API's bringing big cash to Mashery

Now a days every website is cashing on using APIs to become a platform. Mashery, a company that has hosted APIs for companies and helped manage them, was rewarded with a $5.5 million series of funding. The huge technology company, Cisco, as well as some other companies are the investors in this round of funding.

CEO of Mashery, Oren Michels, stated in the article that so many companies are beginning to test the waters of API and are seeing significant raises in revenue as well as the growth of their companies. Michels goes on to say that companies are seeing the importance of letting their customers interact with they services instead of forcing them to do everything at the companies website. I would say that companies willingness to develop APIs are also very important to education, such as the students of IS449w being able to complete there projects for the course!

Mashery will use this new money to hire more people in sales and marketing to be able to expand their product. Currently there are 40,000 developers connected to the website. Some of the bigger names being: Bestbuy, Netflix and New York Times. I think this is another great website, other than programmable web, that we can use to gather information of our APIs. Also check out 3scale. The article lists them as Mashery's competitor.

The Original article was Posted on TechCrunch

Picture-driven computing

“Sikuli is a visual technology to search and automate graphical user interfaces (GUI) using images (screenshots).”
What does this mean, well it is a really neat technology developed by MIT. Instead of programming using 100% code, imagine if you could say “find on the page (this item), focus (here), and click (here)” all using screenshot clips instead of coding the name of each entity.



I haven’t had time to download it and try it yet, although I definitely would make the time if it could help the project. It seems like it would be something that could help one understand the concept of what we are doing.

Picture computing is really a neat concept that is exciting as well as worrisome. Saw this site a while ago and was amazed. However after thinking about it a while I realized that this is kind what I’m going to school for. If this catches on after awhile, people won’t be paying others to do something that everyone can do.

Something simple but technical

Everyone always bashes Ohio and how we have nothing there but LeBron. But I found something that makes me pround to be from Ohio. A small company(Kent Display, Inc.) in Kent, Ohio has come up with a small device named the Boogie Board, that can be used for taking notes. I know it kinda sounds like the iPad but it is really nothing like it. The only thing this device does is take notes. It uses an LCD screen and pen and the user can take notes on it.

The company mistakenly came up with this product it was an experiment gone wrong. But it turned out to be pretty successful. It was released a week before the iPad and has been sold out every since. It is sold out on Amazon and I think the only place to get one is in Ohio. I think it's a good idea that they came up with. It makes me appreciate the little companies existing, just trying to get that big break.

The only thing that I worry about with this product is that people are buying it hoping that it does what the iPad does and will later be upset when they find out all it does is take notes. It's said to be really small for convenience. I wish I could home and see one in action. After Kent Display, Inc. catches up with all of it's back order product I hope they invest in improving this product, because I see it as being very successful in the future.

Apple Failure

Everyone always talks about how successful Apple is and how their name means quality. However, Apple has had its fair share of failures. One of the biggest failures was the Apple Lisa. This computer debuted in 1983 and had a price tag of almost ten thousand dollars. It was the first commercially produced computer to have a GUI interface. It seemed the Lisa had what it would take to become a highly successful PC.

However, many companies were turned off by the price and instead ran the cheaper IBM PCs. The only entity that ran the Lisa exclusively was NASA who used LisaProject for their project management. Although the Lisa was a very advanced computer for its day, it still ran very slowly when compared to other less expensive models of the time. Another factor that helped doom the Lisa to failure was the introduction of the Mac in 1984.

The Mac cost less and people flocked to this new Apple product. The Lisa seemed doomed from the begging. Its price was too high for what it provided to the customer. It was also cannibalized by Apple’s introduction of the Mac. In 1986 after a failed make over the Lisa was discontinued and was left as just a bad memory to Apple. It just goes to show you that not everyone can be successful all the time and making mistakes is just part of the success process.

Apple Inc.

