de interes ..de P C Mag

Network Tools for Small Organizations

Running a network isn't easy, especially if you're part of a small or even
one-person IT shop. But there are a collection of free and near-free-
network administration tools that can help you look like a champ in the
small office. PCMag's Business and Networking team has pulled together
a look at the best of them.

http://eletters.whatsnewnow.com/u.d?i4GptbuMhIyrT78-jmRQ=80

Hands on with Google Shopper

Google mobile labs just rolled out a pretty neat shopping assistant that
uses image scanning (including bar codes), voice recognition and good
old-fashioned text search to help you find the best prices and information
when you're shopping for just about anything. I grabbed one of our
Android phones and took it for a test run. It's pretty sweet. Click the link to
get my report and video.

http://eletters.whatsnewnow.com/u.d?kYGptbuMhIyrT78-jmRV=90

Google Probably Not Making Us Stupid, Pew Study Says

Does searching the web, using Google and Wikipedia to find answers
make us smarter or stupider than we were before? I think the former, but
sometimes I'm not so sure. The good news is that now we have a study
assuring us that Google is not making us getting dumber, and we can all
breathe a sigh of relief. I think. We have a summary of the report on
Appscout.

http://eletters.whatsnewnow.com/u.d?64GptbuMhIyrT78-jmRK=100

Germany opens R & D in New York. Good or bad ?

German Center for Research and Innovation Opens in New York

The German Center for Research and Innovation will foster international collaboration in research & development by bringing together scientists and experts from academia, industry, and government.

GCRI

Buzz and Facebook 400 million .

Facebook Redesign Puts Search Front and Center When Facebook turned 6 years old earlier this month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg proudly told the world that the leading social network now has more than 400 million users. To celebrate the birthday, Facebook began rolling out changes to its homepage. See some of the changes, which will be rolling out to all users over the coming weeks.

Google Buzz Aims to Sting Facebook Google Buzz, the search engine's latest stab at social networking, is intended as an alternative to Facebook and Twitter. The service lets Gmail's 176 million users post status updates and share Picasa photos, YouTube videos and links directly in Gmail. Here is a peek at some of its capabilities, including the Google Buzz for Mobile app.
Google said it plans to bring Buzz into Google Apps, which would put the search giant on a collision course with enterprise social networking companies such as Socialtext and MindTouch.

The 10 things every user should know about Google Buzz.

1. It has a little bit of everything

Google Buzz attempts to be the social network to best them all. The service allows users to share photos and videos, update their status, share their locations, send messages to a select group of followers, and much more. It also integrates tweets, so users can see what others are talking about on Twitter without going there. Google Buzz is designed to be a one-stop shop for all things social.

2. No limits

Twitter users who have a difficult time with brevity will be happy to know that Google Buzz doesn't limit the number of characters they can use in a status update. That allows users to copy-and-paste important text from something they find interesting or to simply provide more detail than they're allowed in Twitter.

3. The timeline isn't chronological

As users follow others and send out status updates themselves, they will notice that their timeline isn't necessarily chronological. For example, if a follower comments on a status update sent a few hours ago—before more recent status updates—it will rise to the top, so it can be more easily found. That might be a problem for some, especially Twitter users, who only expect to see chronological updates on display.
4. Some design quirks
Unfortunately, Google Buzz suffers from some design issues that might frustrate users. The page can get cluttered if a user is following too many people. And thanks to multimedia sharing, some might be overwhelmed by just how much content is on the site. These design issues are certainly not a deal-breaker, but they might confuse some novice users.
5. It can go mobile

Google Buzz works on a mobile phone. Users can update their status and set their locations from their mobile device . Most importantly, they can find other Google Buzz users around their location with the help of their phone's built-in GPS function. Admittedly, that functionality can be found in several other tools that integrate with social networks. But it's a nice option to have for those perpetually on-the-go.

6. It's more FriendFeed than Twitter

Although Google Buzz is undoubtedly targeting Twitter and Facebook, the service seems far more similar to FriendFeed than any other. Like Google Buzz, FriendFeed allows users to update their status, share photos and videos, and communicate with others on the site. FriendFeed offers far more customization, and integrating other social networks on the service is simple, but the way in which Google Buzz handles and displays content is awfully similar to FriendFeed. Rest assured, there are elements of Facebook and Twitter built into Google Buzz, but they're not as obvious.

