Weekend Open Forum: Where do you buy online?

Tech enthusiasts were among the first consumers targeted by dedicated online retailers and since brick and mortars charged hefty margins, online shopping was made even more attractive from the get go. Early etailers included the ubiquitous Newegg, which now exceeds $2 billion a year in sales, Buy.com, TigerDirect, and many sites dedicated to photography and audio equipment. As you might recall, PC manufacturers like Dell and Gateway were also quick to take full advantage of online ordering and made a huge asset out of it.

As online shopping became more mainstream, and for many a necessity, dozens of star retailers on many different categories have emerged. You have Zappos for buying shoes, Steam/Impulse for games, iTunes for music, Expedia/Orbitz or any other of the numerous travel sites, Fandango for movie tickets, and the list goes on. Amazon has also remained a pioneer in the industry and today you can buy nearly anything you could possibly want from their site, either direct or from smaller retailers using Amazon's impeccable logistics.


As the holiday shopping season gets rolling, our question for you is: How much do you rely on online retailers and where do you prefer to buy stuff? Not only tech, but things in general like clothes, gifts for family and friends, food, flowers, anything you are used to buy online these days. Even if it's a local store, we want to hear about it. Discuss.

* Graph used for illustration purposes only. Source: Lifehacker, Permuto, US Census Bureau.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41326-weekend-open-forum-where-do-you-buy-online.html

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TNW Mobile Review: HTC Surround [TNW Mobile]

Windows Phone 7 devices, announced March 15, had some proclaiming it an ?iPhone Killer.?  Once Windows Phone 7 made its way to the hands of reviewers the reviews were mixed.

AT&T was kind enough to send an HTC Surround to us to review and outside of Tweeting about my initial thoughts, I?ve said very little about the device, until now.

The HTC Surround sports the completely re-designed Windows Phone 7 operating system, is a device for media fiends,  featuring a slide-out speaker and fold-out kickstand.

The HTC Surround arrives with the following specs:

  • Processor: QUALCOMM QSD 8250 1GHz
  • Operating System: Windows® Phone OS 7
  • Internal Memory: 512 MB ROM, 576 MB RAM plus 16 GB included memory
  • Display: 3.8-inch WVGA with capacitive touch screen
  • Network: UMTS 2100/1900/850 + GSM GPRS EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
  • GPS: Internal GPS antenna
  • Camera: 5.0 megapixel with auto focus
  • Battery Rechargeable: Lithium-ion battery, 1230 mAh

With the basics covered, let?s dive into the device, the guts, the hardware, and the OS, to see if Microsoft has a smartphone hit on their hands.

Operating System and Hardware Fun

Make no mistake, Windows Phone 7 is the most exciting aspect of this, and all other devices running the OS. The OS is wonderfully designed, intricate, with the more I interacted with it, the more I enjoyed.  Nothing about the OS feels restrictive.  Everything feels free and flows with a pleasing elegance.

On all Windows phones, including the Surround, there are three navigation controls, back, Start and search. Other features of the hardware include a microUSB port, a 3.5mm headphone jack a power button, with sturdy volume toggle and camera shutter button on the right-side of the device.

The device itself feels well-constructed.  The HTC Surround feels substantial without feeling heavy.  That said, at 5.8-ounces, the device is slightly on the heavy side.

As for the aforementioned specs, the HTC Surround contains features like high-end models from other smartphone manufacturers:  1 GHz processor, 5-megapixel camera with flash and 720p HD video recorder, a bright and generally crisp 3.8-inch screen, 16GB of memory built-in, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and 7.2 Mbps 3G connectivity.

Two items worth noting concerning the Surround is that it lacks a front-facing camera (odd given its primary focus is media) and the device also lacks an expandable memory card slot. Lack of an expandable memory card slot is strange given other HTC models can accommodate additional microSD memory to give their devices a competitive advantage over the likes of the iPhone, which lacks the feature.

Multimedia Madness

The differentiating features of the HTC Surround is a slide-up speaker and kickstand. Nice features, but the device lacks a screen both large and crisp enough to make the Surround a true media powerhouse.  Don?t get me wrong, the Surround has a nice screen, bright and sharp, but without a top-not screen, the addition of a slide-up speaker not only adds weight to the Surround, but also makes the device thicker.  Therefore, the speaker, while a novel concept, is nothing more than a gimmick given the negatives of the feature outweigh the positives.