The other day I had to read a case paper about Apple Inc. It was interesting to see how Apple started out and how they revolutionized a lot of the technology we know today. Apple Computer joined the world in 1976, when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak began making computer circuit boards in their garage. A while back Steve Jobs was fired, which is one thing I never knew. Here is some examples of things that we use that might not exist without Apple and Steve Jobs.

Apple created things such as the iPod, Mac, iPhone, and millions of apps that we use everyday. Apple has created two great partnerships, one with AT&T when they created the iPhone, did you know Steve Jobs went to Verizon also, but Verizon turned down his offer. Steve Jobs wanted to own all the rights to iPhone but pair up with a strong wireless service to offer great connection. He told AT&T that they wont have any control over what he does or how it’s offered. And although reluctant they took the offer that Verizon had turned down.

Another great partnership is Apple and Nike. They have created the Nike + iPod. Nike + iPod has a chip that as you go bike or run it will track of the distance and speed from your previous workout. Also it has a feature that when you begin to slow down it will change the song in your iPod and gives you a previously selected “pump up” song to help you keep up your goal. Learn more about this at apple.com.

General Electric and HealthyMagination

General Electric is one of the strongest companies of our era. As you watch the Olympics I’m sure you see all the commercials for Healthymagination.com. That is GE’s new approach, to help create better health for more people in the future.

As I look through the website, GE has a lot of projects. Some examples of these projects are Morsel, which is a smart phone app that helps people make healthier decisions. The idea of better health communication can be an example of real life ajax, they found a way to meet WebMD and healthymagination to create a database of your information so yoru doctors can see more about your history faster.

GE also has a blog site for healthymagination. I thought it’d be helpful to show you all what it looks like, healthymagination.com/blog. The most recent post talks about if the iPad could revolutionize health care. Like I said they are converting WebMD and healthymagination together to help doctors.

I wanted to talk about GE because ultimately I would love to work for them. They are always looking to the future, and are finding ways to help people all over the world.

Online Banking made tamper proof?

In recent development banking powerhouse UBS has developed a device made from IBM that is thought to have the ability to secure online banking transactions without the interference of hackers. The device is called Zone Trusted Information Channel (ZTIC) and it is a smart card reader that attaches to a computer through a USB cable.

How this device works is that it when your doing a online transaction instead of going through the web browser it bypasses it and makes a direct secure Socket Layer Connection(SLC) with the bank. And with this access the ZTIC is able to show the banking customer what is really happening even if there was malicious and dangerous software infected on the computer.

When you are connected to the PC via USB, the customer enters the ZTIC card and enters their own PIN code onto the UBS website. When the account information of the beneficiary is entered for payment, the ZTIC will display the target account on the device screen. If the transaction has been hacked and the account numbers don't match the customer can the abort payment This is a good process because hackers steal information by interfering with transactions in real time and modifying the data. With ZTIC it eliminates the middle man attacks and hacks and gives you a direct connection to the source.

Online Video

UBS primarily bought this device mainly for corporate customers trying to set up new payment beneficiaries in their online banking system. This technology has been around but IBM is the first company to get a major banking corporation to deploy it.

Paradise By Computer

As our winter break approaches many of us may spend the break catching up on homework and other assignments for our senior classes. Still many others will take that week and turn it into a much needed vacation from school and homework. If you do decide to go on vacation, one of the top destinations for college students on break is Cancun Mexico. With its premium white beaches, tropical atmosphere and it’s almost perfect weather Cancun is a delight for all who have ever been there.

What does Cancun have to with an IS 449 class blog? Cancun with all its beauty and charm would not exist today had it not been for a computer that was used to pick the most perfect location for tourism in Mexico. Had it not been for a computer, this main tourist attraction would still be just overgrown jungle and its beautiful beaches would belong to just the sea creatures who inhibit the waters.

