New construction at Apple's North Carolina data center

Photos courtesy of Wired reveal that Apple's new "tactical" data center at its Maiden, North Carolina facility is well on its way to completion. Captured with the help of a decidedly low-tech airplane -- a 1949 Piper PA-11 Cub Special, if you must know -- the shots feature what appear to be the facade of the $1.9 million, 21,000 square-foot structure that was outed last month. The images also show glimpses of a second 20-megawatt photovoltaic array and what may be the foundations of the complex's planned 4.8-megawatt biofuel cell plant, which will convert biogas into electricity. With Apple's upcoming Reno project getting the rubber stamp of approval, it doesn't seem like the company will run out of construction projects any time soon. Click on through to the source link for the full set of pictures and analysis.

[Source: Engadget]

Apple v. Samsung: Meet Apple's next 7 witnesses

After its first real break, court is back in session later today in the case between Apple and Samsung.

The trial is currently in its testimony phase, as both sides break out a string of witnesses. So far that's included testimony from Apple's Christopher Stringer, one of the designers of the iPhone, the iPad, and numerous other Apple products. And just before the break it was Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller, who is slated to the stand once again this morning.

There are six others testifying after Schiller, though you might not know all of them. Here's a quick primer of who they are, and why Apple's using them.

[Source: cnet - Read the full story]

Maily: The App That Introduces Email to Your 4-Year-Old

Raphael Halberthal and Tom Galle know your kids are more tech savvy than you, so they think your kids should be able to use tech for something most adults find common practice — communication. That’s why Halberthal and Galle designed an email client tailor-made for toddlers, not grown-ups.

The kid-friendly, iPad app, Maily, includes several of the same features of normal “adult” email hubs like Outlook or Sparrow. Kids can send and receive messages, have access to a contact list and see notifications of new emails. Since it’s targeted toward a younger demographic (mainly ages 4 to 9), Maily has a very visual feel — bright colors, options to add stamps and stickers to messages, or use markers to draw pictures in the email. It also lets kids handwrite words instead of typing using a pencil icon. It even incorporates a camera tool so kids can take pictures and add them directly into the message.

Maily co-creator Halberthal tells Mashable he and Galle were inspired to develop an children’s email system when realizing kids used tablet devices to play games and watch video, but seldom were able to reach out and connect with others using those same devices. Since email services like Gmail and Yahoo Mail require those who register to at least be 12 years of age, Halberthal adds, there was a need for kids to safely participate in a daily activity.

“It’s the same way when we were young we would give the drawings we made to Grandma to keep on the fridge,” Halberthal says. “But now, kids will just email them to Grandma.”

Though many would argue giving email access to a kid opens up a plethora of safety concerns, Maily offers a secure network. Parents receive their own Maily account with a dashboard to monitor activity. Kids can only send and receive messages from parent-approved contacts, parents can choose to be copied on all sent and received messages, and parents can decide to read messages before they are sent out or delivered to their kids.

[Source: Mashable - Read the full story]

Stompy gets off the ground with a Kickstarter: buy a ride on a 2-ton hexabot

In June we were promised a Kickstarter for Project Hexapod's 10-foot tall, two-ton Stompy. We're happy to report that Gui Cavalcanti and his cohorts (James Whong and Dan Cody) at the Artisan's Asylum weren't kidding. This morning the page went live and you can officially pledge your support for rideable six-legged robots. Now that the chassis is 80 percent through the design phase, the half-scale prototype leg (Gimpy) has proven its mettle, and the full-size prototype leg has been designed and the necessary parts ordered, it's time to start lining up funding for the final project. You know how it works: you pledge a certain amount of money and in return you receive a particular level of reward. Don't have much to offer? For just $5 the team will scale the White Mountains and shout your name from the top, while $10 will get you get you something a bit more tangible -- a bumper sticker that reads "my other car has six legs."

