1. Raiders of the Lost iPhone
Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's home was raided by the Silicon Valley High Technology Task Force on Friday following the tech blog's recent purchase of an Apple iPhone prototype. Authorities seized four computers and two servers during the raid. The raid followed the alleged theft of the iPhone after Gray Powell, an engineer at Apple, reportedly walked out of the Gourmet Haus Staudt in Redwood City, Calif., leaving the phone on a barstool. After publishing its scoop on the iPhone prototype, Gizmodo said it returned the device to Apple.
2. 2013: The Year Tech as We Know It Changes
The market is in a planning cycle, and analysts are being asked to take a look in their crystal balls and describe what 2013 will look like. Clearly, we will have more bandwidth, 3-D TV will be ramping, and most of us will either be using tablet devices for something or moving to the next big thing. I'm going to look out to 2013 and make some assumptions and then paint a picture of what the world will look like through the eyes of someone who is on the cutting edge of technology. I'm picking cutting edge because that is where the most change is likely to be.
3. Earthly pleasures come to Maps
Earth Day may have just passed, but the Google Earth team loves it too much to let it go. So we’ve found our own special way to celebrate Earth Day (a little late) by making an announcement that we’ve been working toward for a long time: Earth view in Google Maps.
When we first launched Google Earth back in 2005, it revolutionized the world of digital mapping. In the years since, Earth has been getting faster and lighter while adding large amounts of imagery, more ambitious features and an ever-expanding roster of platforms, including support for Mac, Linux, iPhone, Android and even the 2011 Audi A8!
Web browsers haven’t exactly been standing still either. As their capacity to handle richer applications has steadily grown, our ability to bring Google Earth online has grown along with it. In 2008, we released the Google Earth Plugin to developers, and since then thousands of sites have used it to create many cool applications and even games. Now the time has come to take off the plugin’s online training wheels and roll it out on the main stage: Google Maps. So if you’re one of the hundreds of millions of people who use Maps worldwide, you can now explore the world in luxuriantly-detailed, data-rich 3D imagery and terrain from Google Earth. If you’ve already downloaded the Google Earth Plugin, you should be able to see Earth view in Maps right away. Otherwise, you can just install the Plugin to enjoy a Maps experience that includes angled Earth views, 3D buildings, smooth panning and zooming and a great introductory showcase of places to visit and things to see.
Current Google Earth users, of course, will continue to enjoy the full power of the standalone application: KML editing, historical imagery, GPS tracks, tour-creation, Mars, Sky, flight simulator and so on. But for quick online access, the power of 3D will also be available at the click of a[n Earth] button. We’re thrilled to be able to bring this functionality to the web and we invite you to come share the moment with us.
4. Humans and neanderthals: Getting it on, after all?
Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's home was raided by the Silicon Valley High Technology Task Force on Friday following the tech blog's recent purchase of an Apple iPhone prototype. Authorities seized four computers and two servers during the raid. The raid followed the alleged theft of the iPhone after Gray Powell, an engineer at Apple, reportedly walked out of the Gourmet Haus Staudt in Redwood City, Calif., leaving the phone on a barstool. After publishing its scoop on the iPhone prototype, Gizmodo said it returned the device to Apple.
2. 2013: The Year Tech as We Know It Changes
The market is in a planning cycle, and analysts are being asked to take a look in their crystal balls and describe what 2013 will look like. Clearly, we will have more bandwidth, 3-D TV will be ramping, and most of us will either be using tablet devices for something or moving to the next big thing. I'm going to look out to 2013 and make some assumptions and then paint a picture of what the world will look like through the eyes of someone who is on the cutting edge of technology. I'm picking cutting edge because that is where the most change is likely to be.
3. Earthly pleasures come to Maps
Earth Day may have just passed, but the Google Earth team loves it too much to let it go. So we’ve found our own special way to celebrate Earth Day (a little late) by making an announcement that we’ve been working toward for a long time: Earth view in Google Maps.
When we first launched Google Earth back in 2005, it revolutionized the world of digital mapping. In the years since, Earth has been getting faster and lighter while adding large amounts of imagery, more ambitious features and an ever-expanding roster of platforms, including support for Mac, Linux, iPhone, Android and even the 2011 Audi A8!
Web browsers haven’t exactly been standing still either. As their capacity to handle richer applications has steadily grown, our ability to bring Google Earth online has grown along with it. In 2008, we released the Google Earth Plugin to developers, and since then thousands of sites have used it to create many cool applications and even games. Now the time has come to take off the plugin’s online training wheels and roll it out on the main stage: Google Maps. So if you’re one of the hundreds of millions of people who use Maps worldwide, you can now explore the world in luxuriantly-detailed, data-rich 3D imagery and terrain from Google Earth. If you’ve already downloaded the Google Earth Plugin, you should be able to see Earth view in Maps right away. Otherwise, you can just install the Plugin to enjoy a Maps experience that includes angled Earth views, 3D buildings, smooth panning and zooming and a great introductory showcase of places to visit and things to see.
