A Tablet that Wants to Take Over the Desktop

A Tablet that Wants to Take Over the Desktop

  12:34:00 PM    Science Lover

---

Cisco has redesigned the Android operating system to make a tablet that also works as a desktop computer—but it takes some control away from users.

New look: The Cius tablet features a radically
different version of Android.
Credit: Cisco.

The latest entrant in the increasingly crowded tablet computing field, Cisco's Cius, is bulkier than the iPad, and has a smaller screen (7-inches wide, compared to the iPad's 9.7). But it packs a number of tricks all of its own, designed to woo business users. The Cius is designed to integrate closely with Cisco's voice and video phone systems, and it can even replace a desktop computer when docked to a new Cisco deskphone, which connects to a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

A Cius tablet makes a user's desk number mobile, enabling a person to make and receive voice and video calls anywhere, if their company has a Cisco phone system. The tablet features HD quality cameras front and back and can be used with a Bluetooth headset for more private calling. The tablet can also be used as a desktop videoconferencing device when docked on a special desktop phone, and can smoothly switch between a WiFi a cellular network connection.

That dock can also be plugged into a monitor keyboard and mouse to act like a desktop computer. "It can replace my desktop operating system," says Tom Puorro, senior director for Cisco's collaboration technologies.

The Cius runs Google's Android mobile operating system, which is used on a rapidly growing number of smartphones and tablets as well. Android is open source, meaning it can be modified by anyone for free, yet so far most companies that have built gadgets running Android have tinkered with it little. The Cius, in contrast, features a radical reworking of Android.

This gives an IT department much greater control over what a Cius user can do. IT managers can shut down access to the Android app market to protect a company from malicious apps. Cisco has also created its own app store, AppHQ, that contains only apps deemed stable and secure by Cisco. Companies can even create their own app store within AppHQ and limit employees to certain applications, or apps built in house.

A WiFi only version of the tablet will be available worldwide from July 31 at an estimated price of $750. Cisco will sell it along with related services and infrastructure, so the cost to businesses will vary, and could be as low as $650. AT&T and Verizon will each offer versions for their 4G networks this fall.



A person can use the tablet's own OS or Windows even via a virtual desktop that runs in the cloud, as Puorro demonstrated at a launch event held in San Jose today. The tablet's powerful 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor allows desktop-like performance when hooked up to a keyboard, mouse and monitor. Although iPads are showing up in workplaces, they can't offer the same integration with everyday tasks like phone calls, and are limited to email, Web browsing and video, says Puorro.

Cisco worked with Google to get advice on its modifications to Android, says Puorro. These modifications enable Android to deal with video and operations like group calling and transferring calls, and make use of a dedicated chip in the tablet that encrypt all its data.

Desk mode: The Cius can be plugged into a new Cisco phone, and function as a desktop computer.
Credit: Cisco

However, the Cius lags other Android tablets in that it uses a now-outdated version of the operating system, code-named FroYo, which was intended only for phones. Cisco say they will catch up, but are waiting for the fall release of Android, code-named Ice Cream Sandwich, a version that Google says will seamlessly span phones and tablets.

Ken Dulaney, a VP and analyst with Gartner specializing in mobile devices says that Cisco has likely delivered something that none of the 200 or so other tablets launching this year can match. "Samsung's latest Galaxy Tab has much more advanced hardware," he says, "what Cisco has done is create a special case of Android that adds things the enterprise needs and is a unique combination of phone, tablet and videoconferencing device."

Other companies have hinted at plans for enterprise-friendly revamps of Android, says Dulaney, including Motorola, but none have so far yet delivered.

Although the Cius may not seem competitive with Apple's iPad 2 to consumers, to businesses concerned about their security it likely see distinct advantages. Apps such as MobileIron exist to help IT staff control iPads used by their staff, but Apple's operating system fundamentally limits the extent to which the iPad can be managed remotely, says Dulaney. "With Android, Cisco could go in at a low level and change how the device is managed so a company can manage everything for the user."

