World Tech Update #17 - June 13, 2008
Cold Open
A massacre in Tokyo's electronics district rocks the country, airport security just got a little easier, and of course there's iPhone 3G. All that news and more on this week's World Tech Update.
Intro
Thanks for joining us on World Tech Update. I'm Nick Barber. Topping our news this week is the massacre in Japan's Akihabara electronics district. On Sunday the killer drove a truck through a crowded shopping area and then jumped out and began stabbing at random. By the end of the day seven were dead and a suspect in police custody. The crime shocked Japan and rocked the country's Oh-tack-oo or geek community. Martyn Williams joins us from Tokyo, what's the latest Martyn...
Thanks Martyn. Shifting gears a little we'll move to Apple's iPhone 3G that launched on Monday at the company's Worldwide Developer's Conference. GPS may be the coolest new feature built into the phone. The icon that shows your location will now be more accurate and travel with you in real time. The phone works on 3G networks, which performs much faster than AT&T's EDGE network.
Steve jobs soundbite about something
Available on July 11, the 8 gig model will retail for 199 US dollars and the 16 gig will go for 299 dollars.
And while the phone may have gotten all the applause, Apple also showed off iPhone 2.0 which includes features for enterprises, the iPhone software development kit, and new features such as parental controls and additional languages.
JOBS: "It's one of the advantages of not having a bunch of plastic keys for your keyboard."
Two of the coolest applications will be purely for fun. Here's an application called Band which is a collection of virtual instruments, even one that plays 12 bar blues.
Major League Baseball plans to offer a tool for real-time updates on games, plus instant highlight videos. Most of these applications will arrive on July 11 through the App Store. On the App Store, vendors will be able to sell their software and keep 70 percent of the revenue. Or just give the applications away.
IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer has smashed the petaflop barrier and can perform more than one thousand trillion calculations per second. In the coming months Roadrunner will be loaded onto 21 tractor trailers and sent to New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory where it will be used to ensure the safety and reliability of the US's nuclear weapons stockpile among other tasks.
David Turek
VP Deep Computing, IBM
The Roadrunner project at Los Alamos is really the first significant manifestation of what we call hybrid computing. At its center are very conventional microprocessors from AMD. The kinds of microprocessors that you find in laptops and servers, but surrounding this are a number of chips known as a cell broadband engine, the same kind of chip that you find in the Sony PlayStation 3.
Roadrunner has nearly 7,000 dual core processors and 57 miles of fiber optic cable connecting it all. The project cost about 100 million dollars.
Two US congressmen accused China of hacking their office computers, possibly compromising information on Chinese dissidents. A representative from Virginia believes his computer was hacked because of his history of speaking out about what he calls "China's abysmal human rights record." A representative from New Jersey and the House Foreign Affairs Committee also reported computer hacking during the same time.
Call it art, call it technology, call it fiction, but regardless its still connecting people on both sides of the Atlantic. Called the Telectroscope the fictional back story behind the project says that artist Paul St. George discovered Victorian era plans in his great grandparent's attic. From those dusty schematics, the Telectroscope was built. The scope is supposed to be an undersea tunnel that connects New York and London and allows viewers in the two cities to see each other. It does, but uses high speed internet and high definition cameras and displays.
Peter Kohlman
New York producer, Telectroscope
A family yesterday came by. The great grandparents and a sister of a woman who had a baby just recently in London and they all saw each other and they saw the baby for the first time right here on the pier.
One end of the scope is next to the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, the other end next to the Tower Bridge in London. It's on display 24 hours a day in both cities until June 15th. It's free in New York and costs 1 pound in London.
The Enterprise 2.0 conference was on this week in Boston and we were there. The major trend that at least vendors were pushing was social networking and collaboration tools.
Companies like Igloo showed off its social networking platform that can be customized by companies that use the software. Social networking start up, Socialcast lets users plug a number of external web sources, such as the Twitter messaging system, into its application. Microsoft also was in the mix unveiling its Podcasting Kit for SharePoint. It's an open-source project built with SharePoint Server and the company's Silverlight. With vendors pushing all of their new wares, attendees were left wondering how to cut through the hype and figure out if the bevy of applications can increase productivity.
Nate Nash
Manager, Bearing Point
I'm not sure everybody does cut through the hype. There is a lot of tool worship going on around here. There's also some good analysis on the early use cases we've seen within enterprises as they get more mature. Some have failed, some have been successful. So using those and looking through that lens at some of the coolest new technology that is out there.
Getting through airport security check points might be a little more convenient for passengers with smart phones. A program recently launched at 4 US airports where Continental Airlines passengers can receive their boarding pass on their smart phone. At the security check point, the phone's screen is scanned and passengers are checked in. For now there are limits on the program. Travelers must be flying on a domestic non-stop Continental flight and be traveling alone. Users must also be able to open email attachments on their phone. About 1500 passengers per day are taking advantage of the paperless boarding passes at airports in Newark, Boston, Washington and Houston.
Well, that's it for this week's show. Thanks for joining us on World Tech Update. Next week we'll have video for you from the consumer electronics Digital Downtown show in New York City and all the week's news. As we head out this week, we'll leave you with video of Intel's research day. Tune in next week for a full report. I'm Nick Barber and for all of us here at the IDG News Service, thanks for watching and we hope to see you next week.
Produced by
IDG News Service
Nick Barber
Martyn Williams
Reporting
IDG News Service
Nick Barber
Martyn Williams
Jeremy Kirk
Marc Ferranti
Stephen Lawson
Chris Kanaracus
Video
IDG News Service
Akibanana.com
Lower thirds
Nick Barber
IDG News Service, Boston
Martyn Williams
IDG News Service, Tokyo
World Tech Update
Man kills 7 in Tokyo
iPhone 3G launches
Steve Jobs
CEO, Apple
iPhone 2.0 new features
New iPhone applications
Petaflop barrier broken
IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer
David Turek
VP Deep Computer, IBM
Telectroscope
In London and New York
Peter Kohlmann
New York producer, Telectroscope
Enterprise 2.0 conference
Social networking for businesses
Nate Nash
Manager, Bearing Point
Boarding passes on phones
Email us at WTU@idg.com
Company
Apple
AT&T
IBM
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Igloo
Socialcast
Microsoft
Continental Airlines
People
Steve Jobs
David Turek
Paul St. George
Paul Kohlman
Product
iPhone 3G
iPhone 2.0
App Store
Roadrunner
Telectroscope
Podcasting Kit for SharePoint
Silverlight
World Tech Update is a recap of the week's technology news. This show can be used by any IDG publication and can be posted immediately. In this week's show: several die in an attack in Tokyo's electronics district, Apple's iPhone 3G launches, Roadrunner smashes the petaflop barrier, the Telectroscope lets London see New York, Enterprise 2.0 pushes social networking applications and paperless boarding passes speed travel.
