Kenneth Olsen, pioneering founder of computer company, dies at 84

Kenneth Olsen, 84, a computer industry pioneer and co-founder of Digital Equipment Corp., died Feb. 6. The place and cause of death were not disclosed.

Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=ed2a3086b726d0c202f5f3c63b85473f

TNS TIBCO SOFTWARE

Roku Adds Flagship Features, Good Looks to Its Budget Set-Top Boxes

Since its release earlier in the year, the Roku 3 has been the little black streaming box to beat. Now the company has updated the rest of its streaming lineup with UI and design cues from its flagship streamer.

Source: http://feeds.wired.com/c/35185/f/661457/s/31aa96a5/sc/15/l/0L0Swired0N0Cgadgetlab0C20A130C0A90Croku0Estreamers0C/story01.htm

SYNNEX SYMANTEC

Nokia enslaves God of Thunder, charges phone with lightning

Imagine a rain-slicked parapet, thunder roaring like the shouts of gods—and a Nokia smartphone, whose battery has run dry. Now imagine holding that phone to the sky, screaming defiance, as a bolt hurtles itself at your outstretched hand. BOOM—and you walk away unscathed, with the phone charged to maximum.

Today, that’s a pretty great way to get yourself killed. Tomorrow, too. But Nokia, together with the University of Southampton, has taken the first steps to “harnessing the power of lightning for personal use.”

Check out the video below, where Nokia creates an artificial high-voltage arc to demonstrate how a smartphone could eventually be charged by lightning. “That the Nokia Lumia 925 could withstand this sort of experiment is testament to the renowned high quality and durability of Nokia’s devices and the company’s continuing research to increase the already outstanding reliability of its products,” the company said.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2050481/nokia-enslaves-god-of-thunder-charges-phone-with-lightning.html#tk.rss_all

SONUS NETWORKS SONIC AUTOMOTIVE

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.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/28/firefox-4-rockets-to-5-global-usage-share-ie9-wallows-at-1-5/

SYMANTEC SYKES ENTERPRISES INORATED

Prime 'beachfront spectrum' for all - if Congress will help

You're probably reading this on junk. And I'm not talking about newsprint - industry woes aside, that's high-quality stuff. But if you're on a computer or an iPad, and you're not plugged into an Internet jack in the wall? Junk, then.

Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=4d81747d271c682797e3f179bb8064a9

SPANSION SONUS NETWORKS

Torus is an impressive 3D Tetris game powered by HTML5

As far as Tetris goes, most variations look quite similar. You're usually looking at a "wall" of bricks directly from the front. Torus takes that notion and throws it away; as you might have guessed from the name (or screenshot), this Tetris clone is played on a ring-like 3D surface.

You rotate the ring itself with the arrow keys, while a Tetris-like piece slowly (excruciatingly slowly, in fact) descends from the top. As soon as you make a solid line, it disappears.

Not all pieces are Tetris-like; some of them wouldn't really work with a regular Tetris game but are a good fit for Torus' 3D format.

Torus is ideal for playing at the office, because it has absolutely no soundtrack. The game is dead-quiet. It's also very very slow (slow enough for me to mention it twice in one post) so you can safely look away for a moment and then keep playing. Also, as soon as the game loses focus, it automatically pauses.

Bottom line: It's an impressive demo of the power of HTML5; if it were a bit faster, it would have some serious addictive potential.

Torus is an impressive 3D Tetris game powered by HTML5 originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/02/17/torus-is-an-impressive-3d-tetris-game-powered-by-html5/

VIRGIN MEDIA VIEWSONIC

BBC releases new iPlayer desktop application for offline content

The BBC has released a new version of its iPlayer desktop application, that unlike previous iterations no longer allows access to live TV. The new iPlayer downloads is an app for the Mac or Windows PC that provides a simple method of downloading shows from the BBC for offline viewing.

The new app requires a one-off install, and will then kick into gear as you're browsing the iPlayer website and select something to download. You can also queue up a series of downloads and see a list of currently available to watch content.

And, since this is strictly an offline experience application, you're unable to use it to watch live TV or radio. For that, you'll need to head to the iPlayer website. For more information and to download, hit up the BBC at the source link below.

Update: Turns out the source info about Adobe Air was incorrect, all references have been removed.

Source: BBC via Pocket-Lint

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/DL4Nkz7_vWs/story01.htm

UNITED ONLINE UNISYS

PayPal launches small-business loan program

PayPal is getting into the increasingly crowded small-business loan market. The eBay-owned online and mobile payment service this week announced PayPal Working Capital, a loan program that will initially serve qualified existing PayPal merchant customers.

PayPal won’t actually lend the money—its initial banking partner is WebBank. But borrowers aren’t saddled with fixed monthly payments or late fees: Rather, they repay the loan and a pre-set loan fee out of sales revenues processed by PayPal.

The cost of the loan depends on the amount borrowed (generally, up to 8 percent of total annual sales processed by PayPal in the last year), the percentage of sales receipts dedicated to paying the loan (between 10 percent and 30 percent), and the merchant’s PayPal track record.

The higher the percentage of sales the merchant is willing to allocate to paying back the loan, the lower the overall fee. In PayPal’s published example, for a business with $100,000 in annual sales that borrows the maximum, $8,000, the loan fee varies from $947 if the business opts to dedicate 10 percent of sales receipts to paying down the loan, to $281 for a business that dedicates 30 percent of its sales receipts to paying back the loan.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049900/paypal-launches-small-business-loan-program.html#tk.rss_all

TRANSACTION SYSTEMS ARCHITECTS TOTAL SYSTEM SERVICES

Obama touts plan to get wireless Internet to 98 percent of U.S.

President Obama unveiled an ambitious blueprint to use $18 billion in federal funds to get 98 percent of the nation connected to the Internet on smartphones and tablet computers in five years.

Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=3d6229545fa1b4d538413912c9731c92

TIBCO SOFTWARE TIBCO SOFTWARE

AMD Radeon R9 290X Sneak Peek: Update Watch AMD's GPU14 Tech Day Live Stream Here

Update -  3:18PM EST- We've updated this page to include AMD's GPU14 Tech Day Live Stream. Slide down to the bottom of this post to catch it live! We’re attending AMD’s GPU14 Tech Day Event currently taking place in Hawaii and have some interesting pictures to show you. During a dinner event last night at the Missouri...

Source: http://hothardware.com/News/AMD-Radeon-R9-290X-Sneak-Peek/

SUN MICROSYSTEMS STANDARD MICROSYSTEMS

Twitter enabling notifications for recommended content, powered by @MagicRecs

Constantly evolving algorithm recommends content that may be relevant to you

Twitter is rolling out a new feature to its first-party mobile apps that will push notifications to you for recommended content on the service. The feature comes after a trial with willing users following the @MagicRecs account, which is a Twitter experiment to build a recommendation engine for finding users and content on the service.

These recommendations are now integrated into the Twitter apps themselves, without the need to follow the @MagicRecs account. You will now start to see push notifications for new content that may be relevant to you if you're using the official app.

Before you get too up in arms, Twitter is quick to remind us that you can turn off recommendation notifications (or any notification type, for that matter) in the app's settings. Just head to the Twitter app > settings > account > notifications and uncheck "Recommendations," second from the bottom.

Source: Twitter Blog

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/z5xFa6EtAAY/story01.htm

WESTERN DIGITAL VOLT INFORMATION SCIENCES