Sinlung's Tabbloid
GIGAOM
Why Amazon Is Bucking the
Trend
MAR 02, 2009 05:00A.M.
Jeff Bezos, when he was peddling the new Kindle on Charlie Rose the other night, kept using the word "seamless." He wasn't talking about the device itself, of course, but the experience of the customer that uses it. Whatever you think about the Kindle, Bezos' choice of that word goes right to the heart of Amazon's own strategy, and the reason why the company, its operations and its stock have held up so well in the past few months. Everyone knows that Amazon's e-commerce site succeeded because its interface was intuitive to the point of being completely natural. What isn't discussed as much is the ethic behind that success: Simplicity is hard. Just as Amazon went to great lengths and expense to make the Kindle experience seamless, it has gone to a considerable amount of trouble to adhere to what is a very simple corporate strategy: Make it easy for the customer, and make it cheap.
What's hard about that approach is sticking to it over year after year, even when technology is changing quickly and, more importantly, markets are extremely volatile. The success of such an approach could be found in another piece of news out of Amazon this week that didn't get as much attention as the Kindle but as far as the company's long-term outlook goes, could prove more important. It's about to become almost debt-free.
ENGADGET
iriver Japan looking to brand its
own e-reader?
MAR 02, 2009 04:26A.M.
Filed under: Displays, Handhelds
iriver Japan looking to brand its own e-reader? originally appeared on
Engadget on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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GIGAOM
Top 10 Tech Companies That
Pay Engineers The Most
MAR 02, 2009 04:08A.M.
It's hardly a surprise that Google is leading the pack, but the composition of top 10is pretty interesting. It's good to see the old stalwarts, especially chipmakers (who are facing some seriously tough times), are staying competitive. Too bad their stocks aren't doing so well — but then, what do they say about buying low? :-) I am surprised, however, by the absence of Cisco Systems and Intel.
Rank Employer Avg Salary Avg Bonus Avg Total Pay 1 Google $106,666 $42,759 $149,425 2 Synopsys $118,908 $15,189 $134,096 3 Broadcom $115,093 $15,023 $130,116 4 Xiinx $114,996 $11, 7 7 9 $126,775 5 Yahoo $114,280 $12,441 $126,721 6 KLA-Tencor $110,227 $15,611 $125,838 7 Sun Microsystems $118,358 $7,356 $125,714 8 Intuit $107,740 $16,349 $1 2 4 ,089 9 Vmware $100,817 $19,768 $120,585 10 NVIDIA $112,291 $8,095 $120,386
Green your IT. Save Money. Save the Planet » Register at $295/ $ 4 9 5 regular»
Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM's Green:Net.
MeeVee A Ghost Town, All
Employees "Inactive."
LiveUniverse CEO Greenspan
Still Nuts.
MAR 02, 2009 03:08A.M.
(The picture makes sense once you read to the end). A former MeeVee employee emails in to say that he hasn't received his 2008 tax forms from the company, and that no one will pick up the phone to say when he might receive them. We emailed Brad Greenspan, the CEO of parent company LiveUniverse (MeeVee was acquired in May 2008) for a comment. His response: "LiveUniverse is in business" (not what we asked, but good to know), and "...we haven't had any meevee employees active in afew months as we consolidate operations of that website with afew others."
We speculated on the health of the parent company last month after a number of high profile outages and claims by employees and business partners that they were going unpaid, but Greenspan insists LiveUniverse remains a going concern.
Always a colorful character, Greenspan (who made $48 million in the
2005 sale of MySpace to News Corp.) also sent us a few unsolicited follow up emails this evening, pointing to a presentation on a company that he invested in called Borba that sells beauty products, and saying
that he's "working on a rival to techcrunch so many pretty little users
that can be sold at a high cpm yum yum....give me some." In anotheremail, Greenspan sent naked pictures of a woman with the message "OH AND MY CURRENT GIRL FRIEND. PLAYBOY BUNNY. RECENTPICS SHE PASSED ME THAT WERE PUBLISHED RECENTLY. SO IM SURESHE WONT MIND ME PASSING THEM TO YOU BIG GUY!!!"
Ever dutiful to our readers, we post a headshot of one of the photos Greenspan sent us above (it's worth repeating that he sent these as a response to our question of whether MeeVee was still in business). For the rest, I guess you have to go to Playboy.
Back to MeeVee, though: It looks like it's in the DeadPool.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Fujitsu Siemens introduces
"zero-watt" Esprimo 7935 PC
MAR 02, 2009 03:02A.M.
PC, which supposedly consumes no energy at all when it's powered off, as opposed to the one to four watts an average PC consumes unless it's actually unplugged. As you may recall, Fujitsu has already gotten in a bit of practice with its zero-watt monitor, although the PC takes things a bit farther by switching into in a low-power mode for a predetermined time period each day to get its necessary business done, after which it cuts the power off completely. According to Fujitsu, the PC also comes with a power adapter that's 89 percent efficient and, to add a bit more ecofriendly cred, it also conforms to the EPA's new Energy Star 5.0 standard. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any word of the PC's specs just yet, but we're assuming it's yet another variation on Fujitsu's current Esprimo 7935 PC (pictured above), which itself is available in a seemingly endless variety of configurations. Look for the zero-watt model to set you back between €600 and €700 (or $760 to $890) when it launches sometime around the middle of this year.
