Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Seas0nPass Jailbreaks Your Apple TV In A Jiff

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/13/seas0npass-jailbreaks-your-apple-tv-in-a-jiff/

Seas0nPass is an Apple TV jailbreak app that allows for a quick, painless jailbreak on most systems, thereby allowing you to install “extra” apps including XBox Media Center, Boxee, and Plex. You can download the application here and instructions for use appear here. It is OS X-only right now although future versions should run on Windows.

What does jailbreaking really get you? Sadly, very little right now except a slightly buggy version of media streamer Plex and SSH access to the box. With the hard drive removed, there is precious little space on the Apple TV and, whereas previous jailbreaks allowed you to upload non-iTunes video the the device, the new homebrew apps allow only for the streaming of previously unavailable files.

Using Big Data and Analytics to Automate the Sales Cycle

Source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/01/how-big-data-makes-the-most-of.php

Big data and analytics have found their place in the sales cycle. In particular that part of the business known as maintenance and renewals.

A method to aggregate and analyze multiple data sources is working for ServiceSource, a cloud services provider that offers a combination of managed services and its software to analyze data and help increase customer renewals.

ServiceSource represents a new generation of cloud services providers that are growing fast by offering a combination of managed services and SaaS-based tools that integrate with enterprise technologies, be they SaaS-based or on-premise.

Sponsor

Gartner Research predicts the cloud services market to increase from $68 billion in 2010 to about $149 billion by 2014. The companies providing cloud services are focusing to some degree on using data and analytics to provide an initial framework that is integrated into the SaaS environment.

For example, Marketo is one of the fastest growing SaaS providers. It provides marketing automation services. And who can deny Salesforce.com's growth? The service has had considerable success with its sales automation technology.

Gary Liu of ServiceSource said in an interview earlier this week that its growth can in part be attributed to the demands companies are facing from Wall Street to boost revenues.

That's also what we hear from Marketo. Companies are searching for incremental revenues. Automation is providing a way to do that.

Here's how it works for ServiceSource customers:

The client gives access to the data sets.
The data is put through the ServiceSource data management engine. The data is normalized and then put into an intelligence platform.
That allows ServiceSource to do benchmarking and tie it to metrics within a dashboard environment.

The enterprise is just getting a taste for the power that automation offers. Sales has traditionally been a manual task where the relationship is of the first importance. That's still true. But the use of automating technologies that integrate with a SaaS platform is what we expect to continue to see as the year unfolds and the cloud services market expands its scope.

For ServiceSource, the challenge is in showing its systems work and can provide increased revenues for the organization. In a smart twist, ServiceSource proves itself by earning its compensation on how sales increase. The pay for performance model is apparently pretty popular with chief financial officers. Now there's a shocker!

The system seems to be working. ServiceSource says that it is seeing a 20% increase and sometimes as much as a 40% increase in customer renewal rates.

And the proof of its success? ServiceSource recently announced its intentions to pursue an initial public offering. That has to be worth something, don't you think?

Discuss

The Largest Molecule Ever Made Could Be Used to Deliver Drugs

Source: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-01/most-massive-synthetic-molecule-could-be-used-deliver-drugs-or-make-new-materials

Organic chemists in Switzerland have built a ginormous virus-sized macromolecule — it has 170,000 bond-forming chemical reactions — calling it a major step in the creation of molecular objects.

The molecule, called PG5, is the biggest synthetic molecule with a stable, defined form. Similar structures exist in nature, but they are hard to duplicate, because they fall apart during creation, as New Scientist explains. Future molecular objects would need to keep their structure regardless of their environment, and PG5 is a step in this direction. Its structure is similar to that of a tobacco virus, and it keeps this rod-like structure in various conditions — it resists flattening out on a surface, for instance.

PG5 is 10 nanometers in diameter and weighs as much as 200 million hydrogen atoms. This is far bigger than the previous record-holder, polystyrene polymers that were only 40 million hydrogen atoms. Still, it's only a fraction of the molecular weight of DNA.

New Scientist describes how researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich built their molecule, adding benzene and nitrogen branches to a carbon-hydrogen backbone. Synthesizing the whole molecule required 170,000 reactions, and the result is a foldy, tree-like structure. Scientists say PG5 could hold drugs in its multitudinous branches, and it is a step toward molecular objects that keep their forms regardless of their environment.

There are plenty of synthetic nano-objects, but these are made of multiple molecules, not a single, gigantic crablike one.

The molecule was described in a recent issue of the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie.

[New Scientist]

Mysterious 7-inch Viewsonic Android tablet breaks cover, reveals little

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/13/mysterious-7-inch-viewsonic-android-tablet-breaks-cover-reveals/

Let's see, if there's a ViewPad 10 and a ViewPad 4, logic would dictate that a ViewPad 7 couldn't be far out, right? Unfortunately for those convinced, Viewsonic actually has a 7-inch ViewPad on the market already, and the device you're peering at above most certainly isn't it. This gem was spotted by CarryPad at Zinio's CES booth, complete with Android 2.2, the outfit's own content software and... well, who knows what else. Chippy noted that booth attendees weren't exactly hip with him toying around with the device, though he did remark that performance seemed snappier than usual when compared to the other 7-inchers out there. So, will Viewsonic come clean with its LTE-enabled, 7-inch miracle-of-a-tablet? Highly doubtful, but who said dreaming was a crime?

Mysterious 7-inch Viewsonic Android tablet breaks cover, reveals little originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 08:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers develop 'liquid pistons' for cameras, medical use

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/13/researchers-develop-liquid-pistons-for-cameras-medical-use/

It may still be years away from any sort of practical use, but a team of researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed some so-called "liquid pistons" that they say could shake up everything from cameras to medical devices. Those pistons consist of some droplets of "nanoparticle-infused ferrofluids," which are able to oscillate and precisely displace a surrounding liquid. In the case of a camera, that could be used for a liquid lens of sorts (as seen at right), and the researchers say the same technology may one day even be used for implantable eye lenses. The possibilites don't end with optical uses, though -- the researchers say that the precise ability to pump small volumes of liquid could also be used for implantable drug-delivery systems that would be able to deliver tiny doses at regular intervals. Of course, there's no indication as to when any of that might happen -- in the meantime, you can occupy yourself with the brief but oddly hypnotic video after the break.

Continue reading Researchers develop 'liquid pistons' for cameras, medical use

Researchers develop 'liquid pistons' for cameras, medical use originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 10:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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