Quarter of the planet to be online by 2012

According to the report by Jupiter Research, the total number of people online will climb to 1.8 billion by 2012, encompassing roughly 25 percent of the planet.The company sees the highest growth rates in areas such as China, Russia, India and Brazil. Overall, the number of users online is predicted to grow by 44 percent in the time period between 2007 and 2012."Even though the emerging economies will have lower online penetration rates compared to the developed countries, Jupiter Research believes that they will ramp up the learning curve in adopting sophisticated online activities compared to the developing countries," said research director Vikram Sehgal.The analyst firm sees Asia as an especially critical market, due to the high rate at which both its physical population and technological markets are growing."Asia will not only have the highest online growth rate compared to other regions in the world, but will also present a substantially large pool of sophisticated online users as a market to tap into," explained Jupiter Research president David Schatsky.

Google Enters Designer, Developer Fray

Although Microsoft and Adobe seem to be duking it out over the issue of developer-designer workflow, Google enters the scene with its own focus on how designers and developers can work together using Google App Engine.
Microsoft has been touting connections between its Expression suite of design tools and its Visual Studio developer tool, and Adobe offers its Creative Suite and Flex tools, along with its upcoming "Thermo" technology, to help designers and developers work better together.
However, at the recent Google I/O developer conference, members of the Google UX team spoke on the need for designers and developers to work better together and said Google App Engine is the place for it. Google App Engine lets developers build and run their Web applications on Google's infrastructure.
To acknowledge how closely the two disciplines need to work together, Lindsey Simon, a developer on the Google UX team, said he was looking for a "design husband." Simon said he was quoting Simon Willison, a co-creator of the Django Python-based Web development framework, who had said, "I need to find a design husband."
Simon said, "I thought that was really funny because here's this guy I admire as a developer and he was saying that he was not looking to find developers or other programmers to work with him, he wanted to find a designer."
Moreover, Simon said, "Working at Google I have the luxury of meeting people like John [Skidgel, a designer on the Google UX team]. I want to work with a good designer, too. If I'm going to work on a project at Google, I'm going to work on it with John. Because I want help with design—it's not something that I'm trained to do."
So, if you were looking for a designer, what would you look for, Simon asked the audience, which was split about 60-40 with developers in the majority.
To answer that question, Simon displayed a slide that was written like a newspaper ad, or even a personals ad, entitled "Coder Seeks Designer."
The core of the ad read: "Seeking an unpretentious, scrappy, well-rounded interaction and visual designer." The qualities listed as being sought after were, "Takes criticism without a hissy fit, willing to entertain rants about back-end/front-end code, knows Photoshop kung fu and not afraid of code."
Added Simon: "I don't want what I imagine is the whiny designer. I want someone I can work with, not someone who's going to give me Photoshop files and I just go implement it from scratch. I want somebody I can work with on a project."
In addition, Simon said, "I don't want an Andy Warhol-type designer; I want someone who's scrappy, who's well-rounded and not afraid to look at code."
Indeed, Simon said he believes, "You can't really have a meaningful design for these kinds of applications anymore if you really want to separate strict visual design and interaction design from the act of engineering it. That's not really a productive workflow." As a developer, "you want to work with your designer, and from the beginning."
Meanwhile, Skidgel, who shared the stage for the May 28 presentation entitled Engaging User Experiences with Google App Engine, displayed his own ad giving what he looks for in a developer.
Skidgel's ad, which was entitled "Designer Seeks Coder," said, "Seeking a sane, customer-focused coding powerhouse with decent communication skills."
Skidgel said, "As a designer, you really want to find someone who is sane and customer-focused." And, "as a developer you should have crocodile skin," he added.
The qualities Skidgel said he seeks in a coder are, "Takes suggestions without going ballistic, appreciates aesthetics, deep and broad understanding of front-end and back-end technology, and not afraid to express himself visually—he can draw [or] chicken-scratch flows."
He concluded, "It's a collaboration. You shouldn't feel that your designer has full reign over the design."
For his part, Simon said, "Most designers are very competent with CSS [Cascading Style Sheets], even better than some developers—so this is where you want them to help you."
Simon said Google App Engine supports workflow and is "a great environment for collaboration." In addition, local testing and deployment are easy and consistent, there is no compilation, the App Engine Launcher provides Mac OS X ease of use for developers, and the SDK (software development kit) auto-update keeps the development environment current, Skidgel said.
Simon said, "The designers I see where I work, they are all Mac people, and they aren't typically people who love the command-line approach." However, with Google App Engine, "getting set up and getting started and having your designer with the same environment you have" is a plus, he said.
Skidgel said things like design flows are important to do with both the designer and developer working together. "It's iterative, and can be informal and quick," he said, noting that the team should capture revisions with a digital camera or cell phone camera to document the design.
"Two heads are better than one when you do this," Simon said. "My inclination is to just go start programming it, but that's not always the best way to do stuff. It's much better to get together with someone and talk it through."
In addition, design and coding should be done concurrently, Skidgel said. The designer works in Adobe Photoshop or Fireworks, and the developer begins writing handlers, he said.
"I go out and start writing all the assets—the mocks, the logos and everything else—and Lindsey is starting to write Python," he said.