In the late 1960s the Mexican president created a committee to research the best possible location in Mexico to develop for tourism. The committee then searched many potential locations. In 1970, all the information gathered by the researchers was feed into a computer and the best possible location was chosen by the computer. Cancun was that choice and I have to say that a computer did a really good job of picking paradise. The computer technology at the time was no where near where it is today and its choice just amazes me. Sometimes nature needs a little help, in this case it was helped by a computer.

Ajax Group Iteration 1

I'm really excited about our group project and can't wait to see how things develop as we go. So far we have completed iteration 1 and have a good idea of what we want our site to do. Our web page will be a place for younger people especially recent graduates to go and search for careers, find local places to live, and give the weather for that location. This information will display using Google Maps.

For iteration 1 we had a simple web page and used the button onClick event handlers to display our information. This was just a starting point to demonstrate the xmlhttprequest and our basic plan. We have already started the design layout for iteration 2 which will show how our actual site will look.


We are continuing to work towards iteration 2 and get a better understanding of the API's we will be using. Using the Proxy-pass through we plan to return the xml and find the information we need. When things begin to come together, we will know if we need make modifications or additions to our original plan.

PleaseRobMe Revealed

Let me start with my usual an update on how I'm feeling about the class as well as how my group project and individual projects are going. We all just did our presentations for Iteration 1 and I feel the whole class did great. I can't wait to see the movie mash-up. It seems like it'll be very interesting. In this group project we have to make all of these sites one and I am so confused as to how we are going to do this. I asked John how to register an API and he said "that'll take some research". :/ This makes me kinda nervous, now I feel like I am behind on the thinking level of the class. I'll catch up though!

On to bigger and better things. I found this article about a site named PleaseRobMe. This site was developed by three friends who are all on twitter and who just talk to people and find out when they're not home and other vacant houses on the street. This is so scary, to know that people are keeping tabs on you in another state is just crazy.

The article said that the developers made this site using simple HTML and JavaScript. Maybe they did a mashup, who knows? But whatever they are using it's obviously working and they know when someone is not at home. They get information by playing four square on twitter. From getting that they post it on their site. I think this is crazy but i hope to be on their level by the end of this class. it seems kinda cool to be able to throw together a site in 30 minutes. I'm sure some of you can do that already though, right? LOL

Proxy-pass through

I decided to write a blog about the Proxy-pass through because I know that it can be a little difficult to understand the first time you look at it. I think the most important thing to know is that it really isn't too complicated. Based on Dr. Drakes PowerPoint I will explain some steps to follow.

To get started create a basic html web page like this. Remember to include the script type in the head. This is shown in slide 5 in Dr. Drakes PowerPoint. Just remember that for iteration 2 we will need to have an event handler like a button onClick and a div for display.


Next create a JavaScript file and name it ajax and save it as a js file. All you have to do is copy slides 6,7, and 8 in Dr. Drakes PowerPoint like below. Note that for iteration 2 we won't use the window.onload because we will have an event handler. You will have to change the function displayDetails beacuse we can't use an alert box. Also, in the function getDetails is where we call the proxy file.


Then all you need to do is create one more file and name it proxy and save it as a php document. Just copy slides 9-13 in Dr. Drakes PowerPoint. In the highlighted area is where we will define a hostname. For iteration 2 we will need to insert our own hostname from a web service we have chosen. Some API's will require a KEY and some parameters along with the hostname.



This is only a way to call on a web service using Proxy-pass through and to return the information as xml. This is the requirement for iteration 2. As we continue in the semester we will take this xml and parse the information to display only the tags we need. I hope this will be helpful and make iteration 2 a little easier to complete.

More on Cloud Computing

Simon Wardley posted a blog explaining the difference between two words that are key to understanding cloud computing and the value it brings. The two words are Commodification and Commoditization.

The following is a quote from cnet explaining the difference.

• Commodification (mid to late 1970s, Word) is used to describe the process by which something which does not have an economic value is assigned a value and hence how market values can replace other social values. It describes a modification of relationships, formerly untainted by commerce, into commercial relationships.