With respect to playing music on the device, anyone familiar with Microsoft?s Zune will feel right at home.  A few odd aspects conerning music playback present themselves, notably multiple screens available for each track and no built-in music sound settings. To solve the latter issue, download the free HTC Sound Enhancer app, allowing one to add bass, or employ a preset EQ setting.

Super Look at Sound and Video

Slide-up the screen, expose the speaker, and pop out the kickstand, and one?s ready to determine the media capabilities of the HTC Surround.  Unfortunately, sliding up the screen doesn?t offer mind-blowing sound quality.   In fact, other devices I?ve used with lower aural pretensions on both speakerphone or video playback modes, offer similar, if not better, sound than that of the Surround.  Below is an example of the speaker, kickstand and media playback in action.  Nice, but nothing out of this world.

Is the Surround Functional?

When trying out a new device I call my Grandmother.  She?s hard of hearing making her a perfect subject to test a phone?s call quality.  Of all of the devices I?ve tested, the Surround gets the call quality and clarity stamp of approval from my Grandma.  Regardless of how a call was made, hands-free, speakerphone, or holding it up to my ear, all I contacted were impressed with the Surround?s call quality.  Well done Microsoft and AT&T.

Concerned about one?s contacts?  No worries.  Windows Phone 7 devices, including the Surround can merge as many phonebooks as one needs (Google, Facebook, SIM, Outlook, etc.), bringing the advantages and communications options of all into the single People contact list.

The remainder of the Surround?s functionality concerns the OS.  The interface is intuitive and enjoyable to navigate. The first reason behind these advancements center on large, almost contiguous, icons, making finding them easier than those on other devices.   Second, the apps on the primary home screen and the secondary screen are listed in a single, alphabetical, line.

Navigating from one app or page to another requires two taps for the majority of functions.  Apps for  the phone, messaging, e-mail and the app marketplace clearly indicate the number of messages or updates awaiting your attention, again, a nice feature.

The Web Browser

The Surround uses Explorer as its browser.  As an iPhone 4 user I found Safari to have a slight speed advantage over Explorer in basic tests.  The difference wasn?t terribly noticeable, something noticed by others conducting similar tests.

Unfortunately, the debate over  which device has the faster browser cannot be settled, but what we do know is that Windows Phone 7, like the iPhone 4, does not support Flash, and when browsing on the Surround, occasionally text on Web pages can be distractingly jagged.

Camera or Lack Thereof

The Surround?s camera is terrible.

One nice feature concerning the camera centers on not requiring a camera icon on the home screen.  Want to take a picture?  Simply press and hold the camera shutter key, activating the camera from any app or condition, including sleep.

The negatives concerning the camera far outweigh the positives.   A list of the negatives:  the OS does not remember adjusted camera settings, resolution defaults are 5 megapixels for still photos, VGA for video, and should one choose a lower resolution for stills or the higher HD resolution for video for a photo session, the Surround reverts to the defaults after leaving the camera feature.  It?s as annoying as it sounds.

Moreover, the image and video quality is substandard.  Still images and videos fuzzy, detail is limited, and HD footage clocks in at 15 frames per second, instead of a full 30 fps.  The only quality, and not by much, shots the Surround captured were indoor using flash.  Another issue?   If you want to hear dialogue while capturing video, only the included headphones will allow you to do so.  Use any other headphones and you?ll experience nothing but silence.

Battery Life

Not much to say here.  HTC claims 4.17 hours of talk time for the Surround.  I found battery life on the Surround quite nice.  A mid-day charge, typical on similar smartphones, was not needed.  Well done HTC.

Hits:

  • Windows Phone 7 OS
  • Long battery life
  • 16GB built-in memory
  • Excellent call quality

Misses:

  • Terrible camera making for terrible photos and video capture
  • Speaker and kickstand provide no value and add extra bulk to the device
  • Lacks expandable memory

Conclusion

The HTC Surround?s bulk, horrid camera and several unneccessary features standing on their own would make the device no one should consider purchasing if it weren?t for the wonderful Windows Phone 7 OS, strong battery life, and solid build of the phone.

I encourage you to try the phone for yourself, and if you?re looking for a Windows Phone 7 device from AT&T, don?t forget they are buy one get one free this weekend.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2010/11/27/tnw-mobile-review-htc-surround/

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Blog - Card Trick Leads to New Bound on Data Compression

Here's a card trick to impress your friends. Give a deck of cards to a pal and ask him or her to cut the deck, draw six cards and list their colours. You then immediately name the cards that have been drawn.

