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<title>Haaze.com / CarPsyday / All</title>
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<pubDate>Thu, 24 Feb 2011 08:10:26 +0000</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Get backstage at Oscars with your iPad/iPhone]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=get-backstage-at-oscars-with-your-ipadiphone</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=get-backstage-at-oscars-with-your-ipadiphone</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 24 Feb 2011 08:10:26 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>CarPsyday</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=get-backstage-at-oscars-with-your-ipadiphone</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I need to ask you a personal question: when was the last time you had a two-screen experienceI know you'll be able to fill the comments section with your interesting experiments--and hopefully there will be things like watching one movie at the movies, while watching another on youriPad,iPhone, oriPod touch. Thankfully, ABC is thinking of you, the multiple screeners, when it comes to Sunday's Oscars. For you will be able to buy, for a mere 99 cents, the Oscar Backstage Pass app that will screen live backstage footage simultaneously while you're attempting to laugh at Anne Hathaway's scriptwriters' jokes. (Credit:Screenshot: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET) According to The New York Times, there will be more than two dozen cameras backstage, each hoping to capture Tom Hanks gesticulating wildly on the topic of Ricky Gervais, or Leonardo diCaprio explaining how it is he made &quot;Shutter Island&quot; and &quot;Inception&quot; and tried to play the same character twice and see if anyone would notice. You will even have the chance to wander into the Governor's Ball, stare at the dresses, and, hopefully, see at least one or two stars who have let their hair down (I am not specifically referring to John Travolta here) and begun to sound like Marlon Brando in his mumbling period. The Oscars' own Web site is also allowing you a peek. Though some might feel it has pricing ideas beyond its exalted station by charging $4.99 for its full 32-camera intrusion. I do think of this two-screen action as a coming trend. Personally, I find watching &quot;Keeping Up With the Kardashians&quot; while writing elegiac poetry on my laptop an especially productive experience. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[IBM researchers show love for 'Jeopardy' champion Watson]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ibm-researchers-show-love-for-jeopardy-champion-watson</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ibm-researchers-show-love-for-jeopardy-champion-watson</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:10:43 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>CarPsyday</dc:creator>
<category>Gaming</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ibm-researchers-show-love-for-jeopardy-champion-watson</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A large group of researchers watched their hero, Watson, take on the best 'Jeopardy' players in history Wednesday night at the Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California.(Credit:Daniel Terdiman/CNET)SAN JOSE, Calif.--I'm going to just come out and admit it--I was rooting for the humans. By &quot;humans,&quot; of course, I mean Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, two men who on the one hand are the greatest champions in the history of &quot;Jeopardy&quot; and who on the other just ended up getting their butts handed to them at the game by a computer that didn't even seem to know that Toronto isn't in the United States.In case you were somehow in a cabin in the mountains with no Internet access and no TV over the last few weeks and don't know what I'm talking about, I'm referring of course to the latest IBM Grand Challenge--Big Blue's development of a supercomputer known as Watson that was intended to be able to beat the world's best &quot;Jeopardy&quot; players at a game centered around one of the biggest problems in computing: understanding and parsing natural language.Over the last three days, Watson's battle against Jennings and Rutter played out on national TV in a two-game match. May the best, er, man win. Though I wasn't able to be in the room at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., when the matches were played last month, I did get invited to the final night party this evening at IBM's Almaden Research Center here, and let me tell you, though I was in a roomful of actual human beings, not many of them shared my preference for a contestant with DNA. These folks were definitely in Watson's corner, tinny text-to-speech voice and all.In the end, they all got the last laugh. As you've no doubt heard by now, Watson out and out dominated Jennings and Rutter, finishing the two games with a total of $77,147, more than the two humans' $24,000 (Jennings) and $21,600 (Rutter) combined.So I guess Jennings' tongue-in-cheek comment &quot;I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords,&quot; which he wrote along with his Final Jeopardy question, was somewhat appropriate.Roomful of researchersWhen I got the invitation to tonight's festivities, I accepted readily. I knew it would be a lot of fun to watch the prime-time conclusion of IBM's four-year effort in the same room as a large group of people who might actually be able to understand the complex science, technology, and math behind the Watson project. Of course, many of those researchers brought their families with them to watch the final match, and some of the kids may have been more enthusiastic than any of the employees.&quot;My daughter feels 50 percent more geeky&quot; than she used to, said James Kaufman, a research manager at the Almaden facility. To which the daughter, Sarah Kaufman, added, &quot;I was pretty geeky to start with.