Chrome OS tablet from HTC reported to ship in November

 An HTC tablet running Google's Chrome operating system will be sold by Verizon Wireless in late November, according to an unnamed source cited by the blog Downloadsquad.
The blog's source specifically said that the tablet will appear on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the traditional start of the holiday shopping season. The blog said the tablet would probably be heavily subsidized by Verizon to compete against the Apple iPad.
HTC and Verizon could not be reached for comment.
The blog also speculated that the HTC tablet would have plenty of popular features, in keeping with HTC's Nexus One smartphone tradition. Those include a 1280-by-720 multitouch display for the tablet, 2GB of RAM, and a minimum of 32GB of storage, the blog said.
But the big interest value would be Chrome OS, since Google has mostly made a splash with Android for smartphones, and a number of Android tablets are expected in the coming months from Samsung and others. Samsung is reported to be showing a new Android 2.2 tablet at a consumer electronics show in Berlin early in September.

FierceWireless reported in July that an HTC spokesman had noted widespread interest in tablets and said HTC would participate if it could find a way to offer "clear value and differentiate ourselves."

Chrome was introduced as an operating system to power netbooks, not tablets, although some analysts have noted that Chrome could work in both.

Computerworld

What can WiMAX bring to smart grid program?

GE exec Mark Hura looks at ambitions for smart grid program.
 GE last week announced that it has launched a pilot program to implement smart grid technology that uses Clearwire's WiMAX network to deliver data to both customers and utility companies.
What makes a carrier green?
 GE says that it will work with utility company Consumers Energy to deliver WiMAX-based grid sensors and energy meters to more than 6 million customers in Michigan. Smart grid technology is typically defined as any information technology that helps power companies more efficiently monitor power demand and allocate capacity. GE says that this particular smart grid pilot project is intended "to demonstrate how real-time wireless communications between meters in the home and the utility's network management and control systems can improve efficiency and reliability for all."
 In Network World's interview with Mark Hura, GE Energy's smart grid commercial leader, we discuss GE's broader ambitions for its smart grid program, its timeline for deployment and its reasons for choosing WiMAX over LTE.

 What do you hope to achieve with this pilot program?


Our WiMAX smart grid deployment is an opportunity to showcase the advantages of leveraging 4G communications for smart grids for both utility companies and consumers. It allows utilities to have a standard communications technology that includes the proper security protocols. WiMAX technology is based off of standards that are already being used in the industry.
 This is a communications standard that has the appropriate amount of bandwidth and latency, and that allows utilities to use their networks for more than automated metering and communicating with metered devices. It also allows for enabling renewable energy sources on the grid. It has more capabilities than the infrastructures that exist today and they allow for new applications on the networks such as alternative energy sources and storage technologies on a community level.

 Can you give a timeline of what we can expect to see implemented and when?
Our timeline is going to be based on utility decisions of how quickly they are going to implement their own road maps for deploying this technology on the grid. The important thing to remember when we look at WiMAX technology is that it will be widely deployed by end of 2010, covering all major markets across the U.S. So based on that I think you'll start to see deployments picking up in late 2010 and then accelerate over the next two to three years.
Why should consumers and businesses care about WiMAX-enabled smart grid technology?
Consumers and businesses will have the opportunity to understand how they use their energy and to understand how to manage their energy consumption more effectively. Having a communications platform based on 4G technology can provide real-time information back to consumers. It can tell you what your usage is at a particular moment and that can help project what your usage may be into the same day or the next day. So for instance it can tell you how you can use different energy sources for different times of the day. It can tell you how to best program devices that perform energy-intensive tasks to work only at off-peak hours to save money.

Why did you decide to go with WiMAX instead of waiting for LTE?

We took a look at the two real 4G paths that carriers are deploying, WiMAX and LTE. LTE has not been released commercially yet, whereas WiMAX is based on an IEEE standard and is commercially deployable right now. It also has a huge ecosystem all around the world. Eventually we see a future ability for appliances to leverage both WiMAX and LTE but for right now we think this is a good opportunity to leverage an existing network technology to benefit both consumers and businesses today.

Networkworld.com

Scientists find turbulence in Saturn's rings

The ringed planet Saturn, brilliant jewel of the night sky, has revealed new insights into the behavior of its rings for scientists studying signals from the Cassini spacecraft still flying through the Saturnian neighborhood after six years in orbit.

"We now have the clearest view of the rings' beautiful crystalline structure pasted onto the real night sky," said Jeffrey Cuzzi of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, leader of the Cassini-Huygens mission. "Gazillions of icy particles are constantly colliding with each other up there as they orbit the planet ... moving as waves under the influence of moonlets we've discovered orbiting inside gaps between the rings."