Sharp to ship world's biggest LCD display for sale

TOKYO, June 13 (Reuters) - Japanese electronics maker Sharp Corp (6753.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Friday it would begin shipping next month the world's largest liquid crystal display, a reminder of the once-heated race for size among TV makers.
The 108-inch display, priced at roughly 11 million yen ($102,100), would be made to order and sold mainly to businesses, Sharp said.
Last year, TV makers vied to make bigger displays in a show of technological prowess as they sought to beat price competition with premium big screens.
Sharp's new display is likely to be surpassed next year when Matsushita Electric Industrial Co (6752.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) plans sales of its 150-inch plasma display for use on billboards.
Weak demand for big TVs hurt manufacturers such as Hitachi Ltd (6501.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Pioneer Corp (6773.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), which posted losses on their TV operations because they lacked economies of scale to weather price falls for smaller TVs in high demand.
Sharp, which had originally planned to focus on bigger displays, shifted more weight to 40-inch class displays and smaller in the middle of last year.
Shares of Sharp closed up 1.7 percent at 1,712 yen against a 0.6 percent rise in the benchmark Nikkei average .N225. (Reporting by Mayumi Negishi; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Grandfathers created a special navigator for his grandson autistic

The autistic have difficulties to handle the amount of information, elements and present colors in Internet. For that reason, a computer science one developed a specific navigator for them. In addition it free put at the disposal of everybody in the Red. An American programmer thought that to sail by the Network autist of six years could help in the rehabilitation of its grandson. Nevertheless, the unique thing that obtained was the downheart after stating that for the small Zac the great amount of colors, banners and the strident contents of the Network did not help it in anything.
In order to solve the problem it designed a navigating specific Web for autistic children, whom the search of contents simplifies and eliminates the elements that affect the mind of those who suffers this disease. After to ask to him rehabilitating educators and of autismo, the grandfathers of Zac incorporated numerous benefits to his navigator, as the blockade of some keys and functions of the computer so that the boy does not relax with secondary elements, like the right button of the mouse or the key “Print screen”. Other elements of the navigator, like the simplified icons and their great size, help the small one to accede of direct form to games, mental stories or exercises. On the matter, an investigator of Brown University de Rhode Island Stephen Sheinkopf indicated that “some parts of the Network have much material stranger who can be being relaxing and for a boy who communicates of nonverbal form, there would not be any possibility so that he uses this information”.

Play 3 Station and Xbox 360 is the devices that more energy consume in the home

The consoles of videojuegos Play 3 Station and Xbox 360 are the electronicses of domestic use that more energy consume, followed of the plasma televisions, according to report is come off a study made by the Australian company Choice.El emphasizes that the power consumption of the Play Station 3 is 10 times superior to the one of the Nintendo Wii and that the cost of leaving it connected during a whole day would ascend to about 250 dollars to the year, five times more than in the case of a refrigerator.The plasma televisions are also positioned like great consumers of energy, with a number that is four times greater than the registered one by the old monitors of analogical television. In the case of the computers, the consumption of the Mac system is inferior to the one of Windows. “To leave to all the connected day a desktop computer, a screen LCD, router wifi, a plasma television and a reproducer DVD it would cost around 450 dollars to the year”, emphasizes the study, in front of the 15 dollars that would suppose to leave them in way stand by. In order to make its study, Choice measured the consumption of power of 16 electronic devices, extinguished and in way stand by.

Taken care of and so you think: computers that read the mind

A group of investigators of the University of Carnegie Mellon is teaching to a computer to read the human mind by means of the interpretation of the scanned images of their brains in which they appear the representations of the words. The equipment of Pittsburgh thinks that this work can take to one better understanding of how and where the brain stores the information. On the other hand, they say that it would serve to improve the treatments of disorders of the language and other incapacities. “The question that we are trying to solve here is one that has become the humanity from always: how organizes the brain the knowledge? ”, Tom Mitchell said, of the equipment of the university. How it works? The team of scientists uses images obtained by magnetic resonance, and calibrate the computer with the aid of nine voluntary students who think about 58 different words, while the scanner shows in images its cerebral activity. Of these images the average images take control of each word and later the test begins. The computer must predict what the mind is saying through these words and the same with phrases is also made. Until now, the results of this experimiento have been satisfactory.

