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| Mozilla Junior Is the Simplest iPad Browser Yet | |  Mozilla is working on a new WebKit-based iPad web browser called Junior. Currently in prototype stage, Junior is probably the simplest iPad browser we've seen, reducing the UI to only a couple of buttons -- a back button and a plus symbol that lets you access bookmarks, recent pages and an URL/search bar. The main idea behind Junior is reducing the clutter -- the browsing experience takes up the iPad's entire screen, and even the tabs are gone. However, those two main buttons can be expanded to reveal other functions, such as reload or print, while other functions can be accessed with finger gestures. The browser is still in early stages in development, and many functions are missing, so don't expect to see it on your iPad very soon. Check out a video presentation of Junior here (the Junior part starts around the 30 minute mark in the video.) |
| China Set for 1st Manned Space Docking Test | |  China is gearing up to perform its first-ever manned space docking Monday (June 18), a feat that would put it in the company of history's two greatest spacefaring nations, the United States and Russia. China's Shenzhou 9 space capsule — which launched Saturday (June 16) carrying three astronauts, including the country's first female spaceflyer — is expected to link up with the unmanned Tiangong 1 space lab around 3 p.m. Monday Beijing time (3 a.m. EDT; 0700 GMT), according to Chinese media reports. To date, the only two countries to pull off a manned orbital docking are the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia, which first did so in 1966 and 1969, respectively. Shenzhou 9 will dock with Tiangong 1 twice, with the first hookup being automated. At some point, the two spacecraft will separate, and the three taikonauts, as China's astronauts are known, will perform the second docking manually. Forty-six-year-old Jing Haipeng leads the taikonaut crew, which also includes Liu Wang, 42, and 33-year-old Liu Yang, China's first female astronaut. All are members of the Communist Party of China and former pilots with the People's Liberation Army; Jing flew on China's last manned spaceflight, which took place in 2008. Two of the taikonauts will live aboard Tiangong 1 during the 13-day mission, while one will stay aboard Shenzhou 9 at all times in case of emergency, Chinese officials have said. Shenzhou-9's flight is considered a key step in China's plan to build a permanently staffed space station in Earth orbit. The nation hopes to have a 60-ton station and up and running by 2020. (For comparison, the International Space Station weighs about 430 tons.) While Shenzhou 9's flight is China's first attempt at a crewed space docking, the nation has successfully linked up two robotic spacecraft in orbit. In November, the unmanned Shenzhou 8 craft docked twice with Tiangong 1 before returning safely to Earth. Shenzhou 9's mission is China's fourth manned spaceflight, following taikonaut launches in 2003, 2005 and 2008. Another manned mission to Tiangong 1 — which launched to orbit in September 2011 — could come later this year, Chinese officials have said. |
| Verizon Launches New FiOS Quantum Service, Offers Speeds Up To 300 Mbps | |  Residential Verizon customers can now take advantage of the company's fastest-ever FiOS Internet service. Called FiOS Quantum, the new Internet tiers offer upload/download speeds of 50/25, 75/35, 150/65 and 300/65 Mbps, the latter three offering speeds twice as fast as what was previously offered by Verizon. "A revolution in speed has arrived," said Bob Mudge, president of Verizon's consumer and mass market business unit. "The new FiOS Internet speed and bundle options provide incredible value, and represent the most significant mass scale, consumer broadband speed enhancement in the nation in the past decade." The company will continue to offer its entry-level speed of 15/5 Mbps as well. "As consumers stream and watch more movies, sports and shows in their homes and on devices other than traditional TVs, such as smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, Smart TVs and Blu-ray players, they need faster broadband to enhance their experience," said Mike Ritter, CMO for Verizon's consumer and mass market business unit. The service is available as a standalone service as well as part of Verizon's double and triple-play bundles. Existing FiOS customers can upgrade to the new plans with no upgrade fee. Verizon says upgrading will typically cost customers between an additional $10 to $15 per month, and will double or triple the speed of their existing plans. The top-of-the-line 300/65 Mbps plan will be available only as a stand-alone product for $209.99 on a month-to-month basis, or for $204.99 with a new two-year contract. The new faster speeds will not be available in all areas. Customers interested in the service can visit Verizon's website to determine if it is available in their area. |
| How Much Money Can You Make Working in Digital? [CHART] | | Sunday, June 17, 2012 11:01 PM | Lauren Drell |
| 