[Source: Engadget - Read the full story here]

Logitech launches TV Cam HD for living room video chats: built-in Skype, 720p, $200

If Cisco's ill-fated Umi video conferencing system had been more like this, would it have survived? Logitech is about to find out, one way or the other, once its TV Cam HD -- recently spotted at the FCC -- arrives in the US this month. The $199.99 device hooks up to your TV and contains all the processing power needed to run Skype and transmit wide-angle, 720p footage of your couch over WiFi or Ethernet. Unlike the previous TV Cam, there's no need for a Viera Connect HDTV -- anything with HDMI-in will do. The company is banking on the notion that families will forgo the use of their existing mobile devices and laptops in favour of an always-on dedicated system with incoming call alerts, four noise-cancelling mics and a Carl Zeiss lens that "gets the whole family in the video call, so everyone from grandparents to grandchildren can move around naturally." If you're tempted, the publicity video after the break gives a decent overview of the product in action.

[Source: Engadget]

Sony loses $312 million in Q1 2012 amid high restructuring costs

Sony has announced its financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal year, and as expected for a company in transition they don't make for pleasant reading — it managed to lose $312 million off sales of $19.2 billion. Sony actually increased its sales year-on-year by 1.4 percent, attributed to the consolidation of Sony Mobile, but $143 million in restructuring costs caused operating income to slide from $270 million to $79 million. Together with the high yen and unstable situation in Europe, the company has downgraded its operating profit forecast for the year from $2.29 billion to $1.66 billion.

The company's few profitable areas right now are its imaging, components, and music businesses, while the gaming, home entertainment, and mobile divisions are all making losses. The games division in particular was disappointing, with sales falling 14.5 percent and the PS Vita not doing much to stop the business slip into the red. However, despite a decline in sales the TV business is actually bleeding less money than this time last year, possibly due to efforts Sony is making to streamline the category. The imaging division, too, is one of the company's recent success stories with high-end cameras contributing to profits of $160 million. The company claims it is "proceeding steadily with efforts to transform our business structure," but shareholders will no doubt have to be patient.

[Source: The Verge]

Gmail 1.3 for iOS now saves image attachments

The official Gmail app for iPhone recently got a nice update, and in addition to a few bugfixes and performance enhancements, users now have the ability to save picture attachments straight to their iPhone (or iPad's) camera reel. That's a nice feature -- it means that you can browse and save attachments more easily.

I can imagine some nice use cases as well: You could grab an image from Gmail and put it right into a slideshow on your iPad, or send yourself some images from another computer, and insert them on to your iPhone or iPad's lock screen wallpaper easily.

The Gmail app in general is a solid app to have. Though I usually use the Gmail web client in my browser when I'm at home, and Apple's own Mail app when I'm out and about, there are times when I'd just rather have an official Google experience when browsing mail. With this update and a few others lately (the last update added support for Notification Center), Gmail makes an even better case for owning a spot on your home screen.

[Source: TUAW]

Crucial outs v4 SSD for solid-state storage on a budget

Solid-state drives cost just a fraction of what they did a few years ago, but with prices that can still exceed $1,000, you could hardly label them as cheap. Crucial still aims to put solid-state storage within reach of those on a budget, however, releasing its 2.5-inch v4 drive with pricing that starts at $50. That entry-level model will net you just 32 gigs of storage -- hardly a lust-worthy sum -- but the series is also available in configurations of 64GB ($70), 128GB ($100) and 256GB ($190), offering read speeds of up to 230 MB/s and write speeds of up to 190 MB/s with SATA 2-capable desktops and laptops. The v4 joins Crucial's higher-end m4, which offers much speedier performance and Ultrabook-friendly configurations to boot. You'll find full details in the PR after the break.

[Source: Engadget]

BBC shows off 33-megapixel Super Hi-Vision Olympic footage

The first live Super Hi-Vision broadcast for public consumption was of the Olympic opening ceremony in London last week. We didn't get to see that premiere, or the second or third screenings either -- but the fourth? Oh yes. We grabbed a seat right up front of a small theater inside BBC Broadcasting House, watched a live 33-megapixel feed from the Aquatics Center and absorbed some very fond memories in the process. At the same time, a question hung over the footage like a watermark: why bother? The world is barely getting to grips with the notion of 4K, so why did the BBC and Japanese broadcaster NHK go to the expense of sending a dedicated SHV video truck, a 22.2-channel SHV audio truck, and the world's only three 8K Ultra HDTV cameras to London? Fortunately, we caught up with someone in charge who was able to respond to that question. Read on for what they said, plus a slightly fuller sense of what the footage was like to watch.

