repair and reimbursement claims now Got an old Dell, HP or Apple laptop sitting around with a defective NVIDIA GPU? The company's finally ready to compensate you Engadget

BYOC: Should employees buy their own computers? You are at work. Your computer is five years old, runs Windows XP. Your company phone has a tiny screen and doesn't know what the internet is. Idling at home are a snazzy super-fast laptop, and your own smartphone is barred from accessing work e-mail. BBC

Police arrest 18 alleged movie, music and software uploaders This week, Japanese police have been carrying out raids all over the country against individuals alleged to have uploaded copyright works to the Internet. In total, 18 people were arrested for sharing movies, anime, music, games and software. TorrentFreak

Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building Those plucky quadrotors at UPenn's GRASP laboratory never cease to amaze. In this latest video, watch them autonomously build a structure. In the future, construction workers will be a buzzing, mildly disturbing haze of mechanical diligence. Gizmodo

IBM's Watson: 1. Human Jeopardy Contestants: 0. A common mortal might be able to best a computer in the strategic game of Chess, but when it comes to the TV game show Jeopardy, humanity is batting 0-for-1. PC Magazine

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41996-weekend-tech-reading-internet-2010-in-numbers.html

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Political Focus on Jobs in Health Fight

In the fight over whether the law will create or destroy jobs, both political parties cite evidence to support their claims. But many economists say the effect on jobs is likely to be modest ? neither so negative as Republicans assert nor so positive as Democrats contend.

In any event, economists say, the impact on jobs ? a hot political issue now ? is not a particularly good standard to use in evaluating a complex law that will affect one-sixth of the economy and almost every American.

For many experts, a more significant test is whether the law will slow the growth of health costs and provide greater value to consumers, taxpayers and employers in return for the $2.5 trillion a year they spend on health care.

?The effect of the law on jobs is likely to be modest,? said Katherine Baicker, an economic adviser to President George W. Bush who is now a professor of health economics at Harvard. ?The most important effects of the law will be on health costs and coverage and the efficiency of the health care system, not on jobs.?

Economists tend to agree that the law could lead some employers to hire fewer low-wage workers, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said. But, they add, if the law eventually slows the growth of health costs, it could leave employers with more money to spend on expanding their businesses and even on hiring.

Health care jobs have been growing for years, and many experts say the trend is likely to continue if, as the budget office has projected, more than 30 million people gain coverage.

Republicans say the law will discourage hiring and employment because it will impose additional payroll costs and taxes on many businesses.

The shaky economy and the health care law, passed on party-line votes in both houses of Congress, are separate political issues. But they could become a combustible mix in the 2012 presidential campaign if unemployment remains high and Republicans gain traction with their argument that the health care law is adding to the problem.

White House officials, aware of the political risks, portray the law as an engine of economic growth that could create more than 300,000 jobs by reining in the cost of employee health benefits.

Starting in 2014, employers with 50 or more employees will be required to pay penalties if they do not offer insurance ? or if their coverage does not measure up to federal standards ? and if at least one worker gets a federal subsidy to help buy insurance. Companies that provide skimpy health benefits or none at all could thus incur substantial costs.

At least one-fourth of workers are in small businesses that will be exempt from the penalties, the Congressional Research Service says, and the desire to keep that exemption could influence the behavior of some business owners.

Tony Gagliardi, director of the Denver office of the National Federation of Independent Business, said many proprietors had told him: ?If I have 49 employees, I am not going to hire the 50th one. The government has removed the incentive for me to create jobs over that threshold.?

(Whether the threshold is at 50 or 51 employees is not entirely certain. ?There is an inconsistency in the law? that may need fixing, the Congressional Research Service has said.)

The law?s defenders say several factors will limit its impact on jobs. Employers will have several years to adjust to many of its incentives and requirements. Most large companies already provide health benefits to employees. And many small employers can obtain tax credits to help defray insurance costs for several years.

Economists say the new costs ? including those for new health benefits and penalties ? will, over time, generally be passed on to workers, through reductions in wages or other compensation.

?However,? the Congressional Budget Office says, ?firms generally cannot reduce workers? wages below the minimum wage,? now $7.25 an hour, and this ?will probably cause some employers to respond by hiring fewer low-wage workers.?

Alternatively, the budget office said, the law may create incentives for some employers to use more part-time workers, because they will not be counted in calculating the amount of penalties.

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d3098c60f1b7080d582b4a6c11d2cda3

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Man Shot in Tucson Rampage Is Arrested at a TV Taping

The man, J. Eric Fuller, 63, a military veteran who supports Ms. Giffords, was involuntarily committed for a 72-hour mental health evaluation, said Jason Ogan, a spokesman for the Pima County sheriff?s office.

The sheriff's office has forwarded charges against Mr. Fuller of threats and intimidation, as well as disorderly conduct, both misdemeanors, to the county attorney's office, Mr. Ogan said.

Mr. Fuller, who was shot in the left knee and back on Jan. 8, was among several victims, medical personnel and others who attended a special forum at St. Odilia Catholic Church hosted by Christiane Amanpour to be televised Sunday on ABC.

