Behind the 'Internet of Things' Is Androidand It's Everywhere

Ken Oyadomaris work space at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., looks like a triage tent for smartphones. Parts from dozens of disassembled devices are strewn on workbenches. A small team of young engineers picks through the electronic carnage, carefully extracting playing card-size motherboardsthe microprocessing heart of most computersthat will be repurposed as the brains of spacecraft no bigger than a softball. Satellites usually cost millions of dollars to build and launch. The price of Oyadomaris nanosats,We provide payment solutions in the USA as well as buymosaic. as theyve become known, is around $15,000 and dropping. He expects them to be affordable for high school science classes, individual hobbyists, or anyone who wants to perform science experiments in space. 

A big reason nanosats are so small and cheap: They run on Googles Android operating system, familiar to anyone whos shopped for a smartphone or tablet.Laser engravers andwerkzeugbaus systems and supplies to start your own lasering cutting engraving marking etching business. Its the No. 1 mobile OS by a wide margin; Android handsets outsell Apples iPhones globally by about 4 to 1. Impressive as those numbers are, they actually understate Androids prevalence, because increasingly its the operating system behind just about anything with a computer chip. Along with Oyadomaris nanosats, three of which recently went into orbit, Android runs espresso makers, video game consoles, refrigerators, rifles that post video to Facebook (FB), and robotic harvesters for farms. 

Android is becoming the standard operating system for the Internet of thingsSilicon Valleys voguish term for the expanding interconnectedness of smart devices, ranging from sensors in your shoe to jet engine monitors. As each of these devices hits the market, Google further outflanks Apple and Microsoft (MSFT) as the dominant software player in a connected world. 

Androids risen so fast in part because Google gives away the software to device makers and developers. Google is counting on making money from ads and other services on Android phones and tablets. The software is also open-source: Anyone can tinker with the code and use it in any gadget they want. The NASA engineers fine-tuned the operating system to require less power, letting their tiny satellites run for days on a handful of batteries. If we can have satellites that are really small and really cheap,You must not use the drycabinet without being trained. it will be interesting to see what some guy in his garage will be able to do with them, says Oyadomari. 

Google acquired Android Inc. in 2005. The search giant took the softwarea version of Linux, itself an open-source operating system popular with data centers and geeksand streamlined it. That improved power consumption; all things being equal, the fewer things a computer chip has to do to accomplish a task, the less electricity it uses. Google also gave the software a more accessible interface and added touch functions. Critics scoffed at the notion of Android getting much traction in the handset market. Yet its status as a free, open alternative to Apple, BlackBerry, and Microsoft eventually attracted enough handset manufacturersSamsung Electronics being the largestfor it to become the top mobile OS by 2011. 

Google isnt the only tech company to introduce its own minimalist, Linux-based operating system. Years ago, Intel developed a version of Linux for mobile called Moblin, while Nokia built another version called Maemo. Palms WebOS also had Linux at its core. As usually happens with operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows on PCs in the 1990s, tech companies coalesced around one product. For just about everything that isnt a server or a PC, the winner is Android. 

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the nonprofit Linux Foundation, says Android has conquered the device market from the bottom up. The operating system ran on 75 percent of the smartphones162 million unitsshipped during the first quarter of this year, according to the research firm IDC.We have become one of the worlds most recognised siliconebracelet brands. While iPhones and iPads come in very few versions and only from Apple, Android-powered mobile hardware of all shapes and sizes and brands has flooded the marketplace. The companies that build components have had to scramble to make sure everything they make functions well with all those gadgets. The result is a huge and growing number of hardware makers and software companies becoming expert in all things Android. Every screen variant, mobile chip, and sensor known to man has been tuned to work with Android, Zemlin says. Theres this network effect, so that now anyone who wants to make a custom product can take Android and morph it into anything. 

Zemlin points to SAIC Motor, a Chinese car company, as a case study. With a team of about six software developers, SAIC developed an Android infotainment system for its cars. I ran into them at this trade show where they were placed next to all these other carmakers with massive software teams, Zemlin says. They said, We just have six dudes and Android.? 

