Tech Jott / Nuevas Tecnologías

Apple has removed the app for controversial whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks from their online store.

“We Removed the WikiLeaks app from the App Store because it violated our developer guidelines,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told the AFP, “Apps must comply with all local laws and may not put an individual or group in harm’s way.”

image courtesy of Redmondpie.com

The app, which was only online for three days following initial approval by Apple, made materials released via WikiLeaks’ mirror sites viewable on Apple’s mobile iPod, iPad, and iPhone. The developer of the app, Igor Barinov, apparently intended to donate $1 of every $1.99 sale to support WikiLeaks. Apple now joins Amazon, MasterCard, and PayPal in deliberately distancing itself from the inscrutable website and its outlets.

WikiLeaks has made news recently by releasing thousands of classified diplomatic and military cables, much of which implicates major governments (including the United States) in doublespeak, espionage, and war crimes. Its founder, Julian Assange, has been under heavy scrutiny by the US, which is believed to be working up a case for espionage charges and plans to have him extradited from Britain, where he is being held for hearings on rape charges brought by the Swedish courts. The word ‘wikileaks’ has officially joined the English lexicon, a product of its profusion of usage online amid its recent headline controversies.

Photo Courtesy of Chinavasion.com

This little guy (and it is little, L:137 x W:77 x D:23 [mm]) is an LED-powered wall projector that can fit in a handbag. It can produce an image up to 70 inches (but only if the lights are completely off), maxing out at a resolution of 640 x 480. Those dimensions are bound to improve in later models, but it’s a start. The pocket-projector features an SD slot for pictures and video, a built-in speaker and headphone/speaker jack.

The kicker, though, is that it comes with built-in WiFi, and a mini “qwerty” keyboard. How is WiFi useful on a projector, you ask? A built-in chip runs a Linux-based operating system that can be accessed through a projected interface, meaning that aside from your own media, this projector allows you to surf the web and play videos, read articles, watch movies, etc. It includes a teeny tripod, too, and all for about $200.

Image Courtesy of FSTEUROPE.COM

Lots of people love their video games…some people can barely stand to be away from their consoles for longer than a few hours.  Sure, they can buy a PSP, iPhone, or Nintendo DS, but these little pocket-’puters lack the features that suck the serious gamer into the screen; high-resolution graphics, a big picture, large library of dense games, and the option to test your skills against other players online.

While the portable systems have done their best to address these needs, nothing can compare to the computing power of a high-octane Xbox or Playstation.  While traveling, a true, discerning game addict may find themselves staring at the clouds to pass the time until they can be reunited with their beloved console.  As it turns out, the cloud is exactly what will bring their relief.

Cloud computing is still fairly new, and it stands to revolutionize the computer industry.  We usually think of a computer as the box on our desk or in our backpack, filled with the circuitry that crunches numbers, manages data, and renders the results (charts, graphs, graphics, audio, etc).  Cloud computing operates under the principle of outsourcing this process from your box to a network of distant computers that operate online.  This nebulous computing ether processes information at a user’s command, leaving whatever device is being used only to interact with this distant process.

The applications are apparent, and it was only natural that it should extend to one of the biggest industries in entertainment.  Take OnLive, for example; consisting of a cigarette-pack sized usb box and controller, it can be plugged into any TV or computer monitor, and allows the gamer to play his or her favorite high definition games without being tied to the wall, or requiring a library of discs to shuffle between playing.  The games perform and operate exactly as they would if the player were at home with their Xbox, but can be enjoyed from a hotel, on the road, and in other countries.  This is the upshot of the cloud-computing concept; portable devices will, in short time, be imbued with the same processing capabilities previously reserved for large consoles and wall-powered computers.  A downside is this may just mean a lot more wasted time and distraction for people who might otherwise have a more enriching experience away from the ‘tube…maybe it’s just high time that the great video games be made as ubiquitous, powerful, and portable as every other drug.

