Better Place Swaps Electric Car Battery In About One Minute

May 13, 2009

Better Place conducted its first public demonstration of a battery swap center on Wednesday, showing that a depleted electric-car battery can be swiftly replaced with a fresh one.

The replacement took about a minute, or less time than it takes to pump a tank of gas.

A plug-in battery charging station from Better Place

A plug-in battery charging station from Better Place

The demonstration in Yokohama, Japan, is a key milestone for the company, which hopes to use renewable power from sources such as solar cells to fuel autos.

Better Place needs to show the battery replacement process is quick and easy and automatic before consumers will warm up to its business plan of paying for electric power. That’s because a fully charged electric car will go only about 100 miles and consumers will need to reply on the stations to drive more than short distances.

Better Place plans to build 200 battery swap stations and 150,000 plug-in charging stations in Israel by 2011.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Intel Parallel Studio Tool To Ease Multi-Core Windows Software Development

May 13, 2009

At Intel’s investors’ conference yesterday, software vice president Renee James revealed that the Santa Clara, Calif.-company will release the first parallel tool suite for client applications.

“These tools are for Windows developers and plug into Visual Studio and they allow client developers to be able to discover problems in their code, help them figure out how to fix it, so that code is threaded and scales on Intel’s multi-core products,” said James.

Parallel Studio is currently in beta and combines Intel expertise in parallelism including open source Intel Threaded building blocks and performance analyzer VTune in a more accessible package for mainstream developers.

1 Comment | hardware, news, software | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

Intel CEO On EU Fines: Just Rumors!

May 12, 2009

This afternoon at Intel’s financial analyst conference, Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini was asked about the possibility of the EU punishing the chip company with a huge fine.

You can listen to his answer on the video below. Apparently, Intel is the only not aware that is coming!

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Posted by TechPulse 360

Google Lets Users Slice, Dice Search Results

May 12, 2009

Google’s Search Option panel is for me the most important announcement made today at the company’s Searchology press conference at the GooglePlex.

Available as of today on the Mountain View, Calif.- company’s Web and Images search engines, the search option panel – that appears on the left hand side of the screen after clicking on the “show options” link at the top of the search results page – lets users slice, dice and filter results in a few clicks: by content (video, forum, reviews), by date (day, week, year and even a timeline), display image stamps right on the results page and the cool Wonder Wheel!

The Wonder Wheel feature is a visual way to look at search results. The Flash-based interactive application starts with the searched keyword in the center, and related terms around it. Clicking on one of the related term puts it in the center of the circle, etc… Reminds me of the “social graph” Altavista launched in the late 90s!

Google also announced two other anecdotal products: Google Squared, which extracts information (details, values…) from a search result and present it in a spreadsheet form (available in Google Labs in a couple weeks); and Rich Snippets, which shows extra metadata in a search result’s preview text just below the URL to help users make more informed clicks.

This is the second Searchology event organized to update Google users, partners, and customers on the progress made in search and launch new features. At the first Searchology, two years ago, Google launched Universal Search, a feature that blended results of different types (web pages, images, videos, books, etc.) on the results page.

Here’s a Google video on the Search Option panel:

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Posted by TechPulse 360

IPhone Ignites Wi-Fi Traffic At SF Giants Games

May 12, 2009

AT&T Park, the home of the San Francisco Giants, was the first baseball park to install a wireless network.

It took Apple’s iPhone to bring it alive.

Giants warm up for a game. 70% of Wi-Fi traffic at the park comes from iPhones and iPods

Giants warm up for a game. 70% of Wi-Fi traffic at the park comes from iPhones and iPods

The network came to the stadium in 2004, at a time when some laptops sold without built-in Wi-Fi chips.

In 2007, traffic saw a gargantuan 573 percent boost per capita, says CIO Bill Schlough. The cause was the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

Today, 70 percent of Wi-Fi traffic at the park comes from the devices, with greater volumes on weeknights rather than weekends. It is not unusual for 3 percent of fans to be online.

At the top of the list of popular destination is a Giants’ sponsored replay site that posts controversial plays three minutes after they take place.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

SF Giants Save $1,000 A Day With Internet Phones

May 12, 2009

Voice-over-IP phone systems have steadily eroded the sales of traditional PBXs, or private branch exchanges.

Customers that make the change to VoIP hope to save money, but are typically apprehensive about the inconsistent quality of phone calls routed over the Internet instead of a more reliable network built specifically for voice.

SF Giants Bill Schlough shows of his new VoIP phone system

SF Giant's Bill Schlough discusses his new VoIP phone system

But the San Francisco Giants, just finishing an implementation, say quality has not been an issue, despite worries early on. And savings amount to $1,000 a day, cutting the team’s telecommunications costs to $135,000 a year from $490,000 previously.

“We’re saving enough with the new system to put another player on the field,” says Bill Sclough, chief information officer.

The Giants purchased a half-rack system from ShoreTel, and, on Monday, Schlough showed it off publicly for the first time. He said the organization evaluated products from Cisco Systems, Avaya and Nortel (all were “solid solutions”), but selected to spend $1 million on the ShoreTel equipment.

The payback will be three years, says Schlough. “Cost savings was the real driver for this,” he adds.

The 42,000-seat AT&T Park has 457 IP phones.

ShoreTel has publicized its success selling VoIP systems to other sports teams, including the Buffalo Sabres and Sacramento River Cats.