The world has gone digital. At this point, most companies big and small have a website, Facebook Page and Twitter handle. With these new digital properties comes a slew of digital jobs -- with that comes the demand for new staff members to create digital assets, design logos, manage a website and transform sketches on napkins into actual products. In the infographic below, produced by OnwardSearch, you can see how much dough you'd net for various jobs in the digital sector, from interactive design to front-end developers. Do you work in these fields? Do the numbers stack up with what you've seen in the industry? Do you think these positions and the salaries make sense, given the rise of digital media? Do you want to move to a market that pays better? Let us know in the comments below. Infographic courtesy of Onward Search Social Media Job Listings Every week we post a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we publish a huge range of job listings, we've selected some of the top social media job opportunities from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting! Chief Product Designer at Recruiting.com in Scottsdale, Ariz. Digital Developer / Art Director at Gelia in Buffalo, N.Y. Visual Designer at Ahalife in New York Image courtesy of iStockphoto, PashaIgnatov |
| 4 Web Design Tips for Startups | | Sunday, June 17, 2012 9:31 PM | Jordan Batch |
|  Mashable's new video series, Behind the Launch, follows Vungle on its startup journey toward a launch later this month. Each week on Mashable, the Vungle team offers our readers some tips and lessons learned from their own startup experience. This week, we saw Vungle meet with design partners from Google Ventures, one the startups investors. Below, Jordan Batch, co-founder of the San Francisco-based design studio Takifugu, shares web design tips for startups. And he should know -- he designed Vungle's site. Watch the episode above, and be sure to tune in to Behind the Launch every Monday and Wednesday. 1. Consider Responsive Web Design More people are getting away from their desk computers and going outside with their mobile phones. Responsive web design is the effort of making a website display properly on any device. The beauty of this is that responsive design does not need to be code-specific to every device out there. It intelligently changes the content based on browser width. If it's designed correctly, your user will no longer need to zoom in to find content. Illy did a great job with its website. In the picture above, you can see how the desktop version transitions into mobile. Now the user does not need to ask questions or zoom in to read text -- the website is presented exactly as it should be, no matter where or how it's accessed. Customers have a clear understanding of who and what Illy is, and defined call-outs especially designed for mobile make it a breeze for on-the-go users. Responsive web design is becoming exceedingly important every day as the number of mobile and tablet users increase. It has become an natural evolution of our industry and very much a standard to adhere to. 2. Bring on a Design Co-Founder Startups like Pinterest, Airbnb and Square all started with design co-founders. Having the business and development sides of a company were always givens. Now entrepreneurs are beginning to wake up and realize the benefits of design. It is an all-natural scaling resource that helps startup companies evolve and cultivate their brand identity with high expertise of the current industry. 3. Collaborate If you don't want a design co-founder, consider working with designers outside your network -- it is a key to success. There are vast networks and communities of designers that are just as passionate as you to create unique and innovative ideas. The team behind the Path understood this and worked with photographer John Carey to enhance their app with unique cover photos. The more you collaborate with designers, the more it will help you realize how important it is to your audience and your brand. 4. Stand Out With an ocean of companies popping up, it can be hard to stand out from the crowd. Utilizing design will not only give your company a distinct style and personality, it will also help build your brand value. Companies like Coca Cola and Nike have put effort into making sure that when you hear their name, you immediately think of the color red or the Swoosh logo. Good design should be able to be understood by anyone in its demographics whether in or outside your perspective country -- you'll see Coca Cola and Nike ads around the world, as they transcend language and cultural barriers. Design is no longer just a luxury but a necessity, and it has become a global standard that companies should always keep up with. How does your startup go about design? Do you have someone in-house, or do you collaborate with independent designers and agencies? Let us know in the comments. |
| Microsoft Could Announce a Barnes & Noble Tablet Tomorrow | | Sunday, June 17, 2012 9:13 PM | Emily Price |
