Technology Effect

    A teen in St. Paul, Minnesota used Facebook in an unusual way: to get help from the police. He posted a message for someone to call 911 as his mother was being attacked by her boyfriend, 31-year-old Reggie LeAndrew Hart in her own home. The 15-year-old was afraid Hart would hear the teen call the police, so he silently used his cell phone to post a message for help on Facebook, according to The Associated Press . His message said “would somebody please call 911 — my mom’s boyfriend won’t let her use the phone.” He followed up with,”This is serious.” Hart had originally taken away the cell phones of his girlfriend, 33-year-old Kelly Heinl, and her son when the abuse first began, but AP said the boy somehow convinced Hart to give the teen back his cell phone, which is when he posted a call for help on Facebook. Despite the fact he posted the message at 2 am, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press , a friend saw the post and calle...

Comments (1)   As Facebook expands its Deals service and prepares to promote it in the news feed , Groupon is planning its own Facebook advertising strategy, giving management of all spending on those ads to AdParlor. AdParlor’s Chief Executive Officer Hussein Fazal, confirmed the arrangement in an email, “Working with us has allowed Groupon to buy advertising much more effectively on Facebook. I do not know much about how this reflects on their strategy against Facebook Deals. Also, unfortunately I cannot comment about present or future ad spend on Facebook.” While this advertising campaign would conveniently position more Groupon messages in the same window that Deals promotions appear, the optimized Facebook ad spending effectively puts more money into Deals, as TechCrunch first pointed out. AdParlor specializes in optimizing Facebook advertising campaigns, and claims to be one of the largest companies in that space. In Dec...

How do you measure engagement on Facebook? New York startup Fangager has one way to do it, and you can see a ranking based on that below. Fangager supplied Wired News with a preview of the 15 most engaging pages on Facebook, based on February 2011 activity; the consultancy plans to release a ranking of the top 100 later today. These rankings show that simply having a large number of fans doesn’t translate into having a high engagement rate. That seems to correspond with many brands’ focusing on the number of likes rather than addressing how to get repeat visits that also involve more time per session. We’re looking forward to seeing the full-sized ranking, and are pleased by the fact that Fangager plans to update rankings on a monthly basis. What do you think about the 15 most engaged pages and how they compare to the ones with the most fans?

The Motorola ATRIX 4G is the fastest smartphone not yet on the market. Come March 6th, however, it will be. AT&T has landed a screamingly fast Android device courtesy of Motorola, and that’s not all. The device is so powerful that it can power a laptop with full Firefox browser, and spit out 1080p video like it’s nothing. We’ve spent almost a day time with the phone and thought it was sufficient for a review, so read on past the break for what we think, alright? Hardware The Motorola ATRIX 4G is one of the world’s fastest smartphone, literally. With a 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, it’s a screamer. So much so, it can power a full netbook-like laptop accessory (we’ll touch on that later). As far as other specifications go, it’s one of the few Android handsets to feature a whopping 1GB of RAM. Rounding out the feature set is a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash and 720p video recording, the first qHD (quarter HD) display, second microphone for noise cancellation, Wi...

HTC often likes to highlight “firsts” in its marketing messages. While the days leading up to the launch of HTC’s Arrive are noticeably devoid of any relevant advertising, Sprint and HTC could have easily kept the “first” theme alive had they chosen to raise awareness. The Arrive is Sprint’s first device to run Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system. In fact, it’s the first modern Windows Phone in the world compatible with a CDMA network. Finally, HTC’s Arrive is also the first phone to launch with Microsoft’s “NoDo” update for Windows Phone 7 — a prerequisite for CDMA compatibility. But do all these firsts add up to a first-class smartphone experience, or are Sprint customers better off waiting to see what’s announced next week at CTIA before making any buying decisions? Hit the break for our full review and find out. The Inside Beginning with software, I’ve said before that I’m a fan of the Windows Phone 7 operating system and that hasn’t changed. It still...

There’s so much to say about Apple’s new tablet, the iPad 2, yet it really boils down to a few short and sweet sentences. It’s the latest tablet on the market, having beaten the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook to market by a good month, and its return to store shelves (or lack thereof) comes just a few weeks after Motorola’s highly anticipated XOOM launched. It seems as though every manufacturer has tablet fever as of late, though Apple really defined this product category, and now it’s back in an even bigger way just under a year later. Read on to find out if the iPad 2 really has the chops to rock and roll with the best of them! Hardware / Design The iPad 2 isn’t a radical departure from the original iPad, as you might have figured out by now. What the iPad 2 is, however, is a much more refined product. Things that weren’t possible with the first iPad have now been featured front and center — a front and rear-facing camera, a thinner and lighter body, a more tapere...