7 Comments | communications | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet

Citrix Online GoToMyPC Goes Mac, iPhone

May 11, 2009
Months after Webexs PCNow, Citrix is about to launch a Mac and iPhone version of its remote PC service

Months after Webex's PCNow, Citrix is about to launch a Mac and iPhone version of its remote access PC service

GoToMyPC is finally catching up to remote desktop service rival PCNow by Cisco/Webex.

Last week I met with Citrix Online’s general manager Bernardo de Albergaria at the Synergy conference in Las Vegas, where he showed the beta version of the GoToMyPC service for Mac.

And no, it will not be called GoToMyMac!

“I don’t think Mac users will mind our original name,” jokes De Albergaria.

The Santa Barbara, Calif.-independent division of Citrix also confirmed it is working on an iPhone version, as well as other platforms (perhaps Google’s Android).

“We’re working on an iPhone and other platforms. We have to make sure we do it with a great user experience in mind, and not because everybody is doing it. A lot of people are doing it just to say I have an iPhone app and put a “smack” on their homepage and it becomes the main value proposition versus what the product is. So we’ll have an iPhone application of our products whenever we are able to develop a great user experience,” added Albergaria.

Expect to see both the Mac and iPhone apps coming up this year, still 2-years after PCNow!

18 Comments | news, software, web 2.0, wireless | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

The Future Of Semiconductor Is In Biology, Silicon Valley Pioneer Predicts

May 11, 2009
Jay Last is one of the treaturous eight who left Shockley Semiconductor to create Fairchild Semiconductor and the first ever integrated circuit

Jay Last is one of the traitorous eight who left Shockley Semiconductor to create Fairchild Semiconductor and the first ever integrated circuit

What will the next 50-years bring to the semiconductor industry?

Well, hard to find a better person to answer that question than Jay Last, one of the responsible for the past 50-years of semiconductor innovation.

Last worked at Fairchild Semiconductor with fellow Silicon Valley pioneers Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce (who then went on to found Intel), where he developed the world’s first integrated circuit chip, 50 years ago!

“The last century can be looked upon as the century of physics. The century we’re in now, proved to be the century of biology. Interconnections of electronics with human biological processes will expand with all sorts of new products that we can not yet imagine, which will require arrays of devices at very low prices,” said Last during a panel on “The Planar Integrated Circuit: Building the Future at Fairchild Semiconductor” at the Computer History Museum late Friday.

In order words, the future of the semiconductor industry will come from discoveries and investments in nanotechnology and its intersection with bio-technology. Exciting programme!

Follows is a video taken at the Computer History Museum of Last’s comments on how he and his team created Fairchild Semiconductor and the first integrated circuit, in 3 parts.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

2 Comments | chips, hardware, news | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

Reducing Travel Seen As Top Motivation For Video Conferencing

May 11, 2009

Among the simplest money-saving (and greenhouse gas reducing) initiatives within easy reach of corporate America is cutting the travel budget.

Favor the phone over the road trip and instantly thousands of dollars drop to the bottom line.

Businesses find video conferencing appealing when sharing files and collaborating on documents

Businesses find video conferencing appealing when sharing files and collaborating on documents

Turns out trimming the travel budget is also behind the motivation to purchase video conferencing systems, ushering in what could be a long-term shift in the way business in conducted in the country.

According to a survey from In-Stat, 68 percent of companies cite reducing travel as the primary factor behind their plans to adopt video conferencing in the next 12 months.

The survey, released Monday, contacted 893 decision makers at North American businesses.

“US business users find video conferencing to be more appealing and beneficial when the sessions involve sharing files, collaborating on documents, and adding…key individuals to the sessions dynamically,” says analyst David Lemelin.

Companies also show interest in bringing video conferencing to the desktop.

The increasing interest in video conferencing is welcome news to vendors such as Avaya, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Polycom, Tandberg and even Skype, which is planning an IPO.

According to In-Stat, Microsoft is cited as the top vendor among small businesses, while Polycom is favored by mid-sized and larger companies. Cisco saw the greatest increase in users in 2008.

1 Comment | communications | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet

Smaller Is Better When Developing For The Web

May 11, 2009

We may have reached a bottom to the recession, if CEOs at bellwethers Intel and Cisco Systems are to be believed. But times are far from good.

Sharpen the focus on less ambitious efforts, says Gartner

Sharpen the focus on less ambitious efforts, says Gartner

Unemployment continues to slide, corporate spending is cautious and consumers remain tight fisted.

In this environment, cutting costs is the surest path to survival. Which is why an observation from Gartner struck me as on target – and not just in today’s rough times but good ones as well.

Gartner on Monday released several guidelines for watching the bottom line as companies continue to push e-commerce initiatives. Some perfunctory suggestions were included: use off-the-shelf tools, negotiate hard with software vendors.

The most significant insight was one that smart companies already follow: Rather than randomly building online communities around a corporate Web site, target existing communities, and stay focused on converting these smaller efforts. Here is the way Gartner states it:

“Leverage established community Web sites rather than building communities in your organization’s site.” And with Web 2.0 sales tools, “scale back their development efforts to only those tools that will lead to higher conversion rates. Gartner estimates that this strategy will save around 10 percent for large enterprises and about 5 percent for small enterprises in 2009, and 5 percent in future years.”

Leave a Comment » | software, web 2.0 | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet

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