Filed under: Desktops
Fujitsu Siemens introduces "zero-watt" Esprimo 7935 PC originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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ENGADGET
Apple planning a March 24
event?
MAR 02, 2009 02:34A.M.
We're not exactly making plans yet, but word on the street is that Apple's planning a March24 desktop hardware event. Both World ofApple (which has a decent track record) and a site called My Apple Guide (which we've never heard of but apparently has a "rough" prediction history) say the event's on the books, and considering the age of the iMac and Mac mini and the uptick in rumors lately, it's certainly plausible. We'll wait until we get an official invite before we start making bold predictions, but we're definitely hoping for a mini with at least 25 USB ports housed inside an old Disk][.
[Thanks, iB3nji]
Read - World of Apple Read - My Apple Guide
Filed under: Desktops
Apple planning a March24 event? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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WebMynd isn't the first browser plugin to offer complementary results from other sites, but what it lacks in originally it makes up for with its polished execution. After installing the plugin, users simply visit one of the supported search engines (which include Google, Yahoo, and Live Search), and search for a query as usual. The plugin inserts a handful of small widgets at the right hand of the screen, each of which includes the first few matches of the same query from sites like Twitter, Amazon, or Digg. Users can choose from over 25 different search sites that they'd like to include in their results. The inserted widgets take some getting used to, but in practice they're surprisingly useful.
The Firefox version of the new plugin also incorporates WebMynd's historical archiving technology, which was the company's primary focus when it launched (The IE version doesn't offer this yet, but it is on the way). The archiving feature allows users to search through a comprehensive history of the pages they've visited, including the full text of each recently visited page (users can choose to turn the feature off during the plug-in's initial setup process or at any time down the line).
CEO Amir Nathoo says that the company plans to monetize the new search enhancement by offering a white-labeled version of the plugin. Companies are able to set their search results as the default widget in the sidebar, though users are still free to customize the widget with their favorite sites after installation. A branded version of the widget can be seen at Fluther.com, and WebMynd is currently seeking other partners.
ENGADGET
GPS-equipped Sony HDR
XR520V camcorder now
available to order
MAR 02, 2009 01:07A.M.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
[Thanks, Dave]Filed under: Digital Cameras, GPS
GPS-equipped Sony HDR-XR520V camcorder now available to order originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Red Xbox 360 Resident Evil
Limited Edition spotted in the
wild
MAR 02, 2009 12:02A.M.
Most work spaces you'll see us feature here are home and commercial offices, but on occasion we find a good reason to break the pattern—like this garage turned into a gorgeous craft room.
New 360 SKUs always seem to land on Target shelves a bit early, and the new Resident Evil 5 red Xbox 360 Elite limited edition is no exception — there it is, hanging out in Pembroke Pines, Florida. We don't know if these are just out behind the counter or if the staff is just ignoring that DO NOT SELL BEFORE 3.13.09 sticker, but we're certain some kind soul will let us know soon.
[Thanks, Morgan]
Filed under: Gaming
Red Xbox 360 Resident Evil Limited Edition spotted in the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 19:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
How did such a cool room come about? Atwater Village Newbie contributed the pictures to our Workspace Pool and shared the following backstory with us. She had a friend who was moving into her aunt's home with two children in tow. The aunt had been an avid quilter for years and had tons of quilting stuff, but not a whole lot of room for the kids to romp around. Several friends got together and helped consolidate all of the aunt's quilting and craft materials into the garage, creating the beautiful work room you see in the picture above. She even pulled the receipts to give us the dirt on how much it cost. So what can you get for $1,200, the labor of five friends, and some sweat equity?
Here's how you build a workable full-time quilting space from The end result of all the labor is both highly functional and visually
a living room and garage packed with moving boxes, giving 3 appealing. It wasn't a dirt cheap or simple fix, but the final product
generations of east-coast family some breathing room in their definitely shows that real effort, planning, and investment was put into
newly-combined west-coast home: the project.
The completed quilting room keeps 50+ years of quilting
- 3-day weekend materials all in one space, with great indirect light from the
garage door and spot lighting at the sewing table ... Privacy
- 5 friends for the quilter in the garage. Safety for the pre-schoolers in
the house. Sanity returned to the family.
- $975 worth of TROFAST storage from Ikea: 8 tall shelf units, 6 short shelf units, 51 small buckets (perfect for small fabric squares), 30 medium buckets, 8 large buckets
- $150 dumpster rental
- 4 levels of 6-foot Elfa shelves (already in the garage)
- 2 existing bookcases (for decades worth of quilting magazines and books)
- 36 squares of FLOR carpet, "bright stripes" and "bright solids," on wicked clearance sale, less than $15/6, found by scouring 5 different Target stores in Southern California
- 1 existing Koala sewing table
Atwater Village Newbie: Background Information on Quilting Room Photos of Garage Makeover [Flickr]
Val in gracht wordt olifant
Annabel fataal
MAR 01, 2009 11:51P.M.