&quot;Watson research manager Eric Brown spent part of the evening answering questions about the project and signing autographs. He also posed for a few pictures.(Credit:Daniel Terdiman/CNET)The evening began with coffee and popcorn outside the research center's auditorium, and on hand was a surprise guest--Eric Brown, Watson research manager at Yorktown Heights, who happened to be in town for another meeting and decided to stick around and regale the crowd with some tales of the project. Standing outside the auditorium, Brown was answering questions and signing autographs. If you think about it, it's probably a pretty rare thing for an otherwise unknown IBM employee to be signing autographs, but here he was a rock star.One kid came up to him for an autograph, and Brown said to him, &quot;Are you going to be a computer scientist when you grow up Because, you know, when you're a computer scientist, you get to go on TV. It's really quite glamorous.&quot;To Brown, being able to watch the finale with a group of fellow researchers was a very different experience than being with members of the general public. Yet, he said that everywhere he's gone as an ambassador for the Watson project, he's been struck by the high level of public excitement. Still, here at Almaden, he knew that the audience would bring &quot;a different eye&quot; to the show.Confidence To me, one of the most interesting things about watching the two matches among Watson, Jennings, and Rutter was seeing the little display at the bottom of the screen in which viewers could see not only Watson's top three potential answers but also the percentage of confidence the computer had in each. To Brown, that last element is one of the most important parts of the entire project. &quot;What [Watson] really is,&quot; Brown said, &quot;is a demonstration of the technology. And what we really want people to think about is [that Watson has to] come up with an answer buried in a [natural language] concept, not only the right answer, but confidence in the answer.&quot;Strangely, there were times during the two matches when Watson's confidence in what turned out to be the right answer was extremely low. At least once, Watson pegged what turned out to be the right answer at just 12 percent confidence and didn't even bother to buzz in. That struck me as odd. But to James Kaufman, that wasn't surprising, given that in order to come up with an answer, Watson had to balance several different algorithms. Most of the time it worked and quite well as evidenced by the computer's resounding victory. But sometimes the computer seemed very off-kilter.Another thing that didn't surprise Kaufman was how well the computer did, even matched up against trivia powerhouses like Jennings and Rutter. &quot;I know the guys [on the] Watson&quot; team, Kaufman said, alluding to those researchers' across-the-board genius-level intelligence.What did surprise Kaufman was how, depending on the topic at hand, the amount of time that Watson sometimes took to answer a question. &quot;That struck me as almost human,&quot; he said. &quot;It was almost hesitation.&quot;Kaufman said that he really enjoyed being able to watch Watson take on the champions and do so well, even as the computer sometimes made silly mistakes, such as its answer of Toronto to the first-match Final Jeopardy question about U.S. cities. But mainly, Watson showed off what was an extremely impressive display of computing prowess, one that now has to be measured right up against IBM's Deep Blue's victory over chess world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.&quot;I spoke to a colleague,&quot; Kaufman said, &quot;who said that the goal [of the Watson project] was to create the computer on 'Star Trek.' They're moving the needle in that direction, and I think they did it.&quot;'Marry that computer'Sarah Kaufman, daughter of research manager James Kaufman, posed with a sign touting the Watson match.(Credit:Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Throughout the evening, IBM Silicon Valley human resources manager Alexa MacDonald fired up the crowd with a series of IBM- and &quot;Jeopardy&quot;-related questions. One showed how closely the group had been paying attention to the project. When MacDonald asked what the correct answer to the first match Final Jeopardy question was--the very same question that Watson botched by responding with &quot;Toronto,&quot; about half the room shouted out &quot;Chicago!&quot;To Andy Hood, a technician specialist at Almaden who with a steady stream of fist-pumping cheers, loud exhortations to the screen, and general energetic support of Watson may have been the most enthusiastic member of the crowd, the outcome of the matches was never in doubt. &quot;I believed that Watson was going to crush [Jennings and Rutter],&quot; Hood said. &quot;He's just got way more information available.&quot;But teenager Sarah Kaufman may have been the one who Watson may most want to meet. &quot;I want to marry that computer,&quot; she said in all seriousness after the computer had finished destroying its merely human opponents.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Microsoft gives Windows Phone devs copy, paste]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-gives-windows-phone-devs-copy-paste</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-gives-windows-phone-devs-copy-paste</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 04 Feb 2011 08:10:23 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>CarPsyday</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-gives-windows-phone-devs-copy-paste</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The upcoming copy and paste feature in action.