Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• In search of the perfect GMO potato

  • Unlike transgenic varieties Monsanto commercialized in the 1990s using genes from synthetic bacteria to kill insect pests, Simplot's new "Innate" brand potatoes use only potato genes
  • Haven Baker, Simplot's Yale- and Harvard University-trained vice president of plant sciences, said his scientists journeyed inside the vegetable's genome to "silence" unwanted attributes, while making sure it remained 100 percent potato

• Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE:CHK): Natural Gas Will Be The Primary Fuel For The Next 100 Years | Market Daily News

  • natural gas will be the primary fuel for the next 100 years. Well-positioned gas companies will be golden for many years to come

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Google urges fast adoption of VP9 video compression | Internet & Media - CNET News

  • At its Google I/O conference Wednesday, company employees made the case for the royalty-free, open-source technology as a higher-quality alternative to today's dominant video codec, H.264. Moving to VP9 -- available now in testing on Chrome and YouTube -- will save bandwidth costs.
  • One problem is that Google is moving very fast. Software such as Web browsers on PCs can be updated rapidly, but it's harder and slower work to build hardware support into chips so mobile phones can decode video without crushing battery life. The industry barely has started coping with VP9's predecessor, VP8, which has been on the market for three years.
  • Another big issue is that VP9 isn't competing only against H.264, a codec that's about a decade old. It also must reckon with HEVC, aka H.265, a standard that's now complete and that has the potential to spread as widely as H.264.
  • But there's another big part of the VP9 sales pitch: no royalty payments. VP9 is free to use, unlike H.264. HEVC/H.265 also will be free to use once the licensing organization MPEG LA finishes up its patent royalty plans. Google sees that as an unacceptable financial burden for startups, programmers, schools, and others who might want to launch a video project on the Internet

• DRM in HTML5 is a victory for the open Web, not a defeat | Ars Technica

  • The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the group that orchestrates the development of Web standards, has today published a Working Draft for Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), a framework that will allow the delivery of DRM-protected media through the browser without the use of plugins such as Flash or Silverlight.
  • Further, the groups argue that the Web is moving away from proprietary, DRM-capable plugins. The EFF writes that "HTML5 was supposed to be better than Flash, and excluding DRM is exactly what would make it better," and the petition claims that "Flash and Silverlight are finally dying off."

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• The Biggest Thing Since Amazon to Happen To .com

  • I predict that the eBay Global Sales platform will be the biggest thing to happen to online retail since Amazon.com.
     
     What is it? It's a new feature eBay soft opened last month, and it is available for all U.S. sellers.
     
     1. You enable it on eBay with a few clicks
     2. eBay then propagates your listings over their network in 27 countries
     3. When you get an international order, you ship it to eBay in Kentucky
     4. You pay the same fees as you would for any other domestic shipment
     5. eBay then ships it overseas, handling customs, export, and shipment
     6. Did I mention your fees don't change? eBay charges the customer for the international shipment.
     7. eBay removes any negative feedback as to the process from Kentucky forward, were you to receive any
     
     In the click of a mouse, you can now take your business from domestic to worldwide, as simple as shipping your packages to Kentucky.
     
     This is a game changer. For anyone that sells on Amazon, you now know why you have received 5 emails in the last 2 weeks from Amazon talking about you expanding with Amazon to other countries, but Amazon thus far makes it difficult to do so.
     
     I predict that the eBay Global Sales platform will be the biggest thing to happen to online retail since Amazon.com, and create a domino effect that will become the new global standard for international eCommerce.

• White House looks to 3D printing with $200 million plan for military, energy manufacturing | The Verge

  • The White House is looking to 3D printing as a model to revitalize the American manufacturing industry. Oh, and to help design new weapons and equipement for the military. That's the basis of a new $200 million public-private initiative announced by the White House this morning, which will create three new advanced manufacturing centers around the country. The White House is opening a competitive bidding process to universities and companies to host these centers, but all three will be modeled after a 3D printing institute launched in Ohio late last year, also funded by the government.

• New Zealand Government Announces That Software Will No Longer Be Patentable - Forbes

  • New Zealand Government Announces That Software Will No Longer Be Patentable
  • In a bill passed earlier today, the Government of New Zealand announced that software in the country will no longer be patentable.

• Internet Service on Planes: FCC to Consider Using Satellite Airwaves - WSJ.com

  • U.S. airlines have been rolling out Internet service on flights for several years. But the service, which typically uses Earth-based antennas, is often too slow for today's data-guzzling Web apps.

