Archive for the ‘Google Reader’ Category
The greatest rant you’ll see this week: World War II is full of plot holes, and the writers should all be fired [This Is Awesome]
13
Jul
Google demos codeless Android development tool for students
12
Jul
Google has announced a new browser-based visual development tool called App Inventor that allows users to create Android applications without having to write any code. It appears to be aimed primarily at students.
App Inventor enables user interface design with a simple drag-and-drop layout system. The behavior of the user interface elements can be programmed via a visual development system that the user manipulates by organizing blocks with specific programming characteristics into various structures. The blocks can be dragged around and snapped into each other to form relatively sophisticated programs. This aspect of App Inventor is based on Scratch, an MIT visual programming language.
The compiler that translates the blocks into Android bytecode is built on top of the GNU Kawa framework, which provides a Scheme-based intermediate language. It's worth noting that Kawa can also be used standalone to build entire Android applications with Scheme.
We were not able to test App Inventor ourselves because it is still in closed beta and is not broadly available to the general public yet. If you want to try it yourself, you will have to register on the Google Labs website and wait for approval. For more details, see the official introduction and demo video.
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Oldest Written Document Discovered in Jerusalem
12
Jul
Archaeologists have dated this clay fragment, found in Jerusalem, to the 14th Century B.C. It’s the oldest known example of written language:
The fragment that has been found is 2×2.8 centimeters in size and one centimeter thick. Dated to the 14th century B.C.E., it appears to have been part of a tablet and contains cuneiform symbols in ancient Akkadian (the lingua franca of that era).
The words the symbols form are not significant in themselves, but what is significant is that the script is of a very high level, testifying to the fact that it was written by a highly skilled scribe that in all likelihood prepared tablets for the royal household of the time, said Prof. Wayne Horowitz , a scholar of Assyriology at the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology.
Link via reddit | Photo: Hebrew University photo/Sasson Tiram
King Leonidas vs. Chuck Norris
12
Jul
(YouTube Link)
Who will win in this grand battle between the toughest, most savage men ever?
Judging from the visual style and sound effects, I’d guess that this video was created by the same Russian ad agency responsible for the Mario vs. Pac-Man video.
via Digg | Previously: Super Chuck Norris Bros.
Cells have many ways to live, only a couple of ways to die
12
Jul
Robert Horvitz's Nobel Prize came largely for his work in turning a small, transparent worm that lives in the dirt into an experimental system that has won several others Nobel Prizes since. But his pioneering use of C. elegans came about because he was interested in a problem that was simply easier to address in the animal: how and when cells in an organism choose to die through a process called apoptosis. It was his research in this field that was the focus of his talk at the Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting.
You might not be aware of it, but many of an animal's cells kill themselves for the greater good of the organism they're part of. In adults, cells with a viral infection or extensive DNA damage (or immune cells that react to the body itself) are induced to commit an organized suicide, slicing up their DNA into short fragments and packaging up their membranes and proteins for easy digestion by their neighbors. The process also takes place during development: we all have webbing between our digits in utero that's gone by birth, and millions of apparently healthy neurons die off to form the adult brain.
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Lab tests: Why Consumer Reports can’t recommend the iPhone 4
12
Jul
Lab test: Apple iPhone 4 design defect confirmed
[UPDATE July 14, 2010: We've also tested another remedy to the iPhone's antenna issue. See: Apple's Bumper case alleviates the iPhone 4 signal-loss problem. —Ed.]
[UPDATE JULY 13, 2010: We’ve received many comments and questions regarding this blog post. See our latest post: Why Apple—and not its customers—should fix the iPhone 4. —Ed.]
It's official. Consumer Reports' engineers have just completed testing the iPhone 4, and have confirmed that there is a problem with its reception. When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone's lower left side—an easy thing, especially for lefties—the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you're in an area with a weak signal. Due to this problem, we can't recommend the iPhone 4.
We reached this conclusion after testing all three of our iPhone 4s (purchased at three separate retailers in the New York area) in the controlled environment of CU's radio frequency (RF) isolation chamber. In this room, which is impervious to outside radio signals, our test engineers connected the phones to our base-station emulator, a device that simulates carrier cell towers (see video: IPhone 4 Design Defect Confirmed). We also tested several other AT&T phones the same way, including the iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre. None of those phones had the signal-loss problems of the iPhone 4.
Our findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4's signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software that "mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength."
The tests also indicate that AT&T's network might not be the primary suspect in the iPhone 4's much-reported signal woes.
One solution to the Apple iPhone 4's antenna
problem is to cover the lower left corner with tape.
problem is to cover the lower left corner with tape.
We did, however, find an affordable solution for suffering iPhone 4 users: Cover the antenna gap with a piece of duct tape or another thick, non-conductive material. It may not be pretty, but it works. We also expect that using a case would remedy the problem. We'll test a few cases this week and report back.
The signal problem is the reason that we did not cite the iPhone 4 as a "recommended" model, even though its score in our other tests placed it atop the latest Ratings of smart phones that were released today.
The iPhone scored high, in part because it sports the sharpest display and best video camera we've seen on any phone, and even outshines its high-scoring predecessors with improved battery life and such new features as a front-facing camera for video chats and a built-in gyroscope that turns the phone into a super-responsive game controller. But Apple needs to come up with a permanent—and free—fix for the antenna problem before we can recommend the iPhone 4.
[UPDATE: Some commentary suggests we've retracted an earlier recommendation of the iPhone 4. In fact, our first blog on the iPhone 4's performance, and a followup comparing it to the Motorola Droid X, were based on preliminary testing, as we stated. Those earlier tests did not address antenna performance. We recommend products only after all tests are complete, and as part of our full smart phone Ratings. —Paul Reynolds]
If you want an iPhone that works well without a masking-tape fix, we continue to recommend an older model, the 3G S. (The full list of recommended smart phones models appears as part of our latest Ratings, available to subscribers.)
—Mike Gikas
You Are Not Authorized to See These Pictures of the Oil Spill, Citizen … Do Not Look!
11
Jul
Preface: The title is a parody of the fact that the government has effectively made it a felony to take pictures of oiled wildlife. Apologists for the new law say that photographers can simply use a telephoto lense to get the shots. But the best shots can only be taken from up close.
Indeed, BP has tried to cover up its blunders by lowballing spill estimates, keeping reporters out of areas hardest hit by the oil (and see this, this, this and this) and threatening to arrest them if they try to take pictures (and see this), hiding dead birds and other sealife, and using dispersants to hide the amount of spilled oil (the dispersants are only worsening the damage caused by the spill).
This post is focused on showing the dead birds and other sealife which BP is trying to hide.
(Dead fish on Grand Isle)
(Baby tern stuck in an oil patch on Grand Isle beach, with nearby fish abandoned by the bird's mother)
(Hermit crabs covered in oil on the shore of Grand Terre Island in Barataria Bay)
Stop! You are not authorized to see any more pictures of the oil spill, Citizen ... Do not look!
