Wednesday, March 21, 2012

SXSW: Google TV Developer Talks With LG, MOVL & Clear Channel

Developers are bringing some impressive apps to Google TV


The Google TV is a pretty impressive piece of equipment. It’s poised to be a major game changer for the television space. Google recently talked with people in the TV tech industry to ask them questions about Google TV.
The panel of developers include Pete Hollenhorst of LG, Alan Queen of MOVL, and Harper Lieblich of Clear Channel. The developers talk about why they have decided to support Google TV with their various technologies.
The talks were conducted over a Google+ hangout. If you missed it, Google developers have posted the entire 27 minute conversation on their YouTube channel. Check it out to see the new developments coming to Google TV.


Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Ads On Free Apps Are Killing Your Smartphone Battery

Those freebies spend more energy showing you ads than actually running the app itself.




Everybody knows that playing games on your smartphone is a death sentence to your phone’s battery. When I first succumbed to my light addiction to Words With Friends, I actually had to start taking my battery charger to work with me because my iPhone wasn’t making it through a whole eight-hour shift (although actually working at work would probably have also preserved my battery, too, but that’s neither here nor there).
If you’re like me, you assumed that the battery-suckage was due to the power required to actually run the game. While your phone’s battery does diminish when you play the game (of course using your phone will use up your battery), it’s not running the game that’s killing it – it’s the fact that you’re using free apps.
As you know, or at least have noticed, free apps are always accompanied by the display of ads. The ads are, after all, how the apps pay for themselves and why you’re permitted to download and enjoy it for free in the first place. However, a new study by a research team at Purdue University has found that the energy used to produce those ads can account for as much as three-fourths of the total energy used to run the apps.
If you are curious enough to check out the research paper, one question that will likely arise before you even get out of the first paragraph of the abstract is: why didn’t the researchers include iPhones in the study? It wasn’t an oversight by any means on the researchers behalf but, rather, Apple’s infamous garden wall.
Abhinav Pathak, the lead researcher for the study, took a minute to reply to an email I sent him in which I asked about, among other things, the omission of iOS devices from the study. “The theoretical framework behind EProf [EProf was the diagnostic tool developed by Pathak and his team for the purpose of this study so they could assess the energy consumption of apps] is Operating System independent and we have implemented the tool for 2 OSes (Android and Windows Mobile 6.5) to show that it actually works across OSes,” he said. “However building the tool requires OS level changes to perform event logging. We do not have access to iOS to implement our lower level changes. Hence we did not port EProf to iOS and hence no app energy measurements from iPhone.”
One app that got a lot of attention from the researchers, and one I’m sure you’ve noticed puts an absolute beating on your battery, was Angry Birds. It’s almost impossible to get more than a couple of hours of untethered playtime before you have to leash yourself to a power outlet to continue to feed your need to play. As it turns out, only 20% of the energy used to power the appis used on actually running the game. 45% of the energy used is on your phone’s GPS and locating you in order to deliver locale-specific ads over your 3G connection.
The study opens up a promising exploration into smartphone energy consumption and, hopefully, developing ways in which that energy can be conserved as newer apps are developed. If you think about it, it makes total sense that there should be some sort of energy regulation on battery usage within smartphones, especially since so many of us have interwoven the device into our daily lives. Pathak believes that the energy drain from app-producing free apps can be cut by developers through some clever programming.
“So far, app developers did not have any tool which could give them in-depth energy consumption details about their app and hence were completely oblivious to the energy drain inside the app,” Pathak said. Now that the researcher’s energy analysis tool EProf has shown that these apps are draining the battery, Pathak added, developers should now be able to address the problem with excessive battery drainage due to ads generated by free apps.
Pathak also mentioned that there is a forthcoming paper that hopes to address the solutions of some of the “most notorious app energy bugs.”
In the meantime, it might be in your best interest to pay for the full version of Angry Birds Space later this month so you’re not constantly hugging a wall outlet just to destroy some green pig forts.

Ads On Free Apps Are Killing Your Smartphone Battery

Ads On Free Apps Are Killing Your Smartphone Battery

Everybody knows that playing games on your smartphone is a death sentence to your phone’s battery. When I first succumbed to my light addiction to Words With Friends, I actually had to start taking my battery charger to work with me because my iPhone wasn’t making it through a whole eight-hour shift (although actually working at work would probably have also preserved my battery, too, but that’s neither here nor there).

If you’re like me, you assumed that the battery-suckage was due to the power required to actually run the game. While your phone’s battery does diminish when you play the game (of course using your phone will use up your battery), it’s not running the game that’s killing it – it’s the fact that you’re using free apps.

As you know, or at least have noticed, free apps are always accompanied by the display of ads. The ads are, after all, how the apps pay for themselves and why you’re permitted to download and enjoy it for free in the first place. However, a new study by a research team at Purdue University has found that the energy used to produce those ads can account for as much as three-fourths of the total energy used to run the apps.

If you are curious enough to check out the research paper, one question that will likely arise before you even get out of the first paragraph of the abstract is: why didn’t the researchers include iPhones in the study? It wasn’t an oversight by any means on the researchers behalf but, rather, Apple’s infamous garden wall.