• Commoditization (early to mid 1990s, Neologism) is the process by which goods that have economic value and are distinguishable in terms of attributes (uniqueness or brand) end up becoming simple commodities in the eyes of the market or consumers. It is the movement of a market from differentiated to undifferentiated price competition, from monopolistic to perfect competition.

These two concepts are at the root of many debates and theories about cloud computing. One of the theories is based around that cloud computing is the "end of infrastructure differentiation". Another theory states that the cloud will be at a more granular level. Others feels that the two theories can not exist side by side. The market has already spawned "Cloud Service Brokers" that offer a blend of services. The author, James Urquhart feels that in the end the market will decide.

There is so much more information on this post on cnet. Besides Simon Wardley's blog is a really cool blog spot. You should read it.

Header for Website

I wanted a standard header for our website that shows up on every page. I knew that the style sheet could help me achive this. It has been a while since I wrote a .css file.

I first tried to have the style sheet just float the elements of the header. Then I was using an absolute positioning. But this involved a lot of code and jocking back and forth between the style sheet and the website to look at each change.

Then I thought there had to be an easier way. I finally looked at the book to see how other sites handled this. It is an Image that is called from the html file. The Style sheet holds the other information like positions and colors about the header. DUH!

I could have used this tutorial too.

DBMS expected increase

DBMS is expected to have an increase in vendors. The competition for DBMS for 2010-2011 is on the rise. though DBMS market is getting a competition boost the same market leaders like Oracle, IBM and Microsoft will continue to dominate. This news comes after a recent survey by ITIC. The reason for the surge in DBMS is that most companies didn't upgrade much technology last year do to the country's recession. Company's must now upgrade do to the software is now out of date.

DBMS plans to do a lot to get potential customers. Researchers say that cost interoperability and performance will be the deciding factors for consumers. The difficult part for vendors especially new vendors is getting companies to change vendors.

Well, I hope that companies do make there software affordable for the masses. I think it would be a great idea for companies to start purchasing new software it usually a sign that the job market is looking up.

US Cyber Attack Test

This week the United States performed a test cyber attack against our nations infrastructure in order to become more familiar with vulnerabilities of the current system. While I had assumed that this is something that is done often in order to ensure stability in the systems, it was clear after reading the article that this is not something that is done on a routine basis.

The Article which appeared on CNN.com, clearly illustrates holes in a system that could leave certain services unavailable for hours to weeks depending on the impact to the system. As stated by National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair "successful cyberattack against a major financial service provider could severely impact the national economy, while cyberattacks against physical infrastructure computer systems, such as those that control power grids or oil refineries, have the potential to disrupt services for hours to weeks."

What is so surprising (well not really) about all of this is that in todays day and age when nearly all information or infrastructure is nearly completely relient on a computer system and has been for the last decade, we are only now beginning to run through realistic as opposed to apocalyptic type tests against these systems. Once again it is clear that the Government, while always trying to become more in the loop, has proven that most of the time it is rarely looking at the big picture of protecting this nation. That is too bad, because in my opinion, some of our largest threats are more than likely going to use some sort of attack to these systems long before they will invade our shores.

API's

API’s are more becoming more widely used by many people and companies today. The Internet is a place where users can get information fast….and API’s are helping to make information retrieval even faster. Internet giants like Google, Amazon, and Netflix are releasing their API’s to the public so people can see how their applications can communicate with other applications over the internet remotely.

Take for instance Google Maps. Chicagocrime.org lists crimes that have occurred in the city of Chicago. Using Google Maps chicagocrime.org can overlay Google Maps to show where crimes have occurred in the city of Chicago. This can be a very useful tool for someone who wants to visit Chicago and be aware of the areas that typically see more crime. Without API’s this would not be possible because it is the API that allows the overlay of Google Maps for chicagocrime.org.

How API's work




The Internet is not the only place that makes use of API’s. Windows makes extensive use of API’s. Whenever you listen to your favorite MP3 on your computer you are making use of an API through your soundcard. Think of an API as a toolbox of many functions that can be called upon at anytime.




