I randomly stumbled upon pictures of a house that was designed by John Pardey Architects called the Hind House. The Hind House is located near Wargrave and sits in the River Loddon. This house is one of a kind because it is literally sits in the river. There are stilts that keep the house standing above the river which allows the water to flow underneath.
The house is controlled by a computerized building management system to control the heat, lighting, solar control and audio/ video. This is one high-tech and nicely designed house that I wouldn’t mind living in one day.
Last week, the FBI arrested Sergey Aleynikov, a former VP at Goldman Sachs. Aleynikov uploaded secret algorithms used by Goldman Sachs that run automated stock and commodities trading. The data was uploaded to a server in Europe. Shortly after the deed was done, Aleynikov resigned from his $400,000 per year job at Goldman.
Unfortunately the code has leaked on to the Internet and could do some damage to the stock market. “The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways,” stated U.S. Attorney Joseph Facciponti. “The copy in Germany is still out there, and we at this time do not know who else has access to it.”
Aleynikov is being held on a $750,000 bail as of right now and he told FBI officials that he only intended to download open source files from the server but ended up downloading more than he had intended.
When Aleynikov posted his resignation, he was intending to join Teza Technologies LLC. Aleynikov became an employee of Teza on July 2nd and then was arrested on July 3rd. Teza stated that they learned about the arrest on July 5th and suspend Aleyniko’s employment without pay pending an investigation.
Goldman uses algorithms and a high frequency trading platform software to buy stock within a few milliseconds of company news being released and then selling a few moments later when other financial companies receive the company news.
At the beginning of June, Aleynikov ran scripts using a bash shell to copy and compress a large amount of source code. After the compression , he sent it to the servers through a secure server protocol to a server in Germany. He sent about 32MB in ASCII code about four times.
Aleynikov tried to have his script erase the bash history, but Goldman keeps a backup of everyone’s bash history. This is how he was caught. Aleynikov is now waiting for his trial. Perhaps while Sergey is waiting on his trial, he may be thinking of new ballroom dancing moves.
Earlier this week the Delicious Library 2 (DL2) iPhone application was removed from the App Store because of a complaint sent from Amazon.com. Delicious Library 2 is software that allows you to keep inventory track of your CDs, DVDs, video games, and books in the form of a photorealistic shelf. The photorealistic shelf maintains your inventory and keeps track of the friends that you let borrow your stuff.
The CEO of Delicious Monster Wil Shipley stated on Twitter that “The DL2 iPhone app was perfectly safe, but Amazon has forced me to remove it due to their new contract.” Amazon.com objected to the DL2 iPhone application because it violated the API contract for developers.
“You will not, without our express prior written approval requested via this link, use any Product Advertising Content on or in connection with any site or application designed or intended for use with a mobile phone or other handheld device,” states Amazon’s contract.
DL2 isn’t the only application that Amazon.com objected to. In November 2008, another iPhone application called Mazo was removed for a similar reason. Mazo was an iPhone application that was a shopping client for Amazon.com. About a week later, Amazon.com released an iPhone application that had similar features as Mazo.
At the beginning of April, BlackBerry App World publicly launched. At the time they had about 1,000 applications and about 3.5 months later, the number of applications have doubled. Research In Motion is now granting users in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain access to the BlackBerry App World store.
BlackBerry App World’s biggest competitor, the iPhone App Store now has over 50,000 applications, but that does not discourage the Canadian mobile manufacturing company. “I don’t think it matters whether it’s 40,000 or 2,000, you’ve still got a broad range of choice,” stated RIM Global Alliance VP Jeff McDowell.
One of the reasons why BlackBerry App World does not have as much traction as the iPhone App Store is the pricing model. Paid applications have a price tag of at least $3. Many of the applications on iTunes are $0.99. BlackBerry App World is also only limited to the U.S., U.K., and Canada as of right now.
Amazon.com just started selling products from a company called Travel John. One of Travel John’s latest inventions is the TravelJohn-Disposable Urinal. The Travel John is a miniature toilet that you can carry in your pocket.
Personally I prefer to let nature call in the great outdoors if there are no toilet facilities around and I’d rather not carry a bag of urine.
But the Travel John has a biodegradable polymer in the bag that will turn urine into an odorless gel that will now spill out of the bag. The TravelJohn sells for about $12 for a 6 pack.
Based on the growth rate of the Apple iPhone, Nokia will no longer be the smartphone market leader by the year 2013. Nokia currently has a 40% market share and that will be reduced to 20% within the next four years as Apple’s market share rises. In terms of unit sales, Apple is expected to move about 77 million iPhones by 2011 matching Nokia’s sales.
The study was conducted by Generator Research, a digital media research and consulting company.
The reason why Generator believes that Nokia’s market share will drop is because they are focused on making budget devices for developing countries. The market for the devices in developing countries is still growing, but the company doesn’t have financial stake in ensuring that their smartphones stay on top. Nokia’s true profits do not lie in the smartphone business.
Nokia also slowly responds to competition. After the iPhone was released, it took Nokia a year and a half to reply with a phone that matches the features. After the iPhone App Store boasted 1 billion application downloads, Nokia was pushed to create the Ovi Store as a central place to download applications, music, ringtones, and video.
Ever since Google Inc. started chipping away at the market share that Microsoft Corporation had for search engine traffic, the two companies have been rivals. Now Google is taking on Microsoft where it really counts, their operating system. Microsoft line of Windows operating systems is powering about 90% of all active computers in the world today.
Google’s new operating system will be called the Google Chrome Operating System and it will be initially installed on low cost netbooks. Eventually the Google Operating System will be installed on more powerful PCs. The Google Chrome Operating System will be open source and will be available for consumers started in the second half of 2010.
“The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work,” stated Google VP of Product Management Sundar Pichai and Engineering Director Linus Upson on the Google Blog.
Google Chrome, the company’s web browser currently has 30 million people using the browser regularly. The web browser along with Google’s mobile operating system Android is also open source.
Analytics company Quantcast is seeking a $50 million round of funding which would put them at a $300 million valuation according to PEHub.
The company is rumored to have received several term sheets, but the identities of the investors is not yet known. Quantcast monitors the traffic and demographics of about 10 million web sites and they are finding ways to monetize the service through a Media Program. The Quantcast Media Program gives advertisers the ability to select the audience they want to reach by having access to demographic information.
So far Quantcast has raised $25 million in total funding. Allen & Company invested $20 million Series B in 2007. Other investors include the Founders Fund, Polaris Venture Partners, and Revolution Ventures.
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