Current Google Earth users, of course, will continue to enjoy the full power of the standalone application: KML editing, historical imagery, GPS tracks, tour-creation, Mars, Sky, flight simulator and so on. But for quick online access, the power of 3D will also be available at the click of a[n Earth] button. We’re thrilled to be able to bring this functionality to the web and we invite you to come share the moment with us.
4. Humans and neanderthals: Getting it on, after all?
New genetic data suggests that, at at least two points in history, Homo sapiens were interbreeding with other species, most likely Homo neanderthalensis or heidelbergensis.
This is pretty damn interesting, because it's a reversal on previous research. A couple of years ago, I got a chance to see Svante Pääbo, an evolutionary anthropologist with the Max Planck Institute, and kind of a big deal in the world of ancient hominid genetics, talk about this very topic. He and his team studied bits and pieces of the neanderthal genome and came to the conclusion that hanky panky hadn't happened between that species and ours. And, because it was Svante Pääbo (again, kind of a big deal) everybody trusted his results. So much so, in fact, the the University of New Mexico researchers who did this new study were surprised that their data said differently.
This is a really fun moment in science, when accepted information gets legitimately challenged. And now the ball is back in Pääbo's court. Remember, his previous neanderthal analysis was based on bits and pieces of the genome. Recently, he wrapped up a rough draft sequence of the entire genome, and, as Nature points out, what he finds there will probably be the first test of this new theory. Of course, it's also possible that both groups are right, and it's really H. heidelbergensis who was knocking boots with ancient sapiens. We'll just have to wait and find out.
5. College students struggle to go without media for 24 hours
Internet and media addiction is not officially a psychiatric disorder, but many college students still seem to be suffering from it. In a recent study done by the University of Maryland, students who were asked to give up their media connections experienced withdrawal symptoms similar to those seen in drug and alcohol addicts, including cravings, anxieties, and preoccupation to the point of being unable to function well.
The students were asked to give up all media for 24 hours, including text messages, TV shows, music, e-mail, and Facebook, and to do so on all sources, including cell phones. Some of the students equated the stipulation to being entirely socially closed off from friends and family.
Many experienced cravings and anxiety because of their temporarily cut ties. One student called their dependency "sickening"; another spoke of texting and IM-ing giving him "a constant feeling of comfort" and said that the moratorium made him feel "alone and secluded" from his own life.
The results of the study are hardly surprising, and on their face appear to support the notion that Internet addiction could be classified as a disorder. The Internet "detox" centers cropping up will likely seize upon the study's results as well. The centers often cite nightmare scenarios rising from media addictions, like significant debts and dropping out of college or losing jobs.
The authors collected some other interesting (though expected) information about its participants, including that few of them watch news on TV or read a newspaper, and like the general population, have very little loyalty to news sources or platforms. They also don't discern between news and general information, but that may just be a function of being the young, carefree addicts they are.
6. Fixing the planet: iFixit wants repair manual for everything
As many Ars readers know, iFixit has long been a source for detailed teardowns of the latest Apple gear. The company's teardowns not only provide information about the chips and other components in each new MacBook Pro or iPhone, the company also gives users the necessary information about tools and techniques needed to get inside the devices. iFixit now hopes to build a compendium of quality, trusted online repair manuals for almost anything you own that might need fixing.
While iFixit's product teardowns have been widely covered—here at Ars and elsewhere—those teardowns were just the first step in building complete, photo-illustrated self-repair manuals for Macs, iPods, and iPhones. The manuals are usually made available for free on iFixit's website, while the company makes money by supplying do-it-yourselfers with the necessary tools and hard-to-find parts. "We're widely considered the largest Apple parts company, outside of Apple itself," iFixit CEO and cofounder Kyle Wiens told Ars. "We recently added an iPad parts store."
7. Invisibility cloaks closer to living up to their name
Metamaterials, which are used to produce the items that are termed "invisibility cloaks," have occasionally been targets of skepticism because they don't actually work in visible wavelengths. A paper published in Nature this week describes the structure of a new metamaterial with a negative refractive index that can misdirect light in most of the visible spectrum, up through blue light, bringing the cloaks a step closer to imparting actual invisibility.
The metamaterials that compose the invisibility cloaks work because they have a negative refractive index, which causes light entering them to bounce in an unusual way. Recently, scientists had found that the physical fabrication limits of their metamaterials were too close to the wavelengths of visible light, and they could only bend waves on the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum. The "invisibility cloak" name had been writing checks its functionality couldn't cash; to make visually undetectable material, scientists needed a new approach.
They found they were able to bend visible light by using a two-dimensional array of coaxial waveguides arranged in a hexagonal configuration. The waveguides were composed of two layers of silver sandwiching a gallium-phosphorus insulator; they could maintain a negative refractive index for light of wavelengths as short as 450-500 nanometers, corresponding to the color blue.