Windows Uses API's

Outlook LinkedIn Connector

Linkined is now connected with Microsoft Outlook. According to PCworld.com "LinkedIn Outlook connector allows you to keep up to date with your LinkedIn connections, integrates their contact information into Outlook, and allows you to add new LinkedIn connections right from your desktop." Getting setup with the connector is said to be time consuming first you need to have the 32 bit version of Microsoft Outlook 2010, download the add-on from Microsoft's website. The connector does not work in older versions of Outlook including all outlook express versions, and 2010 Outlook 64-bit version. Next you have log in to LinkIn and install the connector add-on. After downloading the connector Microsoft has detailed setup instructions.

Whenever you open a message in Microsoft Outlook from anyone in your LinkedIn network, you will see information pulled from your contact's LinkedIn profile below the message pane. You will be able to see their profile photo, latest status messages, recently added connections and see any recent questions they've asked or answered. Microsoft is planning to expand its connection options to include Myspace, Facebook and other social networks to add to its social connector.

I think that the social connector will be convenient for many people who use social networks regularly. It is also good for people who use Outlook but the draw back is its not available in other Outlook versions.

There is a great comparison of social media is made in this article on Lifehacker . The article has a great breakdown of Buzz, Twitter, and Facebook. I kind of missed Google’s Buzz when it first came out. I found this article while looking it up. From what I’ve heard buzz is suppose to contend with Facebook, I haven’t had the chance to use it much.

I found it odd that the author chose to put only these three in the chart. The author mentions others explaining that they are “generally too niche to be compared in the same aspects and categories.” I would argue that buzz is too new to not have a niche and twitter isn’t really comparable to Facebook or Buzz at all.

This article had some really great comments. One comment had the above picture from this site. The picture includes a breakdown of more social media sites. One of the best questions brought up in was in a different comment by cal82, “… What about the most important factor: which network your network uses?” This has to be the number one reason to use a social media site. Are the people that you want to be social with using the site?

Buzz has a step up on this process by automatically including people that I follow in Google Reader. I use social media mainly for looking at and sharing interesting things, either from friends and family’s lives, or something someone else found on the internet. I use Facebook for most of this and Google Reader for the latter. However reader can be a little overwhelming if you don’t check it often enough and would like something that offers a little more filtering options. I’m going to have to see what direction Buzz goes, and how many people adopt it.

Knowledge is power....

Knowledge is power is the title of this blog and I think it is perfect. I have transferred schools three times due to following a dream. It just so happens that each time I transfer, I get a fresh start. My first school was University of North Texas and I didn’t go to class consistently and did as little as possible to get by. I then moved to Colorado and went to the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. My attitude towards school was a lot better, but I was still not attacking the learning part like I should. My last transfer was to Eastern and again I was given a fresh start.

I was very lucky with my fresh start, for I finally decided what major I wanted to go after. I also met my business partner John Hanna in my first class. I was grouped up with John and we both showed how we can really spend time on an assignment and turn it into something helpful for others. We then were asked to help create the second course for Google AdWords for Eastern Michigan. During this time we decided to create a company and there was a lot of excitement.

We then ran into some problems. We are very good with Google AdWords, which was shown if you saw our certification test score. We are not good at getting customers and sharing our knowledge with other companies to help them succeed. So, we put our company on hold and continued working on school projects and learning more information.

It is time to get our company going again for we both need money. After a conversation, we are about to take what we have learned in the classroom and apply it to our business. We are using what we are learning in our project management class to help us with our progress. We are going to meet every week now and just focus on our company. This Thursday we are spending quality time on content so we will be able to launch our new site that looks more professional and try and lower the risk concerns with potential clients. Ajax could be a feature that could also be used with our new site, but I think we should try and finish the semester before we incorporate something we don’t have a full understanding of.