Without an existing investment in Cisco phone and communication systems, though, many company may see little appeal. Puorro says that Cisco continues to develop and release iPad and iPhone apps for its collaboration software, a strategy Dulaney says is wise. "Of course Cisco will also aggressively support iPads," he says, "I think they're gonna see how the Cius does, and if it doesn't work out, work hard to support the most popular tablets."

Read More

WiFi 'napping' doubles phone battery life

WiFi 'napping' doubles phone battery life

  7:56:00 PM    Science Lover

---

A Duke University graduate student has found a way to double the battery life of mobile devices – such as smartphones or laptop computers – by making changes to WiFi technology.

This is Justin Manweiler from Duke University.
Credit: Justin Manweiler

WiFi is a popular wireless technology that helps users download information from the Internet. Such downloads, including pictures, music and video streaming, can be a major drain of battery.

The energy drain is especially severe in the presence of other WiFi devices in the neighborhood. In such cases, each device has to "stay awake" before it gets its turn to download a small piece of the desired information. This means that the battery drainage in downloading a movie in Manhattan is far higher than downloading the same movie in a farmhouse in the Midwest, the researchers said.

The Duke-developed software eliminates this problem by allowing mobile devices to sleep while a neighboring device is downloading information. This not only saves energy for the sleeping device, but also for competing devices as well.

The new system has been termed SleepWell by Justin Manweiler, a graduate student in computer science under the direction of Romit Roy Choudhury, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering. The SleepWell system was presented at the ninth Association for Computing Machinery's International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys), being held in Washington, D.C.

Manweiler described the system by analogy: "Big cities face heavy rush hours as workers come and leave their jobs at similar times. If work schedules were more flexible, different companies could stagger their office hours to reduce the rush. With less of a rush, there would be more free time for all, and yet, the total number of working hours would remain the same."



"The same is true of mobile devices trying to access the Internet at the same time," Manweiler said. "The SleepWell-enabled WiFi access points can stagger their activity cycles to minimally overlap with others, ultimately resulting in promising energy gains with negligible loss of performance."

With cloud computing on the horizon, mobile devices will need to access the Internet more frequently -- however, such frequent access could be severely constrained by the energy toll that WiFi takes on the device's battery life, according to Roy Choudhury.

"Energy is certainly a key problem for the future of mobile devices, such as iPhones, iPads and Android smartphones," Roy Choudhury said. "The SleepWell system can certainly be an important upgrade to WiFi technology, especially in the light of increasing WiFi density."

Manweiler said that "the testing we conducted across a number of device types and situations gives us confidence that SleepWell is a viable approach for the near future."
Provided by Duke University

Read More

The PC (As We Know It) Is Dead

The PC (As We Know It) Is Dead

  1:07:00 AM    Science Lover

---

The rapid rise of cloud computing, coupled with a slew of increasingly powerful mobile computing devices, is killing the PC faster than analysts had predicted.

In fact, some now say, the desktop PC is essentially dead – an immobile zombie that's already irrelevant to many consumers and soon will be to businesses, too.

Lights out for today's personal computers.
CREDIT: Dreamstime/BusinessNewsDaily illustration

Yesterday's announcement of Apple's iCloud, which will store content online and synch all of a user's Apple devices wirelessly, is the latest in a series of nails being hammered into the PC coffin. Smart phones and tablets have given rise to a new consumer demand for immediate information at our fingertips, which John Quain, industry expert and longtime technology writer, said has made the desktop computer defunct.

"We don’t need PCs anymore," Quain told BusinessNewsDaily. "They are dead."

PC sales slide

The two-stage death march is evident in surprisingly dim statistics released recently.

Two of the world's largest manufactures of personal computers, HP and Dell, recently reported significant losses in sales to consumers. PC sales to individuals for quarter ending April 30 plunged 23 percent at HP and 7 percent at Dell.

PC sales to businesses have fared better. But overall, a turning point has clearly passed.

