By creating these lights with the exact same form factor as a fluorescent bulb, NetLED has made it incredibly easy to upgrade the lighting in a store or office to its LED tubes, which can also be remotely controlled over Wi-Fi. More »
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Wi-Fi Controlled LED Tubes Make For Easy Office Upgrades [Video]
A single species of bacteria is responsible for tooth decay. But until now, mouthwash has worked by sterilizing your maw wholesale. But why go Death Star v. Alderaan on it when you could just kill off that one bad species? This is exactly what Colgate has done and the result could mean an end to cavities—forever. More »
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New, Targeted Mouthwash Could Eliminate Tooth Decay "Within Our Lifetimes" [Medicine]
Facebook announced new usage milestones in its S-1 filing today: 845 million monthly active users including 425 million users who access the service on mobile devices.
The company had last claimed 800 million monthly active users and 350 million mobile monthly active users at its f8 developer conference in September.
Overall, that means the social network has seen a 39 percent increase in monthly active users since December 2010. It saw particularly strong growth in Brazil with a 268 percent increase year-over-year and India with a 132 percent increase. Notably, both of these markets were strongholds for Orkut, an early rival social networking service from Google.
In the U.S., Facebook is starting to hit its saturation point with 161 million monthly active users, a 16 percent increase from the previous year.
It comes as little surprise that a large percentage of users return regularly. Facebook has long said that half of its users access the site daily. The social network had 483 million daily active users in December 2011, an 48 percent increase since December 2010. According to the company’s IPO filing today, 360 million users were active on at least six days a week in December 2011.
Of course, the larger Facebook gets, the harder it may be for it to grow. “We anticipate that our active user growth rate will decline over time as the size of our active user base increases, and as we achieve higher market penetration rates,” the company said in its filing today. “To the extent our active user growth rate slows, our business performance will become increasingly dependent on our ability to increase levels of user engagement in current and new markets.”
One of the last bastions where Facebook might find an additional 500 million or more users is in China — a country it has explored but never formally entered. In addition to government censorship, it would find many mature rivals there including Sina and Tencent. Prospects there do not look promising, especially considering that Google lost substantial search market share there after a disagreement with the Chinese government. “We do not know if we will be able to find an approach to managing content and information that will be acceptable to us and to the Chinese government,” the company’s statement said.
The company defines active user as a registered user who has logged in and visited Facebook through a website or mobile device in the last 30 days. Facebook also shared stats about activity on its platform. As of December 31, 2011, there were more than 37 million pages with ten or more Likes. More than seven million apps and websites have integrated with Facebook.
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Facebook says it has 845M users with 425M on mobile devices
The Troll Wall is part of the Troll Peaks Mountain located in the Romsdalen Valley near the west coast of Norway, and it’s become one of the world’s foremost base jumping sites. I’m not going to pretend for one second that I have any clue what kind of alpha balls it takes to engage in this jaw-dropping recreational sport, but I’m guessing one of the most popular post-jumping activities would be to chow down on an incredible meal. And the world’s most ultimate sport now has its most ultimate restaurant located at the base of Troll Wall. The Troll Wall Restaurant was completed last year and this balls-out mesmerizing building comes from the the geniuses at Reiulf Ramstad Architects. The restaurant comes in at just under 7,600 square feet, with floor-to-ceiling windows supported by the angular tall white beams which allow a bounty of natural light to pour into the space. Pure amazingness. For more information on this daredevil team of architects be sure to visit ReiulfRamstadArkitekter.no, and to learn more about Troll Wall itself simply head over to Wikipedia. I’m now having trouble figuring out which is more impressive — base jumping or this building. The Troll Wall is the tallest vertical rock face in Europe, about 3,600-feet from its base to the summit of its highest point, and it has been a prestigious goal for climbers and base jumpers alike. Carl Boenish, the “father” of base jumping, was killed on the Troll Wall in 1984 shortly after setting the world record for the highest base jump in history. Base jumping from Troll Wall has been illegal since 1986.
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The World’s Most Daring Base Jumpers Now Have One Of The World’s Most Stunning Restaurants
BGR is claiming that one of its sources has access to an iPad 3 prototype which, at this stage of development, it may be true. According to them, these debug screenshots confirm some of the speculation about the next Apple tablet: More »
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Alleged iPad 3 Development Photos Confirm Key Details [Rumors]
We’ve known for some time that Microsoft would be bringing official Kinect support to Windows this week, but one thing they kept quiet was the fact that they’d be debuting a new version of the hardware as well.
It’s not tiny, as some hoped, or built into the bezel of a laptop, as we know it will be eventually, but it does improve on the original in a few ways.