Once our site is up, I know John and I will both welcome any help with getting our name out there and helping us help other companies.

Google, Google, Google!

Really, sometimes I think that Google's main objective in life is to take over the world. Seriously lol I only say that because it seems like everyday Google is on the news for release this or adding that. But hey I'm not complaining because I'm definitely a Google fan and I don't think I will be jumping off their bandwagon anytime soon.

This brings me to my blog for today about a new feature that Google has released. In Google Apps, enterprise admin policies have been added for iPhone, Nokia and Windows Mobile Devices. Google Apps Premier and Education Edition administers will not be able to manage the phones of their users without using additional software or managing dedicated enterprise servers.

Some of the settings that admins will have access to are: being able to remotely wipe data from lost or stolen devices, require each phone to have a strong password, and lock idle devices after inactivity. All this will be accessible under the "mobile tab" in the Google Apps control panel.

Even though this is more for businesses, I just think that it is very cool that Google has added it. I work at a medium size corporation and it took me a very long time to organize all the Blackberry's being used by employees and it took me a while to really grasp how to use the Blackberry Enterprise Server to manage the phones. This seems like a very easy and clean interface for businesses that do not want to spend a lot of money to buy the expensive software but want a way for their IT administrators to have control of access to corporate data on devices. You can read the full article at yet another on of Google's Official Blogs: Official Google Enterprise Blog

On a side note, if you have an iPhone and use exchange, did you know that there is a way to remotely wipe your lost or stolen phone? You can find the How-To guide HERE. I find this pretty cool.

RIM makes it work faster

Research In Motion(RIM) gave a demo of the latest Blackberry Browser at Mobile World Congress(MWC) in Barcelona, Spain. The most common issue with the current browser is that it is slow. This is because it has hard time with many javascript-heavy pages; and it makes certain web pages hard to read. This browser is expected to be launched in market in late 2010.


The company CEO said that this new WebKit-based Blackberry Browser is not only loading javascript faster but manages Ajax efficiently and supports HTML 5.0, DOM L3 and CSS3. This new browser has scored 100/100 in the Acid3 Web standards test. This test is to gauge a browser's congruency with different web standards. The interesting fact to know is that neither Internet Explorer nor Firefox have received a perfect score on this test.


It will also support the two widget standards - Blackberry Widgets and JIL widgets. The Blackberry developers are promising it to be a very powerful application experience for the users. I am eager to actually get the hands-on experience with this new browser but I hope it doesn't get too late.

Avatar, revolutionizes movie going

Have you all seen Avatar yet? Its an incredible movie, Directed by James Cameron who also produced Titanic and Terminator 2. James Cameron has produced some of the biggest selling movies of all time. Alot of the information I got were from the Discovery Channel and the link will take you directly to words with James Cameron.

As he created the movie, He wanted to create aliens that looked like humans but didn't want then to be to much like humans. He wanted to make sure the actors/actresses would show every facial movement, from lips to their eyes. Using a helmet that watched their face in every scene, then they converted it into the aliens.

He then talks about the 3D part of the movie, He didnt want to use gimmicks. Instead he wanted to use the way your eyes worked in real life, like when you hold your hand in front of your face and look past it you see both your hand and the wall. He wanted this so the audience was in the movie, not like we are watching a movie.

I want to talk about Pandora, which is the planet that the movie is located on. The creatures on this planet resemble the real like animals we see everyday. He used our Horses to create the 6 legged horses located on Pandora. When they used the information that we are used to, it made us(the viewer) step into the world and feel like we want to be a part of it.

Wireless Networking with LED

Recently back in the early month of January a Siemens research project broke the record for wirelessly transmitting data. They achieved this with making use of white Light emitting diodes(LED) instead of what they use today which is radio waves. The researchers were able to transmit data up to 500/Mbps which beat the previous record of 200/Mbps. This new record crushes current WiFi standards, but WiFi is developing new standards that could push speeds up to a Gigabit.

