Chutneytech | UK Technology News

Google has historically maintained a steady pace of acquiring small, privately held companies and, after a brief lull due to the recession, now expects to be making about one acquisition per month, mainly in lieu of hiring.

In their first foray into the UK market Google has bought Plink, a small company which makes a mobile app that recognizes works of art. Plink was founded by Mark Cummins and James Philbin, both of whom have PhDs from Oxford, and launched publicly only four months ago. According to their blog post announcing the deal they will no longer be developing Plink but instead will be working on the Google Goggles visual search project. The visual search project is a Google Labs experiment that currently runs only on Android devices and lets users search for landmarks, books, documents and other objects by taking photos with their mobile device.

Plink’s app — which is called PlinkArt, and runs on iPhones and Android devices — allows users to get information about works of art. When a user takes a photo of a painting with their phone, the app recognizes it and pulls up information about it. The Plink founders apparently got Google’s attention when they won $100,000 in an Android developers challenge last year. Google Goggles was released last year, and the company has said it plans to support iPhones and other platforms soon as well as Android. According to gigaom, in February the company showed a prototype version of the app doing text recognition and translation of a German restaurant menu.

Cummins and Philbin sign off by saying “The visual search engines of today can do some pretty cool things, but they still have a long long way to go. We’re looking forward to helping the Goggles team build a visual search engine that works not just for paintings or book covers, but for everything you see around you. There are beautiful things to be done with computer vision – it’s going to be a lot of fun!”

When Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev invented the periodic table in 1869 he prophesised that there were four as yet undiscovered elements. Many did not believe him but the four elements he described; scandium, gallium, technetium and germanium were soon discovered, matching his predictions exactly.

There aren’t many who have possessed the ability to so accurately predict discoveries in the future but Professor Leon  Chua of Berkeley College can now be included on the list based, on his prediction in 1971 that a fourth circuit element type would be added to the known three of resistor, capacitor and inductor. This fourth element he called a memristor, because it combines the electrical properties of a memory element and a resistor.

The memristor was first turned into reality by HP Labs in 2008 whose team of researchers led by R. Stanley Williams have now created architectures for memory chips using this fourth element. Because they can maintain their state when powered off, memristors are expected to allow faster and greater storage on a much smaller scale (holding double the data of flash memory) and with lower energy requirements. Unlike flash, which can only withstand around 100 000 read-write cycles, memristors have withstood around a million cycles in lab tests. According to Williams “We will be able to scale faster and farther than flash because the memristor is a very simple structure, and it can be stacked.”

Because memristors can maintain their state whilst powered off they could be used in a new type of computer memory that would replace D-RAM with something that would not require a slow, energy-consuming boot-up process - there would be no need to wait for data to be retrieved from magnetic storage.

Another big advantage of memristor devices is that they will be able to carry out both memory and logic functions at the same time – a lot of computing power and time is currently devoted to moving data between the two. These capabilities are expected to see a major increase in amount of computing power available to handheld devices in particular which would be able to offer 10 times the memory of today’s products and continuing Moore’s law in the process.

HP believes products with memristor chips could become commercially available in the next few years.

According to the latest Report on Jobs published by The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG there has been further recent growth in the IT jobs market with the worst of the recession having now passed and the number of IT jobs — permanent and contract — rising.

Kevin Green, the REC’s Chief Executive said:

“Permanent appointments increasing at the fastest pace for over 12 years is the clearest sign yet of a revival in the UK jobs market. A rise in both temporary and contract work at the sharpest rate for nearly three years shows how they continue to provide vital flexibility for UK businesses as well as a valuable route back into work for job-seekers.

“However, the overall outlook is tempered by public expenditure cuts which are already impacting on recruitment in this sector. Deep-rooted reforms and innovative approaches to public sector resourcing will be needed in order to maintain frontline services. While high-end sectors such as IT and engineering continue to show strong growth, demand is also increasing for secretarial and back-office support roles.”

Bernard Brown, Partner and Head of Business Services at KPMG commented:

“The UK jobs market seems to be going from strength to strength with permanent job placements growing at the fastest rate for over 12 years. These figures show that private sector confidence is returning and that the UK is exiting recession at a pace. However, a lot of the current hiring activity is going on in the public sector. The public sector recession which clearly is on the cards hasn’t hit the jobs market yet but when it does, the upwards trend we have seen over the last couple of months may come to a halt.”