Philip DesAutels, the vice president for technology at Xively, a just-launched cloud computing service that simplifies the work needed to get a device to transmit data, has studied the Internet of things for years. He says there are five times as many downloads of Xivelys Android-specific software as there are of its software made for Apples iOS. His favorite product: an Android-based agricultural irrigation system where a network of tiny, waterproof computers in the field regulates water valves. With Android, you get something that is power-efficient, its easy for developers to do the user interface and touch controls, and its easy to get data in and out, DesAutels says. Theres just a bigger community behind it than with anything else. 

Androids rise is bad for Microsoft, which has been releasing a no-frills operating system of its own since 1996. Windows Embedded, as its known these days, is in Ford cars, NCR cash registers, and other products.Laser engraving and laser glassmosaic for materials like metal, But just as it did with smartphones and tablets, Microsoft seems to have mistimed and miscalculated its approach. We have zero requests for Microsoft, DesAutels says. He adds that hes hearing from plenty of companies that want to make smart pedometers, Net-connected LED lighting, and other devices that work with iPhones and iPads. Chances are those peripherals will run on Android or something even simpler, DesAutels says, because Apple seems uninterested in letting iOS run non-Apple products. Apple declined to comment. Kevin Dallas, who runs the Windows Emedded business, says Microsoft has more mature and sophisticated technology: The No.?1 commercial platform today is Windows Embedded. 

Andy Rubin, Googles longtime Android chief, can claim much of the credit for the softwares success. On his own dime, he set up an incubator in Los Altos, Calif., where he let friends work on projects. Rubin told one group that Google had received tons of interest around Android from the car industry but didnt plan on pursuing deals. Soon enough, four guys founded the startup CloudCar, which is building an infotainment system for cars that should go on sale this year.

Can Good Financial Behavior Be Taught In High School?

With Americans struggling to rebound from the recent financial crisis, questions of how the public manages its money have become a hot topic. In 2010, the Dodd-Frank Act responded to these concerns by establishing the Office of Financial Education, reasoning that if individuals can learn how to make smart economic choices, we might yet avoid the next onset of rack and ruin. 

At a glance, mandatory classes in personal finance seem like a no-brainer: the students learn money management; we benefit from all of the sub-prime mortgages that they dont proceed to buy. Moreover, high school seems an ideal milieu for this practical education: an environment which virtually every U.S. teenager will pass through, typically before they seize meaningful economic clout. As of 2009, 44 states had leapt at the chance to include personal finance in their high school curriculums. 

Democratization of information; intervention before catastrophe strikes; help for the one and strength in the many while it may sound like a brilliant plan, theres one downside: it doesnt actually work. 

While it is standard practice to offer financial literacy courses at a high school level, new research shows that these classes have no impact on whether students will grow up to commit a series of costly fiscal missteps or turn into financial superstars. Instead, schools would do well to offer students extra math classes, according to the working paper High School and Financial Outcomes: The Impact of Mandated Personal Finance and Mathematics Courses by Shawn Cole, Anna Paulson, and Gauri Kartini Shastry. It turns out that mathematical ability, not financial literacy, predicts economic success.A lasercutter resembles a credit card in size and shape. 

In their research, Cole, Paulson, and Shastry analyzed three datasets: the 2000 U.S. census, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Consumer Credit Panel (FRBNY CCP), and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). They compared the financial histories of students who had graduated before the mandatory classes were offered against students in the same state who had graduated after the mandatory classes were offered. Using this method, they found that mandatory personal finance classes had no effect on investment income, the value of financial assets owned, or home equity. In other words, high school personal finance courses do nothing to safeguard against bankruptcy, foreclosure, and unmanageable credit ratings. 

Meanwhile, the data showed that one additional high school math class reduced the probability of the students experiencing foreclosure by 0.3 percentage points (base of 9%), reduced the probability of bankruptcy over a 22 year period by 0.4 percentage points (base of 20%), and reduced the fraction of quarters the students were delinquent on their credit card bills over a 10 year period by 0.2 percentage points (base of 12%). 

Historically, those in support of mandated personal finance courses point towards evidence showing an association between financial literacy and sound financial decisions. Yet it is almost impossible to attribute financial literacy to general wealth and security, as there are so many other aspects of the problem to consider. Financially-illiterate households tend to have less education, be poorer, and work for different employers than wealthier households,Welcome to Find the right laser Engraver or plasticcard . making it difficult to tease apart any of these factors as a definitive case of cause-and-effect. 