EMMEN - Nadat ze uren voor haar leven had gevochten, hebben dierenartsen zondagavond besloten om olifant Annabel te laten inslapen.
Xbox 360 red ring of death
problems (finally) solved?
MAR 01, 2009 11:31P.M.
appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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LIFEHACKER
Get Rid of Your Clutter
Crutches to Finally Get Clean
[Clutter]
MAR 01, 2009 11:00P.M.
Is your Xbox 360 red in the face? No, not that kind of red, but facing that painstakingly loathsome red ring of death? Well, if group product manager Aaron Greenberg knows anything about the situation — and we'd imagine he does — then it looks like the guys at Microsoft have finally found a solution to many gamers' worst nightmares. In an interview with Edge Online, Greenberg said that through repairs they've done as well as updated technology, the guys in Redmond are pretty confident that afflicted consoles should be nonexistent in the not so distant future and that they've "put the worst behind us on this." So, breathe easy obsessive gamers, you needn't worry about getting an infected console any more — we hope.
[Via Yahoo! Games]
Filed under: Gaming
Xbox 360 red ring of death problems (finally) solved? originally
Erin at the Unclutterer blog has declared war on her "Clutter Crutches," the things in her environment that encourage the accumulation of clutter and mess. Photo by yimhafiz.
What exactly has she set her sights on? She offers this example of how such a simple, seemingly smart-minded thing in her physical environment lent itself to the collection of clutter:
When I am really busy at work, the first thing I cut out of my day are magazine and newspaper reading. All incoming magazines are stored in a "to read" Stockholm project case and hang out with the idea that I'll read them when things calm down. Except, when things calm down, I have that day's reading materials to tackle and not enough time to read two week's worth of information. I have a project case to hold my "to read" materials, but no set plan to ever empty the case.
Weeks and months pass, the box becomes jammed packed, and I end up tossing the materials straight into the recycling bin without ever looking at them. My crutch is this box, and all it does is create clutter.
I can relate. I ended up scraping the entire design of my office during my extreme office makeover because my clutter crutch wasn't just a bin—it was an entire multi-section desk.What about you? What clutter crutches exist in your environment that you could weed out? Share in the comments below and help your fellow readers think of things they can weed out in their own homes and offices.
Let go of Your Clutter Crutches [Unclutterer]
Meeste zetels voor Nationalisten
in Baskenland
MAR01, 2009 10:45P.M.
SAN SEBASTIAN - De Nationalistische Baskische Partij (PNV) heeft de meeste zetels gewonnen, maar wist niet de meerderheid te behalen bij de verkiezingen zondag in Spaans Baskenland.
SLATE MAGAZINE
Spending a day with Grover
Norquist among the believers.
MAR01, 2009 10:44P.M.
Grover Norquist always starts with a metaphor. Or two or three, if necessary. "Guys, there are two teams in American politics," he tells the group of young conservatives at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. "Our team, the Reagan Republicans," and "our friends on the left." He then describes President Obama's role in passing the stimulus bill in mixological terms: "If this is a martini, Obama would be the vermouth." Now the package is being divvied up like "after the bank robbery in the movie: One for you, one for you, one for you."
[more...]
LIFEHACKER
Ask the Commenters Roundup
[Hive Mind]
MAR01, 2009 10:30P.M.
- Is there any way to make Windows XP see multiple drives as one large volume?
- Is there a Skyp-like app that allows for free-to-cheap video conferencing?
- I need to reinstall Windows on my girlfriend's computer, how can I
make sure I backup everything important like registration keys?
- I've never flown with a laptop before, does anyone have good tips or tricks to share?
- How many of you use Google Docs over some Office software?
- Is it possible in Firefox to have a file Save As and then Open when done downloading, like in Internet Explorer?
- Is there an application that will display the contents of a folder directly onto the Windows desktop?
- What summer jobs do you recommend for a 14 year old with no prior work experience?
ENGADGET
Pentax bridge digital camera
image leaked ahead of PMA?
MAR01, 2009 10:28P.M.
NU.NL - ALGEMEEN
Twee woningen Winschoten in
deas
MAR01, 2009 10:25P.M.
WINSCHOTEN - Twee woningen aan de Boschsingel in het centrum van Winschoten zijn zondag door een langdurige brand volledig verwoest.
ENGADGET
Verizon's LG VX9600 Versa hits
store shelves todayMAR01, 2009 10:07P.M.
It appears the folks at Colorfoto.de
have erred in our favor. In an article for the Olympus E-620, a seemingly random image has popped up of a currently unknown Pentax digital camera. What makes it especially interesting is the appearance of an EVF / LCD option — which so far the company has not use for any of their models. It also bears a striking resemblance to a DSLR-esque "bridge" camera, which would make it Penny's first in that category. Looks like we've got another reason to anticipate next week's PMA.