7. Buzz is coming to businesses

According to Google, it plans to bring Buzz to the enterprise and educational institutions at some point in the future. The service seems ideally suited for the corporate world. By allowing users to easily communicate with one another and collaborate on products, Google Buzz could become a serious contender in the enterprise-productivity market. Unfortunately, though, Google wouldn't say when it will be offered to enterprise users.

8. Buzz suggestions are done right

One of the complaints some folks have with Twitter is its friend-suggestion tool. Rather than help its users find people that they might know or might like to receive updates from, Twitter handpicked individuals to include in the suggestion list. Unlike Twitter, Facebook does it right. Its friend-suggestion tool makes it extremely easy to find friends and acquaintances. The same can be said for Google Buzz. Rather than choose random folks to follow, it analyzes a user's list of followers to find others they might know. It adds value to the service.

9. It's all about real-time

Google Buzz delivers updates in real-time. When a user's follower updates their status, it automatically shows up on Google Buzz. To some, that might be overwhelming, since folks working in the software will see updates appear out of the blue. But being able to see what others are discussing immediately is a nice feature that should help users stay engaged with the service.

10. No Facebook integration—yet

Although Google Buzz boasts some integration with Twitter, users won't be able to share content with Facebook. It's a glaring omission. Facebook is the de facto leader in the social-networking market. If Twitter is integrated into Google Buzz, it would seem only natural that Facebook would be too. For now, it's not. And there's no telling if that will change anytime soon.

Tech.view Running out of juice

Tech.view. Running out of juice of juice. How will we recharge all the electric cars?
Jan 29th 2010 | From The Economist online

IN THE ten years since hybrid electric vehicles first hit the highways and byways of America, they have come to represent 2.5% of new car sales. Yet, in places like Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington, DC, every other car seems to be a Toyota Prius. That is because hybrids like the Prius have sold overwhelmingly where well-heeled early adopters reside.

Expect the new generation of “Post-Prius” electrics—plug-in hybrids like the Chevrolet Volt from General Motors and those relying only on a battery such as the Nissan Leaf—to end up nosing around the same upscale neighbourhoods. With more than a dozen plug-in and pure-electric models arriving in showrooms over the next year or so, sales are expected to outstrip even those enjoyed by the Prius and other hybrids in their early days. A couple of million of the new electric vehicles could be bought by early adopters during the first few years.

Alamy
That would be a problem. Unlike the Prius and its ilk—which use their petrol engines, along with energy recovered from braking, to recharge their batteries while motoring—plug-in hybrids and pure electrics have to be recharged direct from the grid. The popular assumption is that they will be plugged into a wall socket in the garage late at night, taking advantage of cheap off-peak power. Unfortunately, things are not that simple.

For a start, the new generation of electric vehicles are not glorified golf-carts, but cleaner and more frugal alternatives to today’s petrol-powered family cars. When fully charged, the Volt (to be called the Ampera in Europe) can travel 40 miles (64km) on electric power, enough for three out of four commuters in America to get to work and back without needing to burn a single drop of fuel. Beyond that range, a 1.4-litre engine kicks in to generate electricity and simultaneously propel the car and recharge its batteries.

The medium-sized hatchback Leaf can carry five adults 100 miles on a single charge. To go farther, Nissan has put its faith in a network of rapid-charging stations it is developing with partners. The Leaf is expected to cost $25,000-30,000, about the same as a comparable diesel-powered car. But the battery pack will have to be leased separately (for around $150 a month).

One thing the new plug-ins and pure electrics have in common is a beefy lithium-ion battery pack that needs a lot of heavy charging. At the very least, that involves installing 220-volt wiring in the home. Trying to recharge a modern electric car with a standard American 110-volt supply takes too long to be practical (up to 18 hours in the case of the Leaf).