There was particular demand for business analysts, software analysts, project managers and those with skills in software testing and SharePoint, Microsoft’s collaboration software with many projects that had been put on hold now taking off again as the economy appears to be turning the corner.

One potential fly in the ointment is the forthcoming election which, coming during a time of economic uncertainty, may cause some companies to hold back on IT spending a bit longer.

According to the wiki, GnuCash is a leading Desktop Financial Manager Application appropriate for personal and small business use meant to be easy to use and full of features - it’s also open source and free.

If you use online banking it is possible to import bank transactions, assuming your bank or credit card company supports one of three import methods; Quicken Import File (QIF), Open Financial Exchange (OFX) and Home Banking Computer Interface (HBCI). If you have trouble connecting the application to your online bank, as I did, there is the option to download your bank statement in csv format and have it converted to OFX via Ed Wilde’s converter . The OFX file can then be imported into GnuCash.

Amongst the features of GnuCash are;

• Auto-Completion - and other entry shortcuts which help speed up data entry and reduce errors.
• Statement Reconciliation - helps you catch any discrepancies between your data and statements you receive.
• Investment Tracking - offers a host of ways to track your investment portfolio. Special investment accounts simplify data entry, and on-line tools allow you to update the price of your holdings as the markets change. Reports complete the picture, allowing you to analyse your investment decisions.
• Currency Support - allows you to track multiple currencies and monitor bank accounts, investments or other financial data in different currencies.
• Reports and Graphs - give you valuable information for filing taxes, budgeting, or simply figuring out where your money goes. Offers a variety of easy-to-use reports and graphs to help analyse your financial position and customize your own reports.
• Double Entry - to provide complete records GnuCash uses the double entry method of bookkeeping. Double entry simply means that money doesn’t just appear or disappear - an equal amount must come from one location and go to another location. By tracking the transaction in both locations, GnuCash will give you detailed reports from the perspective of either account.
• Tip of the Day - gives helpful tips to new users about available features.

The wiki has further information including an FAQ.

Are PCs as we know them about to disappear? Well, maybe not completely but they will become a lot thinner on the ground if the hype around new virtualisation and ‘zero-cost’ thin client solutions is anything to go by. One supplier in particular appears to be shaking up the market – Ncomputing, who already sell virtual desktops – have announced that they will be selling their Numo chip for use in a range of devices used in both business and the home. The chip contains a dual-core processor based on an Arm design that will allow multiple users access one PC for their work simultaneously. Only one set of hardware and applications is required on the PC side with each user connecting via a small dumb terminal that allows connections to monitor, keyboard, mouse, Ethernet, audio and USB. One company that NComputing will supply is LG Electronics who plan to sell monitors containing the Numo chip sometime this year. This will negate the need for a separate dumb terminal and simplify setup even further.  NComputing’s client devices cost around 70 USD which makes them a viable option for many organisations including those in developing countries where there can be lower user-to-PC ratios. Another big plus in going with thin clients like these is reduced power consumption with Numo devices drawing 1-5w only compared to 80w-90w for a medium-spec PC and this this would also be an important factor where power supply is unstable. Numo devices currently work with Microsoft XP only with support for Windows 7 imminent and are best suited where video demands are low (not for gaming or video streaming at the moment).

Another company supplying virtual solutions is Pan Logic of California who have recently produced one of the thinnest clients available in the Pano Device. Sleek and sexy, this cube-like device is only 3.5 inches square at it’s base, 2 inches tall and weighs only 1.1 pounds. It is also considered a zero client in that it contains no software (well, that’s the claim but it must hold a tiny bit at least to be managed). Pano Devices are typically being used with VMware in business environments and have good results with video-intensive applications. As usual, careful consideration has to be given to Desktop licensing requirements.

How would you feel if your Internet connection was disconnected because someone somewhere thought copyright legislation was being breached (whether by you or anyone using your Internet connection)? Will you be happy to pay a tax to the government for Broadband use? How about nipping to your local coffee shop or library for a spot of free Internet browsing and finding it’s no longer available? Will you mind ISP staff monitoring what you’re doing online to ensure that certain legislation is not being breached?

