Review: Wireless speaker system keeps rooms in sync

Despite all the entertainment options the digital age has unlocked, one-button simplicity is fast disappearing. Take music, for example. A sizable portion of the world's discography is available on demand and often hyperpersonalized to our tastes. However, this access requires clicking, tapping, searching and queuing, rather than punching a single button on, say, a radio.
Meet the Sonos wireless speaker system, which is set up in a way that lets anyone in the house figure out how to pump up the jams. (This can be a good or a bad thing, depending on their tastes.)
I've spent the last week testing a pair of Play:3 speakers, which Sonos introduced a few weeks ago. It is the least expensive speaker the company offers, but at $299 each, these are still luxury items. The costs add up because the Sonos concept doesn't pay off until you purchase units for several rooms.

LinkedIn's new mobile app loosens its tie

LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, has a suit-and-tie type of reputation in the flip-flops-and-hoodies world of the Internet. But the company's new mobile app -- for Android, Apple iOS and mobile Web browsers (sorry businessy BlackBerry users) -- is trying to change that buttoned-up image a bit.
Released Tuesday morning, the LinkedIn app is faster, more visual and more social than its predecessors. It also tries to distance the network -- known for helping business types make connections, swap resumes and get jobs -- from competitors like Facebook and Twitter.
The new LinkedIn "looks less like a clone of the Facebook app," writes Ben Parr at the tech-news blog Mashable, which is a content partner of CNN Tech.
The blog TheNextWeb says the app has a "slick, highly visual interface."
VentureBeat says the app is "so gorgeous, you'll actually want to use it."
This, of course, implies something that's perhaps obvious to tech insiders: No one really wanted to use LinkedIn on the go before. I had to try four passwords before I could remember how to log into my account when I downloaded the app for this story. People tend to check LinkedIn's site every now and then -- unlike Facebook and Twitter, which people update constantly, and from all over the place.
Here are some of the new mobile features on LinkedIn:
• Groups, which let people talk about shared business interests
• "People you may know" feature, to help you find contacts
• New navigation around four simplified topics: Updates, You, Inbox and Groups
• Speed: The new app is 10 times faster, LinkedIn said in a blog post
• And the company released an HTML 5 mobile website
LinkedIn is the third largest online social network, with 120 million users compared to pack leader Facebook, which has 750 million. Twitter has more than 175 million users.
The company's mobile products have seen a 400% increase in traffic since this time last year, LinkedIn says in a blog post Tuesday, without giving the total mobile traffic number, or its mobile user stats.
A video promoting the new app says the mobile version of LinkedIn will give the suits "meeting intelligence."

"You can quickly search for someone's LinkedIn profile before walking into a meeting," the video says. "The profile will show connections you have in common, and a bit about their background, including companies they worked at, schools they attended and recent updates. These kind of insights can break the ice for any first meeting."

Apple releases first Lion update

Rev up your Software Updaters, because Apple has released its first update to Mac OS X Lion. The 10.7.1 update is recommended for all Lion users and contains fixes for a number of sanity-eroding issues, and there's even a special 10.7.1 version for the 2011 MacBook Air and Mac mini.
The main update for those of us who don't own the latest and greatest Apple releases addresses issues that caused the system to hang when watching a video in Safari and audio to stop working when using HDMI or optical audio out.
There were also some complaints about flaky WiFi, and some users ran into problems when trying to migrate their data to a new Mac running Lion -- both of which have been resolved, according to Apple.
Most annoyingly, some Lion users said that their main admin accounts were missing after upgrading to Lion, which has apparently been fixed.
For the 2011 MacBook Air, Apple has applied all the same updates, plus a fix for a problem that caused the Air to boot up when the MagSafe connector was attached and another related to flickering displays.
The Mac mini also got a fix for a problem that caused the SD card slot to operate at reduced speeds.
It's a bit early to tell whether Apple sneaked other bug fixes into this update, but some users are still holding out hope that it will help speed up their systems after upgrading.

If you have already applied the update, do you see improvements?