The literal invisibility cloak is stll incomplete—as it stands, the metamaterial described here would be able to bend away every color except violet, so anything "cloaked" would just be highlighted purple. Even if researchers do eventually conquer violet, an invisibility cloak might still be noticeable to the human eye. Still, the ability to bend shorter wavelengths brings scientists a step closer to a new way of beating the diffraction limit and creating superlenses that can see features even smaller than the wavelengths we use.
This is pretty damn interesting, because it's a reversal on previous research. A couple of years ago, I got a chance to see Svante Pääbo, an evolutionary anthropologist with the Max Planck Institute, and kind of a big deal in the world of ancient hominid genetics, talk about this very topic. He and his team studied bits and pieces of the neanderthal genome and came to the conclusion that hanky panky hadn't happened between that species and ours. And, because it was Svante Pääbo (again, kind of a big deal) everybody trusted his results. So much so, in fact, the the University of New Mexico researchers who did this new study were surprised that their data said differently.
This is a really fun moment in science, when accepted information gets legitimately challenged. And now the ball is back in Pääbo's court. Remember, his previous neanderthal analysis was based on bits and pieces of the genome. Recently, he wrapped up a rough draft sequence of the entire genome, and, as Nature points out, what he finds there will probably be the first test of this new theory. Of course, it's also possible that both groups are right, and it's really H. heidelbergensis who was knocking boots with ancient sapiens. We'll just have to wait and find out.
5. College students struggle to go without media for 24 hours
Internet and media addiction is not officially a psychiatric disorder, but many college students still seem to be suffering from it. In a recent study done by the University of Maryland, students who were asked to give up their media connections experienced withdrawal symptoms similar to those seen in drug and alcohol addicts, including cravings, anxieties, and preoccupation to the point of being unable to function well.
The students were asked to give up all media for 24 hours, including text messages, TV shows, music, e-mail, and Facebook, and to do so on all sources, including cell phones. Some of the students equated the stipulation to being entirely socially closed off from friends and family.
Many experienced cravings and anxiety because of their temporarily cut ties. One student called their dependency "sickening"; another spoke of texting and IM-ing giving him "a constant feeling of comfort" and said that the moratorium made him feel "alone and secluded" from his own life.
The results of the study are hardly surprising, and on their face appear to support the notion that Internet addiction could be classified as a disorder. The Internet "detox" centers cropping up will likely seize upon the study's results as well. The centers often cite nightmare scenarios rising from media addictions, like significant debts and dropping out of college or losing jobs.
The authors collected some other interesting (though expected) information about its participants, including that few of them watch news on TV or read a newspaper, and like the general population, have very little loyalty to news sources or platforms. They also don't discern between news and general information, but that may just be a function of being the young, carefree addicts they are.
6. Fixing the planet: iFixit wants repair manual for everything
As many Ars readers know, iFixit has long been a source for detailed teardowns of the latest Apple gear. The company's teardowns not only provide information about the chips and other components in each new MacBook Pro or iPhone, the company also gives users the necessary information about tools and techniques needed to get inside the devices. iFixit now hopes to build a compendium of quality, trusted online repair manuals for almost anything you own that might need fixing.
While iFixit's product teardowns have been widely covered—here at Ars and elsewhere—those teardowns were just the first step in building complete, photo-illustrated self-repair manuals for Macs, iPods, and iPhones. The manuals are usually made available for free on iFixit's website, while the company makes money by supplying do-it-yourselfers with the necessary tools and hard-to-find parts. "We're widely considered the largest Apple parts company, outside of Apple itself," iFixit CEO and cofounder Kyle Wiens told Ars. "We recently added an iPad parts store."
7. Invisibility cloaks closer to living up to their name
Metamaterials, which are used to produce the items that are termed "invisibility cloaks," have occasionally been targets of skepticism because they don't actually work in visible wavelengths. A paper published in Nature this week describes the structure of a new metamaterial with a negative refractive index that can misdirect light in most of the visible spectrum, up through blue light, bringing the cloaks a step closer to imparting actual invisibility.
The metamaterials that compose the invisibility cloaks work because they have a negative refractive index, which causes light entering them to bounce in an unusual way. Recently, scientists had found that the physical fabrication limits of their metamaterials were too close to the wavelengths of visible light, and they could only bend waves on the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum. The "invisibility cloak" name had been writing checks its functionality couldn't cash; to make visually undetectable material, scientists needed a new approach.
They found they were able to bend visible light by using a two-dimensional array of coaxial waveguides arranged in a hexagonal configuration. The waveguides were composed of two layers of silver sandwiching a gallium-phosphorus insulator; they could maintain a negative refractive index for light of wavelengths as short as 450-500 nanometers, corresponding to the color blue.
The literal invisibility cloak is stll incomplete—as it stands, the metamaterial described here would be able to bend away every color except violet, so anything "cloaked" would just be highlighted purple. Even if researchers do eventually conquer violet, an invisibility cloak might still be noticeable to the human eye. Still, the ability to bend shorter wavelengths brings scientists a step closer to a new way of beating the diffraction limit and creating superlenses that can see features even smaller than the wavelengths we use.
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