We just received our HTC ThunderBolt from Verizon Wireless and we’ve dug through the very black and red packaging to pull out a 4.3-inch 4G Android device — and we even photographed it. In all seriousness, the HTC ThunderBolt is one feature-packed handset, and it’s the first one to run on Verizon’s new 4G LTE network which spits down hyper-fast speeds. We already spent some hands-on time with the unit, but some more quick first impressions? We’re really digging the styling, it looks great in person. The screen is very attractive — it looks beautiful — colors are super rich, and text is very crisp. The device is reasonably thick, and pretty large, though that’s obviously due to the internals and that amazing 4.3-inch display. We’ll be putting the HTC ThunderBolt through our review process ASAP, but in the meantime, make sure to check out some unboxing photos of one of the most anticipated handsets of the last few months.

Google’s Chrome team had a lot to share with the public today at an event they held in San Francisco.  They shared how now there are 120 m consumers who use the Chrome browser to surf the internet.  They also announced that with Chrome 8 the browser is no, thanks to a new technology called “Crankshaft” is now the fasted web browser on the market. Two of the biggest announcements was the official launch of the chrome web app store and a public beta of their Chrome OS which included showing off a reference Chrome notebook called CR-48. Chrome Web Store The Chrome Web Store was announced by Google at their 1/0 conference earlier in the year.   Officially it was made available to the public today and I fully anticipate it to be well received.  The Chrome Web App store at the very least will move HTML 5.0 forward leaps and bounds as developers create unique and new experiences with their web content using this new technology.  The main goal of the Chro...

  SEOUL, S. KOREA: South Korea's LG Electronics Inc, the world's No.2 TV manufacturer, said on Wednesday that it aims to sell 5 million 3D televisions in 2011 as part of its overall sales target of 40 million flat-screen TVs.BANGALORE, INDIA: A new Accenture survey predicts that consumer purchase rates for personal computers and mobile phones (excluding smartphones) will decline by 39 percent and 56 percent this year compared with last year, respectively. By contrast, buying rates of 3DTVs (three-dimensional TVs) are expected to rise 500 percent; tablet computers 160 percent; ebook readers 133 percent; and smartphones 26 percent. The annual survey focused on usage and spending on 19 different consumer electronics technologies among more than 8,000 consumers in eight countries in both emerging markets and developed economies: Brazil, China, India, Russia, France, Germany, Japan and the United States.  Survey respondents in emerging countries represent key urban m...

 It’s a car that travelled a distance of 5,000 km in Australia at a cost of just $16. Wondering how? Well, it was powered by the wind. The Wind Explorer, touted as the world’s first car that runs on wind-generated energy, arrived here Monday after travelling from Perth via Adelaide and Melbourne. It covered 5,000 km over a three-week period at a cost of barely 16 Australian dollars ($16), a media report said. The vehicle is a prototype built by Dirk Gion and Stefan Simmerer who worked on it for about six months in Germany. It is powered by lithium-ion batteries that are charged overnight through a mobile wind turbine. “We wanted to prove how good the technology is,” Gion told Australian news agency AAP. “There are a lot of sceptical people and we wanted to show them how efficient you can make it.” Free of carbon emissions, it is a very compact, low to the ground pod-shaped car. The car weighs about 200 kg while the average car weighs about a tonne. The vehi...

Bhavnagar-based Central Salt and Marine Chemicals and Research Institute (CSMCRI) has successfully scaled up power output of conventional silicon solar panels by nearly 50 per cent, so as to bring down the effective cost of energy generation. “Through strategic usage of reflectors we have managed to raise power output of conventional silicon solar panels by about 50 per cent. During the peak hours say between 12.00 to 1.00 power output gets doubled with reflectors, while over the day it’s up nearly by fifty per cent,” CSMCRI Director Dr Pushpito Ghosh told PTI. The technology has potential to bring down effective cost of per kilowatt of electrical energy generation from solar panels by about 30 per cent, he claimed. “The feat was achieved by retrofitting photo voltaic panel units. The units were fitted with reflectors to enhance the power output without tinkering the panel,” Ghosh said. “Usage of reflectors to enhance power output of panels has been demonstrat...

Bhavnagar-based Central Salt and Marine Chemicals and Research Institute (CSMCRI) has successfully scaled up power output of conventional silicon solar panels by nearly 50 per cent, so as to bring down the effective cost of energy generation. “Through strategic usage of reflectors we have managed to raise power output of conventional silicon solar panels by about 50 per cent. During the peak hours say between 12.00 to 1.00 power output gets doubled with reflectors, while over the day it’s up nearly by fifty per cent,” CSMCRI Director Dr Pushpito Ghosh told PTI. The technology has potential to bring down effective cost of per kilowatt of electrical energy generation from solar panels by about 30 per cent, he claimed. “The feat was achieved by retrofitting photo voltaic panel units. The units were fitted with reflectors to enhance the power output without tinkering the panel,” Ghosh said. “Usage of reflectors to enhance power output of panels has been demonstr...