Bringing solar light bulbs to the world

It started with such a simple concept: A solar light bulb that charges up during the day and lights the night when the sun sets. Inventor Steve Katsaros perfected his design in June 2010, and four days later he had a patent in hand.
He knew it was a good product, but he didn't know what to do with it.
"It wasn't until after we created it that we asked ourselves, 'How do we market this,'" Katsaros says. "And we learned that the largest market was the developing world."
As Katsaros began researching markets in developing countries, he began to realize that his solar light bulb could potentially make a huge impact on the 1.4 billion people around the world who don't have access to an electrical grid.
Many use fuel lamps that burn kerosene, which is costly, dirty and can also be unhealthy.
He dubbed his company Nokero -- short for "No Kerosene" -- and set out to get his bulbs into as many hands a possible in the developing world.

Quiz: How do I apply for jobs online?

For the most part, e-mail makes our lives easier. It allows for instant written communication. It grants us permission to politely ignore friends and contacts for hours or even days at a time. It prevents us from having to actually get up and talk to other people in our offices and eliminates the need to use one's vocal chords for entire 24-hour stretches.
But there's one realm where e-mail makes life unnecessarily confusing: The online job application process.
A gleaming white new message pane just isn't the ideal space for cobbling together what was once a little packet printed on fancy résumé paper and mailed to the hiring manager in a large orange envelope.
The U.S. economy added 117,000 jobs last month, perhaps a sign that looking for a new gig won't be a Herculean feat for much longer now.
Test your e-application know-how and ace the logistics of the application process. (How you actually perform at the interview, well, that's your own problem.)
1. Ahoy, a job listing for a position that actually interests you! The classified says to send a résumé and cover letter to such-and-such e-mail. You polish up your resume and:
a) Attach it to the e-mail as a Word doc. That's what you've been writing it in, after all.
b) Attach it as a PDF.
c) Include a link to your Linked In profile or the CV section of your website.
2. Now what to do with this cover letter? You:
a) Paste it into the body of the e-mail.
b) Attach it to the e-mail and leave the body blank.
c) Attach it to the e-mail and include a quick note in the body.
3. Time to fill in the subject line. You:
a) Use something generic, like "Project engineer application"
b) Get bold, along the lines of "Meet your new project engineer."
c) Give the generic subject line a twist, a la, "Enthusiastic project engineer application: John Smith."
4. You're an on-the-hunt journalist or graphic designer. (Sorry to hear it.) The job listing asks for samples of your work. You:
a) Include links to articles online or PDFs on your website.
b) Attach PDFs of your clips.
c) Ask the hiring editor to view your work at yourwebsite.com. Surely she can figure out where the CV section is.
ANSWERS:
1: b. Don't forget, the human on the other end of that e-mail might use a different version of Word, or nothing but Googledocs, or some weird open-source version of Microsoft Office. She opens up your carefully crafted, one-page, two-column résumé and -- poof -- it looks like a multipage mess.
Converting your resume to a PDF is easy in Word: Just go to Print, then click on PDF and "Save as PDF." If your resume lives in Googledocs, PDF is one of the available formats for converting the file.
Just don't send over your résumé directly from Googledocs -- anyone over the age of 40 has mild conniptions when a file is sent their way via Googledocs, according to unpublished research from the authors.
2: a or c. Using your cover letter as the body of the e-mail is a smooth solution -- it saves the hiring manager a step. Remember to skip indents and use spaces between paragraphs so the whole thing's easy to read.
If you prefer to send your cover letter as a Word doc or PDF, take the time to tap out a polite, formal note in the body of an e-mail; the first paragraph of the cover letter works, or a simple "Please find my résumé and cover letter attached" will suffice.
3: c. You need to include the job title in the subject because the boss will likely use it as a search term to view all applications at once. Label it something fancy and you'll get lost in his overflowing inbox.
(You'll also look like a tool. So.) Including your name and perhaps a non-annoying modifier will help him easily call up your materials.
4: b...or possibly a. We're of the mind that the hiring manager shouldn't have to do a lick of work to view your entire application, so attached PDFs win the zero-effort prize. (Digging around in one's Downloads folder for some applicant's confusingly labeled clip? Not ideal.)
But some managers' inboxes are always on the brink of certain collapse due to the crush of thousands of e-mails and large attachments. It's your call; you can always attach one or two and provide a direct link to more.