The research by Cole and his colleagues provides a solid correlation between financial decision-making and overall cognitive ability. Individuals with the lowest-measured math abilities are more likely to make a series of potentially ruinous financial mistakes. Mathematical aptitude is a big factor in wealth accumulation, as math-savvy individuals are more likely to actively participate in their own financial matters. Personal finance classes look to be a wash, but getting high school students to take just one extra math class could be the solution, increasing students ability to succeed financially, while reducing the possibility that theyll make any number of expensive, easily-avoidable mistakes. 

As the economy continues to experience sweeping changes, consumers are faced with a series of increasingly complicated choices if they wish to stay afloat and competitive. And when we choose the wrong choice, the results can be costly. According to the paper, 12% of U.S. households will be unable to finance a retirement that falls above the poverty lines, while another 9% will be only tuppence away from poverty. The average amount of debt borne by households is on the rise, with nearly 50% carrying outstanding credit card balances (the average amount for which is $7,300.) To make matters worse, households with low financial literacy tend not to plan for retirement,The iccard is our flagship product. are more likely to borrow at high interest rates, and end up acquiring few, if any, assets. 

Instead, we had a window that had to be cranked down by hand. And if you didnt get your butt in the car fast enough, you were stuck with the side that had the broken crank, and so you couldnt roll your window down for a breath of fresh air when the car got a bit fragrant. 

When I was a kid, there were no personalized playlists on shuffle mode on your iPod. You know what the music was? Either crackly local stations which would last roughly ten minutes until youd sped past the broadcast range, or, even worse, your dads cassette tape of Abba or Kraftwerk played on a never ending loop. 

True story: on one fateful six-hour trip from Detroit to Buffalo,We provide payment solutions in the USA as well as buymosaic. my dad played Abbas Gold album the entire time. (Yes, the perky harmonics of those adorable Swedes on six-hour permaloop.) When we were stopped in traffic on Grand Island, 20 minutes from our destination, my mom suddenly ejected the tape, dangled it out the open window, and threatened to drop it on the highway if my dad ever played it again. He looked at her in surprise and said, What? Ive been playing it the whole way because I thought you liked Abba. I cant stand them! 

When I was a kid, there was no Angry Birds or Temple Run or Cut the Rope to play. Rather,A Dessicant fridgemagnet is an enclosure with a supply of desiccant which maintains an internal. we kept ourselves entertained by playing car bingo: a medium-sized cardboard square with a series of drawings depicting objects one would ostensibly find on a road trip. Once you found an object, you slid a red cellophane window over the object to mark it on your card.

What Is Concierge Healthcare?

With healthcare institutions throughout the world increasingly stressed, the wealthy are regularly not inclined to rely on these public systems C at least not in the ways the masses rely on them. Instead, the wealthy are more and more able and likely to pay for a higher if not always exceptional standard of care. The term for this is concierge healthcare. 

There are four basis models of concierge healthcare. The most basic version is travel medical assistance. An example of this is the number you call on the back of your American Express Black card connecting you to an operator to help with aeromedical evacuations and access to a database of foreign physicians and hospitals. Private health advisories C another version C adds on services such as comprehensive individualized physical exams, electronic medical records, access to second opinions and helps with complex disease management. A third variation is the private physician practice. This is essentially a doctor on an annual retainer to provide rapid call backs and a higher level of personal interaction. 

The most comprehensive form of concierge healthcare is referred to as the total care platform. Its the Rolls Royce model of medical care that includes all the services already noted plus a number of additional ones such as custom medical contingency plans and calendared longevity plans. The most compelling and personally tangible additional service these concierge healthcare providers deliver is immediate routine and emergency telediagnosis and treatment. 