This spring, Gartner, Inc. released statistics showing PC sales overall dropped 1.1 percent compared to last year. Meanwhile, IMS Research has forecasted a whopping 213 percent growth for tablets.

While the PC has long been considered a necessity in the workplace, Quain said mobile devices are now giving businesses the chance to break from that mold.

"I see a lot of large enterprises and small businesses reconsidering the need for a desktop computer," Quain said. "The tablet computers are much cheaper, and give small and medium-size business another option so they don’t have to invest in a desktop computer."

Meanwhile laptops, considered to be PC's, are changing rapidly. Apple's Mac Air has the instant-on capability of a tablet computer, and isn't much bigger than one. Intel recently announced Ultrabook, a thin, light tablet-like laptop with a touch screen. The company thinks it'll make up half the laptop market by the end of next year.

And earlier this year, Motorola released the Atrix 4G, a smartphone that docks to a laptop-like device that's really just a screen, keyboard and giant battery. The smartphone is the brains of the operation.

Gone from campuses

Nowhere is the PC demise more stark than among the consumers of tomorrow.

At Penn State University, Director of Education Technology Services Allan Gyorke said the former student staple is now rarely spotted in dorm rooms.

"The desktop PC is dead," Gyorke said, estimating that 95 percent of students now bring a laptop or tablet media device to campus instead of using a traditional PC in their dorm room.

Those newer devices, he said, are easier to store and easier to set up.

While not ready to put the final nail in the PC's coffin, Roger Kay, an industry expert and president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, said the growing use of media tablets and smartphones is indeed pushing it out the door.

"Death might be an over-exaggeration, but the wind has been taken out of the PC’s sails," Kay said. "There is a lot of momentum going the other way."

With tablets and smartphones having as many computer capabilities as a desktop PC, Kay said it's only naturally for people to choose the handier option.

"It is hugely more convenient," Kay said. "It immediately changed my lifestyle, in that it offered a type of mobile computing that wasn’t available before."

The wireless connection

The explosion of wireless networks is also linked to the PC's demise. You no longer need to be seated at a desktop computer that is plugged into the phone line next to it to access the Internet, Gyorke noted.

"If there is a wireless connection somewhere, people want to access it," Gyorke said. "That is a real drawing force."

Apple's new iCloud will help seal the desktop's fate by spurring the use of all cloud-based services, Quain said. "It is going to make everyone feel more confident in using those cloud services."

Other analysts point out that the iCloud is mostly an Apple affair, but that Google, Microsoft and others who want a foothold in the cloud are already racing in that direction, and iCloud will only heat that race up.

Evolve or die

Still, even as he acknowledged that PC alternatives like the iPad and other media tablets are slowing personal computer sales, George Shiffler, research director at Gartner, Inc., said he expects the PC to survive by evolving into something else.

"PCs are a very flexible platform," Shiffler said. “There will be something like a PC (in the future), but it won't be exactly what it is like today.”

One scenario, he suggested, is to have a further merge of the television and computer.



"I think we may see the desktop move to an all-in-one screen," Shiffler said. "Then it becomes a media center."

Gyorke said he actually sees the future of personal computers headed in the same direction as tablets, with touch screens and app centers.

"The interface will be very similar to the iPad," Gyorke said.

Read More

Phase Change Memory-Based 'Moneta' System Points to the Future of Computer Storage

Phase Change Memory-Based 'Moneta' System Points to the Future of Computer Storage

  12:21:00 PM    Science Lover

---

A University of California, San Diego faculty-student team is about to demonstrate a first-of-its kind, phase-change memory solid state storage device that provides performance thousands of times faster than a conventional hard drive and up to seven times faster than current state-of-the-art solid-state drives (SSDs).