All of these, and more, are possibilities contained within the new UK Digital Economy Bill which has now completed all stages in the House of Lords and is due for a second reading in the House of Commons. Although the final bill may look very different once it’s passed, many people are concerned that it will be rushed through committee stage without proper examination. The government is keen to get it on the books before the next general election is called but there could be wide-ranging implications for an unsuspecting public including giving unlimited power to the First Secretary of State to bring into law any legislation relating to file sharing on the Internet, without the consent of Parliament.

According to freedom campaigners such as the Open Rights Group the entertainment industry has most to gain, especially large copyright holding companies, whilst individuals and small companies have the most to lose through the threat of legal action based on what their friends, colleagues and customers do online. Even YouTube could face closure for hosting ‘unsanctioned’ footage of artists. An often-cited Ipsos-mori piece of research indicates the Film and TV industry is losing around £500m annually through online and physical piracy. How much of this would filter down to artists/employees is not known but the industry does claim that there is less money for things such as experimental projects that would bring greater variety to the mainstream.

Although there may be a need to address illegal downloading and breaches of copyright many see the new Digital Economy Bill as a very big hammer to crack a very small nut whilst others are concerned that this is the start of government getting involved in censorship of the Internet.

More and more, we are being told that the more bandwidth we have, the better are online experience will be, But what exactly is bandwidth, and how does it affect you?

The bandwidth of your connection, to make a simple analogy, is how big the pipe is that brings the information to your computer. If you imagine the data you are transferring from the internet to your home PC is water, the wider the pipe, the more water can be transferred in the same amount of time.

Now obviously, with the success of things like BBC’s iPlayer and Youtube, more and more information is available to be streamed directly to you at home; and at higher and higher resolutions as well – meaning that they take up more and more bandwidth as they do so. moneysupermarket.com says: ““These high speed services are particularly useful for anyone streaming high definition content from the web, for example those playing games or watching high definition catch-up TV.”

Bandwidth also affects your ability to multitask as well – for example, if you’re downloading music from iTunes and watching a video on youtube while your children play video games online, you may notice that all of these things are slow, unresponsive and not working properly – this is because of bandwidth limitations.

A higher bandwidth allows more information to flow through to your computers, but at the same time means that you can quickly rack up large amounts of data usage – many internet providers apply caps on this sort of thing, and will charge large amounts of money should you go over this.

Should your internet provider offer you an increased bandwidth (or broadband speed, as it is more commonly known), you should make sure you check what your download limits are. You may find that a higher bandwidth means that you will download far more information than you were before hand. moneysupermarket.com offers a great price comparison service that can help you find the best deals on your broadband both quickly and easily, meaning that you can spend more time browsing!

The Windows 7 ‘black screen of death’ is being blamed on malware.

The problem arises when users are confronted by a totally black screen when they log on to their computer.

Initially it was thought that Microsoft’s own security update could have caused the problem but that has now been ruled out.

The company that made the suggestion that the security update was the problem has apologised for its claims and reports are suggesting that the problem affects Windows Vista and XP, too.

Microsoft revealed in a blog on its security site that it was looking into the claims and “found that our November Security Updates are not making changes to the system that these reports say are responsible for these issues”.

Microsoft believe that the issue was probably due to malware, such as Daonol.

Amid the confusion over the cause, software company Prevx had said the November update may have been to blame, but have retracted their statement, saying it had been a “challenging issue” to identify the cause of the problem.

The firm announced on their website that “having narrowed down a specific trigger for this condition we’ve done quite a bit of testing and re-testing on the recent Windows patches including KB976098 and KB915597 as referred to in our previous blog”.

“Since more specifically narrowing down the cause we have been able to exonerate these patches from being a contributory factor.”

Prevx issued an apology to Microsoft “for any inconvenience” its initial claims may have caused.

Prevx has offered a fix for the problem, which it says could affect “millions” of computers worldwide.

David Kennerley, an employee for Prevx, wrote in a blog post that “users have resorted to reloading Windows as a last ditch effort to fix the problem”.

“We hope we can help a good many of you avoid the need to reload.”

Although Prevx don’t believe that the fix will always work, with Mr Kennerley stating that “there can be many causes”.

“But if your black screen woes began in the last two weeks… or after running any security program (including Prevx) to remove malware during this time, then this fix will have a high probability of working.”