The most visible improvement for most people will be a slight improvement of the minimum distance required for the device to operate. The Xbox 360 Kinect required you to be around 50cm away at least, and the Kinect for Windows will go down to 40cm — about 16 inches. That means it can sit on a monitor on a user’s desk and capture movements without the user having to scoot back at all.
Other improvements are of the softer variety. Microsoft has improved the tracking software, providing an improved raw sensor stream, better color/depth synchronization, and more accurate skeletal tracking.
On the downside, the new version costs quite a bit more: the new Kinect for Windows is going for $250, while the 360 version is selling for just $100 at the Microsoft Store right now. The justification for the price seems to be that the new version has been updated to support multiple systems and situations, rather than the standard 360 hardware it’s been running on for the last year. And I’m guessing they’re not subsidizing this price quite as heavily.
The official SDK won’t work with the 360 version, it seems, though you can still download the beta SDK, which works fine but officially can’t be used for commercial applications.
Microsoft says they’ve been working with hundreds of companies and seeing lots of unique applications and ideas, so hopefully we’ll see some of those hit soon. In the mean time our Kinect tag has lots of projects that demonstrate the versatility of the device.
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Microsoft Updates Kinect Hardware For Official Windows Release
For wary Office 365 enterprises who’ve been reluctant to dip their toes into the beta pond, today will certainly be memorable in the IT room: Research in Motion has gone ahead and blessed BlackBerry Business Cloud Services as ready for prime time. The software, which has been in beta stage since October, allows BlackBerry users to easily integrate with their firm’s Office 365 deployment. Users can expect synchronization with their Exchange email, contacts and calendars, along with the ability to remotely wipe or lock their data should the device go missing. Likewise, IT gurus may take advantage of remote administration and wireless activation of the handsets. The software is free and will work for all medium-sized and enterprise subscribers of Office 365. So go ahead and uncork that dusty bottle of champagne, or absent that, feel free to flavor up the Folgers a bit. The press release just after the break, and you’ll definitely want to prepare yourself.
Continue reading RIM welcomes Office 365 users into the fold with BlackBerry Business Cloud Services
RIM welcomes Office 365 users into the fold with BlackBerry Business Cloud Services originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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RIM welcomes Office 365 users into the fold with BlackBerry Business Cloud Services
In today’s digital world we’ve all got data, and lots of it. Our libraries are also growing rapidly: where you used to get by setting aside a few bookshelves for your books, CDs, DVDs and VHS tapes, we now require untold server space to preserve our beloved media in digitized form. We also want our data to be itinerant, or at least seem that way. That is, if you want to take a book or disc to another room of your abode, you pull it from the bookshelf and take it with you. Similarly, if you’re working on a document upstairs on your desktop and you want to move to the den with your laptop, you’ll need the proper infrastructure working in the background to enable that kind of wizardry. So, how can we create this “digital bookshelf?” Can you go out and buy it now? Can you build it in your garage? As it turns out, the answer is “yes” on all counts. You could go out and buy a Drobo device but in this case, we’re going to assemble our own. And we’re going to do that with the help of an open source storage platform called FreeNAS. So how involved a process is that? Meet us after the break to find out.
Continue reading How-To: Set up a home file server using FreeNAS
How-To: Set up a home file server using FreeNAS originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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How-To: Set up a home file server using FreeNAS
alphadogg writes “Many IT departments are struggling with Apple’s ‘take it or leave it’ attitude, based on discussions last week at MacIT, which is Macworld|iWorld’s companion conference for IT professionals. Much of the questioning following technical presentations wasn’t about Apple technology or products. It was about the complexities and confusions of trying to sort out for the enterprise Apple’s practices. Those practices include the use of Apple IDs and iTunes accounts, which are designed for individual Mac or iPad or iPhone users, and programs like Apple’s Volume Purchase Program, which, according to Apple ‘makes it simple to find, buy, and distribute the apps your business needs’ and to buy custom, third-party B2B apps.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Apple Forcing IT Shops To 'Adapt Or Die'
sciencehabit writes “In a new study, neuroscientists connected a network of electrodes to the hearing centers of 15 patients’ brains and recorded the brain activity while they listened to words like ‘jazz’ or ‘Waldo.’ They saw that each word generated its own unique pattern in the brain. So they developed two different computer programs that could reconstruct the words a patient heard just by analyzing his or her brain activity. Reconstructions from the better of the two programs were good enough that the researchers could accurately decipher the mystery word 80% to 90% percent of the time. Because there’s evidence that the words we hear and the words we recall or imagine trigger similar brain processes, the study suggests scientists may one day be able to tune in to the words you’re thinking.”
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Computer Program Reconstructs Heard Words From Brain Scans