[Via 1001 Noisy Cameras]
Filed under: Digital Cameras
Pentax bridge digital camera image leaked ahead of PMA? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 17:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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[Via Boy Genius Report]
Filed under: Cellphones
Verizon's LG VX9600 Versa hits store shelves today originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 17:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
If you're not content with smooshing all your food into a mini-cooler or a brown bag, behold the stackable, food-separating, shiny awesomeness of a tiffin carrier lunchbox.
Tiffins—derived from the Indian word for snack—are the Indian equivalent of the iconic steel lunch boxes that mid-century working men in United States carried. Essentially a tiffin is a series of stacking containers and lids secured by a tension clip on the side. Each compartment can be filled with a separate food or liquid, as demonstrated in the video below:Golfstaten geven 1,3 miljard aan
Gaza
MAR 01, 2009 09:59P.M.
RIYAD - De zes Golfstaten hebben zondag laten weten, dat ze 1,3 miljard euro doneren aan de Palestijnen voor de wederopbouw van de Gazastrook.
NU.NL - ALGEMEEN because it helps them from wandering off into a daydream."
Brand in woningen Winschoten
MAR 01, 2009 09:30P.M.
WINSCHOTEN - In twee woningen aan de Boschsingel in Winschoten woedt brand. Het vuur brak aan het eind van zondagmiddag uit op de zolder van een van de huizen.
LIFEHACKER
Doodling Increases Focus and
Recall [Mind Hacks]
MAR 01, 2009 09:00P.M.
How does it work? The scientists hypothesize the mental load it takes to absentmindedly draw is significantly smaller than the demands of a full-on fantasy, which leads your mind entirely away from the event you're supposed to be engaged in. That trickle of attention devoted to doodling appears to keep you focused in the present time, while giving you a release valve from a frustratingly over-long group session.
It should be noted that the doodling test subjects were doing some light doodling, like shading in boxes. So while abstract or simple shapes might be okay for your focus, try to scale it back if you find yourself crafting elaborate panoramas of medieval battle fields and epic space operas. Then again, your inspired re-imagining of the Sistine Chapel during the report on last quarter's profits per share might suggest a larger career assessment is in order.
A Sketchy Brain Booster: Doodling [Wired]
| NU.NL - ALGEMEEN Polderbaan zondagavond weer open MAR 01, 2009 08: 5 4 P.M. | ||
SCHIPHOL - De Polderbaan op Schiphol wordt zondagavond om 23 uur weer in gebruik genomen als landingsbaan. Het eerste deel van de nacht worden vijf tot acht vliegtuigen verwacht, meldt de luchtverkeersleiding. | ||
It turns out that your daydreaming doodles of infinite awesomeness not only help with long meetings, but can also help you remember what goes on during the meeting.
Photo by Bigbadvoo.In a study, scientists asked subjects to recall what they'd just heard in recordings—with some having dooled throughout, others not. The doodlers demonstrated significantly higher recall than the non-doodlers.
"People may doodle as a strategy to help themselves concentrate," said study co-author Jackie Andrade, a University of Plymouth psychologist. "We might not be aware that we're doing it, but it could be a trick that people develop
ENGADGET
Dell's Inspiron 1410 spec bump
is too mild to notice
MAR 01, 2009 08:42P.M.
Okay, so maybe the newest Inspiron 1410 internals are something to celebrate if you're really looking for low-end, but you'll be hard pressed to find a real tech enthusiast that's jazzed about a 2GHz Core 2 Duo T6400 processor within a 14-inch laptop. At any rate, the aforementioned machine has been juiced (we're being liberal here) with 2GB of DDR2 RAM, a 14.1-inch WXGA display, 250GB of hard drive space, a DVD burner, Intel's GMA X3100 graphics, 802.11b/g WiFi and a sweet, colorful lid. Oddly enough, both the customize and buy links are currently dead, so it looks like you'll need some patience in order to buy one without talking to an actual human.
[Thanks, jediclinto]
Filed under: Laptops
Dell's Inspiron 1410 spec bump is too mild to notice originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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TECHCRUNCH
Information Technology, 50
Years Ago
MAR 01, 2009 08:37P.M.
This guest post is written by JackArrington, who contributed 50% of the genetic material required to produce TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. Jack was around at the very beginning of what we today call the Information Technology business. In 1950 pure business necessity drove Bank ofAmerica, then the largest bank in the world, to look for ways to automate the labor intensive job of handling checks. From that necessity ERMA was born, one of the first large scale data processing machinesfor business. Jackjoined Bank ofAmerica in 1963 as a Computer Operator Trainee. He retired in 2002 as Head ofData Processing Operations.
2009 is the half-century milestone in the use of information technolo g y for business applications, and it's an opportunity to look back and give a nod of appreciation to those early IT entrepreneurs.