The tumultuous nature of the particles in Saturn's seven main rings and the gaps between the planet's rings, where those tiny moonlets cause ring edges to wave like ripples on the shorelines of space, are being described today in the journal Science.
Saturn's rings, through even the best of telescopes, look like series of thin flat discs grooved like an old phonograph record. But that's far from the truth: From Cassini's images and data, researchers have determined that each ring is a turbulent collection of orbiting particles - 95 percent water ice glistening in sunlight and the rest some strange kind of rubble tinged in red-brown here and there.
"That color may be some kind of organic materials," said Cuzzi, "but to me it looks like just plain rust - iron oxide. How it got there we don't yet know."
The ice chunks range in size from a few inches to tens of yards. As they orbit the planet, gravity turns some into huge clumps and pulls others apart, and they batter each other chaotically.
Beyond Saturn's major rings, Cassini scientists report they have detected several other faint rings that seem to be composed of minute amounts rubble and "microscopic dust."
The physics involved in their evolution suggests they are similar to the "protoplanetary discs" of rubble that on a much larger scale mark the earliest stages in the formation of the planets in the solar system.
But just how long ago the rings of Saturn formed and where their material came from originally remains a mystery, the scientists say.
The rings and the icy matter they contain are far from stable in their orbits around the planet. Instead, they appear to be changing constantly.
"Saturn's rings show dramatic variability (over) decades, years, even weeks," said the scientists.
Cassini's instruments have also revealed that strange objects occasionally shoot through the rings from far beyond the planet - comets, or asteroids, perhaps, but know one knows, Cuzzi said.
Each of Saturn's rings is labeled by a letter according date when it was discovered. Between Saturn's A and F rings lies a space 200 miles wide called the Encke gap. The gap holds several "ringlets" and gravity from a strange object named Pan, only 12 miles in diameter, disrupts the rings and causes waves along their edges.
Another gap exists between the thin ringlets of the Encke gap. It is called the Keeler gap, and here Cassini has discovered a lumpy little moonlet only 5 miles across that is also creating waves on the edges of Saturn's rings.
Amid all of Saturn's rings and ringlets lie 13 significant gaps, where Cassini mission scientists have been hunting for evidence of other moonlets. The absence of moonlets inside Saturn's C ring remains "baffling," the scientists say.
For now, the origin of the rings and much of their turbulent behavior will remain unknown, the scientists say, "until we have understood the powerful dynamical processes that have formed, and continue to shape, these elegant structures on time scales reaching from yesterday to billions of years" ago.

From http://www.sfgate.com/

Cisco Quits WiMax Radio Business

The decision to cease making WiMax base stations gives a boost to Cisco's Long-Term Evolution portfolio.

 WiMax is taking another hit as another major supplier -- Cisco -- confirmed that it is quitting the WiMax radio access network business and will cease making WiMax base stations. However, the networking company said it will continue supplying IP core and WiMax edge products like Wi-Fi and femtocells to WiMax customers.


The decision gives a boost to Cisco's Long-Term Evolution portfolio, which was strengthened in recent months by Cisco's acquisition of Starent Networks. Clearwire, which is majority owned by Sprint Nextel, has been the major deployer of WiMax in the United States.
Cisco got into the WiMax business through its acquisition of Navini Networks for $330 million in October 2007, but most carriers have since snubbed WiMax for the more efficient LTE. WiMax has been more popular in non-U.S. markets and its users, including Clearwire, have noted that it is relatively easy to shift network infrastructure -- and subscribers -- from WiMax to LTE.

Navini had a head start in WiMax and had supplied equipment to several startups scattered around the world. Its largest U.S. customer, Xanadoo, in Texas, said it had signed up more than 14,000 subscribers two years ago. Navini's use of MIMO antennas and Smart Beamforming technologies received high marks from many carriers. Navini's networks also were selling in countries with emerging business technologies.
When Cisco acquired Starent for $2.9 billion a few months ago, the acquisition also appeared to seal the doom of WiMax as a Cisco base station supplier. Starent was already gaining major contracts from LTE carriers like Verizon Wireless, which is scheduled to roll out the first U.S. LTE network later this year.

InformationWeek

Google Maps satellite photos of US government's reserve fleet

The United States government’s three reserve ship sites can be seen via satellite photos taken by Google Maps.

The National Defense Reserve Fleet is a group of ships that are used for “national defence and national emergency” crises.

The 'Boneyard': £22bn 'military aircraft cemetery' on Google Maps.

More than 170 vessels, managed by the Department of Transportations Maritime Administration, are located at James River, Virginia, Beaumont, Texas and Suisun Bay, California.