Magic? Not quite. Instead, it's the next best thing: mathematics. The key is to arrange the deck in advance so that the sequence of the card colours follows a specific pattern called a binary De Bruijn cycle. A De Bruijn sequence is a set from an alphabet in which every possible subsequence appears exactly once.

So when a deck of cards meets this criteria, it uniquely defines any sequences of six consecutive cards. All you have to do to perform the trick is memorise the sequences.

Usually these kinds of tricks come about as the result of some new development in mathematical thinking. Today, Travis Gagie from the University of Chile in Santiago turns the tables. He says that this trick has led him to a new mathematical bound on data compression

Gagie achieves this new bound by considering a related trick. Instead of pre-arranging the cards, you shuffle the pack and then ask your friend to draw seven cards. He or she then lists the cards' colours, replaces them in the pack and cuts the deck. You then examine the deck and say which cards were drawn.

This time you're relying on probability to get the right answer. "It is not hard to show that the probability of two septuples of cards having the same colours in the same order is at most 1/128," say Gagie.

He goes on to consider the probability of correctly predicting the sequence of cards pulled at random from a deck of a certain size and after a few extra steps, finds a lower bound on the probability of doing this correctly.

This turns out to be closely related to various problems of data compression and leads to a lower bound than has been found by any other means.

"We know of no previous lower bounds comparable to [this one]," he says.

That's impressive, a really neat trick in itself.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1011.4609: Bounds from a Card Trick

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Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=023b7ec7200686447ca34d68f025ac14

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Today is the first official ?Small Business Saturday? [TNW United States]

Today, November 27, 2010, is the first-ever ?Small Business Saturday,? a day dedicated to supporting small businesses ?that are getting our economy going again.? It?s a day to support the small businesses we love like our local coffee shops and restaurants.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and American Express Chairman and CEO Kenneth I. Chenault announced the day less than a month ago on November 8th, 2010. Declaring it ?Small Business Saturday,? the nationwide campaign is meant to spur business for small merchants on a day that falls between the big corporate shopping day better known as Black Friday and Monday?s online shopping, Cyber Monday.

The campaign has successfully used social media to get the word out. Their Facebook page, garnered over 1 million fans in less than a month.
To get the word out, American Express launched a national ad campaign and social media campaigns through Facebook and Twitter. They are also rewarding small businesses through social media. American Express will give the first 10,000 business owners that sign-up $100 of free Facebook advertising. And Facebook has even rallied for the cause, donating $500,000 in Facebook credits for these small business owners to use in the future.

?Small businesses are the backbone of our economy and the glue that holds communities together, and we?ve always sought new ways to support them ? something that became even more important when the national economic downturn began,? said Mayor Bloomberg. ?When Ken Chenault told me about his idea for Small Business Saturday, I jumped at the opportunity to participate. We?ve all heard about Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This year, if you have the opportunity to shop on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, make it a point to visit local small businesses. It really can make an enormous difference for merchants in our communities.?

?Small business is the engine of job creation in the US economy,? said American Express Chairman and CEO Kenneth I. Chenault. ?It is also among the sectors hardest hit by the recession. By spreading the word about Small Business Saturday, we can help raise awareness about the critical role small businesses play in cities and towns across the country at a time when they need support the most.?

For every person who ?likes? Small Business Saturday on Facebook, American Express is donating $1 up to $500,000 to Girls Inc. to empower young women to be entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/us/2010/11/27/today-is-the-first-official-small-business-saturday/

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Weekend Open Forum: Where do you buy online?

Tech enthusiasts were among the first consumers targeted by dedicated online retailers and since brick and mortars charged hefty margins, online shopping was made even more attractive from the get go. Early etailers included the ubiquitous Newegg, which now exceeds $2 billion a year in sales, Buy.com, TigerDirect, and many sites dedicated to photography and audio equipment. As you might recall, PC manufacturers like Dell and Gateway were also quick to take full advantage of online ordering and made a huge asset out of it.

As online shopping became more mainstream, and for many a necessity, dozens of star retailers on many different categories have emerged. You have Zappos for buying shoes, Steam/Impulse for games, iTunes for music, Expedia/Orbitz or any other of the numerous travel sites, Fandango for movie tickets, and the list goes on. Amazon has also remained a pioneer in the industry and today you can buy nearly anything you could possibly want from their site, either direct or from smaller retailers using Amazon's impeccable logistics.


As the holiday shopping season gets rolling, our question for you is: How much do you rely on online retailers and where do you prefer to buy stuff? Not only tech, but things in general like clothes, gifts for family and friends, food, flowers, anything you are used to buy online these days. Even if it's a local store, we want to hear about it. Discuss.