NASA announced today that they have discovered a new form of life in the highly toxic waters of Mono Lake in California.  “The definition of life has just expanded,” said NASA’s Ed Weller.  Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorous.  These were the six elements that have defined life from the early days of molecular biology until today.  The discovery has revealed that the phosphorous can be replaced with the highly caustic molecule arsenic.  GFAJ-1, the bacterium of the day, can build its genetic structure (DNA, RNA, etc) with arsenic, previously thought impossible.  Small a difference as it may seem, the new discovery is monumental in its impact, meaning that previous definitions of life are simply inadequate.

Dr. Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues were circumspect in their manner, but well aware of the implications that this discovery portends.  “This will inform us about life on our own planet,” she said, “and it will help inform us of life, we will find it one day, elsewhere in the Universe.”

By expanding the chemical requirements of life, biologists have given cosmologists and astronomers a much wider berth for identifying potentially life-harboring systems elsewhere in the Universe.  Goldilocks planet, the Earth-like system orbiting a distant red dwarf star, has been analyzed for its atmosphere, which may not be as forgiving to life as Earth knows it, but environments heavy in poisonous gas no longer explicitly preclude the possibility of life in novel forms.  It is also worth mentioning that new approaches to measuring the mass of galaxies have resulted in a 300 sextillion  (that’s ‘3’ followed by twenty-four zeroes) more red-dwarf stars than previously thought existed, which are highly likely to support planets of habitable temperatures (a loaded term), vastly increasing the potential harbors of life in the Universe.

The point of this new data, though, is that extraterrestrial life need not be on an “Earth-like” planet in the classical sense.  Atmospheres previously considered poisonous and deadly may now qualify as the lush ether of life on distant worlds.  The argument has steadily shifted from whether life will be found on other worlds to one of where or when.  As the definition of life expands, and our understanding of the mechanism of our own corporeal existence does the same, the likelihood of our peculiarity in the Universe will continue to shrink.

As a child, my fascination with science fiction made the hum drum of the real world seem rather dull. By reading comic books and sci-fi novels, the mind-expanding power of Star Wars, Blade Runner, Star Trek and Quantum Leap invited me to a world of giant, elegant ships, lights and lasers, silver and golden robots with personalities. Basic cable and bicycles hardly compared, but this fantasy world is slowly becoming reality. As commercial spaceships, laser cannons, flying cars, robot assistants, hand-held computers, etc. emerge, the environment is beginning to resemble the boldest visions of science fiction.

The technology I hoped for most of all, my imagination’s chosen talisman for the idea of the future, and the one that seemed somehow the least probable to ever see, was the hologram. I imagined living in a world of brightly colored, translucent, moving three-dimensional images, the visual landscape of a future world.  The technology seemed so far flung, so unreasonably demanding on physics, computation and optics, that we would never live to see it.

Well, engineers at sony seem to have a similar vision:

It’s true, holograms are coming. The video explains the principle thoroughly enough, but understated in the video is just how game-changing this technology could be. The potential applications extend far beyond just communication and entertainment. Think of remote surgical operations, design programs, maps, interstellar distress calls, lego instructions…the mind boggles to imagine the applications.

The Nobel Prize for physics was awarded yesterday to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, for their work in manufacturing a remarkably simple material called graphene. Graphene is essentially the same stuff that makes up the tip of your pencil (graphite), but at only one atom thick, it is the world’s first “2-D” substance.  To get an idea of just how thin this is, consider that 7,000,000 sheets of it would stack up to be only one millimeter thick.

Computer model of graphene, image by AlexanderAlUS via Wikimedia Commons

The material is also notable because of its properties and the applications they allow for. Graphene is not only highly conductive, but  remarkably strong, and simultaneously transparent. One of the most commonly proposed potential applications is use in flexible view screens (imagine folding your iPhone to fit  into your shirt pocket). Graphene also has applications for super-fast transistors, restoring faith in the ongoing relevance of Moore’s Law, which basically states that processors will double in speed and halve in size every two years.