Its ships are classified as either ready “reserve force ships” (RRF), which can be put back into service between 10 and 120 days or “non-retention vessels”, which are past their serviceable life and have been nominated for disposal.
It is another example of how the US government’s disposal of military machinery.
On Monday, a spectacular series of new high-resolution Google Earth satellite images were released of the world’s most expensive military cemetery, a £22.6 billion centre dubbed “The Boneyard”.
The 2,600 acre facility, officially known Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, is home to thousands of outdated aeroplanes and helicopters mothballed by the United States Air Force and other allied forces.
Established under Section 11 of the Merchant Ship Sales Act of 1946, NDRF vessels have supported emergency shipping requirements in seven wars and crises, according to is official website.
They were used by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to support relief efforts during Hurricane Katrina.

Officials say that of the 93 non-retention vessels in the fleet, 70 are in the disposal process, or are ready for disposal while a further 23 are being prepared for disposal.
Last month the US government announced that a cleanup operation of Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet had been expanded.
A MARAD spokesman said that when a ship becomes obsolete, the department arranged for their disposal in an “environmentally sensitive manner”.
“When a ship is recycled, the recycler often salvages and sells metal and other materials, and disposes of other materials in accordance with state and federal law," he added.

By Telegraph.co.uk

Skype on Verizon: A Big Deal or Not?

Verizon Wireless and Skype say they’re teaming to bring Skype to nine BlackBerry and Android phones on the Verizon network.

I'm not sure if this is just an intriguing partnership or a major moment in phone history. But at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Verizon Wireless and Skype announced that they're working together to bring Skype to nine BlackBerry and Android phones on the Verizon network. A version of Skype Mobile will be available next month, permitting free Skype-to-Skype calls, chatting, and Skype Out calls to any phone number, including cheap international rates. And it'll all be done using flat-rate data plans rather than phone minutes.
There's nothing inherently historic about Skype being available on phones -- it's on the iPhone (albeit over Wi-Fi only right now) and I first used the service on a Windows Mobile handset years ago. (Only briefly, though -- it taxed the phone to the breaking point, and voice quality was pretty miserable.)

But a major carrier such as Verizon not only grudgingly permitting Skype but buddying up with it as a selling point for its phones is an interesting twist. I look forward to trying Skype Mobile on my Droid when it's available. And I have a few questions in the meantime...
Is there any integration with the phones' standard phone features? Say, access to the phone address book from within Skype? Or-dare I wish for it-the ability to route all calls through Skype, as Google's Google Voice app permits on BlackBerry and Android handsets? (Yes, I know that Google Voice isn't comparable to Skype-it uses phone minutes, and Skype doesn't)
How well does it work for incoming calls? Skype Mobile can run in the background, and I presume that you can use a Skypein phone number to permit people to dial a standard phone number and reach you in Skype. But does all this work smoothly enough that you could comfortably use Skype to take calls rather than the phone's standard phone features?
How's the quality? As good as a standard cell call? Better?
Are there any gotchas? On paper, this whole deal sounds...suspiciously enticing. The better Skype Mobile works, the more likely it is that lots of Verizon customers will do most (or all?) of their calling using it. Even if Skype cut Verizon in on any revenue it made, that couldn't be good for Verizon's bottom line.

More thoughts once the app's available.
For more smart takes on technology, visit Technologizer.com. Story copyright © 2010, Technologizer. All rights reserved.

Nexus One Multitouch Arrives Officially

The update also adds the Google Goggles app;

Ever since the Google Nexus One was announced (and then released) last month, talks were on about its forthcoming multitouch support. We all knew that the phone was more than capable to integrate multitouch gestures. Google, however, for some reason, chose not to include it in the initial firmware that the Nexus Ones came. There was a small fix that enabled multitouch in the browser. But that was from unofficial channels.
That was then. Yesterday, Google issued a small OTA (Over The Air) update for the Nexus One that brings in multitouch support to it - apart from numerous other improvements. Multitouch has been enabled in the gallery, browser and Google Maps where now you can pinch and zoom - just like on the iPhone. Google Maps has also been updated to version 3.4 and brings with it items synchronization, search suggestions from users' personal maps history, and a very interesting "night mode" in Maps Navigation. The update also adds the Google Goggles application that was first seen in December 2009.
Under the skin, there seems to be not much of a change. We can expect another update in the near future that will help Google fix the 3G connectivity issues that many users faced initially. As for the update to arrive for on your phone, you would have to be at the mercy of your operator to have it issued for you. Of course, there is another way out where you can update manually to get this same OTA version. More on that here.
As always, if you plan to update, do take a backup of all your data. Just in case, you know.

Techtree.com