“At least 10 different scenarios which will trigger the same black screen conditions,” according to Mr Kennerley.

“These appear to have been around for years now”.

Prevx believe that the black screen of death can affect Windows 7, Vista, XP, NT, and Windows 2000.

Microsoft would like all those that experience problems should get in touch with their customer service line.

The “black screen of death” is a pun based upon “the blue screen of death” which is displayed when Windows experiences a system failure.

It has been confirmed that computing giant Microsoft is looking into a problem described as the “black screen of death”, which is a growing problem for users of its latest operating system, Windows 7.

The problem has caused many users of Windows 7 to be shown a completely black screen after logging on to the system.

Microsoft has said it is looking into claims that suggest the latest security update, released on 10 November, was the root of the problem.

However, according to reports, the error also affects Vista, XP and other systems.

Major software company Prevx, which has created a download to remedy the problem, says “millions” of people may be affected.

David Kennerley, an employee at Prevx, revealed that “users have resorted to reloading Windows as a last ditch effort to fix the problem”.

“We hope we can help a good many of you avoid the need to reload.”

Prevx announced that although the cure to the problem worked in many cases, it did not work in all.

“There can be many causes,” said Mr Kennerley.

“But if your black screen woes began in the last two weeks after a Windows update or after running any security program (including Prevx) to remove malware during this time then this fix will have a high probability of working.”

Mr Kennerly went on to reveal that “at least 10 different scenarios which will trigger the same black screen conditions”.

“These appear to have been around for years now,” he said.

According to Prevx, the problem affects editions of Windows 7, Vista, XP, NT, and Windows 2000.

Those who have been affected by the problem have been advised to contact Microsoft’s customer service line.

A Microsoft spokesperson declared that reports did “not match any known issues” that had been recorded by the company previously.

Many are concerned that Microsoft has yet to issue a fix for the problem, which, according to reports, causes the desktop, task bar, system tray and side bar to disappear.

The “black screen of death” term is being used by many to describe the problem and is based on the “blue screen of death” pun, which is visible when Microsoft operating systems crash.

The following is a list of the five best mobile phones that we give a rating of 5 stars, including the Samsung Tocco Lite, Samsung Jet, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Samsung Genio Touch and Apple iPhone 3G S.

Samsung Tocco Lite. Available in black or pink, the Samsung Tocco Lite is seen as a response to the LG Cookie. The touchscreen mobile phone is great value for money, but lacks 3G. All the features you would expect from a modern mobile phone are included, with easy access to popular websites such as YouTube and Facebook, a 3.2 megapixel camera, FM radio with RDS, video recording, music player, Bluetooth and a memory card slot. It’s available for free on contract with a range of free gifts, such as a laptop, free line rental or an X-Box 360!

Samsung Jet. This attractive slimline phone is extremely fast and responsive. Not only does it deliver a lot of features and good quality, but it comes at a middle-of-the-road price. It delivers access to a range of online widgets, fantastic web browser, multi-tasking and a fast processor to handle it all. It comes with a 5 megapixel camera with flash and autofocus, FM radio with RDS, music player and a fantastic AMOLED display. This great phone comes packed with incredible features.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Available in Black, red and blue, the first touchscreen phone to be released by Nokia is very impressive. Some may say that the list of great features make it better than the iPhone, even if the iPhone seems more polished. The benefits include a 3.2 megapixel with Carl Zeiss optics, 3G video calling, a Flash supported web browser, and the touchscreen offers an extremely high resolution with 16 million colours. In addition, a music player with FM radio, GPS positioning, WiFi, Bluetooth and an 8GB memory card!

Samsung Genio Touch. Similar to the Tocco Lite, this touchscreen mobile phone is ideal for those looking at entry-level. The camera is more basic than the Tocco Lite, and the screen smaller, but MySpace, Facebook and Twitter are easily accessible. With its bargain price-tag, the Genio Touch is an all-round great phone.

Apple iPhone 3G S. Last, but by no means least, the iPhone is the best known and quite easily the greatest phone to ever be released. This isn’t just a phone, but equally a media player and internet device, too.  Also included are GPS, a digital compass, WiFi, extremely fast web browsing and there are thousands of applications available. Complete with 32GB of memory, a mountain of music storage is possible. The only problem is that most of us will have to wait for the high price to drop!