In the mid-20th century, the majority of people did not have checking accounts and none of them had bank-issued credit cards. Those in the lower and middle economic classes mostly relied upon cash to buy goods and pay bills. If funds needed to be sent long distances, Western Union provided facilities for the purchase of money orders that were communicated via telegraph and could be retrieved by the payee in another town or country. But the process of consumer banking was tailored for the needs of people who lived most if not all of their lives in the same town. Banking activities were mostly limited to home and car loans and the average customer was well known by the banking staff.Throughout most of the country, historic bank processes continued to serve well because most banks were single-office businesses, catering to the needs of a stable and known customer base.
California, though, had unique scaling problems. The state faced an exploding population following World War II, when many of the people who had served in the US military decided to settle there instead of going back to the eastern & mid-western hamlets and family farms of their origin. Jobs in California were plentiful, land was cheap and so was construction material. Homes were thrown up throughout the length and width of the Golden State.
California-based Bank of America, then the largest bank in the world,
had earlier pioneered the concept of deploying branch offices of the parent bank in many locations. So BofA followed its potential customers into each new neighborhood, providing home loans and other banking services. But if your account was domiciled in Palo Alto, cashing a check in Modesto was difficult because of an inability to share data between two bank offices, even though they were both Bank Of America branches. Identification of account holders attempting a transaction was primarily accomplished by visual comparison of a transaction signature to the one on a signature card on file at the domiciling bank office. In order to retain its leadership position in commercial and consumer banking, BofA desperately needed a banking solution that would accommodate mobility and the financial flexibility of people and businesses.
The system worked, but just barely. BofA was hard pressed to keep up with the demands on its services. Backrooms of the branch offices were crammed night and day with people tapping away on huge adding machines while manually updating paper ledgers for each accountholder. An experienced bookkeeper could post about 245 accounts per hour, but errors were common and required another person to proof the work of the first. Adding more people to fix the problem simply became impossible, and branches began closing earlier and earlier in the day to deal with the mountain of paperwork that piled up.
By 1950, BofA decided it was time to think about replacing all those people with a computer. At the time, computers were used primarily for scientific and military calculations. But there was no reason they couldn't be built to handle the mundane but important task of processing checking accounts, too.
Displaying focused insight that should be the envy of many in the current crop of Silicon-Valley entrepreneurs, Bank of America teamed with Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and General Electric to invent and then build the first system of automation for commercial banking. They dubbed it ERMA.
developed by Bell Labs in 1947 but functionality had not matured sufficiently to enable the processing required of ERMA in the early 1950s, so SRI first settled on vacuum tube technology to meet the requirements set by BofA. A modified octal binary system served the program assembler and Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR, or E13B,) font was developed to allow checks & deposit slips to serve as machine-readable input. Other methods of input included punch-paper tape, which allowed insertion of alphanumeric data such as names and addresses. Reels of magnetic tape (distributed by dedicated air and road couriers,) allowed current account-balance information to be shared between, eventually, each of 14 ERMA Centers located from San Diego to San Francisco.
These were, by today's standards, monstrously large machines. ERMA weighed about 25 tons and was spread out through four rooms. It contained more than a million feet of wiring, 8,000 vacuum tubes, 34,000 diodes, 5 input consoles with electronic reading devices, (optionally) two magnetic memory drums, a check sorter, a high-speed printer, a power control panel, a maintenance board, 24 racks holding 1,500 electrical packages and 500 relay packages, up to 12 magnetic tape drives for 2,400-foot tape reels, and a refrigeration system. ERMA used more than 80 kW of power and required cooling by an air conditioning system.
Her primary processing unit (which contained memory and I/O interface units) was about the size of a Humvee. Her compliment of 8-12 tape drives were each the size of a refrigerator and her printer was a little bit bigger than a fully-loaded Mini-Cooper. The primary peripheral device that ERMA was designed to serve was the Check Reader/Sorter, which could read MICR encoded checks at a rate of 600 per minute, capturing the data on magnetic tape for subsequent posting, while routing them to one of 12 pockets. The contents of each pocket would subsequently be fine-sorted and packaged for return to the domiciling branch-office with the morning's journals and status reports. ERMA controlled two of the Check Reader/Sorters, each approximating the size of a Ford Explorer. A complete ERMA system required about 3000 square feet of space, to house her components and serve her auxiliary input and output needs. During the busiest hours, ERMA required 5 operators working in harmony to achieve peak processing capacity. By today's standards, you might consider her a bit chunky...but in our time, we thought she was lean and efficient.
Programs under execution resided on magnetic tape. When needed, commands and calculations were downloaded into the 4000 bytes of memory (donut-shaped iron core components with each bit approximately the diameter of a dime and twice as thick.) This was long before the deployment of wireless or even wired connectivity to user devices, so output was limited to updated magnetic tape files and printed reports produced on a huge noisy device, which (when not broken), could turn out journals and status reports at a speed of 600 lines per minute.