Just don't tell the manager to go rooting around on your website for more -- in the absence of the paper-clipped, manila-enveloped job application, handing over the whole shebang is your task, not hers. If you're high-maintenance at this point, she's not exactly going to want to be dealing with you on a daily basis.

Skype app lets you pay for Wi-Fi by the minute

You can now use Skype credit to pay for Wi-Fi access on your iPhone or iPad. The Internet phone giant launched "Skype WiFi" in the Apple store Wednesday, an app that allows you to connect to more than 1 million Wi-Fi hotspots around the world -- and only pay for the minutes you use.
Unlike hotspot services such as Boingo (which powers Skype's mobile Wi-Fi service), which require a day pass or a monthly subscription, Skype Wifi charges Wi-Fi users by the minute.
Access rates start at $0.06 per minute, but may be more depending on the provider. The service has previously been available for laptops under the label "Skype Access."
Why would anyone want to pay for Internet if they have a mobile phone with a data plan? In a blog post about the new feature, Skype suggests it might be useful for avoiding data roaming charges abroad. We might add that it's extremely helpful when your iPhone's 3G signal is weak, and you just want to download that one vital email.

If you find mobile access to pay-per-minute Wi-Fi tempting, you can try the app for free this weekend -- August 20 and 21 -- for 60 minutes.

New IBM computer chip mimics the human brain

Making computers behave like humans has taken another step forward. IBM on Thursday announced it has created a chip designed to imitate the human brain's ability to understand its surroundings, act on things that happen around it and make sense of complex data.
Instead of requiring the type of programming that computers have needed for the past half-century, the experimental chip will let a new generation of computers, called "cognitive computers," learn through their experiences and form their own theories about what those experiences mean.
The chips revealed Thursday are a step in a project called SyNAPSE (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics). The two chip prototypes are a step toward letting computers "reason" instead of reacting solely based on data that has been pre-programmed, IBM says.
"Imagine traffic lights that can integrate sights, sounds and smells and flag unsafe intersections before disaster happens," said Dharmendra Modha, the project leader for IBM Research. "Or imagine cognitive co-processors that turn servers, laptops, tablets and phones into machines that can interact better with their environments."
The chips' processing power is not unlike that of IBM's Watson supercomputer that beat two human champions on "Jeopardy!" this year.
Other scenarios the researchers envision: A computing system that could monitor the world's water supply -- measuring things like temperature, pressure, wave height and acoustics -- then give a warning when it thinks a tsunami is likely.
Or imagine a sensor that a grocery store owner could use to read sights, smells and temperatures and give an alert that produce may have gone bad.
"The computers we have today are more like calculators," Modha told tech blog VentureBeat. "We want to make something like the brain. It is a sharp departure from the past."
One of the prototype cores contains what amounts to 262,144 programmable synapses, and the other contains 65,536 learning synapses.
Using the chips, IBM researchers have built a "brain wall" at a San Jose, California, lab. The long-term goal? A one-square-centimeter chip with the equivalent of 1 million neurons and 10 billion synapses.
Modha and other researchers say that using current programming techniques, any computer that approached what they're trying with the SyNAPSE project would have to be larger and would suck up more energy.
For the next phase of SyNAPSE, IBM has assembled teams from Columbia University, Cornell University, the University of California, Merced and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Phase 2 of the project has been rewarded $21 million in funding from DARPA, the U.S. military's research branch.

