Friday, 22 July 2011
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Bjork's First Song From the Biophilia Album Is Now Out (as an iOS App) [Apps]
After all the hoopla surrounding the fact Bjork's got a new album and that she's releasing it as ten in-app purchases, it's finally here, with the app itself costing zilch, and the first song just $2. More »
Thursday, 21 July 2011
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Power To The People
As I type this, a UPS beeps furiously behind me, over the growl of half-a-dozen diesel generators on the street outside. I?m in an Internet café in Leh, a city nestled in a Himalayan valley surrounded by 6,000-metre / 20,000-foot peaks, the fast-growing capital of India?s northernmost territory Ladakh. It?s clearly outgrown its electrical capacity; power cuts hit several times a day.Power generation is a deeply unsexy but profoundly important subject in the developing world. Technology is busily transforming lives all around the globe even as you read this?but a dearth of reliable electricity is a massive obstacle even in major cities, much less faraway villages.
People do find various imperfect and ingenious ways to cope. I was once on a riverboat in Guatemala whose captain distributed newly powered phone batteries to inhabitants scattered along the river, and collected their old ones to charge when he returned to civilization. You?ll find stores selling small-scale solar power equipment in remote small towns throughout Uganda, and occasional microhydro generators in the Himalayas; and people everywhere burn through enormous (and toxic) amounts of scarce (and expensive) diesel to power generators when their lights go out.
But there has to be a better way: and, increasingly, there is. In particular, I?ve had my eye on Fenix International for awhile now. Their ReadySet battery has two cigar lighter and two USB outputs to charge radios, lights, and batteries, and can itself be recharged via solar, bicycle, or wall power. Plus, they?ve recently released a universal charger that can power up almost any lithium-ion battery via a USB plug. (I wish I?d known this before I?d set out on this trip; I could have left both of my camera-battery chargers at home.)
It gets better, and wackier. There is also this BioLite stove that charges your cell phone And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently awarded $100,000 to a project that seeks to use soil microbes to power fuel cells, which, it is claimed, could be built from scratch, in a few minutes, for pennies. I have to confess I?m a little skeptical, but I?ll be watching with interest.
In the long run, of course, localized micropower projects aren?t enough for serious economic development; you need a sizable and stable electrical grid. But in the interim, a little power is a whole lot better than none, and can and does make a huge difference. So here?s hoping that those microbes are a megahit.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/vfJt5Y6UU0c/
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Firefox 4 rockets to 5% global usage share, IE9 wallows at 1.5%
Using some early numbers from both StatCounter and Net Applications, Mozilla's noisiest hominid, Asa Dotzler, has illustrated Firefox 4's meteoric rise to around 5% of Web browser global usage share. Internet Explorer 9, which launched two weeks ago, seems to be enjoying a much more casual stroll in the park with just 1.5% of the global Web usage share.
Interestingly, we can see IE9 dipping between March 20 and 21, just before the 'Important' Windows Update rolled out. It's hard to say whether IE9 is only growing because of the installed-by-default Windows Update, but that small dip definitely sticks out -- did excitement peter out? Did people download IE9, try it out, and summarily uninstall it? Perhaps, given their close proximity, the stats show an attention shift from Microsoft to Mozilla?
Numbers-wise, if the bottom left corner of the graph shows 2.3 million downloads for IE9, we can guesstimate that that it has now been downloaded 5 million times. Firefox is clocking in at 37 million downloads after five days of public availability.
We wonder whether Microsoft knew its release schedule would coincide so closely with Firefox 4. Internet Explorer 9 -- a great browser by almost every metric -- was never going to do well against anything emanating from the maws of Mozilla. The main thing, though, is that Microsoft has now shown that it's serious when it comes to the Open Web. If Internet Explorer 10 is good, and 11 and 12, then we might finally see it compete with the zealous Mozillan horde.Firefox 4 rockets to 5% global usage share, IE9 wallows at 1.5% originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 05:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
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Microsoft trumpets Windows Phone 7 numbers on first birthday
Happy first birthday, Windows Phone 7! One year on, and the fledgling mobile operating system has 36,000 active developers in its AppHub community, 1.5 million downloads of its Developer Tools, and 11,500 apps in its Marketplace.
Microsoft is quick to take a couple shots at competitors' app stores, beating its chest about not re-counting tanslations of an app or "lite" apps, "increasing tonnage" by supporting apps from other mobile platforms, and not listing wallpapers as a category.
That's all fine and dandy, but we spend a lot of time sifting through WP7 app feeds -- and we're still not seeing a lot of awesome apps on the platform. We think a few marquee apps would've made a pretty nice first birthday present -- along with a much smoother update process for WP7 users.Microsoft trumpets Windows Phone 7 numbers on first birthday originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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ChromeLite: experience the ASCII Web of yesteryear
Have you ever wondered what the Web was like before the Mosaic Web browser? If you were born in the last 20-odd years, or you only discovered your inner geek recently, did you miss out on monochrome monitors and the dial-up BBS era? Well, here's your chance to get a sneak peek at history: grab the ChromeLite extension and marvel as the entire Web is transformed into ASCII characters.
Now, ChromeLite isn't really all that functional. For the most part, it simply strips images and converts text into a monospaced terminal font. There are a few Easter eggs inserted -- such as a fun message at the bottom of YouTube (image after the break) -- and some fun ASCII art, but that's about it. Rather oddly, most JavaScript continues to work -- so you can still enjoy Google Instant Search!
ChromeLite was actually made by Google as an April Fools' joke -- and indeed, an annoying 'you can uninstall this!' message appears at the top of every page -- but we're kind of hoping that Google, or another developer, takes ChromeLite and turns it into a real ASCII browsing extension with configurable settings. If anything, it will provide an easy way to save bandwidth and CPU time.Continue reading ChromeLite: experience the ASCII Web of yesteryear
ChromeLite: experience the ASCII Web of yesteryear originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 07:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/04/chromelite-experience-the-ascii-web-of-yesteryear/