A view of the internals of the Moneta storage array with 
phase change memory modules installed. 
(Credit: UC San Diego / Steve Swanson)

The device was developed in the Computer Science and Engineering department at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and will be on exhibit June 7-8 at DAC 2011, the world's leading technical conference and trade show on electronic design automation, with the support of several industry partners, including Micron Technology, BEEcube and Xilinx. The storage system, called "Moneta," uses phase-change memory (PCM), an emerging data storage technology that stores data in the crystal structure of a metal alloy called a chalcogenide. PCM is faster and simpler to use than flash memory -- the technology that currently dominates the SSD market.

Moneta marks the latest advancement in solid state drives (SSDs). Unlike conventional hard disk drives, solid state storage drives have no moving parts. Today's SSDs use flash memory and can be found in a wide range of consumer electronics such as iPads and laptops. Although faster than hard disk, flash memory is still too slow to meet modern data storage and analysis demands, particularly in the area of high performance computing where the ability to sift through enormous volumes of data quickly is critical. Examples include storing and analyzing scientific data collected through environmental sensors, or even web searches through Google.

"As a society, we can gather all this data very, very quickly -- much faster than we can analyze it with conventional, disk-based storage systems," said Steven Swanson, professor of Computer Science and Engineering and director of the Non-Volatile Systems Lab (NVSL). "Phase-change memory-based solid state storage devices will allow us to sift through all of this data, make sense of it, and extract useful information much faster. It has the potential to be revolutionary."

PCM Memory Chips

To store data, the PCM memory chips switch the alloy between a crystalline and amorphous state based on the application of heat through an electrical current. To read the data, the chips use a smaller current to determine which state the chalcogenide is in.

Moneta uses Micron Technology's first-generation PCM chips and can read large sections of data at a maximum rate of 1.1 gigabytes per second and write data at up to 371 megabytes per second. For smaller accesses (e.g., 512 B), Moneta can read at 327 megabytes per second and write at 91 megabytes per second , or between two and seven times faster than a state-of-the-art, flash-based SSD. Moneta also provides lower latency for each operation and should reduce energy requirements for data-intensive applications.

A Glimpse at Computers of the Future

Swanson hopes to build the second generation of the Moneta storage device in the next six to nine months and says the technology could be ready for market in just a few years as the underlying phase-change memory technology improves. The development has also revealed a new technology challenge.

"We've found that you can build a much faster storage device, but in order to really make use of it, you have to change the software that manages it as well. Storage systems have evolved over the last 40 years to cater to disks, and disks are very, very slow," said Swanson. "Designing storage systems that can fully leverage technologies like PCM requires rethinking almost every aspect of how a computer system's software manages and accesses storage. Moneta gives us a window into the future of what computer storage systems are going to look like, and gives us the opportunity now to rethink how we design computer systems in response."

In addition to Swanson, the Moneta team includes Computer Science and Engineering Professor and Chair Rajesh Gupta, who is also associate director of UC San Diego's California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. Student team members from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering include Ameen Akel, Adrian Caulfield, Todor Mollov, Arup De, and Joel Coburn.

Read More

How Friends Influence Gadget Adoption

How Friends Influence Gadget Adoption

  1:09:00 AM    Science Lover

---

Buying habits revealed via social networks could predict whether a product takes off or not.

Gadget Adoption

When your friend shows up with the latest "must-have" product, it's more likely you'll buy the same product. By exploiting this phenomenon—and harnessing the information available through online social networks—marketers hope to better target products to would-be buyers.

In work presented this week at the Interdisciplinary Workshop on Information and Decision in Social Networks, researchers from the Norwegian telecom provider Telenor showed how important friend connections can be to the adoption of a product. Watching how adoption spreads within social networks could help predict whether a new product will become a viral smash, they say. The researchers looked at patterns of adoption for Apple's iPhone and iPad, as well as for the far-less-successful Doro mobile handset.

"Social networks matter when purchase decisions are made," says Pål Sundsøy, a project manager in the advanced analytics and business intelligence group at Telenor. In particular, he says, people have a higher chance of adopting a product that their friends have bought. Likewise, when people abandon a product—for example, by switching between cell-phone networks—they are more likely to jump ship if their friends do so first.