'The Sims' comes to Facebook

What do you get when you combine the top-selling PC game franchise of all time with the world's biggest social network? A whole lot of people living the "life" they choose and sharing it on Facebook.
"The Sims Social" takes the classic life simulation game and transforms it into a social experience that allows players to interact in ways they could never do before in "The Sims" franchise.
John Buchanan, vice president of marketing at EA Play (Electronic Arts), said PC gamers could always share elements of the game with their friends, but could never actually play with their friends.
"For a community that is as social as 'The Sims' is, to be able to now let them play 'The Sims' on the No. 1 social platform in Facebook, it's just a perfect marriage," Buchanan said. "Then you realize how popular it is from a community standpoint: With over 7 million Facebook fans, it is a perfect opportunity to create an experience for those fans out there."
Developers at Playfish Games wanted to bring an authentic feel to the social network game. As in "Sims" games of the past, players start off by creating their Sims, giving them personalities and building homes for them to live in.
The change in gameplay occurs when your Sim begins exploring the world, building skills and going on quests. Now, friends in the game can be involved in helping (or hindering) the development of your character.
Through Facebook wall posts and feeds, everyone can see what's going on with characters Are they falling in love? Are they breaking up? Did they put a spider on someone's toilet seat?
Relationship building is one key element that was made easier by bringing the game to the social platform. Sim characters can become friends, fall in love, get married and break up, which helps the characters develop and increase in levels.
Buchanan said players can show off quests they complete with their Facebook posts. Characters can work toward personal goals, like building the most beautiful home, and highlight the player's creativity and expressiveness through their in-game choices.
"You can also build your skills by becoming an artist, being a musician by playing the piano, or becoming a writer," Buchanan points out. "These are different skills that let you explore life and level up your Sim as they go about their lives in ways that your friends are going to be able to explore with you."
However, not all friend experiences may be friendly. Buchanan said they expect players to get emotionally attached to their Sim and the events their Sim goes through. So if a game relationship goes sour, the game offers ways to ... get even.
"It's going to offer me an opportunity to have some fun, to have some pranks," he said. "I might put a spider in the bed. I might turn my relationship into an enemy or into an archenemy, and then we turn into frienemies and we might have a boxing match."
Buchanan quickly points out that the pranks are never permanent and are just to have some fun and an opportunity for competition between real friends. This, in turn, will create interaction off Facebook with the chance to talk about what is happening in-game and compare Sims characters between friends, leading to what Buchanan hopes is a richer experience with "The Sims Social."
Technically, the interface for the Facebook game will be different from the PC version, but Buchanan said it should be familiar for PC players.
The game interface had to be changed to fit within the Facebook platform, but developers still wanted it to be easy to use.
With more than 140 million copies of the PC game sold in the past 10 years, it would seem there is a ready-made fan base for "The Sims Social."
Buchanan said the attention, even before the game launched, was amazing.
"We already have over 1.3 million fans of the game (on Facebook). One would say yes, they've been clamoring for the game and are incredibly excited."
Buchanan said they are also developing an app that will allow players to take "The Sims Social" experience on the go. "The Sims Social" is free to play on Facebook, and there is an opportunity to advance your skills faster by using micro-transactions to pay for skill points.
Sim Cash enables players to accelerate their gameplay, but it isn't necessary to play or advance. In case you were wondering, yes, your Facebook Sim will have access to a computer in the game, but no, your Facebook Sim will not be able to play "The Sims Social" in the Facebook game.

Making Bacteria Make More Fuel Engineered E. coli convert sugar to butanol 10 times faster than other microbes.