* Graph used for illustration purposes only. Source: Lifehacker, Permuto, US Census Bureau.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41326-weekend-open-forum-where-do-you-buy-online.html

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Health Law Faces Threat of Undercut From Courts

The judge, Henry E. Hudson of Federal District Court in Richmond, has promised to rule by the end of the year on the constitutionality of the law?s requirement that most Americans obtain insurance, which takes effect in 2014.

Although administration officials remain confident that it is constitutionally valid to compel people to obtain health insurance, they also acknowledge that Judge Hudson?s preliminary opinions and comments could presage the first ruling against the law.

?He?s asked a number of questions that express skepticism,? said one administration official who is examining whether a ruling against part of the law would undermine other provisions. ?We have been trying to think through that set of questions,? said the official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case freely.

While many newly empowered Republican lawmakers have vowed to repeal the health care law in Congress, a more immediate threat may rest in the federal courts in cases brought by Republican officials in dozens of states. Not only would an adverse ruling confuse Americans and attack the law?s underpinnings, it could frustrate the steps hospitals, insurers and government agencies are taking to carry out the law.

?Any ruling against the act creates another P.R. problem for the Democrats, who need to resell the law to insured Americans,? said Jonathan Oberlander, a University of North Carolina political scientist, who wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine last week that such a ruling ?could add to health care reform?s legitimacy problem.?

So far, there has been only one ruling on the merits among nearly two dozen legal challenges to the health care act. Last month, a federal district judge in Michigan upheld the law. But another judge, Roger Vinson of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., has joined Judge Hudson in writing preliminary opinions that seemingly accept key arguments made by state officials challenging the law.

Unlike the judge in Michigan, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, both Judge Hudson and Judge Vinson were appointed by Republican presidents.

?We are not operating under the assumption that those two judges are inevitably going to rule against us,? the administration official said. ?But of course we?re planning for the possibility that judges will reach different conclusions.?

The novel question before the courts is whether the government can require citizens to buy a commercial product like health insurance.

Because the Supreme Court has said the commerce clause of the Constitution allows Congress to regulate ?activities that substantially affect interstate commerce,? the judges must decide whether the failure to obtain insurance can be defined as an ?activity.?

Lawyers on both sides expect the issue eventually to be decided by the Supreme Court. But the appellate path to that decision could take two years. In the meantime, any district court judge who rules against the law would have to decide whether to block enforcement of one or more of its provisions, potentially creating bureaucratic chaos.

Such a decision would prompt a flurry of appeals, as the Justice Department almost certainly would ask the judge and then the appellate courts to stay, or delay, the injunction pending the outcome of higher court rulings.

Administration officials, as well as some lawyers for the plaintiffs, agree that Judge Hudson seems unlikely, based on his comments from the bench, to enjoin the entire law. The judge volunteered at a hearing last month that his courtroom was ?just one brief stop on the way to the Supreme Court.?

If he does not enjoin the law, the immediate impact of a finding against the insurance mandate would be limited because that provision, and others that might fall with it, do not take effect for more than three years.

Virginia?s attorney general, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, a Republican who filed the Richmond lawsuit, argues that if Judge Hudson rejects the insurance requirement he should instantly invalidate the entire act on a nationwide basis.

Mr. Cuccinelli and the plaintiffs in the Florida case, who include attorneys general or governors from 20 states, have emphasized that Congressional bill writers did not include a ?severability clause? that would explicitly protect other parts of the sprawling law if certain provisions were struck down.

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=7060646b65027ec99a53ad6b31868745

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Blog - Poker n' Face

War Machines: Recruiting Robots for Combat

And while smart machines are already very much a part of modern warfare, the Army and its contractors are eager to add more. New robots ? none of them particularly human-looking ? are being designed to handle a broader range of tasks, from picking off snipers to serving as indefatigable night sentries.

In a mock city here used by Army Rangers for urban combat training, a 15-inch robot with a video camera scuttles around a bomb factory on a spying mission. Overhead an almost silent drone aircraft with a four-foot wingspan transmits images of the buildings below. Onto the scene rolls a sinister-looking vehicle on tank treads, about the size of a riding lawn mower, equipped with a machine gun and a grenade launcher.

Three backpack-clad technicians, standing out of the line of fire, operate the three robots with wireless video-game-style controllers. One swivels the video camera on the armed robot until it spots a sniper on a rooftop. The machine gun pirouettes, points and fires in two rapid bursts. Had the bullets been real, the target would have been destroyed.