Touch screens, DNA sequencing, and gas detection are among other proposed uses for this sub-microscopic miracle matter. There is still much research to be done, and it is very difficult to manufacture, so it will be some years before any real-world potential for the stuff is realized. However, it is likely to be soon that books are built with computers embedded in their very pages, or indeed that computers themselves are page-thin and faster than ever.

Photo from Willimediablog.com

Marguerite Reardon and Caroline McCarthy of CNET are reporting that Facebook has taken steps toward the development and release of its own mobile device. This “Facebook phone” would aim fot the same territory as Google’s Nexus One and Microsoft’s Kin, making social networking the primary facet of their phones’ functionality. While devices like the Kin launched with no existing network to underpin their service (the theory was that the users of the phone would create and grow the network), Facebook stands on their status as the definitive social network to power such a device. It is by far the most recognized and heavily used (half a billion users at the time of this article) of all social networking services, and growing rapidly. Having this purchase on the industry places Facebook at a market advantage, but the same difficulties that plagued previous attempts may beset Facebook in theirs.

The consumer’s expectation for functionality is becoming increasingly broad and sophisticated, including social networking as a staple of their mobile use, but hardly as the sole reason for owning an expensive smart phone. To pull this off, Facebook will need to balance some tricky parameters. The phone will have to be novel; designed in such a way that its core functionality of social networking activity is made intuitive and exciting, using familiar operating systems and interfaces or, if they have a very strong concept for one, a brand new operating system; users are notoriously touchy about new user experience designs, and it is an ever-shifting minefield to reinvent the wheel of iOS or Android. This leads to the problem of cost; development and manufacture of these kinds of devices is very expensive and very risky, and aside from being downright dangerous from a business standpoint, the company will have to ensure that the device is affordable for the tween-age demographic of Facebook users.

Time will tell whether this device breaks new ground or tries to find its fortune buried in the graves of the Kin and Nexus One (if it happens at all; this is still, officially anyway, a rumor). There is a lot of money to be made on the empire of Facebook, on whom the sun ever sets, but is such a device even necessary? Do we really need more downcast eyes, hands occupied with typing, and minds defocused amongst the scattered world that Facebook can engender?

It’s enough to make one consider tying a string between two cans.

Google has unveiled a new search interface, called Google Instant, which may have significant implications for the business of the Internet. The system works by updating the results page, in real time, as you type. Enter ‘a,’ and a list of websites immediately emerges as though ‘enter’ had already been pressed, ready to be viewed. Type ‘p,’ and the list instantly shifts to accommodate the new parameters. The system is remarkably fast, and is best understood by trying it, or watching it in action.

One potential implication of this system is the time it will save across its user base. Google calculates that as much as 5 seconds per search will be saved, which they extrapolate, in typically grand googly fashion, as adding up to a savings of a whopping 11 million man-hours annually. This is a significant contribution to the efficiency of the web, but it is also a remarkable engineering feat. The system is much faster than previous iterations, requiring new caching, crawling, and scripting methods that boggle all but Google’s brains.

Another implication the advent of Google Instant has sent crawling the rumor mills relate to its effects on advertising. If someone is typing half as much to achieve a result, and all intermediate pages are flicking by at typer-speed, will a user even notice the ads?  Will the user be exposed to fewer products, or could those many brief intermediary exposures be worth even more to the advertiser, maybe even creating a new type of ad; the super-subliminal nanosecond ad, perhaps?

This new interface  is not yet ubiquitous, appearing to work only on certain browser versions or machines. This is to be expected, as Google is still testing the system, albeit without much secrecy; they have already published two separate blogs addressing the new format. Whatever the implications, Google Instant is a noteworthy addition to Google’s already awe-inspiring arsenal of products and services, and is worth at least the time it saves you to check it out.