A new microbe engineering trick could potentially make butanol, a promising biofuel, so cheaply that it could compete with ethanol. By tapping into a highly efficient metabolic pathway, scientists at Rice University engineered E. coli to convert sugars to butanol 10 times more efficiently than any other organism.
Butanol, which is typically made by fermenting sugar, packs more energy per gallon than ethanol and can be shipped via existing oil pipelines.
Several companies are now trying to commercialize biobutanol, including some seeking to retrofit existing ethanol facilities. However, the bugs normally used to produce butanol don't tolerate it well and so produce only small quantities. "You can get over 10 percent ethanol in the fermentation process from corn," says Jonathan Mielenz, a biofuels researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. "Butanol is nothing near that level. It's typically not much more than 1 or 2 percent."
The new E. coli work faster than other fuel-producing microbes. They also produce five to 10 times more fuel from the same amount of sugar. That means they require less sugar feedstock and can be grown in smaller vessels, cutting capital and operational costs. Ramon Gonzalez, a chemical and biomolecular engineering professor who led the work, says that several companies have shown interest in the technology, and he expects to see it on the market within the next three years.
Cobalt Biofuels, a biobutanol startup based in Mountainview, California, uses Clostridium bacteria to break down plant matter and convert the resulting sugars into a mix of butanol, acetone, and ethanol. Gevo, a company based in Englewood, Colorado is working with E. coli that are altered to divert some of their metabolites, which would otherwise be involved in synthesizing amino acids, toward alcohol production. And Butamax, a joint venture between Dupont and BP, is using genetically modified yeast.
Gonzalez and his colleagues outlined their new approach in a paper published online in the journal Nature. The researchers tapped into a pathway that microbes use to break down fatty acids, which are hydrocarbon molecules, to generate energy. They modified about a dozen genes in E. coli to reverse this beta-oxidation pathway so that the microbes build fatty acids.
The method is more efficient than others because it adds two carbon atoms at a time, rather than one, to the hydrocarbon molecules being formed. "What makes it really efficient is that the mechanism by which those two carbon atoms are added to the chain doesn't require [energy]," Gonzalez says.
By selectively manipulating genes, the researchers can program the microbes to synthesize many different fuels and chemicals. In addition to butanol, the bacteria can produce various useful fatty acids that existing processes derive from plant and animal oils.
Because the beta-oxidation pathway is found in nearly all organisms, it could also be engineered in yeast and algae, which might make it easier for many different companies to adopt the technology, Gonzalez says. He is looking at modifying various organisms with the goal of making the process even cheaper and more efficient. Yeast, for instance, are more tolerant to ethanol and butanol, he says—but E. coli grow faster.
However, in the end, cautions Mielenz, all biobutanol processes face the crucial challenge of requiring a switch from food sources such as corn, sugarcane or beets for their sugar feedstock to cellulosic biomass, which is more expensive to convert to fuels.

Personal Security A wearable jamming technology could protect patients with implants from potentially life-threatening attacks.

Many medical implants, such as insulin pumps and pacemakers, are equipped with wireless radios that let doctors download data about the patient's condition and adjust the behavior of the implant. But these devices are vulnerable to hackers who can eavesdrop on stored data or even reprogram the implant, causing, for example, a pacemaker to shock a heart unnecessarily. While it may be possible to engineer new, more secure implants, millions of people are walking around with vulnerable devices that can't be replaced without surgery. An anti-hacking device presented this week at the annual SIGCOMM communications conference in Toronto may offer them a solution.
Created by researchers from MIT and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the laptop-sized device, called "the shield," emits a jamming signal whenever it detects an unauthorized wireless link being established between an implant and a remote terminal (which can be out of sight and tens of meters away).  Although no attack of this kind is known to have occurred , "it's important to solve these kinds of problems before the risk becomes a tenable threat," says Kevin Fu, an associate professor of computer science at UMass and one of the developers of the shield. Fu was Technology Review's Young Innovator of the Year in 2009 for his work in uncovering the previously unsuspected danger that hackers pose to implant wearers.
The key innovation is the new radio design that the shield uses for jamming. "If you just do simple jamming [broadcasting radio noise on a given frequency], then the attacker doesn't get the information, but the doctor doesn't either," says Dina Katabi, another developer of the shield and an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. Instead, the shield allows a jamming signal to be broadcast while it simultaneously receives data signals from the implant and relays them over a secure link. So doctors can still download data and confirm adjustments even while the shield is jamming an attacker.
Normally, trying to get a radio to detect data while it's broadcasting on the same frequency is like attaching a hearing aid to a megaphone on full blast and expecting the hearing aid to pick up a nearby conversation. Earlier attempts to make radios capable of simultaneously transmitting and receiving on the same frequency relied on a carefully spaced trio of antennas. But at the frequencies used in medical devices (about 400 megahertz), this spacing would result in a jamming device far too big for a person to carry. Instead, the researchers worked out how to use two closely spaced antennas: one for receiving and the other for broadcasting the jamming signal. The trick is to feed an "antidote" signal to the jamming signal into the receiving antenna, canceling out the jamming noise.