Of course, if not fully charged at night it may have to be recharged during the day—when electricity rates can be up to five times more expensive. Average peak rates in America are 33 cents a kilowatt-hour compared with seven cents off-peak. Charging at the peak rate is equivalent to buying petrol at $3.63 a gallon (80 cents a litre), instead of 77 cents a gallon off-peak, reckons Southern California Edison, a utility based in the Los Angeles area. In America, peak-rate charging totally destroys any economic advantage an electric car may have.

At least the electricity companies ought to be pleased at the prospect of selling more power, day or night. In theory, recharging electric vehicles during off-peak hours should help utilities “fill the valley”—the trough in electricity demand between midnight and six in the morning, and thereby get better utilisation from their coal- or gas-fired generating stations. But, again, things are not quite as they seem. No utility wants to run its network flat out. Scheduling maintenance becomes difficult, which can lead to more frequent failures. The net result is that additional capacity has to be installed at a cost that would not otherwise be justified.

A study done a few years ago by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, suggested there was enough idle generating capacity in America to recharge three quarters of the country’s 230m cars if they were plug-ins of one sort of another—provided they only connected to the grid during off-peak hours, and preferably in the coal-rich midwest. But the vast majority of new plug-ins will be located in a handful of urban centres on the east and west coasts, which, unlike the midwest, do not have huge reserves of cheap, coal-fired generating capacity. Nor can they import it easily from the middle of the country, given the fragile nature of the grid.

Southern California Edison has been operating a fleet of 300 electric vehicles to find out how customers will use and recharge them. Above all, it wants to make sure that a conversion to electric motoring goes smoothly, unlike a previous attempt in the mid-1990s. Back then, California thought electric cars like the Honda EV+ and the General Motors EV1 were the wave of the future, and thousands of public charging points were hurriedly installed in shopping centres, libraries and airports. But the enthusiasm collapsed when the motor industry successfully lobbied the California Air Resources Board in 2001 to get it to relax a mandate requiring 10% of new cars sold in the state to be emission-free by 2003. With no need to worry about zero-emission vehicles any more, GM and Honda promptly called in all their leased electric cars and crushed them.

This time the Californian utilities are being more circumspect. They are concerned about highly concentrated pockets of ownership and the effects of everyone deciding to recharge their electric vehicles at once—as they inevitably will do when they return home from work. The local electricity system could be easily overwhelmed, and wider swathes of the grid brought to its knees in the process. Preparing for this means beefing up local transformers as well as installing heavy-duty wiring and smart meters in homes to provide early warning of network troubles ahead. Sooner or later, those additional costs will have to be passed on to customers.

Much, of course, will depend on how quickly the new plug-ins and pure electrics become part of mainstream motoring. Generally speaking, it takes 15-20 years for a new technology to capture 10% of an established market, and a further 10-15 years for it to own 90%. That was the case when steam ships replaced clippers in the mid-19th century, and when petrol-engined taxis took over from horse-drawn cabs in the early 20th century. The same sort of lag occurred with the introduction in the 1970s of emission controls on cars. It takes years for the benefits of volume production to work their way through to the market, and for the supply chain to catch up.

If plug-in electrics follow a similar demand curve to other disruptive technologies, there could be 25m of them humming quietly around by 2025, and ten times that number by 2040. Hopefully, by then, the utilities will have learned to cope with recharging them.

Excuses for not doing what is needed- Europe

Reforming European economies. The cruelty of compassion.
Social cohesion has become an excuse for avoiding necessary reforms in Europe
Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

SOCIAL cohesion is one of those values all decent Europeans can sign up to: less social conflict and less of the inequality that America and Britain (see article) put up with. Some countries, notably Germany, really do manage to marry social harmony and economic reform. In the past decade Germany has—thanks to good management and obliging unions—kept its public sector in check, partly freed its labour market, held down unemployment, and regained competitiveness. Elsewhere, though, the need to preserve social cohesion, parroted by European politicians from left and right, has become a self-defeating excuse to avoid reform.