|  Microsoft is set to make a big announcement Monday. In an invite sent to press last week, the company promised it was an event we "will not want to miss." What Microsoft will announce is anyone's guess. The latest rumors suggest, however, that the company will unveil the first product it has developed in partnership with Barnes & Noble. The two companies formed a "strategic partnership" in April, uniting Barnes & Noble's digital business with $300 million in investment with Microsoft. The new, jointly backed company has not yet been given a name. "Our complementary assets will accelerate e-reading innovation across a broad range of Windows devices, enabling people to not just read stories, but to be part of them," Andy Lees, president at Microsoft, said in a statement released at the time. Lees was formerly the head of Windows Phone for Microsoft. He was moved late last year to the Barnes & Noble project, according to The Verge. CEO Steve Ballmer called Lees's move a "time-critical opportunity" in an internal memo sent at the time, one that would "maximum impact in 2012 with Windows Phone and Windows 8." Earlier this month, Microsoft showed off a new technology called SmartGlass which allows users to push content from their televisions to their phones or tablets, and visa versa. SmartGlass could also play a role in the announcement, perhaps bringing Xbox live-streaming capabilities to the device. An Xbox-related announcement would help explain Microsoft's decision to hold the event in LA, the home of many entertainment studios. Either way, we'll know what Microsoft has in store shortly after its press event begins at 3:30 PT Monday. Join us -- we'll be there blogging all the action live. |
| Top 10 Tech This Week [PICS] | | Sunday, June 17, 2012 7:39 PM | Charlie White |
|  Top 10 Tech is presented by Chivas. Access a world of exclusive insider benefits - private tastings, special events and the chance to win a trip for you and three friends to the Cannes Film Festival. Join the Brotherhood. The past seven days in the technology world have been nothing short of profound. Profound? That's the word we use when a groundbreaking laptop is rolled out by the world's foremost technology company, hybrid vehicles win first and second place in the 24 hours of Le Mans, a new operating system is introduced for iPhones, and a company accustomed to cranking out hard drives aces its first router ... all in one rip-roaring week. SEE ALSO: Previous editions of Top 10 Tech This Week And that's just the beginning! You'll be impressed and amused with the other occupants of our perennial list, encompassing ideas that none of us had ever considered. So dive into the best gadgetry and innovations the week had to offer, right here in the burgeoning bundle of commentary and graphics we call Top 10 Tech This Week. Here's last week's Top 10 Tech. Series presented by Chivas Top 10 Tech is presented by Chivas. Access a world of exclusive insider benefits - private tastings, special events and the chance to win a trip for you and three friends to the Cannes Film Festival. Join the Brotherhood. |
| Audi E-Tron Is The First Hybrid To Win Le Mans [VIDEO] | | Sunday, June 17, 2012 6:40 PM | Emily Price |
|  The Audi E-Tron is the first hybrid car to win the 24-hour auto-racing endurance test of Le Mans. "This result is the fruit of so much hard work," Beniot Treluyer, one of the drivers of the Audi said after winning the event. "We prepared well for the race, and Marcel, André and I felt more confident after our win in 2011. We also worked with the same technical staff, including our race engineer Leena and our mechanics. We are really motivated by the hybrid project. Today, I think we wrote a fresh page in motor racing history." Unlike the Prius you may have in your driveway, Audi's E-Trons have a powerful turbo-diesel V6 running the rear wheels, and swap the massive battery -- found in traditional hybrids -- for a flywheel that collects energy from things like braking coverts it into power for the front wheels on the vehicle. Audi didn't just walk away with the gold. It nabbed the top three spots. Another Audi E-Tron finished second, and the Audi Ultra picked up third in the race. A non-hybrid, the Toyota-powered Lola, took home 4th place, besting the other Audi Ultra on the track. The car wasn't the only hybrid on the track for this year's race. Toyota also hit the track with its LMP1, however, the car did not finish due to an accident. "By achieving this further success at the world's most important endurance race our engineers demonstrated their high technological expertise in a particularly impressive way," said Rupert Stadler, Chairman of the Board of Management of AUDI AG." The E-Tron is currently a prototype, with a production model expected to be available some time in the future for consumers. |
| Inside Google's Plan to Build a Catalog of Every Single Thing, Ever | | Sunday, June 17, 2012 6:02 PM | The Atlantic |
|  There's a lot more to Google's Knowledge Graph than might be apparent from what you see in a casual search. The ugly truth is that computers don't know anything. They have no common sense. This idea had been circulating in Metaweb co-founder John Giannandrea's head since 1997 when he was working at Netscape and thinking about how to reveal what you did not know you didn't know on the web. If you were looking at search results for a hiking trail, say, what other hiking trails might you look at? Giannandrea called it "going sideways through the web," and he loved the idea, even if he couldn't execute it back then. Years later, in 2005, Giannandrea teamed up with Danny Hillis and Robert Cook to cofound Metaweb, which had a simple premise: "What if we could make a catalog of all the stuff our computer should know?" Giannandrea told me in a recent interview. "We were interested in building a model of the world. Our computers are remarkably dumb about the stuff that we take for granted. You learn about