iClassics Brings Classical Music Discovery to the iPad

There are plenty of apps available for all sorts of different music genres, but the newly announced iClassics from Deutsche Grammophon and Decca Classics is something a little different, as it’s a classical music discovery app that has been developed exclusively for the iPad. Basically, the free app enables the user to explore the recordings from both labels’ vast catalogues, featuring the likes of Pavarotti, Cecilia Bartoli, Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel, Leonard Bernstein, Anna Netrebko, Renee Fleming etc) in a new and interactive way.


The app uses a unique tagging interface that gives the user the ability to search, and mix and match, composers, instruments and even moods, catering to both classical music novices and established fans. The app also includes an interactive composer timeline featuring over 100 composers ranging from the medieval time period through to the present. And, if you want to share your love for the music with your friends on Facebook and Twitter, you can do that too! Free updates will include new recordings and new features as and when they become available. Here are some of the app’s key features:

• Interactive Tagging Interface
• Free Streaming Deutsche Grammophon & Decca Classics
• Radio
• Streaming Audio Samples
• Integration directly with the iTunes Music Store
• Facebook integration
• Twitter integration
• Apple AirPlay enabled

"Classical music is an incredibly rich experience, but the sheer variety of composers, performers and interpretations can be daunting for some," said Max Hole, Chief Operating Officer, Universal Music Group International, who is responsible for UMG's market-leading classical music labels worldwide. "This new, exciting iClassics app simplifies this complex world and guides music lovers to the finest recordings of the masterpieces performed by the world's top performers in an enjoyable, user-friendly way. Our goal is to help more people discover this extraordinary world."

Sounds like a great idea for people to learn more about classical music, and its getting nothing but five-star ratings in the iTunes store so far!

Domestically, the HTC EVO 3D has been getting plenty of face time with customers in spreading the word about the hoopla surrounding 3D capabilities with smartphones, but surely enough, LG’s offering is prowling in the cover waiting for the right time to strike. Although it’s been available across the big pond over in Europe where it’s better known as the LG Optimus 3D, US consumers have been waiting patiently to check out the alternative with AT&T’s version in the LG Thrill 4G – though, we’re still in the dark in regards to an actual release date. Nevertheless, we’re sure that its $99.99 on-contract price will keep potential owners in constant grasp until its arrival.

Even despite being AT&T’s very first 3D capable smartphone, the LG Thrill 4G retains the typical packaging found with most of the carrier’s offerings.  Naturally, images of the handset are splattered in the front and back of the box to offer would-be buyers that subtle tease, but besides that, there’s nothing else too noteworthy with it. Inside, we’re presented with the common set of accessories and documentation – like its microUSB cable and wall charger. However, we’re ecstatic to find a microHDMI cable included with the retail packaging! That’s spectacular in our books seeing that it’s not something you’d expect to be packed in, but more importantly, it’s just one nice gesture we’re glad to see come from AT&T and LG.

As for the actual handset, it’s exactly like the LG Optimus 3D in every way and form except for the prominent AT&T branding etched into its rear cover. We’ve talked about the handset’s design extensively before, but it’s worth noting that the handset is preloaded with an 8GB microSD card. Another thing worth mentioning about the LG Thrill 4G, besides its obvious 3D display and capture, is the fact that it’s an HSPA+ Category 10 enabled smartphone that’s good for up to theoretical download speeds of 14.4 Mbits/s. However, its choice of kicking it back with Android 2.2 Froyo might dissuade some people – but still, we’re certain that others are going to be more concerned with its 3D prowess. Finally, we notice right off the bat that the 3D display of the handset offers better viewing angles than what we’ve seen with the HTC EVO 3D.

In the end, is this going to be the smartphone to really get people bonkers about 3D technology with smartphones? We’ll be checking it out in the meantime to see how it handles.