The research company used Ostar LEDs, which are one of the top LEDs in terms of brightness. How this new LED networking works is that the lights are modulated at a frequency that allows for high speed data transferring and at the receiving end of this is a machine called a photodetector that gets the light signals and then transfers those signals into electrical pulses. Siemens refers to this transferring of data as Visible Light Communication (VLC). They claim this technology can be used in different ways, one way is that it can enhance the performance of wireless networks. Meaning if you live in a place where wireless networks interfere with one another, this new technology could be a different choice to use because there is no current use of light technology with data transfer and so using this would led to less interference.

Siemens claims that transferring data is more secure than radio waves since the recieving end must have a photodetector. The company also has other ideas of how to use VLC with applications such as LED stoplights that can transmit data to cars and trains for transportation use or safety. And the research group has tested out an idea using 5 combined LEDs that could transmit 100/Mbps over longer distances.

Web development tools for Firefox

So, as I told Dr. Drake in class, I'm going to make a post talking about a few of the web development tools that I like to use. There are a few different ones that I like to use for Firefox including Firebug, MeasureIt, and Colorzilla. An addon that I like to use that is unrelated to web development is Download Statusbar.

Firebug is an addon that allows you to inspect various elements by either hovering over it in the web page or by searching through your source code in firebug while it highlights each element as you hover over it.

MeasureIt is an addon that lets you measure the distance between two items in firefox, it gives you the distance in pixels which is very helpful when trying to set margins or measure the distance between two elements while developing a web page.

Colorzilla is one of my favorite addons. Think of the eyedropper in paint. It allows you to click the tool and click any color on a web page in firefox and it gives you the rgb numbers so that you can replicate it if you want when developing a page. It is especially helpful if you're trying to replicate the colors of a web page for whatever reason because then you don't have to go through the CSS to look through all of the colors.

Finally, while not helpful for development, it is a convenient little tool that I like because it keeps pop up windows out of my face when I'm trying to download things. Download Status bar is a must have for me personally.

Windows Mobile 7 Flash

One of the largest complaints about the iPhone is the lack of Flash. With over six million download requests in December 2009 alone, it is clear the users expect flash to be present on a mobile device at this point. Many expect that Windows Mobile 7 will be compatible with Flash, given Microsoft's close relationship with Adobe. The introduction of flash on Windows Mobile will finally allow Microsoft to one-up Apple... but can they do it?

The simple answer is no. Steve Ballmer recently announced that Windows Mobile 7 will not have Flash capability at initial release. Many may say that the capability will eventually be integrated into the OS, but Microsoft has a dirty history of keeping the status-quo with many of its products. Windows Vista, for example, was supposed to come with a new file system that would speed up data access rates and allow for superior organization, but Microsoft simply never got around to it.

Flash requires processing power that is capable with current technology, but the battery life of any device using it would be the equivalent to those which are currently using GPS. The number of flash applications is begging to dwindle and HTML 5 is supposed to remove the necessity of the Flash format, which may actually make this entire post into a moot point.

1Gbps Streaming?

The average internet user in the United States pays for broadband ranging from 1 - 12Mbps, allowing us to stream videos and download songs at a fairly decent rate. Even with these modern "fast" speeds, there are still situations in which faster speeds may be necessary. Siemens recently went to 500Mbps streaming with the use of white LED's, but there is a solution that works even better than that.

A Penn State graduate student and a professor have but a mechanism that sends data at a blazing 1Gbps. "Their setup sent data across a room by modulating a beam of infrared light that was focused on the ceiling and picking up the reflections using a specially modified photodetector. The pair says that their measurements show the system could support data rates "well beyond" the one gigabit per second they are currently claiming."

A wireless N connection is currently only capable of about 300Mbps and anyone who has done large data backups over this speed knows that it can still take quite some time, especially considering multiple users on the same router who may be using its resources. I personally look forward to this being available to the public. Take that, FIOS.