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U.S. chip manufacturing in the age of the iPad
Behind the fly-off-the-shelf popularity of products like Apple's iPad and iPhone are hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs--mostly overseas. Is it possible to create more of those jobs here in the U.S. to combat chronically high levels of unemployment?
Andy Grove's Stanford class examined the state of manufacturing in the U.S.
(Credit: Intel)Personal computing is moving rapidly beyond the laptop. And there's no better example than Apple, whose most popular products are now the iPhone and the iPad. The surging demand for anything Apple is causing a seismic shift in chip manufacturing to Asia, the hotbed of new silicon ecosystems. Though companies like Hewlett-Packard and Dell also play a role, they are still primarily Intel-centric PC makers, while Apple is morphing into a maker of smartphones and tablets, which is creating the alternative non-Intel silicon manufacturing ecosystems overseas. Thus the focus on Apple. ... Read full post & comments
The Apple fear factor
The palpable fear that Apple evokes in Silicon Valley is getting worse by the month.
As long as Apple keeps designing products that consumers love, the company is practically untouchable.
(Credit: Apple)Yell "Apple!" in a theater crowded with Silicon Valley executives and watch how fast they head for the exits. Or, more realistically, drop the name into an interview and suddenly even the most long-winded marketing manager is speechless.
This has always been vexing for me because the fear creates an iron curtain past which only Apple-sanctioned information can pass, at least in the U.S.
Pretty much every person at every company that I talk to is under special orders not to utter a syllable about Apple. (I say "pretty much" because there may have been one or two cases that I'm not recalling.)
What's going on here exactly? Though this syndrome is not news in ... Read full post & comments
Congress moves to outlaw 'mystery charges' for Web shoppers
(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET)
Legislation that makes it illegal for Web merchants and so-called post-transaction marketers to charge credit cards without the card owners' say-so came closer to becoming law this week.
A bill known as the "Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act" passed on Tuesday in the U.S. Senate. The law will make it illegal to use "misleading post-transaction advertisements" and require marketers to clearly disclose the terms of their offers. Merchants and marketers must now "obtain billing information, including full credit or debit card numbers," directly from card holders. The legislation was the government's answer to one of the blackest episodes in e-commerce's brief history.
A Senate investigation last year found that marketing companies Webloyalty, Affinion, and Vertrue paid dozens of some of the Web's best-known retailers to help dupe shoppers into signing up for loyalty programs that enabled the marketers to walk away with ... Read full post & comments
WikiLeaks--public enemy No. 1? (week in review)
WikiLeaks promised its latest release of classified documents to the Internet would be its biggest to date, and the resulting backlash ratcheted up as well.
Despite strident denunciations from Washington officialdom, the whistle-blowing site released about 250,000 sensitive diplomatic cables. Among the files released is a directive signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordering clandestine electronic surveillance of United Nations leadership, including obtaining "security measures, passwords, personal encryption keys, and types of VPN versions used."
The files, which appear to have originated from the U.S. Defense Department's SIPRNET, were provided in advance to news organizations including Germany's Der Spiegel and Spain's El Pais--Wikileaks waited before releasing the cables on its own Web site.
However, even before WikiLeaks was able to post the files, its site was reportedly targeted by a massive computer attack. "We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack," ... Read full post & comments
WebGL powers 3D virtual world on the Web
KataSpace is a 3D world accessed using a WebGL-enabled browser.
(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)One of the obstacles to Second Life popularity is the fact that people must install specific software to visit the site. One of the promises of a 3D technology called WebGL is that such worlds could be drawn directly in a browser.
Now a company called Katalabs, formed by a number of Stanford researchers, has done just that with a virtual world project called KataSpace. A version can be explored online with a browser such as Firefox 4 beta 7 (Windows | Mac | Linux) that has WebGL support.
KataSpace uses the Web technologies to create a user interface for the open-source Sirikata platform for multiuser 3D world, Katalabs said in a blog post.