[Source: To read the full article visit Engadget]

HootSuite Extends Its Social Media Wings With Evernote, Storify and Zendesk Integrations

HootSuite, the Vancouver-based developers of a social media management dashboard for enterprises and other power users, is adding three new outlets to the list of social networks that are supported on its platform: from today there will be plugins available for Evernote, Storify and Zendesk that will let users send content created natively for Twitter and Facebook to these three, on top of support already offered to manage interactions on Twitter, Facebook and other sites like LinkedIn for some five million users worldwide.

HootSuite notes that this is a development on how the App Directory has been used since its creation in 2011: originally it was intended as a dashboard “focused primarily on populating streams within HootSuite.” It says it will be adding more plugins to extend the new functionality even further, covering areas like customer support, CRM and publishing — putting HootSuite in much closer competition with the likes of Oracle and Salesforce, which are also converging on this area.

[Continue Reading … Source: Tech Crunch]

Box Raises $125M To Target Global Growth And Large Enterprises

Cloud storage company Box just announced a new $125 million round of funding led by growth investor General Atlantic.Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company was raising a new round at a $1.2 billion valuation. (After the article came out, TechCrunch’s Rip Empson asked co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie, “Are these hella wicked crazy rumors true, Aaron? You really let workers store and access documents on the Web?” To which Levie replied, “Bro, you know we can’t comment on speculation about how businesses use our product to enable the sharing and access of information anywhere.”)Levie isn’t disclosing the valuation, except to say that it represents “some nice growth from last year,” when Box raised an $81 million round at what we heard was a valuation of more than $600 million.Box claims it’s now working with more than 120,000 businesses, as well as individuals at 92 percent of the Fortune 500.Levie says the new money will go towards “three key investment areas.” The first is just “continuing the momentum of what we’ve been doing.” The second is international growth — companies outside the United States currently make up about 20 percent of Box’s customer base, and Levie says that number should be more like 40 percent. And the third is building tools that will make Box more appealing to large enterprises. (The company started out and is still available as a consumer product, but it has focused in recent years on selling to businesses.)More broadly, Levie paints a picture of an enterprise software market that’s in a period of dramatic change, thanks to the confluence of mobile, social, and cloud technologies. With the shift from main frames to minicomputers, then from minicomputers to PCs, the addressable market for enterprise companies keeps growing, he says, and that’s continuing with the shift to the “post-PC enterprise.” (One of the company’s most recent launches was of Box OneCloud, a platform for enterprise mobile apps that integrate with Box.)“These kinds of changes happen every decade or so,” Levie says.General Atlantic operating partner Gary Reiner, formerly the CIO at General Electric, is joining Box’s board of directors. Previous investors Bessemer Venture Partners, DFJ Growth, New Enterprise Associates, SAP Ventures, and Scale Venture Partners also participated in the round, as did a new investor, the Social + Capital Partnership.The company has now raised more than $280 million. It actually still has half the money from the last round in the bank, Levie says, and the new funding puts Box “in a strong position to never raise privately again.” (Though he also cautions that it’s “impossible to say never.”) Asked what this means about the chances of a long-rumored IPO, he says there are elements of the company’s strategy, like investing heavily in international growth and “deep technology”, that Box has “more latitude” to do as a private company.“I think you can take this as a sign that we’re focused on really building a strong independent company,” he says. “This affords us the opportunity to do that privately for now.”

[Source: Tech Crunch]

BMW shows 75 mph electric scooter

In the last decade, BMW's motorcycle division dabbled in scooters as a green solution for crowded urban centers, producing the C1 for a few years. Now BMW is showing off the final fruits of a new project, an electric scooter designed to achieve the performance specifications of a gasoline-fueled scooter.The C Evolution is the third generation of an electric scooter that BMW has previously shown in concept form. This two-wheeler uses an electric motor and an 8 kilowatt battery pack to drive the rear wheel. BMW says that it can go 62 miles on a full charge. Although a large battery back, it does not use liquid cooling. Instead, its casing channels air through the individual cells. As the batteries produce more heat under load, the C Evolution should be going faster as the batteries hit higher temperatures, improving the air flow...

[Source: To read the full article visit CNET News]