In Greece, for instance, the hard-pressed Socialist government of George Papandreou talks up social cohesion as a reason to avoid unduly large public-sector pay cuts in its urgent fiscal retrenchment. Spain’s Socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, touts it to justify the retention of labour-market laws that make it ruinously expensive to sack permanent employees. Italy’s right-wing government, under Silvio Berlusconi, is similarly loth to lift burdensome regulations on small businesses and services for fear of protests and strikes. Sweden’s centre-right leader, Fredrik Reinfeldt, is reluctant to be seen attacking his country’s generous social model by trimming benefits, pay and pensions. Even France’s conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is unwilling to damage social cohesion (and risk trouble in the streets) by pushing hard for labour-market, pension and welfare reforms.

Two worrying common threads can be discerned in all this. One is that the natural desire for social cohesion is being abused to justify the protection of “insiders”—those in permanent jobs, in trade unions or in privileged professions. But the cost of protecting insiders falls largely on “outsiders”—the unemployed and those in temporary work, especially young people and immigrants. The gulf between insiders and outsiders destroys the very social cohesion that the policy is meant to preserve. And in the long run it is bad for everyone, because employers do not train temporary workers—a particular problem in economies like Italy and Spain, where new permanent contracts are rare. This lack of training is one of the main reasons why Europe’s productivity growth over the past two decades has persistently lagged behind America’s.

The second common thread is that social cohesion has become a reason to defend the privileges and perks of the public sector, which is also now the last bastion of trade unions. Across Europe many private-sector workers have seen their pay, pensions and other benefits frozen or cut by cash-strapped employers during the recession. Yet most governments, even Britain’s, have been reluctant to apply similar treatment to the public sector. One result is that the state is taking a rising share of GDP, which is sure to lead to heavier taxes. Another is that public-sector pay and benefits have shot ahead as a cosseted caste extends its privileges.

Follow the Irish—or Germans
Most governments seem too paralysed by their muddle-headed talk of social cohesion to act, despite the struggle to finance huge deficits. Yet they now have a striking example in Ireland. Faced with a gaping budget deficit and a recession, the Irish government has torn up its 30-year social compact with employers and unions. It has slashed public spending and made sharp cuts in pay. Indeed, pay is now falling across the whole economy. Not surprisingly, workers and unions are unhappy. This week, the public sector began a work-to-rule. But the harsh medicine seems to be working, as Ireland pulls out of recession, the public finances improve and the economy regains competitiveness lost inside the euro.

It is not always necessary to face down strikes. Italy and Spain could learn from Germany’s trick of reforming without strife. But that may be beyond deeply troubled countries like Greece, which probably has no alternative but to copy Ireland. What all European governments must grasp, though, is that many of the policies espoused in the name of social cohesion do not promote compassion over cruelty. Rather, they encourage decline, entrench divisions and thus threaten the harmony they pretend to nurture.

New money for corrupts

Fighting corruption in India-zero contribution-unconventional way to combat petty corruption
Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

5th Pillar
A ZERO-SUM game is one in which the gains of one player are exactly balanced by the losses of another. In India a local non-governmental organisation has invented a new sort of zero sum which, it hopes, will leave everyone better off: the zero-rupee note.

What on earth is the point of that? The note is not legal tender. It is simply a piece of paper the colour of a 50-rupee note with a picture of Gandhi on it and a value of nothing. Its aim is to shame corrupt officials into not demanding bribes.

The idea was dreamt up by an expatriate Indian physics professor from the University of Maryland who, travelling back home, found himself harassed by endless extortion demands. He gave the notes to the importuning officials as a polite way of saying no. Vijay Anand, president of an NGO called 5th Pillar, thought it might work on a larger scale. He had 25,000 zero-rupee notes printed and publicised to mobilise opposition to corruption. They caught on: his charity has distributed 1m since 2007.

One official in Tamil Nadu was so stunned to receive the note that he handed back all the bribes he had solicited for providing electricity to a village. Another stood up, offered tea to the old lady from whom he was trying to extort money and approved a loan so her granddaughter could go to college.

Mr Anand thinks the notes work because corrupt officials so rarely encounter resistance that they get scared when they do. And ordinary people are more willing to protest, since the notes have an organisation behind them and they do not feel on their own. Simple ideas like this don’t always work. When India’s government put online the names of officials facing trial for corruption, the list became a convenient guide for whom to bribe. But, says Fumiko Nagano of the World Bank, transforming social norms is the key to fighting petty corruption and the notes help that process. They are valueless, but not worthless.