Clothing Giant H&M Defends ‘Perfect’ Virtual Models

Also “completely virtual” are the models at the center of H&M’s swimsuit and lingerie online campaigns, the Swedish-based retailer confirmed.

“It’s not a real body; it is completely virtual and made by the computer,” H&M press officer Hacan Andersson told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet in an article questioning the company’s picture-perfect online models.

more......

H&M under fire for using 'completely virtual' models

Connect your things to the Internet - IoT

http://ninjablocks.com/
http://www.greenwavereality.com/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-listen-to-your-world-talk-to-the-internet

Facebook and Yahoo news

Collaborative Document Management System

Collaborative document management system

http://www.box.net/home/

Live and Leaner Video is following VOIP

The first voice call over IP was made some where in the mid of 1995, even after 16 years it is not possible to call from one VoIP domain to an other VoIP domain. A lot of standardization effort was done but we still require PSTN or other gateway functions to connect different VoIP domains. If some one have an account on Skype there is no way to call AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Google messenger or to cooperate VoIP domain. {I am not sure if I can blame Telco for this, as no one had stopped Skype, MSN, Yahoo, Google, AOL to get together}

Same like VoIP Leaner and Live TV is following the same destiny. There are people in technical community think that ABR can solve their issues for transporting Live/Leaner TV over the Internet. In my opinion ABR is not going to scale for Live events, only network based replication (multicast) can serve 111 million supper bowl (2011) viewers.

Apple, Google, NewsCorp and the Future of Content

Apple, Google, NewsCorp and the Future of Content - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.

Future of Content

Also, in the "fusion" model I outlined before - news will be delivered in a completely new way. It no longer needs to be "presented" by a credible looking news figure. Instead, news will be raw and the "commentary" will be generated by the audience themselves. Imagine the kind of stuff that people write as comments on video clips on YouTube or Facebook now but taken to the 10th power. The audience of the near future doesn't want to be walked through their news. Here's the new context for the new news: 1st person point of view as personal experience. Maybe you could say the news as "video game"? (laughs) Not quite… The NYTs has had a successful career as a shaper of stories - I think that is less important now and will go away quickly. Honestly, I think anyone in the newspaper business should be on Craig's List looking for a new gig.

More....

http://www.investorsinsight.com/blogs/john_mauldins_outside_the_box/archive/2010/12/13/the-future-of-content.aspx

New media right standard (DECE) UltraViolet

A Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) alliance that includes Warner Brothers, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Sony, and Fox is working to break down walls between gadgets and services to catalyze demand for films.

.....

The DECE alliance has set up an UltraViolet platform for film lovers to create free accounts in the Internet "cloud" where versions of movies they buy in DVD or digital formats are stored in online “lockers.”
"If you buy a movie, it comes with a copy in the cloud," Warner Brothers Digital Distribution president Thomas Gewecke said during a DECE panel discussion at the Consumer Electronics Show that ends Sunday in Las Vegas.

More.....
http://www.uvvu.com/
Akamai Preps for UltraViolet

Nobel Prize honors super-strong, super-thin carbon

NEW YORK, (AP) --

It is the thinnest and strongest material known to mankind — no thicker than a single atom and 100 times tougher than steel. Could graphene be the next plastic? Maybe so, says one of two scientists who won a Nobel Prize on Tuesday for isolating and studying it.

Faster computers, lighter airplanes, transparent touch screens — the list of potential uses runs on. Some scientists say we can't even imagine what kinds of products might be possible with the substance, which hides in ordinary pencil lead and first was extracted using a piece of Scotch tape.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/10/05/international/i025338D19.DTL#ixzz11em8am7S

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene

Facebook identity management service

There are a lot of different consumer websites now offering login via facebook identity. Could be a good idea to have a single login but at the same time lose your personal data to facebook.

Skype offer internet over WLAN

Pay for internet view Skype account. This was experience on a BTOpenzone WLAN access point in UK.

Some interesting news 2

ROADMs Get Ready to Go Off-Grid
Finisar Corp. (Nasdaq: FNSR) has been able to flexibly control the wavelength assignments in its wavelength-selective switch (WSS) all along. But as of yesterday, the technology got a cool name: Flexgrid. more.....

Finisar news announcement

Huawei describes smart memory chip

Very interesting news about new work on Network Processor.

Huawei Technologies discussed work on a first-generation smart memory that will pack 32 Mbytes of IBM embedded DRAM on a 45nm chip consuming 60W. It will include an array of packet processing elements to drive data rates at rates up to 100 Gbits/second and achieve at least 250 million memory accesses per second. more.....

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4206434/Huawei-smart-memory-chip

Transparent Proxy/Cache

Known HTTP Proxy/Caching Problems RFC3143

New laser shoots beams of night

A laser that doesn't produce light would ordinarily be a failure. After all, the first two letters of laser stand for light amplification, not light reduction.

But a new laser created by scientists at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology and JILA, a joint institute of NIST and the University of Colorado at Boulder, shoots beams of night instead of beams of light. The "dark pulses," as the NIST scientists ominously call them, create areas absent of light. more......

40G/100G Standard Ratified

40G/100G Standard Ratified
IEEE, the world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology, today announced the ratification of IEEE 802.3ba 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s Ethernet, a new standard governing 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s Ethernet operations. An amendment to the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standard, IEEE 802.3ba, the first standard ever to simultaneously specify two new Ethernet speeds, paves the way for the next generation of high-rate server connectivity and core switching. more....

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=193449

Best Buy video service links streaming, consumer electronics

Can a consumer electronics big-box retailer be a player in over-the-top video? Best Buy is putting its best foot forward in this market, launching its CinemaNow service for renting and buying TV shows and movies online. Web-based buying via CinemaNow has been available for awhile. What’s new this week are plans to make the service available via the same electronics products that Best Buy sells in its stores — basically a “connected devices” play by one of the bigger real-world outlets for the device part of that equation. more ..........

Eric Giler demos wireless electricity - WiTricity

Wal-Mart buys Vudu; enters OTT delivery fray?

Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) has agreed to acquire over-the-top (OTT) content provider Vudu, according to a New York Times report today. Terms of the acquisition weren’t released, but the Vudu screen shot companies reportedly informed Vudu’s Hollywood studios and TV manufacturers of the deal today. The acquisition could make Wal-Mart, already a leader in DVD sales, a formidable competitor in OTT service delivery as well. more ............

Mobile SP - Apple's appstore and IMS Dilemma

Until now the Mobile SPs was successful to hold their value added services and earn good money from their business. SMS was the biggest success but not an innovation, rather a by-product. As most of the voice tariffs are going flat Mobile providers are looking for alternatives. Currently almost all Mobile SPs are unanimously thinking that IMS (IP multimedia system) will provide additionally services for future earnings. Billion of dollars are planned for investment in this area. It is petty that this will be useless investment as the future of services will be coming from Internet based platforms and Mobile will face the same problem from OTT as today's fixed network.

Apple iphone was steroid for some of the Mobile SPs. Apple's appstore is the side effect of the steroid. Few more popular app stores like this and no body will care about the services from the Mobile provider. It is quite possible that in short time period Nokia, Samsung, Google and other mobile manufacture will follow the path of Apple. Some of the European Mobile providers are thinking about appstore as well but it will be same as the IPTV services offered from fixed network providers.

If Mobile and fixed network providers want to stay in the value chain they need follow a different path.