The demonstration world is workable but primitive, with only two avatars to pick from, some jerky movement, and terrain that avatars walk ... Read full post & comments
BMC acquires GridApp Systems
BMC Software said today that it is acquiring GridApp Systems, a company that specializes in database provisioning, patching and administration.
According to BMC, it will use the GridApp acquisition to expand its lineup of automation and configuration tools. These systems will then be added to its enterprise application deployment and management portfolio.
The GridApp software is already integrated with BMC's BladeLogic Server Automation. GridApp automates database admin tasks. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
Separately, BMC said that it will add change, problem, and configuration management to its ServiceDesk on Force.com software.
Read more of "BMC acquires GridApp Systems; Expands Salesforce.com partnership" at ZDNet's Between the Lines.
Google elevates PDF reading in Chrome 8
Google helped make Adobe Systems' PDF files a first-class citizen on the Web years ago by indexing their content with its search engine. Now it's gone another step by building the ability to read them into its latest browser, Chrome 8, released yesterday for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
That means when people click a PDF link, the document will open directly in the browser. Chrome's built-in PDF reader is also walled up within a sandbox, lowering the risk that security issues will escape a confined region of memory to facilitate a broader attack on a computer.
The PDF reader is among 800 improvements in Chrome 8, including 12 security fixes, according to a blog post yesterday by Chrome team member Jason Kersey. Google paid out $1,000 to each of three discoverers of high-risk vulnerabilities and $500 to two discovers of medium-risk vulnerabilities.
Chrome 8 also is the first version to support the Chrome Web Store, ... Read full post & comments
Contemplating tablets beyond the iPad (Q&A;)
The iPad is expected to encounter a crush of competition in 2011. A manager at Atmel, which supplies chips to tablet makers, talks about how he thinks things will shake out in the non-Apple tablet market in 2011.
Atmel supplies the touch-screen controller chip for the Samsung Galaxy Tab. The 7-inch screen size will be popular, but large tablets will also emerge, says Atmel.
(Credit: Samsung)Binay Bajaj, a product marketing manager at Atmel, which makes touch-screen controller chips for the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the HTC Evo 4G and Motorola Droid phones (among other devices) talks about how tablets debuting in 2011 will come in a variety of sizes that move the tablet experience beyond today's 10-inch iPad. Atmel is slated to supply chips to a host of tablets in 2011.
Q: How many products does Atmel see coming?
Bajaj: We think there's going to be 10 to ... Read full post & comments
Chu touts ARPA-E as questions over funding loom
LEXINGTON, Mass.--Energy Secretary Steven Chu toured tiny solar company 1366 Technologies here today, holding it up as an example of success in the ARPA-E program and the importance of federal funding for energy research.
Chu toured the labs of 1366 Technologies, a company spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008 to bring the price of solar power down to the price of coal, after briefing incoming members of Congress at the Harvard Kennedy School of government in nearby Cambridge.
Steven Chu during a media briefing, after touring 1366 Technologies in Lexington, Mass.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)1366 Technologies received a $4 million grant from the ARPA-E program, which enabled it to attract private capital to bring its "direct wafer" technology closer to commercialization. That manufacturing technology promises to cut the cost of making photovoltaic solar cells in half.
1366 typifies the innovation that American scientists and ... Read full post & comments
Chrome Web Store could emerge soon
Google's new Chrome Web Store icon
(Credit: Google)The Chrome Web Store, Google's mechanism to bring online services and features to users of its browser products, appears likely to launch shortly.
The online service is designed to let Chrome and Chrome OS users find, install, and potentially buy Web applications, similar in concept to what Google has done with its Android Market and to what Apple has done with its App Store. Chrome 8, which is in its final stages of development, is the first gateway.
"Chrome 8 is the first version that supports the Chrome Web Store," a Google programmer said in a discussion about Chrome 8 documentation. One element of that support likely will be a Chrome Web Store icon on the new page that appears when Chrome users fire up a new tab; it wouldn't be a good user experience, if the icon ... Read full post & comments