Abhinav Pathak, the lead researcher for the study, took a minute to reply to an email I sent him in which I asked about, among other things, the omission of iOS devices from the study. “The theoretical framework behind EProf [EProf was the diagnostic tool developed by Pathak and his team for the purpose of this study so they could assess the energy consumption of apps] is Operating System independent and we have implemented the tool for 2 OSes (Android and Windows Mobile 6.5) to show that it actually works across OSes,” he said. “However building the tool requires OS level changes to perform event logging. We do not have access to iOS to implement our lower level changes. Hence we did not port EProf to iOS and hence no app energy measurements from iPhone.”

One app that got a lot of attention from the researchers, and one I’m sure you’ve noticed puts an absolute beating on your battery, was Angry Birds. It’s almost impossible to get more than a couple of hours of untethered playtime before you have to leash yourself to a power outlet to continue to feed your need to play. As it turns out, only 20% of the energy used to power the app is used on actually running the game. 45% of the energy used is on your phone’s GPS and locating you in order to deliver locale-specific ads over your 3G connection.

The study opens up a promising exploration into smartphone energy consumption and, hopefully, developing ways in which that energy can be conserved as newer apps are developed. If you think about it, it makes total sense that there should be some sort of energy regulation on battery usage within smartphones, especially since so many of us have interwoven the device into our daily lives. Pathak believes that the energy drain from app-producing free apps can be cut by developers through some clever programming.

“So far, app developers did not have any tool which could give them in-depth energy consumption details about their app and hence were completely oblivious to the energy drain inside the app,” Pathak said. Now that the researcher’s energy analysis tool EProf has shown that these apps are draining the battery, Pathak added, developers should now be able to address the problem with excessive battery drainage due to ads generated by free apps.

Pathak also mentioned that there is a forthcoming paper that hopes to address the solutions of some of the “most notorious app energy bugs.”

In the meantime, it might be in your best interest to pay for the full version of Angry Birds Space later this month so you’re not constantly hugging a wall outlet just to destroy some green pig forts.


View the original article here

Apple Sells Three Million iPads In Four Days

"Blockbuster" new iPad sees best first weekend in the iPad's history.





Just a little while ago we brought you news that both AT&T and Apple had announced “record” sales of the new iPad, which hit stores last Friday. Neither company, however, had gotten into specifics about how many iPads had been sold in the new tablet’s opening weekend, leaving us to speculate about just what “record” meant.
Now Apple has gone into specifics. The company announced today that they had sold 3 million iPads in the first four days of availability. Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing called this “the strongest iPad launch yet.” The new iPad became available in both in Apple Stores and the stores of Apple’s retail partners in nine countries around the world. It was the largest single-day launch in Apple’s history.
Apple announced the new iPad at a special media event on March 7th. Preorders of the tablet sold out in the first two days, and online orders are currently taking 2-3 weeks to ship. Apple’s retail stores had a sizable supply of the tablets in stock.
The new iPad’s launch contrasted with last year’s iPad 2 launch. The iPad 2 suffered from shortages, and took nearly a month to sell its first million units.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Internet firm in China stops using Google services

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBase



An Internet company run by one of Asia's richest men said Tuesday it has ended its affiliation with Google Inc. as the American search giant stopped censoring the Internet in violation of Chinese regulations.
Making good on threats made more than two months ago, Google began shifting its Chinese-based search functions to Hong Kong, a Chinese territory where companies are not legally required to censor Internet search results.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Search engine takes leap in Web tech Search engine takes leap in Web tech

Image representing Yahoo! as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBase


LONDON: Global internet services company Yahoo has announced that it will adopt some of the key standards of the "semantic web" to improve its search engine.
The technology, considered to be the next step for the World Wide Web, involves a much richer understanding of the masses of data placed online. Amit Kumar, director of product management for the company's search site, has revealed in Yahoo's blog that they will include some semantic web identifiers while indexing the web for Yahoo search.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

11 Blogging Lessons From The Daily Mail Traffic Growth

Daily Mail Bin Campaign (Day 169)Daily Mail Bin Campaign (Day 169) (Photo credit: adamwilcox)

The Daily Mail is the most popular newspaper online. The website of the British newspaper even beats the New York Times website traffic.
Let’s take a look at the key ingredients for the success of The Daily Mail and what lessons bloggers can learn:
  • Publish news that people want to read. People love celebrities, people care about themselves. You will see a lot of content featuring celebrities and different health concerns.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

60 Awesome WordPress Themes of February 2012

With time, WordPress is becoming a more powerful platform, therefore, wordpress themes are also becoming incredibly easy to use and versatile. I can`t believe how advanced a theme can be. In fact, there`s PHP at the middle, and what can`t developers do with PHP? Regarding the design part, this year`s hot trend is from far responsive web design and it seems like more and more themes are built to fit on any device screen. HTML5 and CSS3 will play an important role too this year in wordpress design.
Every day wordpress themes are released, but how good can they be? Can they fit your business, will they convert visitors to customers better than your old site, can they change their layout for smartphones or tablets or will they have enough features you need to set up your website? Each month I choose the best wp themes and showcase them in order to help you make an easier choice. Month of february was amazing and I was able to collect no more or less than 60 amazing wordpress themes which can handle any website. So if you need a refresh to your business or a new facelift to your websites, here are some of the best themes to choose from.

Hypermind

Hypermind is an incredibly easy to use WordPress portfolio theme. Quick to setup and easy to customize, thanks to the powerful admin panel, the detailed manual, and the carefully structured code, HyperMind is the perfect theme for showcasing your most important work directly in front of your visitors.
hypermind 60 Awesome Wordpress Themes of February 2012