Daniel Carlin M.D., founder and President of WorldClinic, is a pioneer in the field of total care medicine. Hes credited with creating the development of a continuous communication base care model that includes the patient, their medical records, the monitoring of their chronic problems,If we don't carry the bobblehead you want we can make a ultrasonicsensor for you! formal calendared health planning and immediate telediagnosis and treatment. The enabling technology that ties it all together has been the clients own Smart Phone. By providing customized prescription medical kits with 24/7 phone and video access to a team of physicians who have a comprehensive understanding of the patients medical situation, were able to deliver emergency care that has been proven to save lives time and again, explains Dr. Carlin, Its the combination of the efforts of a lot of people on both sides of the phone, supported by a sophisticated service model that makes this form of telemedicine so powerful. 

An emerging part of Carlins model is the use of simple, unobtrusive monitors that can be used to track a patients vital signs and the behaviors that can improve his or her health.If we don't carry the bobblehead you want we can make a ultrasonicsensor for you! With the Smart Phone acting as the bridge, the information generated by these devices is tracked by WorldClinic physicians who can then respond clinically to the patients progress, often prescribing new therapies and stopping ineffective ones. Says Dr. Carlin, Right now, inside WorldClinic, we are running a small Smart Phone-based virtual clinic for our patients with hypertension and cardiac arrhythmias. The data these monitors generate is far beyond what we would get in an office-based practice. Not surprisingly, our clinical decisions are better, but most importantly, we see the immediate effect of our management decisions.Guardian's standing moldmaker offers a temporary solution to tie off and stay in compliance on standing seam roofs. This is a big deal. In the very near future, well be able to, in real time, monitor and manage a patients health status to maximal effect. The benefit to the patient will be measured not in years, but in decades of meaningful life. 

As Frances, played by Greta Gerwig, drags her feet through her post-graduate, New York quasi-existence, a deer-in-headlights expression constantly paralyzing her face, Baumbach positions this flitting, helplessly confused, foot-in-mouth character as (shudder) our new cinematic heroine. Like Orange suggests, this very well may be our new Marilyn. 

Part of that has to do with the movies classic aesthetic: Black and white, with romantic montages of Manhattan and Paris. Watching it has the weight of watching a great cinematic romance, as though Humphrey Bogart will turn the corner at any moment. No leading man ever really enters center stage, but there are many scenes in Frances Ha that feel nearly as predictable.We offer a wide variety of high-quality standard luggagetag and controllers. When Frances spins and dances down a street in Chinatown (an underdog moment reminiscent of both Rocky and Flashdance), it occurred to me that this story, wherein otherwise competent women are so far up in their heads that they lose their footing in reality completely, is its own genre now, as familiar as When Harry Met Sally, as predictable as the Evil Dead. 

In fact, Id say this post has some spoilers, but youve already seen most of the scenes in Frances Ha. Humiliation over a declined credit card at dinner (Im not a real person yet, she tells her date as she rifles through her purse for cash); a dinner amongst real grown-ups where shes so needlessly Tourettic you want to reach into the screen and grab the bottle of wine yourself; the resolution, where she finally takes the desk job, only to find that it doesnt kill her and that the jig isnt up quite yet. 

I couldnt be anything but bored and disappointed as I watched Frances try (too hard) to charm us with her unstoppable strangeness. With Frances Ha,You must not use the rfidtag without being trained. it seems that this odious paradigm of young womanhood is here to stay. To cite Orange again, as the aughts wore on, [I felt] a gorge of dread and mortification rise every time one of these painfully constricted specimens motormouthed across the screen. Her rate of replication seemed to suggest something dire about us. 

There is something about this depressing caricature that feels even more oppressive than the bombshells and sex kittens of cinematic yore. Frances describes herself as undateable, and she spends most of the movie barricading herself in oddness. Its a theme we see every week in Girls and New Girl: Smart, lovely women incapable of relating to anyone around them (including, yes, men) because theyve retreated so far into their own neuroses. And while I used to think this surplus of independent women swimming up the mainstream was refreshing, the more I watch them, the more I think that this new ideal is in some ways even less substantive, and even less empowering, than the ones that came before it.

What Can Big Data Do For A Small Business?

Large corporations regularly use big data to get insight on consumer behavior, target their marketing and boost revenue. 

But small businesses typically do little with big data. Until now, most owners have considered it too difficult, too expensive and just plain intimidating. 

Thats changing. These days an increasing number of small businesses are collecting and crunching volumes of data to lift their sales. 