State Representative Terri Proud, a Republican, was sitting two rows behind Mr. Fuller. The topic of gun control came up in the forum, she said, and one of the speakers made a comment about a bill introduced recently in Arizona that would allow faculty members on college campuses with concealed weapons permits to carry guns.

Ms. Proud said she spoke up to clarify the bill?s language. Trent Humphries, the founder of the Tucson Tea Party, who was sitting one row behind her, rose to speak and suggested that discussion about gun legislation be postponed until after the funerals. He started to say that he had also been affected by the tragedy because a neighbor was a victim.

At that point, Ms. Proud said, Mr. Fuller blurted out to Mr. Humphries, ?You?re dead.?

Mr. Fuller then began to ?behave in a very odd manner,? she said. ?He was making inappropriate comments.?

Ms. Proud said that after the forum ended, she went to one of the police officers providing security at the forum and asked him to file a report about Mr. Fuller?s remark to Mr. Humphries. The officer told her it was being investigated.

About five police officers surrounded Mr. Fuller and escorted him out. As he was leaving, Ms. Proud said, he turned and yelled, ?You?re all whores!?

Mr. Fuller was also involved in a confrontation on Jan. 8, shortly before the attack on Ms. Giffords, which occurred at an event she held for her constituents outside a Safeway supermarket. He said in a long interview last week with The New York Times that he had argued there with a man he described as a former Marine after a heated discussion over politics. Gabriel Zimmerman, an aide to Ms. Giffords, separated the two.

Mr. Zimmerman was killed in the attack later that morning.

Mr. Fuller spoke dismissively of Republicans during the interview. ?They appeal to simple-minded rednecks,? he said.

He said that he had had trouble sleeping after he was wounded and that he calmed himself the first night by writing down the Declaration of Independence, which he had memorized three decades earlier.

In the first days after the attack, his anger seemed especially strong. In the interview, he repeatedly denounced the ?Tea Party crime syndicate,? and said he placed some of the blame for the shooting on Sarah Palin and other Republican leaders, saying he believed they had contributed to a toxic atmosphere.

He said he had expected to see protesters at Ms. Giffords?s event, and had planned ?to shout them down because I can make a lot of noise.?

Speaking of Jared L. Loughner, who is accused of being the gunman, he said, ?Saying anything about him would be a waste of breath. Recognizing his existence is a waste. I don?t like his face.?

Later in the week, Mr. Fuller visited the Loughner home to apologize to the parents for calling their son names, according to reporters at the scene. They said he did not manage to see them.

Mr. Fuller used to drive a limousine, but in recent years, he said, he got by working various odd jobs, including collecting signatures for political campaigns.

In an interview with The Arizona Republic, Dr. Laura Nelson, deputy director of the Division of Behavioral Sciences of the Arizona Department of Health Services, said that Mr. Fuller?s actions could be a response to the trauma he suffered in the shooting.

?Grief after what happened here in Tucson last week is a completely normal reaction, and anger is a very common symptom of grief,? said Dr. Nelson, who was invited to speak at the forum. ?I hope that he?ll get the help that he needs to get through this very difficult time.?

Reporting was contributed by Joseph Goldstein, Jennifer Medina, A. G. Sulzberger and William Yardley from Tucson, and Sarah Wheaton from New York.

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d6be95f4a149684f37eef38f78500d2f

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Intel Sandy Bridge launch was pointless

While the review we published yesterday of Intel's new Sandy Bridge range of CPUs was extremely glowing, the fact remains that launching it at 5am (UK time) on 3 January was pointless.

This is because, more than 33 hours after the so-called 'launch' of Sandy Bridge, you can't still buy one of these new CPUs or an LGA1155 motherboard to put one in.

In short, Sandy Bridge is a paper launch and Intel has joined the ignoble list of companies that 'launches' products you can't buy. There are several reasons why the launch on Monday is such a joke.

First of all, just days before launch, Intel pulled forwards the launch date by a couple of days, throwing the industry into disarray. For example, we had to suddenly get the review prepared earlier than expected; not a whole lot of fun when you're on national holiday and the team is spread around the globe.

Intel Sandy Bridge launch was pointless *Intel Sandy Bridge launch was pointless
You can get your own paper Sandy Bridge CPU by printing out this image

However, while most major review sites managed to scrabble some coverage together, retailers and manufacturers have still yet to catch up. As a result, no major UK or US retailer is listing any Sandy Bridge products as available to ship, let alone pre-order.

It's not just the press and retailers that are confused either - I've yet to receive a single press release from a manufacturer about their Sandy Bridge motherboards, memory or CPU coolers either. Perhaps we'll see some news later on today, when Sandy Bridge was originally meant to launch.

So, even if Sandy Bridge does (on paper) make the whole existing range of LGA1156 CPUs and most LGA1366 processors obselete, in reality it doesn't.

The sad fact is that Intel didn't need to rush out the release of Sandy Bridge in such a slap-dash manner. Its competitor has nothing remotely threatening planned until quite a lot later this year, so it's a baffling decision.

That is, unless you believe its a cynical ploy to drum up demand so that when you finally can buy Sandy Bridge, Intel can mysteriously up the price. In the meantime, don't expect a January Hardware Buyer's Guide anytime soon...

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/blog/~3/wSNU1wwIiWw/

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