Weekend Open Thread

If Chrome is so popular, why is it that practically every other program I download begs me to also install Chrome?

Chrome has already moved to the top of he iOS app store as the hottest free app.
»www.mobilenapps.com/articles/291···apps.htm

With Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, Google is taking a shot at iPhone digital assistant Siri.
The next-generation Android OS, announced this week at Google I/O, offers the ability to search for and find information about anything you can imagine by simply asking.
Using the power of Google, the company has incorporated its Knowledge Graph into searches, making its answers more informative than Apple’s digital assistant in some cases.
In other cases, the Android-based voice search not so hot.

When it came to food, Siri was at the top of her game.
For sports, on the other hand, Google was king.

Check out the video at link above for a look at the two search tests in action.

But before the new and improved Siri arrives, Google is unleashing an upgrade to its search that, well, blows Apple’s tech right out of the water. Built from the ground up in the new Android Jelly Bean update, the new search engine accepts and answers questions with aplomb. When we first booted it up and gave it a go, it seriously blew us away with how quick it returned results, and the technology’s voice is much more fluid than Siri’s robotic pipes. We pitted the two against each other to see just how great Google’s enhanced search is, and why Apple’s new Siri may already be behind before she even arrives.

My former plan 900 minutes ($59) unlimited data ($30) tethering ($20) and 250 texts ($5). My new plan is smartphone (iPhone) ($40) MiFi ($20) and 4GB of data between the two devices ($60). They told me I could add an iPad to the mix for another $10 per month but my current iPad (original) is the AT&T version.

An electrical storm in VA took out an Amazon datacenter, knocking a bunch of sites that rely on it offline, such as Instagr.am and Blip.tv.

»status.aws.amazon.com/

quote:

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8:21 PM PDT We are investigating connectivity issues for a number of instances in the US-EAST-1 Region.
8:31 PM PDT We are investigating elevated errors rates for APIs in the US-EAST-1 (Northern Virginia) region, as well as connectivity issues to instances in a single availability zone.
8:40 PM PDT We can confirm that a large number of instances in a single Availability Zone have lost power due to electrical storms in the area. We are actively working to restore power.
8:49 PM PDT Power has been restored to the impacted Availability Zone and we are working to bring impacted instances and volumes back online.
9:20 PM PDT We are continuing to work to bring the instances and volumes back online. In addition, EC2 and EBS APIs are currently experiencing elevated error rates.

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Contract negotiations between Consolidated Edison and its unionized workers broke down early Sunday, prompting the dismissal of about 8,500 workers, utility officials said.

Negotiations between the Con Ed and Local 1-2 of the Utility Workers of America lasted just over 10 days. The contract expired at midnight Saturday, but talks continued early Sunday. Negotiations broke down just before 2 a.m.

Clendenin said the company was calling in 5,000 managers, some of them immediately, to run the utility because it couldn't run the risk of a strike by the workers. He said company officials had asked the union for a two-week extension to negotiate before talks broke down, which union officials denied.

In all, I’m impressed by what Asus and Google have done with the Nexus 7. It’s a classy, well-made product from a design standpoint. It may not be the most original, thinnest, or lightest tablet on the market, but it’s certainly a respectable and refined entrant to the race. Bottom line — this is a much better feeling and looking tablet than anything else in its price range.

Inside the Nexus 7 you’ll find a quad-core Tegra 3 CPU clocked to 1.15GHz on four cores (or 1.3 GHz when running on just one), 1GB of RAM, and 8GB or 16GB of onboard storage (that extra storage will cost you an additional $50). Sorry, active downloaders — there’s no microSD slot here. In fact, the Nexus 7’s back panel is not removable at all. The device also packs in Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, and has a GPS chip, NFC, gyroscope, compass, and accelerometer. It’s also got a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera, as well as a speaker embedded around the back of the device, and what appear to be a pair (there are two identical holes) of built-in microphones.

That camera isn’t really useful for anything but Google+ Hangouts and the like — though it certainly gets the job done.{{like Skype}}

In terms of sheer specs, there’s nothing here to prevent the Nexus 7 from being every bit as useful and usable as its bigger counterparts and competition — even the iPad.

The Nexus 7 boasts a 1280 x 800 LCD display that’s coated with "Corning glass," which I assume means Gorilla Glass. The screen is 216 ppi if you’re keeping count — and it shows. Text and images look crisp and clear on the 7-inch screen — not Retina display quality, but not too far off either.