(Credit:Microsoft)The slow march toward the public release of Microsoft's first update to itsWindows Phone 7 system software is one step closer to fruition. At the top of the PPCGeeks Podcast last night, Brandon Watson, who is Microsoft's director of developer relations, announced that the company today would be seeding a new version of the Windows Phone Developer Tools to registered Windows Phone 7 developers.Included in the update are things like the long-awaited copy and paste feature, and a performance improvement for application load times. The tools give developers a chance to test their applications for compatibility, but also signal that the update is closer to getting into the hands of end users. During the podcast, Watson also said that the Developer Tools software was on track to pass a million downloads since its introduction at last year's Mix conference. That's no small feat considering Microsoft's most recent tally of registered phone developers was north of 24,000. Microsoft still has yet to nail down a specific date for a consumer release of the software upgrade. During a phone interview with CNET last week, Greg Sullivan, senior product manager for Windows Phone 7 was still going with the within &quot;the next few months&quot; estimate the company had provided atCES. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Blame me: Mozy scraps unlimited backups]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=blame-me-mozy-scraps-unlimited-backups</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=blame-me-mozy-scraps-unlimited-backups</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 31 Jan 2011 08:10:02 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>CarPsyday</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=blame-me-mozy-scraps-unlimited-backups</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Mozy, the online backup service provider and EMC subsidiary, plans to announce today that it's dumping its subscription permitting customers to store unlimited data.The reason is not hard to guess: with ever-growing quantities of photos and videos, the unlimited plan is financially unsustainable, the company said. In other words, it's my fault.You see, I'm a Mozy customer. I spent $82 for a two-year subscription and started inflicting my hundreds of gigabytes of photos and increasingly videos as well. I'm a photo nerd, so each 21-megapixel photo in raw format sucks up something like 20MB or 25MB, and each video is shot in 1080p so even shortish clips can occupy a half a gigabyte.I'm somewhere in the top 0.3 percent in terms of my data use, but I'm also a leading indicator, and that's why Mozy is altering course.&quot;There has been a change in consumer behavior,&quot; said Russ Stockdale, Mozy's vice president of product management. &quot;What we have seen since we launched an unlimited service five years ago is there has been an explosion in digital content, specifically digital photos and video.&quot;In my case, with just under 600GB of data, the $3.40 per month I pay now will explode to just about $60 per month when my subscription runs its course in a few months.That's because Mozy will begin charging $5.99 per month for up to 50GB of data, with more costing $2 per month per 20GB after that. And, recognizing that more and more people have multiple computers to back up, it's added a new multi-machine option costing $9.99 a month for up to 125GB and three computers. More computers or further 20GB increments add another $2 per month each.Good-bye unlimitedNeedless to say, I'm now looking at Mozy alternatives. But I don't feel resentful--just sad at the disappearance of yet another uncapped part of the Net.I'm grandfathered into an unlimited-data plan with T-Mobile UK, but if I leave to try to find a carrier with better service, they don't have an unlimited plan for me, and I can't go back to the T-Mobile plan. Likewise, my unlimited home broadband account actually has fair-use limits, as is customary in the U.K. My $25 a year at Flickr gets me unlimited photo storage, but it's something of a holdout in an increasingly pay-as-you-go world.And Mozy isn't alone. Google Docs costs $1,400 a year for 400GB, for example, and Google's Picasa Web Albums costs $100 per year for 400GB. Jungle Disk, which provides a front end to storage using Amazon's S3 service, charges $3.15 per gigabyte per month. Carbonite, perhaps Mozy's best-known competitor, throttles down bandwidth for big-data users. And up-and-comer Dropbox charges $20 per month for 100GB.Here's Mozy's rationale for the change: the average storage per user increased more than 50 percent last year. More than half of the growth, though, was with the top 10 percent of the users, as measured by how much data that they have.&quot;The great majority of customers are growing at manageable levels, while the heaviest users bring up the average for the entire group,&quot; Stockdale said.Mozy braces itselfThe company knows it's in for some ill will.&quot;We do not take this on lightly...I don't expect everybody to be happy about it. But if they take a look at what we're doing and why, it'll at least be understandable,&quot; he said. Mozy is trying to make the change so it can provide sustainable high-quality backup in the long term&quot; and not resort to fine-print shenanigans hoping few will notice.The unlimited plans come to an end starting March 1, but last through the end of each customer's paid subscription.Not all of Mozy's costs are going up. Hard drives can hold ever more data for a given price (2-terabyte drives can be had for $100 these days). But that's not enough to deal with Mozy's financial plight, Stockdale said.&quot;The cost of storage is an element, but it is not even the majority of cost of providing the service,&quot; Stockdale said. &quot;The bandwidth, the data centers, the people who manage that--those costs are a larger part of the cost of providing this.&quot;Mozy, though a subsidiary of storage powerhouse EMC, uses its own software running on commodity storage systems. Later this year, though, to it'll start moving users to EMC hardware and eventually migrate everyone, Stockdale said.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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