Disposable biotech sensors won't let you diagnose your own diseases quite yet, but we've taken the first step -- a research team spanning three universities has successfully prototyped a lab-on-a-chip. Called the Self-powered Integrated Microfluidic Blood Analysis System (or SIMBAS for short, thankfully), the device takes a single drop of blood and separates the cells from the plasma. There's no electricity, mechanics or chemical reactions needed here, just the work of gravity to pull the fluid through the tiny trenches and grooves, and it can take as little as ten minutes to produce a useful result. It's just the first of a projected series of devices to make malady detection fast, affordable and portable. Diagram after the break!

email share   BlackBerry PlayBook, RIM’s foray into tablet territory, is now available for pre-order in three different versions, starting from $499.99. PlayBook has a 7″ 1024×600 WSVGA capacitive LCD touch screen, a 1 GHz dual-core CPU, 1 GB of RAM memory, a 1080p HDMI output, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a 5-megapixel camera on the back, as well as a 3-megapixel one on the front for video chats. The aforementioned $499.99 will get you the 16 GB variant , and you’ll have to dish out $599.99 or $699.99 for the 32 GB and the 64 GB model , respectively. In the U.S. the PlayBook will be available at AT&T, Best Buy, Sprint, Verizon, Office Depot, Cbeyond, Cellular South, Cincinnati Bell, RadioShack, ShopBlackBerry.com, Staples and BlackBerry from Wireless Giant. In Canada, the list is even longer, and includes Bell, Best Buy and Costco, among others.

  Fear and uncertainty continue to grow around the condition of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. There has been a fervent struggle to keep the plant’s reactors from achieving a partial or complete meltdown after the devastating earthquake in Japan and Pacific tsunami damaged the plant and knocked out the backup power needed to cool its radioactive fuel rods. Naturally, the events in Japan have people curious, frightened and confused about the potential impact of not only the Fukushima plant’s radiation, but on the impact of nuclear power plants and radiation in general on the body. Even friends have asked me if they should evacuate the U.S. West Coast just in case radiation from Japan travels across the Pacific Ocean. Until now, I haven’t had a good way to explain why they shouldn’t worry about radiation from Japan , especially given the many other sources of radiation we encounter on a daily basis. However, Randall Munroe of XKCD has solved that problem ...

  The World Wildlife Fund’s annual Earth Hour awareness campaign now has an app of its own. This iPhone offering will help ordinary people accomplish extraordinary things with simple tasks that take the Earth Hour idea beyond a once-a-year activity. Created by the WWF with help from the Leo Burnett Group , the app “is all about taking Earth Hour a step further by encouraging people to do things to help the planet every day, not just for that one hour,” said a Burnett rep. To that point, the app is called 60+ [iTunes link] and is available for download now. The app works a bit like a location-based service in that it has to-dos and checkins. But for this mobile application, you’ll check in positive actions you’ve done from a list provided by the app; for example, you might use more natural lighting, change your air conditioning settings or install a water-saving showerhead. As you check in more actions, you’ll earn achievements, which are shareable across larger so...

  Microsoft has announced that it has filed a lawsuit against Barnes & Noble for patent infringement related to functionality present in its Android-based Nook e-reader. Microsoft is also taking legal action against Foxconn and Inventec for their roles in manufacturing the Nook. At the heart of the issue are patents that Microsoft claims it owns for certain aspects of the Android user experience. The technology titan specifically mentioned “natural ways of interacting with devices by tabbing through various screens to find the information they need, surfing the Web more quickly, and interacting with documents and e-books” as three examples of functionality that Microsoft has patented. Instead of suing every Android device maker though, Microsoft typically lets them sign a patent licensing agreement. Microsoft and HTC entered a licensing deal last year that covers Android devices. In return for the patent license, HTC agreed to pay Microsoft royalty fees on a yea...

  Right now, every day, one out of ten mobile users are watching video content on their devices. But the video they consume accounts for a staggering 38% of all data volume on mobile networks. These stats and more were released Monday in mobile services company Bytemobile ‘s Mobile Minute Metrics report. The company also found that by the end of this year, video content will jump to 60% of all network data volume. And as one might expect, much of this volume comes from a core of power users; the report states that 10% of mobile data users generate 87% of total traffic. This disparity is also mirrored by the stats for “power videos,” if you will. Around 40% of total video data volume on wireless networks is generated by the top 3% of requested videos. When it comes to timing, the average length of video content access was around 5 minutes. But mobile subscribers are tuning out and moving on after around 60 seconds, showing what we’ve known for a long time: For web (or...

  Mozilla has unveiled the release candidate of Firefox 4 for Android and Nokia Maemo, paving the way for browser’s offical launch for mobile platforms. Firefox 4 RC for mobile adds several new updates to its previous beta release, including faster scrolling, a more responsive version of Firefox Sync, text reformatting on zoom, a slimmed-down form helper and copy/paste functionality for HTML form fields. There are other UI changes, such as support for restartless add-ons, iframe scrolling and a redesign of the “New Tab Opened” popup. Mozilla first released an alpha mobile browser last April. Back then it was called Fennec, not Firefox, and it was filled with bugs that would drain phone memory and crash the system on a regular basis. Mozilla has dramatically improved the product since then. The first official beta brought a better, more stable overall experience, and the launch of Beta 3 added faster booting, better page load times and major enhancements to Firefox...