12th June 2009
Web creator job ‘beyond politics’
Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said that the job he has been given by Gordon Brown is an important one that goes beyond party politics. The inventor of the world wide web has been asked by the prime minister to help open up access to government data. “I think there’s a public demand for transparency. This is way beyond party politics and beyond global borders,” Sir Tim said. He said taxpayers’ money paid for the data so it should be available to them.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8096273.stm
Opera lashes out over Microsoft’s browser removal
The chief complainant in the European browser case against Microsoft says that the move to strip Internet Explorer out of Windows 7 in Europe is an insufficient step that won’t lead to better competition in the browser market. In an interview, Opera Chief Technology Officer Hakon Wium Lie said that with regulators threatening action, Microsoft was under pressure to do something, but said that its choice wasn’t what Opera was looking for. Lie told CNET that Opera wants people to have access to more browsers, not fewer. “I don’t believe this is going to restore competition in the marketplace,” he said.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10262913-56.html
Mobile apps to spur broadband spending: U.S. tech czar
The U.S. government’s new technology czar said on Thursday that new mobile phone applications could spur private investment in high-speed Internet connections, but Washington would also play a leadership role. Aneesh Chopra, recently appointed the country’s chief technology officer by U.S. President Barack Obama, said growing mobile Internet access, underscored by the popularity of Apple Inc’s iPhone, provides more incentives for broadband infrastructure spending.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE55A6XL20090611
Nokia developing phone that recharges itself without mains electricity
Standby mode is often accused of being the scourge of the planet, insidiously draining resources while offering little benefit other than a small red light and extra convenience for couch potatoes. But now Nokia reckons a mobile phone that is always left in standby mode could be just what the environment needs. A new prototype charging system from the company is able to power itself on nothing more than ambient radiowaves – the weak TV, radio and mobile phone signals that permanently surround us.
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2244016/nokia-developing-phone
Data-Driven Schools See Rising Scores
Last fall, high-school senior Duane Wilson started getting D’s on assignments in his Advanced Placement history, psychology and literature classes. Like a smoke detector sensing fire, a school computer sounded an alarm. The Edline system used by the Montgomery County, Md., Public Schools emailed each poor grade to his mother as soon as teachers logged it in. Coretta Brunton, Duane’s mother, sat her son down for a stern talk. Duane hit the books and began earning B’s. He is headed to Atlanta’s Morehouse College in the fall. Montgomery, a suburb of Washington, D.C., spends $47 million a year on technology like Edline. It is at the vanguard of what is known as the “data-driven” movement in U.S. education.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124475338699707579.html
Getting a theory of everything by ditching tenet of physics
Every article on quantum gravity begins the same way. On the one hand we have quantum mechanics—excellent at describing the very small and intrinsic lumpiness of the universe—and on the other hand we have general relativity—excellent at describing gravity, but it relies on a smooth universe. Progress in uniting quantum mechanics with general relativity has typically proceeded along two lines. Option one is to generate seemingly outlandish ideas, such as string theory, loop quantum gravity, and their brethren, which resolve the problem by positing the existence of things as yet unobserved. The more sedate approach is the rapid-fire production of grand unified theories, which are neither “grand” nor “unified”. A pair of unrelated papers, however, indicate that progress is occurring.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/06/getting-a-theory-of-everything-by-ditching-tenet-of-physics.ars