     

      Qualcomm Inc.  QCOM +0.23%  is pushing the Federal Communications Commission to free up airwaves used by the satellite industry. Such a system could be years away, but commissioners are likely to vote Thursday in favor of opening the issue to public comment, agency officials said.

• Say goodbye to the pin: voice recognition takes over at Barclays Wealth - Telegraph

  • Advanced voice recognition will detect whether a customer is who they say they   are after just 30 seconds of normal conversation, the bank claims.  

     

     The system, which is powered by the voice specialists Nuance, who are also   widely known to be behind Apple’s Siri technology, could end the frustration   of customers who struggle to remember passwords.

  • Barclays, is the first financial   services firm to deploy voice biometrics as the primary means to   authenticate customers in their call centres. A verified voiceprint is used   to identify the caller to the system, which will be rolled out across   Barclays in the future.

• 3D printing with metal: The final frontier of additive manufacturing | ExtremeTech

  • Few areas of technology have seen as much development in one year as that of 3D printing. Undoubtedly, the most dramatic and challenging has been printing with metal

• Nordstrom Using Smart Phones To Track Customers Movements « CBS Dallas / Fort Worth

  • the retailer is using software to track how much time you spend in specific departments within the store
  • sensors within the store collect information from customer smart phones as they attempt to connect to Wi-Fi service. The sensors can monitor which departments you visit and how much time you spend there.

• Daniel Burrus

  • For example, governments, organizations, corporations, educational institutions, and the military are in the process of installing connected sensors to just about everything, from the concrete in streets, bridges, highways, and buildings, to cars, boats, and everyday products,
  • Heaven must be really small ,because I can see it in my Mom’s eyes

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Citi: The Solar Age Is Dawning - Business Insider

  • The biggest surprise in recent years has been the speed at which the price of solar panels has reduced, resulting in cost parity being achieved in certain areas much more quickly than was ever expected; the key point about the future is that these fast ‘learning rates’ are likely to continue, meaning that the technology just keeps getting cheaper.

• Tiny Device Will Detect Domestic Drones - US News and World Report

  • A Washington, D.C.-based engineer is working on the "Drone Shield," a small, Wi-Fi-connected device that uses a microphone to detect a drone's "acoustic signatures" (sound frequency and spectrum) when it's within range.

• Profits At High, Wages At Low - Business Insider

  • Corporate profit margins just hit another all-time high. Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before.
  • Wages as a percent of the economy just hit another all-time low
  • Fewer Americans are working than at any time in the past three decades

• Citi: Disruptive Innovation - Business Insider

  • Disruption 1: 3-D Printing
  • Disruption 2: E-cigarettes
  • Disruption 3: Genomics And Personalized Medicine
  • Disruption 4: Mobile Payments
  • Disruption 5: Energy Exploration Technology
  • Disruption 6: Oil To Gas Switching
  • Disruption 7: Over The Top Content
  • Streaming is already nudging out regular old TV
  • Disruption 8: The SaaS Opportunity
  • Disruption 9: Software Defined Networking
  • Disruption 10: Solar

• Senator Charles Schumer Targets Patent Trolls, Wants USPTO To Review Infringement Suits Before They Head To Court | TechCrunch

  • Today, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) is expected to announce legislation that looks to snuff out patent suits brought by these companies in their early stages, by sending the suits to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for vetting before they hit the courts.
  • This could not only help snuff out bogus suits, but it could also highlight which patents may be bogus as well, creating a framework for preventing their use in subsequent suits.
  • the bill proposes a new process by which all patent cases will get vetted by the USPTO — not just the “extortion” (his word) brought by trolls. “This will apple to all patent cases, but if you have a legitimate case it will go forward in a month. It just eliminates all the frivolous suits. We think it’s the best solution.”

• UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now * The Register

  • For the first time anywhere in the world, the Act will permit the widespread commercial exploitation of unidentified work - the user only needs to perform a "diligent search". But since this is likely to come up with a blank, they can proceed with impunity. The Act states that a user of a work can act as if they are the owner of the work (which should be you) if they're given permission to do so by the Secretary of State.

      

    The Act also fails to prohibit sub-licensing, meaning that once somebody has your work, they can wholesale it. This gives the green light to a new content-scraping industry, an industry that doesn't have to pay the originator a penny. Such is the consequence of "rebalancing copyright", in reality

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