The machines, viewed at a ?Robotics Rodeo? last month at the Army?s training school here, not only protect soldiers, but also are never distracted, using an unblinking digital eye, or ?persistent stare,? that automatically detects even the smallest motion. Nor do they ever panic under fire.

?One of the great arguments for armed robots is they can fire second,? said Joseph W. Dyer, a former vice admiral and the chief operating officer of iRobot, which makes robots that clear explosives as well as the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. When a robot looks around a battlefield, he said, the remote technician who is seeing through its eyes can take time to assess a scene without firing in haste at an innocent person.

Yet the idea that robots on wheels or legs, with sensors and guns, might someday replace or supplement human soldiers is still a source of extreme controversy. Because robots can stage attacks with little immediate risk to the people who operate them, opponents say that robot warriors lower the barriers to warfare, potentially making nations more trigger-happy and leading to a new technological arms race.

?Wars will be started very easily and with minimal costs? as automation increases, predicted Wendell Wallach, a scholar at the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and chairman of its technology and ethics study group.

Civilians will be at greater risk, people in Mr. Wallach?s camp argue, because of the challenges in distinguishing between fighters and innocent bystanders. That job is maddeningly difficult for human beings on the ground. It only becomes more difficult when a device is remotely operated.

This problem has already arisen with Predator aircraft, which find their targets with the aid of soldiers on the ground but are operated from the United States. Because civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan have died as a result of collateral damage or mistaken identities, Predators have generated international opposition and prompted accusations of war crimes.

But robot combatants are supported by a range of military strategists, officers and weapons designers ? and even some human rights advocates.

?A lot of people fear artificial intelligence,? said John Arquilla, executive director of the Information Operations Center at the Naval Postgraduate School. ?I will stand my artificial intelligence against your human any day of the week and tell you that my A.I. will pay more attention to the rules of engagement and create fewer ethical lapses than a human force.?

Dr. Arquilla argues that weapons systems controlled by software will not act out of anger and malice and, in certain cases, can already make better decisions on the battlefield than humans.

His faith in machines is already being tested.

?Some of us think that the right organizational structure for the future is one that skillfully blends humans and intelligent machines,? Dr. Arquilla said. ?We think that that?s the key to the mastery of 21st-century military affairs.?

Automation has proved vital in the wars America is fighting. In the air in Iraq and Afghanistan, unmanned aircraft with names like Predator, Reaper, Raven and Global Hawk have kept countless soldiers from flying sorties. Moreover, the military now routinely uses more than 6,000 tele-operated robots to search vehicles at checkpoints as well as to disarm one of the enemies? most effective weapons: the I.E.D., or improvised explosive device.

Yet the shift to automated warfare may offer only a fleeting strategic advantage to the United States. Fifty-six nations are now developing robotic weapons, said Ron Arkin, a Georgia Institute of Technology roboticist and a government-financed researcher who has argued that it is possible to design ?ethical? robots that conform to the laws of war and the military rules of escalation.

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=efbbfec42f2480a081113e9fbd4a1287

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Weekend Open Forum: Where do you buy online?

Tech enthusiasts were among the first consumers targeted by dedicated online retailers and since brick and mortars charged hefty margins, online shopping was made even more attractive from the get go. Early etailers included the ubiquitous Newegg, which now exceeds $2 billion a year in sales, Buy.com, TigerDirect, and many sites dedicated to photography and audio equipment. As you might recall, PC manufacturers like Dell and Gateway were also quick to take full advantage of online ordering and made a huge asset out of it.

As online shopping became more mainstream, and for many a necessity, dozens of star retailers on many different categories have emerged. You have Zappos for buying shoes, Steam/Impulse for games, iTunes for music, Expedia/Orbitz or any other of the numerous travel sites, Fandango for movie tickets, and the list goes on. Amazon has also remained a pioneer in the industry and today you can buy nearly anything you could possibly want from their site, either direct or from smaller retailers using Amazon's impeccable logistics.


As the holiday shopping season gets rolling, our question for you is: How much do you rely on online retailers and where do you prefer to buy stuff? Not only tech, but things in general like clothes, gifts for family and friends, food, flowers, anything you are used to buy online these days. Even if it's a local store, we want to hear about it. Discuss.

* Graph used for illustration purposes only. Source: Lifehacker, Permuto, US Census Bureau.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41326-weekend-open-forum-where-do-you-buy-online.html

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