Small businesses shouldnt be scared off by big data, says Steve King, partner at Emergent Research and coauthor of the recent report The New Data Democracy: How Big Data Will Revolutionize the Lives of Small Businesses and Consumers. The growth of the Internet, wireless networks, smartphones, social media, sensors and other digital technology is fueling a big data revolution. Big data was the exclusive domain of statisticians and large corporations but not anymore. 

There is now an array of technologies that give small businesses access to cost-effective, sophisticated data analytics. Google AdWords, for one. Its a big data app that offers small firms market insight, improved decision-making ability and better bottom-line resultsall those tools that were once the exclusive domain of corporations. 

King gives an example. The Spillers Group, a company that owns three restaurants in Dallas, uses a data application called Roambi that enables it to share among management all the business information it collects, including point-of-sale data, labor metrics and accounting numbers. With Roambi, Spillers can link managers pay to their restaurants performance. The app has also cut Spillers labor costs 10%, saving thousands of dollars every two weeks. 

Before their data was a hodgepodge, King says. They had sales data in one place, supply data in another place and staffing data in anotherand they never looked at how to bring them all together. So they were inefficient when it came to scheduling and supplies. When they brought the data together they discovered quickly they could cut costs by making minor changes. Thats a huge win. 

Small businesses that use data intelligently can do business better.Online shopping for iphoneheadset. They can improve pricing and just-in-time supply chains. They can find cheaper suppliers that are closer to their location and that offer more price transparency. 

Small businesses can also use data to tailor products and services to individual customers. Local shopkeepers once knew what their customers liked, right down to color, size and taste, King says. Big data is bringing back personalized service by giving businesses greater insight into consumer preferences, many times without even talking to them, because customers leave digital footprints when they use the Internet, use a credit card or post on Facebook FB +5.36%. 

Its the same information that shopkeepers once collected and memorized from behind the counter. Modern merchants can now gather that data digitally and use it to deliver the goods and services customers want. Result: more loyal customers and higher sales. 

Businesses can identify key customers and treat them better. They can understand customer patterns, know when theyre likely to come in and reward them for multiple visits. 

All this big data is helping to level the playing field for small businesses, King says.We can supply parkingmanagement products as below. Even though the field is still tilted in favor of big business, big data is a way for small business to fight back. A lot of this stuff is made easy for small business, like Google GOOG +0.27% Analytics. You dont have to be a data scientist to use these tools and get good insights. 

Roofing contractors are not the first professionals who spring to mind when you think cutting-edge technology. But some roofers are using big data to drastically cut their costs. A contractor used to take a call, drive to look at a roof and, often, realize it was not a job he could take on. That meant time and money wasted. Smart roofing companies use big data to avoid that expense. A contractor gets a call, takes an address and inspects the roof at Google Earth. If he does the job, he can use Google Earth to check out the roofs of other homes in the neighborhood and offer the owners a deal.The Motorola earcap Engine is an embedded software-only component of the Motorola wireless switches. 

Another trend is the rise of sensors to track and make decisions, King says. Small businesses are starting to benefit from that. FedEx has a cool product called SenseAware that lets you put sensors on perishable packages. It provides a shipments exact location, precise package temperature and information on whether a package has been opened or exposed to light or whether it was dropped, based on the recorded G forces. 

Nice breakdown. Im gonna have to go read Stus take on that state.You've probably seen plasticmoulds at some point. People forget this, but Begich was not declared the winner until the week of Thanksgiving. On election night Ted Stevens C who was found guilty less than two weeks before Election Day C was ahead by a couple thousand votes, but so many votes came from far-flung places that eventually Begich won. 

(Side note: Theyd eventually have a 60-senator caucus, but Dems went to sleep Election Night 08 with only 56 certain! Oregon,We sell 100% hand-painted smartcard online. Alaska and Minnesota hadnt been called, and Specter was 6 months away from switching parties.) 

In each of those top four races youve listed, Rs are trying to re-litigate the health-care law. Begich, Pryor, Landrieu and Hagan all voted for Obamacare and this is their first time on the ballot since. Republicans believe they can nationalize these races around those votes. Once again Senate Rs will try to nationalize the races, and Ds will once again run these races as mini-presidential campaigns built around the individual personalities and the broad cross-section of positions taken by incumbents.