Microsoft wants that we stop using telephone numbers

The present president of Microsoft, Bill Gates, declared his intention to eliminate the necessity to use telephone numbers. How we will contact with another person? According to Gates, with contacts of Live Messenger.At the beginning of Gates May it gave to char it in Japan in which it said: “we have the number of moving body, the one of the fixed one, the direction of email, your user of instantaneous mail, and all of them are very different things, and the problems exceed how much of that information joint parties with people well it is not defined”.Gates continued: “If we can unify all those types of communication, we will be able to simplify them of remarkable form. We can forget to us the telephone numbers, and with this I mean that if you want to contact with somebody, basing us on whom you are and where she is that person, it is possible to be decided if to take care of the call or to respond with a message, so that great improvements in this field can be done”.That intention of Microsoft to eliminate the telephone numbers or has better explanation, because what tries it is to make use of the contacts of Windows Live Messenger, and is what in ZDNet they have called “Echoes” of your personality or your information of contact, although clearly, it seems that only they will be available for users of the Windows Mobile platform.

More notebooks, less desktops

As well as it happens to the cellular telephones in relation to the fixed apparatuses, the tendency aims at that more portable computers than desktop will be sold. Mobility is the one of its main attributes and growth of the WiFi also, since it allows that the users can connect themselves in all sides.Why is registered east boom of the sale of notebooks? A factor that influences in this change of consumption is the technological advance that allows the manufacture of equipment with better designs, lighter and cheaper, that is to say, comfortable and much more transportable. In one another instance, “one of the motivations by which this takes place happens through mobility, people who need to be connected with her PC and in movement simultaneously”, honors the Argentine consultant Enrique Carrier. On the other hand, there is a tendency to have more than a computer in the houses and it does not exist a place for writing-desks nor scope to keep them. As well, the price of each affects the fact that notebooks has smaller prices in dollars every time, even so notebook varies from country to country (deviado to the rate of imports).Different profiles from users could be drawn up: • The one that is in constant movement, the one that for example enters a confectionery and are connected. He is most movable. • Those transports that it: those that own a PC in the work and another one in its house. They unify everything in a single machine they take and it from a side to another one. • Those that does not move it of the house, use but it within her. They read newspapers while they have breakfast; they work comfortable in a armchair or they chatean from the balcony…


Presentation of the MacBook Air, of Apple, one of notebooks thinner of mercadoDe agreement with a report of the consulting Frame, “As it happened with other technological products, like being the Cellular Telephone, this technology made well-known for a very specific public, and with time exclusividad' is leaving his `for, slowly, to amass itself”. Luis Guaragno, manager of Regional Marketing of the consultant, relates the advance of the WiFi to the one of notebooks, and assures that “this tendency occurs anywhere in the world. The sale of notebooks of very important form grows, to replace to desktops”. Although the penetration of these equipment varies of country in country, all go towards that model. The model movable greater than a cellular one, nevertheless also gained a space in the daily uniform of many professionals. It would be possible to be defined as the movable model. “In your machine he is all yours. Videos, mail, music, contacts, work… It is your house and office at the same time. It individualizes the consumption”, explains Martin Flachsland, manager of Marketing of HP.Although that is a product, at first, he was not massive, Gustavo Battista, manager of Marketing of SICSA, also indicates that notebook “is used as a form of life in the sense of the work. Little by little, one is going away to give a tendency similar to the one of the cellular ones. At first, they did not have many it and now there are almost two movable telephones by person”. Corporative marketing is in charge to segment each one of the benefits of products in agreement with the spending power of the users. As it says the old slogan of marketing, the companies work for each target “to taste of the consumer”. The prices of the portable ones, vary enough. On the one hand, they are the equipment máss economic, for the called consumers technological initiators, that never had a computer and want one notebook and they could not arrive by price. On the other, the computer of 100 dollars (OLPC of the English language One Laptop Rep Child), elaborated so that any boy in the world has access and knowledge to the technologies of the information as modern forms of education.Finally, it appears the strip of products appointed those people they count on a PC and they want the second machine, with tendency to go to one notebook, are the habitual clients of this type of products and that want to renew them. All this evidence that “notebook will comprise of the customs. It allows to be official notice, comfortable, not to depend on a place for conectarte”, as it assured Gustavo Battista.