Nearly a decade elapsed in the design, testing and manufacture of the system before the product was put into service in September of 1959. A total of 32 ERMA systems Purchased by BofA and installed in cities
throughout California. Each machine processed up to 33,000 accounts per hour (the output of about 135 experienced bookkeepers), providing daily posting of all customer checking and savings accounts. Best of all, the machines never slept, going 24/7 except for (frequent) maintenance - a GE engineer was on site every day to deal with issues. A single ERMA machine, working a week straight, was able to do the work of more than 500 people.
The decision to deploy ERMA wasn't about simply replacing high-cost jobs with a relatively low-cost computer. While there were undoubtedly significant operating efficiencies, ERMA quite simply allowed the bank to continue to keep pace with the rapid population growth of California. Without computerized data processing, that would have been impossible.
Other banks soon jumped in line to follow the direction taken by BofA and the technology became standard for most banks in the U.S. Although 50 years have passed, E13B (the magnetic ink font at the bottom of checks) remains the most common machine-readable input standard for financial institutions.) A nice thing about E13B is that with a bit of training and focus, people can read it too, although few today are able to determine which district of the Federal Reserve is encoded in the MICR line on their checks.
ERMA served the BofA well until 1967, when her vacuum tubes grew cold and dim and her limited brainpower could no longer cope. She was replaced by an IBM monstrosity (the 360 and its trail of descendants). Two ERMAs were preserved; one is at the Smithsonian in Washington DC and the other at Bank of America's Technology Center in Concord, C A .
My time with ERMA lasted only two years but the hands-on experience remains a vivid memory, even with a half-century of progress clamoring to dull my senses.
For more information on ERMA, see SRI, GE and Ed Thelen (lots of pictures).Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
PolarClock Tracks the Time
with Concentric Circles
[Downloads]
MAR 01, 2009 08:30P.M.
Windows/Mac: PolarClock is a novel screen saver that displays the passage of time in a series of shrinking concentric circles.
Each division of time is represented as a separate circle, with circles for the month, calendar day, day of the week, hour, minute and second. As time passes, each circle grows incrementally and proportionately larger to show the passage of time. The level of detail and customization is
impressive for such as simple concept: you can arrange the order of the circles designating various divisions of time, change the colors, widths and fonts, and get deeper still, if you'd like. In addition to a screen saver for Windows and Mac OS X, PolarClock is also available as a dash board widget for Mac OS X and an iPhone app. If you have a novel or unique time-focused screen saver or widget you're dying to share, sound off in the comments below so your fellow readers can partake in the visual goodness. Thanks laurion!PolarClick [Pixel Breaker]
Add Pictures to Picasa Web
Allbums via Email [Picasa]
MAR 01, 2009 08:00P.M.
To enable email uploads, from your Picasa Web Albums account, click on settings and scroll down until you see the Upload Photos by Email section as seen in the screenshot here. Check the box, then type in a secret word. The secret word becomes the suffix on your address in the form ofusername.secretword@picasaweb.com. Then you'll want to add your upload address, like myusername.zomgpictures@picasaweb.com, to your email client to prevent head-scratching later on. Really convenient: The subject line of your email chooses the album your pictures jump into. Emails without a subject or with a subject that doesn't match an existing album are dumped into your generic drop box.
Emails are limited to 20MB in size, but there's no restricdtion on the number of files you can send.
Send Your Photos to Your Picasa Web Album with an Email [MakeUseOf]
LIFEHACKER
Add Pictures to Picasa Web
Albums via Email [Picasa]
MAR 01, 2009 08:00P.M.
To enable email uploads, from your Picasa Web Albums account, click on settings and scroll down until you see the Upload Photos by Email section as seen in the screenshot here. Check the box, then type in a secret word. The secret word becomes the suffix on your address in the form ofusername.secretword@picasaweb.com. Then you'll want to add your upload address, like myusername.zomgpictures@picasaweb.com, to your email client to prevent head-scratching later on. Really convenient: The subject line of your email chooses the album your pictures jump into. Emails without a subject or with a subject that doesn't match an existing album are dumped into your generic drop box.
Emails are limited to 20MB in size, but there's no restriction on the number of files you can send.
Send Your Photos to Your Picasa Web Album with an Email [MakeUseOf]
Astronomische lente begint op
20 maart
MAR 01, 2009 07:57P.M.
DE BILT (KNMI) - De meterologen vinden dat de lente zondag is begonnen en wat temperatuur betreft, krijgen ze gelijk. De astronomische lente laat nog even op zich wachten.
NU.NL - ALGEMEEN
'Iran heeft genoeg materiaal
voor kernbom'
MAR 01, 2009 07:51P.M.
WASHINGTON - Volgens de hoogste militair van de Verenigde Staten heeft Iran voldoende materiaal om een kernwapen te bouwen. Dat zei admiraal Mike Mullen, voorzitter van de chefs van staven, zondag tegen de nieuwszender CNN.