Performance on the Nexus 7 was zippy. Snappy. Buttery, if you will. We already know that the Tegra 3 chipset is no slouch, and it felt particularly slouch-free on this tablet.

General OS performance was excellent — helped undoubtedly by the Android 4.1 and its "Project Butter" initiative which is said to vastly improve touch response and smoothness in Android. Apps were also quick to open and close, and speedy in use. In particular, 3D gaming that was optimized for the Tegra chipset looked stunning and held steady frame rates, and basic tasks like multitasking were nearly instantaneous.

In the short period of testing I’ve had so far, battery life seems pretty solid — certainly about what you should expect out of a device of this size and with this technology footprint. In our rundown tests, I squeezed roughly six hours out of a fully charged device. Now that’s on 65 percent brightness, with webpages loading constantly. Your mileage when gaming, watching video, and using more CPU-intensive apps will obviously vary.

In practice, Jelly Bean does seem smoother and cleaner than ICS, though I don’t think it’s a sea change coming from 4.0. If you were getting used to Android feeling like a complete and cohesive OS, this will only reinforce that feeling. But in general, things like multitasking and moving into and out of apps seem faster and more responsive, and those long waits for your app list to pop up seems to be all but killed.

While Google’s new OS and latest app initiatives are very, very good, Android on tablets still suffers from an incredible lack of developer support.

Google’s Nexus 7 isn’t just an excellent tablet for $200. It’s an excellent tablet, period. In fact, it’s the first Android tablet that I can confidently recommend to buyers — and not just because it’s got a low price tag (though that certainly helps). It’s a well-designed, powerful, and useful product, with lots of bells and whistles that makes it feel like a device that should be more expensive than it is.

There are still issues that need to be addressed — particularly around growing the tablet app footprint and expanding content offerings — but I don’t think those are deal breakers. The Nexus 7 delivers way more functionality than I expected, and it delivers it in a package that’s sleek, smart, and affordably priced.

Believe it or not, the last time I was surprised by a product with those same qualities, it was called the iPad.

It should come as no surprise that Google isn't content on releasing a "Google Experience" tablet just in a 7-inch form factor......sources claim Google is continuing on with its quest by attacking the iPad on the 10-inch front.

The sources claim that Google will also launch a 10-inch Nexus tablet using OGS panels from Wintek, making the company the largest touch panel supplier for Google. Also in the 10-inch plan is supplier AU Optronics, the sources said.

There's also talk that Amazon will launch the 10-inch version of its Kindle Fire "Hollywood" tablet before the end of the year. Like the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD (2), it will feature a metal casing rather than a plastic body as seen with the original, a front-facing camera, and a possible mini-HDMI output jack.

A new report about Apple Inc.’s voice-recognition software Siri concludes what many users have been saying for a while: It doesn’t work all that well.

Of 1,600 common searches, the speech technology accurately resolved the request 62 percent of the time on a loud street and 68 percent in a quieter setting, according to a report released today by Piper Jaffray Cos., the Minneapolis-based investment bank. The report graded the technology “D” for accuracy, while predicting it will improve as more features are added.

Munster said that while Siri is good at comprehending what a user is saying and will accurately repeat the question, it struggles turning those words into a correct answer. For instance, Siri will repeat old answers when a user is trying to ask a new question. The technology also struggles when trying to use speech commands to find directions, Munster said.

“Apple right now gets a ‘B’ in comprehension and a ‘D’ in accuracy,” Munster said. “There’s a big difference between comprehension and her actually doing what you want her to do.”

Fitting subject, going to Roger Waters The Wall @ Fenway Park Sunday night!!! (YeA!)

^^^My seat x'ed in yellow ^^^

Apple's DNS servers stopped responding for me at 7:00 PM CST.

30-Jun-2012 19:01:26.652 query-errors: debug 1: client 192.168.x.x#33366: view intern
al: query failed (SERVFAIL) for apple.com/IN/A at query.c:6207

bash-3.2# host apple.com
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
bash-3.2# host ntp.apple.com
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

Sounds very much like Koyaanisqatsi.

I have never seen Baraka but I am familiar with some of the music.

A southwest Florida teenager has died after authorities say he was shot during a game of Russian Roulette.

Pinellas County Sheriff's deputies said 17-year-old Thorin Montgomery was the first of his friends to have a turn at the game when the gun discharged Friday. He was shot in the head.

American ISPs to launch massive copyright spying scheme on July 1

If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider (ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.

That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.

Word of the start date has been largely kept secret since ISPs announced their plans last June.