To measure the social characteristics of product adoption, the researchers made use of anonymized data from Telenor's network. That data revealed how users communicate and what mobile devices they use.

Most strikingly, the researchers found what Sundsøy termed a "tribe of Apple." People who used Apple products tended to be connected to each other. After the launch of the iPhone, a heavily connected cluster of users formed relatively quickly. That central cluster grew larger over time. For the iPad, the researchers observed a similar structure forming even faster (their graphs tracked iPad adoption by the month, instead of the quarterly measures they used for the iPhone). They found that social connections predicted whether users were likely to own Apple products. iPhone users had twice as many connections—meaning they had communicated with one another by voice, text message, or email—than would be expected by chance. The researchers also studied the much less successful Doro. The handset is marketed as a device designed primarily for phone calls rather than data-related activities. Doro users tended to be connected to few other Doro users, and there was no central cluster. Sundsøy argues that this structure suggests that the device will likely never gain momentum.

But social connections aren't everything. In another talk given at the same workshop, Nicholas Christakis, a Harvard University social scientist and expert on networks, said that the qualities of whatever is spreading through a network matters a great deal. For example, some germs are more contagious than others, and will spread faster through a network. Similarly, he said, some ideas are "stickier" than others, and take hold better. So product adoption will also spread according to the quality of the product, and not just the number of friends who already own it.

Even taking variations in product quality into account, however, it will still be useful to look at patterns of adoption in social networks, the Telenor researchers say.

"The social variables have high predictive power," says Sundsøy. "Those who communicate together tend to adopt together." According to his group's work, one key factor is the size of the connected cluster that forms around a product. If a large, heavily connected group begins to form, he says, there's a good chance that a product will take off.

Read More

A Touch Screen with Texture Electrovibration could make for a better sensory experience on a smooth touch surface.

A Touch Screen with Texture Electrovibration could make for a better sensory experience on a smooth touch surface.

  10:32:00 AM    Science Lover

---

Touch screens are ubiquitous today. But a common complaint is that the smooth surface just doesn't feel as good to use as a physical keypad. While some touch-screen devices use mechanical vibrations to enhance users' experiences of virtual keypads, the approach isn't widely used, mainly because mechanical vibrations are difficult to implement well, and they often make the entire device buzz in your hand, instead of just a particular spot on the screen.

Subtle sensation: In this TeslaTouch demonstration, one finger is stationary while the other experiences the sensation of friction as it moves.
Credit: Disney Research

Now, engineers from three different groups are proposing a type of tactile feedback that they believe will be more popular than mechanical buzzing. Called electrovibration, the technique uses electrical charges to simulate the feeling of localized vibration and friction, providing touch-screen textures that are impossible to simulate using mechanical actuators.

One of these groups, composed of researchers from Disney Research in Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Paris Sud, presented a paper earlier this month at the User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) symposium in New York City. In the paper, they described their approach to electrovibration, called TeslaTouch, in which they modified a commercial touch panel from 3M that uses capacitive sensing -- the approach used in most mobile phones and in the iPad.

The touch panel is made of transparent electrodes on a glass plate coated with an insulating layer. By applying a periodic voltage to the electrodes via connections used for sensing a finger's position on the screen, the researchers were able to effectively induce a charge in a finger dragged along the surface. By changing the amplitude and frequency of the applied voltage, the surface can be made to feel as though it is bumpy, rough, sticky, or vibrating. The major difference is the specially designed control circuit that produces the sensations.

It's a challenge, says Ivan Poupyrev of Disney Research, to vibrate a screen in a way that makes sense for a user. When an entire device buzzes, it can be more annoying than helpful. There are also technical hurdles and extra costs in making a touch screen mechanically move. The goal, then, was to create a tactile sensation without using any mechanical motion. "It sounds crazy," Poupyrev says, "but that's what we've done with TeslaTouch."