ENGADGET
Rumored AT&T trade-in
program could provide easy
alternative to eBay
MAR 01, 2009 07:29P.M.
eBay or Craigslist than turning it over to AT&T, but wouldn't it be nice to have the option if you're really in a bind? According to Boy Genius Report, the aforesaid carrier is mulling the idea of implementing a trade-in program that would allow existing subscribers to put a "used value" towards the purchase of a new phone. While none of this has yet to be confirmed, we're told that any phone traded in must be less than two years old and in relatively good shape, and the new phone you're after won't have any subsidies attached; your trade-in value is the discount. Oh, and regardless of how awesome that shiny new whatever is, the maximum value of any trade is capped at $200. We'll keep an ear to the ground for more, but we wouldn't be shocked at all to see this go live sooner rather than later.
Filed under: Cellphones
Rumored AT&T trade-in program could provide easy alternative to eBay originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 14:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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SINLUNGSourabhee Debbarma Becomes
First Female 'Indian Idol'
MAR 01, 2009 07:06P.M.
Congrats Sourabhee, Cheers!!! After four years of its running, popular music reality show "Indian Idol" finally got its first female winner in the form of Sourabhee Debbarma, who won the grand finale of the fourth season of the TV program in Mumbai on Sunday night. Sourabhee, who hails from the India's north east, belted out popular [...]
SINLUNG
Shocking US 'Cell Assault'
MAR 01, 2009 07:00P.M.
Slam ... cops and girl in cell By HARRY HAYDON SHOCKING footage has been revealed of a 15-year-old girl being beaten in a US police cell. The surveillance camera footage shows a sheriff's deputy charge into the cell and push the teen back into a wall. The girl is then slammed onto the floor and[...]
SINLUNG
The Bux Strips Here
MAR 01, 2009 06: 5 4 P.M.
Looking a million Bux ... sexy Danielle By David Willets GORGEOUS DANIELLE BUX shows why hubby-to-be GARY LINEKER fell for her charms — as she poses in a bikini. The underwear model, 29, took a break from planning their wedding to fit in the shoot on a beach in Dubai. Love match ... with footie legend Gary [...]
SINLUNG
Rihanna and Chris Brown 'back
together'
MAR 01, 2009 06:45P.M.
On again? ... Rihanna and Chris Brown By Stuart Pink RIHANNA and CHRIS BROWN our dating again, according to reports in the US. The star couple have resolved their differences just three weeks after Brown allegedly attacked the Umbrella singer following a Grammys after-party. Bruises ... leaked photo A source told People: "They're together again. They care for each [...]
ENGADGET
Nokia NAM 5800 XpressMusic
pulled from NYC flagship store,
replaced with Euro edition
MAR 01, 2009 05:21P.M.
While we did manage to eventually commandeer 3G on our Nokia flagship store-purchased NAM 5800 XpressMusic — albeit not first without leaving the Chicago area — The Nokia Blog went by the NYC store yesterday afternoon and found out the phone had been pulled from shelves. We put in a call to the store ourselves and confirmed that the NAM version is currently being eschewed in favor of the Euro-spec edition. No word on when it'll return, but we're still waiting anxiously for Nokia's official statement on the matter.
Filed under: Cellphones
Nokia NAM 5800 XpressMusic pulled from NYC flagship store, replaced with Euro edition originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 12:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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of FreeBSD. How minimal, you ask? You can run FreeNAS off a 32MB flash drive. Designed to be an absolutely skeletal operating system to maximize the resources devoted to storage FreeNAS is great for when you want a simple operating system that leaves every hard drive bay and disk platter wide open for file storage goodness. Despite being so slim, FreeNAS is still feature packed, including support for BitTorrent and remote web-based file management via QuiXplorer; it even serves as the perfect iTunes music server. You can boo FreeNAS off nearly any media: hard drives, optical discs, floppy disks, and flash-based media. It has support for both hardware and software based RAID, disk encryption, and management of groups and users via local authentication or Microsoft Domains. Even an old dusty Pentium III can become a headless file-serving powerhouse with the addition of a basic $20 SATA PCI card to pack it full of modern hard drives, thanks to FreeNAS's scant 96MB of RAM requirements.
Ubuntu Server Edition
Media files, data synchronization, and remote backups, oh my! Home computing has advanced to a point where it's practical to run your own home server, and we're running down the five best tools for the job.
Photo by RudolfSchuba.
Earlier this week we asked you to tell us what software you used to power your home servers and add that extra kick of convenience and power to your home networks. After tallying up the votes we're back to share the top five contenders for the home server championship belt. The following server implementations cover a broad spectrum of solutions ranging from install-it-and-forget-it to tinker-your-way-to-perfection and everything in between.
FreeNas
Ubuntu Server Edition shares the ease of use that has catapulted its desktop-edition sibling to popularity. The automated LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) installation makes installing the core components of a robust server a walk in the park compared to manually configuring each component on your own. While configuring Ubuntu isn't going to be as easy as grabbing a pre-configured Windows Home Server off the shelf at your local Best Buy and plugging it in, there are a wealth of applications to help you integrate your Linux based home server with the rest of your network. It won't be as straight forward as using Windows Home Server or a Time Machine backup, but Ubuntu is more than powerful and capable enough to handle all your media streaming, remote backup, and file serving needs. We've covered using Ubuntu as the basis for a home media server before, so if you're considering trying it out check out how to build a Linux media server and build yourself an affordable media server to get an idea of what you're in for.
