Netizen

The X Phone

Finally Google is getting into hardware. The Nexus line was warm up.

Google Designing 'X Phone' to Rival Apple, Samsung

Seven months after being acquired by Google for $12.5 billion, Motorola is designing its marquee handset with cutting-edge features to stand apart from existing phones when it is released next year ..... using a bendable screen .... Motorola is also expected to work on an "X" tablet after the phone .... only one billion of the world's seven billion people use smartphones, calling that "an incredible opportunity." .... Motorola wanted top-notch features for the phone's camera and photo software, such as better color saturation and the ability to take panoramic shots .... materials such as ceramics that would allow the company to make the X Phone more stress resistant, use more colors and mold into different shapes .... Motorola plans to enhance the X Phone with its recent acquisition of Viewdle, an imaging and gesture-recognition software developer .... The South Korean company shipped 40.3% of all Android-based phones in the third quarter .... Google could begin adopting an integrated approach of having its Motorola and Android units work more closely together, like Apple does with its hardware and software teams .... Google has filled Motorola's top ranks with several dozen Google executives and product managers, many of whom didn't have previous experience with hardware ..... Google sees that relative inexperience as an advantage if it wants to revolutionize smartphone design

Sugarcoating

Venezuelan sugar cane (Saccharum) harvested for processing. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bioengineering has much to offer. Energy can be bioengineered. And there might not be green house gases.

Bacteria Use Photosynthesis to Make Sugar for Biofuels

ultra-cheap sugar at high yields using photosynthetic microörganisms ..... 10 times more sugar per acre than sugarcane. It expects it can further engineer the bacteria to increase this yield, to as high as 30 times more sugar per acre than sugarcane.

Chromebook Glory Days

The glory days are ahead, but the Samsung Chromebook already looks like a Macbook Air, at a quarter the price.

New Chromebook: Getting Better, but Its Internet Dependence Is Limiting

a bare-bones version of the Linux operating system capable of running only one application: a Web browser ..... Chrome OS has at last matured from a quirky experiment to something that make sense for consumers. .... 11.6-inch screen .... woke up in less than five seconds. .... If you don’t pause to ponder the difference between an “app” and a bookmark (often there is none at all), it works surprisingly well. .... Chrome OS has the same minimal feel as a smartphone. The constrained space of a mobile screen often forces designers to display fewer options, and less information, at once making for a less cluttered experience. ..... The speakers are also impressive for a small, cheap device. .... Offline photo editing is impossible, which is a shame because a Chromebook would be a good companion on a vacation, when you might take a lot of photos. ...... even the company’s own lineup of offline apps is weak..... There’s a version of Gmail that works offline, and it’s possible to create and edit word-processing documents offline using Google Docs, and read other documents offline.

The Chromebook happened before HTML5 happened. This book is ahead of the times.