Electrovibration was first proposed for touch screens in the 1950s, but the approach didn't see widespread use because the screens didn't achieve commercial success until recently. Now, with many researchers looking for ways to improve the now-popular screens, other groups have also rediscovered electrovibration. Nokia recently announced a smartphone prototype that uses the approach. And a Finnish company called Senseg has also implemented electrovibration in touch screens, having closed deals with three companies to incorporate the technology into products that could be available in 2011.

All three groups have filed patents for electrovibration; each outlines a different approach. Currently, the Disney demonstration only provides the feeling of texture when a finger is moving, although the group is working on a way to give feedback to a still finger. Senseg's technology, however, already provides localized feedback to a nonmoving finger, says Ville Mäkinen, founder of the company.

Another limitation of the Disney prototype is that it provides only a single sensation at a time. However, it is possible to split up the screen in various ways to generate different sensations in different parts of the screen, but the design of such a screen would most likely depend on the specific application.

Nokia is exploring ways to use the tactile feedback as a way to augment communication with another person, says Tapani Ryhänen, Nokia lab director in Cambridge, UK. "There's a possibility to use this as a type of communication," he says, "so if I do something on my screen, then you can feel it on your screen."

While electrovibration can provide a different feel for touch screens, the type of interaction is somewhat limited, says Bic Schediwy, director of research at a touch-screen company called Synaptics. Since some systems only work when a finger is moving, those systems couldn't simulate a button click, one of the biggest complaints with touch screens. Additionally, he says, in demonstrations of electrovibration systems, it appears that people have varying responses to the induced current, possibly because of varying skin thickness.

At the UIST symposium, the Disney researchers showed a range of demos to illustrate TeslaTouch, including a simulated ice-covered window that changes friction as virtual ice is removed and a racetrack that provides different sensation as a finger traverses varying terrain. On hand to test the system was Patrick Baudisch, professor of computer science at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. While the demos were simple, he says, they were "very convincing." TeslaTouch may not provide "the basis for getting rid of keyboards or such," Baudisch says, but "it really enriches the interaction on touch devices."

Disney's Poupyrev isn't sure about what his company plans to do with the technology, but the applications that are most obvious involve honing electrovibration so it could be used to more easily draw and paint on a smooth touch surface. Poupyrev also thinks electrovibration, since it is so easily implemented, could find a home in more unusual applications, such as large surfaces like wallpaper, and conformable materials like cloth.

Read More

Is That a BlackBerry in Your Tablet? Details emerge on RIM's soon-to-come Blackberry PlayBook tablet.

Is That a BlackBerry in Your Tablet? Details emerge on RIM's soon-to-come Blackberry PlayBook tablet.

  12:09:00 AM    Science Lover

---

RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook Could Be the First Real iPad Competitor

BlackBerry PlayBook

RIM

Extra evidence that the future of tablet computing is going to be very active—today RIM dropped some details on its upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook seven-inch tablet, with a new BlackBerry Tablet OS.

It's smaller than Apple's existing 9.7-inch iPad screen, but it promises to be more powerful and feature-rich, with a dual-core 1GHz processor, 1GB of embedded RAM, dual front and rear HD cameras, HDMI video output, tethering to BlackBerry phones and support for Adobe Flash 10.1 as well as Adobe's Air publishing platform.

RIM claims that it will launch in Q2 of next year, and with the install base of BlackBerry Exchange servers in the corporate world, it could be a formidable business device. Whether it will gain the same type of acceptance that the iPad currently enjoys will have everything to do with how many developers embrace the platform, and how much the device will cost­­—still a big question mark on that.

And the biggest question mark of all is what will happen between now and the second half of 2011.

How many Google Android or Chrome tablets will be on the market by then? Will HP beat RIM to market with Palm webOS tablets? And, of course, Apple likes to make big announcements in January—and I wouldn't be too surprised to see a lineup of at least two iPads with cameras all over them, FaceTime support, Retina displays and dual-core A4 processors popping up next year. So as usual, we hold our breath.

Read More