Apache
Apache is the only entry in the top five that isn't a completely stand alone server package. Apache is, however, open source and cross platform; it support a dozen operating systems; and it's the backbone of many of your fellow readers' home server operations. Because of its widespread adoption and extreme compatibility with a variety of platforms, we're including it here. No matter what operating system you throw on your home server, you're almost guaranteed that you can run Apache on it. Nearly four years ago we covered how to set up a personal web server using Apache, and it's still relevant and worth a look for getting an idea what the setup entails. While you're at it, you may also want to try setting up a home Subversion server with your Apache installation for keeping track of file revisions.
Debian
Windows Home Server
If your home is filled with Windows-based computers—which the average American home certainly is—it's tough to go wrong with Windows Home Server. It isn't free, and until recently you couldn't even buy it separately from the home servers sold by Hewlett Packard and others—but even though it has the distinction of being both the only commercial and closed-source software package on the list, that doesn't mean you should dismiss it out of hand. Windows Home Server stands definitively as the most Average Joe-friendly server implementation on the list. Not only is it the only server package you can buy pre-configured and installed in a ready to go off-the-shelf server, but Microsoft has gone out of their way to make the experience of using Windows Home Server as transparent and painless as possible for the end user. In fact, many Lifehacker readers expressed the "It just works" sentiment when logging a vote for Windows Home Server. Once you have all your computers connected to your Windows Home Server, you'll have a centralized backup location that supports up to 10 remote PCs and indexed remote file storage. Printers are shared and there is easy to use remote server access to log into your archives from anywhere in the world. Files are no longer lost in a mass of drives, add a few terabyte drives to a Windows Home Server and you'll never wonder if that movie file is on the F, G, or H drive again. Windows Home Server spans drives using Drive Extender so that files are located in a single folder namespace, sans drive divisions. The most recent update of Windows Home Server even adds an option to backup the server itself to external drives for extra data redundancy. Since the Microsoft site for Windows Home Server is heavy on promotion but low on actual screenshots, check out our screenshot tour for more.
Now that you've seen the contestants vying for the title of best home server, it's time to log your votes to see who will go home with the belt—and the task of storing your mountains of media files and remote backups.
Which Home Server Software is Best? (polls)
If you have tips or tricks for running a home server, sound off in the
comments below. Many readers will be considering running a home server for the first time after reading over the top contenders above, so your experience (and accolades) could help them find a home server package that works for them.
4 Tools to Make Virtual Data
Centers More Efficient
MAR 01, 2009 05:00P.M.
Earlier this month, a survey commissioned by IT management software provider CA Inc. found that 92 percent of U.S. IT budgets already include energy-efficient software solutions, with virtualization of servers (55 percent) and storage (56 percent) dominating U.S. efforts. That got me thinking — if energy efficiency is so critical, we should show more appreciation for power management tools that can make next-generation systems (virtual and physical) more efficient by making them more responsive.
The on-demand crowd (of which I consider myself a part) loves to talk about cloud computing and dynamic data centers, about policy-based provisioning and resource allocation, about workloads moving from machine to machine or cloud to cloud. But just because these on-demand lovefests always end before someone brings up power management, that doesn't mean providers are ignoring the issue. Here are four tools that raise the profile of power management using performance-based policies:
Appistry EnergySaver: An add-on to Appistry's Enterprise Application Fabric, EnergySaver lets customers define performance-based policies for power management. When resources are no longer necessary, EnergySaver puts them to sleep, only bringing them back up as needed. If target resource utilization for a system is set at 50 percent, EnergySaver can power on or power off machines to keep aggregate usage at the predefined level.
Cassatt Active Power Management: Available across Cassatt's line of Active Response solutions or as a standalone product, Active Power Management takes into account a variety of factors — from system performance to your electric utility's peak and off-peak pricing schedules — to determine when to turn servers on and off. If machines are needed for failover or to maintain application service levels, Active Power Management can bring them back up automatically.
Virtual Iron LivePower: A standard but still "experimental" feature of Virtual Iron v4.4, LivePower lets users set pre-determined utilization levels for physical machines. (Virtual Iron calls the feature experimental because "it has not yet been widely tested in production environments.") When utilization falls below that level, LivePower leverages Virtual Iron LiveCapacity to move VMs running on that machine elsewhere. The physical server is shut down, rebooting and reentering the pool as demand picks up.
VMware Distributed Power Management: Another "experimental" feature, Distributed Power Management (DPM) is part of VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). DPM monitors power consumption in DRS pools and uses vMotion to consolidate workloads onto fewer physical servers automatically. Unneeded physical machines go into standby mode and come back online as predefined utilization policies dictate.
Finding the right utilization levels for your data center is key to getting the most from the latter two tools. Even where consolidation is a driving force behind the decision to virtualize resources, experts suggest running physical machines at less than full capacity keep native performance high and to safeguard against unforeseen problems.