stuff. You have some context for understanding. Our computers don't work that way because we don't have any loaded context." With remarkable confidence (hubris?), he and the other founders said to themselves, "Teaching computers all the discrete stuff in the world seems like it should be doable," so they set out to make a machine-readable catalog of everything in the world. Last month, their project was finally let loose into the wild as the Google Knowledge Graph, which you now see showing up in your search results on the right of your screen. But there's a lot more to the creation of the Knowledge Graph than might be apparent from using it in casual searches. This is one of those human knowledge projects that is ridiculous in scope and possibly in impact. And yet when it gets turned into a consumer product, all we see is a useful module for figuring out Tom Cruise's height more quickly. In principle, this is both good and bad. It's good because technology should serve human needs and we shouldn't worship the technology itself. It's bad because it's easy to miss out on the importance of the infrastructure and ideology that are going to increasingly inform the way Google responds to search requests. And given that Google is many people's default portal to the world of information, even a subtle change in the company's toolset is worth considering. And that's how I found myself on the phone with John Giannandrea discussing mojitos and semantic graphs. "Take the drink called the mojito," he said. "Mojito has ingredients and mint, rum, ice. We'll create a catalog entry for that entity for that human concept 'mojito' and then we'll create a connection between the mojito and its ingredients." The key difference between their catalog and a standard database is that the connection between the mojito and mint is itself an entity, an entity that says, "This thing is an ingredient in this other thing." The edge between the two nouns contains meaning and that makes all the difference. "We can talk about the representation of knowledge with the knowledge itself," Giannandrea said. Whoa, Meta! I thought. Hence, Metaweb. But there's at least one problem. If you're going to build a catalog of all common sense things in the world, where do you start? The answer was simply, "Somewhere." They added bodies of water and bridges, which go over bodies of water, and highways which the bridges are a part of, and the length of those highways and the states through which the highways run, and the capitols of those states, and the populations of those capitols, and the population of the United States, and the population of every country in the world, and the dates in which those countries were founded, and so on and so forth and so on and so forth. They built tools to import data from other sources, so that if they got a database from the French cheese association, they could crank out the sodium levels in those cheese and also tell you a bit about the regions they came from. After five long years, they had 12 million objects in the database. And they were purchased by Google. In the first year after the acquisition, they had 25 million things. What did Google bring to the acquisition, aside from money? Data, of course, of a very specific kind. Before, they were just guessing at what people might want to know (cheese, rivers, highways, etc). With Google's search data, they *know* what users are after, so they can go about finding and making that information available. With Google's help, their database has grown rapidly to over 500 million items. That's orders of magnitude larger than previous attempts to educate artificial intelligences like the Cyc project out of the University of Texas. (Though it should be noted that Cyc has some capabilities that the Knowledge Graph does not.)In the end, what is most significant to Giannandrea is that "we're taking a baby step in teaching all our computers at Google something about our human world." As for what comes next, he can't say, but the idea is that it will become a resource that all Google developers can call on, the core of common sense at the center of Google's vast web. Image via iStock, Hillary Fox |
| How to Avoid 17 Internet Scams [INFOGRAPHIC] | | Sunday, June 17, 2012 4:57 PM | Allegra Tepper |
|  We've all heard the horror stories: credit card fraud, pyramid schemes, phishing, identity theft -- the list of scams goes on and on. "Oh, that won't happen to me," you think. "I know the signs." No one wants to think he'll be counted among the fooled. But the truth is, you can never be too cautious about scams on the web. After all, according to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, yearly dollars lost grew by about $500 million from 2004 to 2009, and the trend isn't showing signs of slowing. SEE ALSO: How to Check If Your LinkedIn Password Was Stolen Background Check compiled research on Internet scams from around the world to help you spot the red flags. Among the stats: Nearly 66% of complaints (predominantly phishing) with a known perpetrator location originated in the U.S. Meanwhile, despite having the world's largest online population, China only accounts for 3.1% of those scams. Check out this infographic for information on the types of scams to look out for, and how to make sure you don't wind up a victim.
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