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Right on time , businesses with the inside track to Microsoft's account team and partner program can now snag the latest version of Redmond's content production software suite, Office 2013 . What's that? You've got the hook up, but you were also hoping for Exchange Server 2013, Lync Server 2013, SharePoint Server 2013, Project 2013, and Vision 2013? You'll be happy to hear that those are also available today -- the already announced "first quarter 2013" release window for Office 2013 stands, when it'll become widely available both digitally and at direct retailers. The big update to Office this time around comes in the form of Windows 8-style visuals and cloud-based saves using Microsoft's SkyDrive service. We've got a full hands-on right here if you'd like to learn more ahead of next year's big launch. Filed under: Desktops , Internet , Software , Microsoft Comments Via: WinSupersite Source: Microsoft

General Electric has moved some of its key appliance-manufacturing work back to the USA, re-opening "Appliance Park," a megafactory in Louisville, KY. The company is finding it cheaper to do some manufacturing in the US relative to China, thanks to spiking oil costs, plummeting natural gas prices in the US, rising Chinese wages, falling US wages, and, most of all, the efficiencies that arise from locating workers next to managers and designers. The GeoSpring suffered from an advanced-technology version of “IKEA Syndrome.” It was so hard to assemble that no one in the big room wanted to make it. Instead they redesigned it. The team eliminated 1 out of every 5 parts. It cut the cost of the materials by 25 percent. It eliminated the tangle of tubing that couldn’t be easily welded. By considering the workers who would have to put the water heater together—in fact, by having those workers right at the table, looking at the design as it was drawn—the team cut the work hours necessary to assemble the water heater from 10 hours in China to two hours in Louisville. In the end, says Nolan, not one part was the same. So a funny thing happened to the GeoSpring on the way from the cheap Chinese factory to the expensive Kentucky factory: The material cost went down. The labor required to make it went down. The quality went up. Even the energy efficiency went up. GE wasn’t just able to hold the retail sticker to the “China price.” It beat that price by nearly 20 percent. The China-made GeoSpring retailed for $1,599. The Louisville-made GeoSpring retails for $1,299. The Insourcing Boom [The Atlantic/Charles Fishman]

Spend hours planning what to do when everything goes to hell-on-earth? I know I do. This map just made things a lot easier (planning anyways, I'm not counting on a lot of connectivity post event!) I have not tried the associated game, yet. The map is far too engrossing!

Some Tumblr users are seeing their pages replaced with several dozen duplicate posts from a known hacker group, warning that deleting said message will delete the Tumblr page in question (it's unclear if this is actually true, but seems to be false in our testing). Tumblr confirmed the ongoing issue to us this morning, and warned users who've seen the message to "please log out of all browsers that may be using Tumblr," as that's one way the "viral post" is being spread. The message from the group is aimed at the wide world of "bloggers," and insists Tumblr users should take their own lives. Tumblr says its team is "working to resolve the issue as swiftly as possible," though there is no timeline for when it'll be fixed. In the meantime, we suggest changing your Tumblr password (though there's no indication that passwords were necessarily taken, or any other personal information) and staying away from the site until the all clear is given. Thus far, it doesn't seem that any previously written posts have been deleted, but simply pushed dramatically far down the timeline by a deluge of duplicate posts. We'll update this post as we learn more. Update: A Tumblr rep tells us, "Tumblr engineers have resolved the issue of the viral post attack that affected a few thousand Tumblr blogs earlier today." The sites we were seeing affected earlier seem to have returned to normal. Filed under: Networking , Internet , Software , Mobile Comments Source: GNAA.eu

hattig writes "US researchers say they have developed a new type of lighting that could replace fluorescent bulbs. The new light source is called field-induced polymer electroluminescent (Fipel) technology. It is made from three layers of white-emitting polymer that contain a small volume of nanomaterials that glow when electric current is passed through them. The developer is promising cheap, hard-to-break, mercury-free, highly efficient bulbs from 2013." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

dcblogs writes "The U.S. Dept. of Energy has set a goal to develop battery and energy storage technologies that are five times more powerful and five times cheaper within five years. DOE is creating a new center at Argonne National Laboratory, at a cost of $120 million over five years, that's intended to reproduce development environments that were successfully used by Bell Laboratories and World War II's Manhattan Project. 'When you had to deliver the goods very, very quickly, you needed to put the best scientists next to the best engineers across disciplines to get very focused,' said U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, on Friday. The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research isn't designed to seek incremental improvements in existing technologies. This technology hub, according to DOE's solicitation (PDF), 'should foster new energy storage designs that begin with a "clean sheet of paper" — overcoming current manufacturing limitations through innovation to reduce complexity and cost.' Other research labs, universities and private companies are participating in the effort." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It seems the rumors of e-ink based displays' imminent death at the hands of tablets were greatly exaggerated. Despite a glut of portable color screen devices now on the market, e-book readers are more popular than ever, and a company called ZBD Solutions now wants to use the e-ink technology as easily updateable store signage. More »

November 29, 2012, between 1026 and 1029 (UTC), all traffic from Syria to the rest of the Internet stopped. At CloudFlare, we witnessed the drop off. CloudFlare spent yesterday morning studying the situation to understand what happened. The following graph shows the last several days of traffic coming to CloudFlare's network from Syria. More »

Thanks to a (now password protected) page on Redbox's support site, details on the company's joint streaming venture with Verizon have finally surfaced. More »

Most foods deteriorate over time, but bread's a major culprit, often going stale after just a couple of days. Now, though, a US research company claims to be able to make your loaf stay fresh for up to 60 whole days . More »