Donate your smartphone to science, but only when you sleep

Donate your smartphone to science, 

but only when you sleep

A new app puts users' smartphones and their processors to good use when they're charging at night.

Called PowerSleep, the app is a collaboration between Samsung and the University of Vienna, and it uses devices' processing power for crunching through scientific research.

It does this via an alarm clock. When it is set and the phone is plugged in for charging and connected to a Wi-Fi network, the university's Faculty of Life Sciences can harness its power for the good of furthering our understanding of genetics, biochemistry and cancer, among other areas.

With the app running, each phone becomes a part of the existing Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, which already draws on the idle processing power of some 60,000 PCs worldwide.

PowerSleep is a great way for cash-strapped academic institutions to build improvised supercomputers, and people who install the app will be able to see how their devices are being used and the nature of the research their processors have been crunching through.

Earlier this month, Cancer Research UK launched a smartphone game called Genes in Space that also aims to harness mobile devices' power in order to further scientific research. However, instead of using idle processor capacity, the game uses players' human ability to spot patterns.

The worlds that players must navigate are actually data points and by plotting a course through each field of what appear to be asteroids they are actually highlighting patterns in research related to breast cancer.

Canadian tykes now better at computers than bike-riding, name-writing or shoe-tying

A global study of how young kids are using the Internet found Canadians were spending less time online and were less likely to have an email address.

Still, more of the three-to five-year-old Canadian children in the study knew how to use a mouse and play computer games than ride a bike or write their name.

The survey of more than 6,000 mothers in 10 countries was conducted by security software company AVG Technologies, which researched how kids between the ages of three to five, and six to nine were engaged with the Internet.

About 89 per cent of the kids in the older group were already Internet users, while the figure was one percentage point higher in Canada. A whopping 97 per cent of the Brazilian kids were familiar with the Internet.

When the parents of the six-to nine-year-old kids were asked how long they allowed their children to go online the most common reply was between two to five hours a week (42 per cent), followed by less than two hours weekly (36 per cent).

About 40 per cent of the Canadian parents said they limited Internet time to less than two hours a week and 48 per cent allowed two to five hours of web time weekly.

Just eight per cent of the parents said they reserved an email address with their child’s name, while six per cent of the Canadian moms did so. Sixteen per cent of Brazilian moms had.

As for what the younger three-to five-year-old kids were doing themselves, 76 per cent of the Canadians could play a basic computer game, 54 per cent knew how to turn a computer on and off, 40 per cent could navigate a tablet or smartphone and 19 per cent could competently browse the web.

Meanwhile, 56 per cent could write their name, 65 per cent could ride a bike, 47 per cent knew their address and 28 per cent could tie their laces.

Credit-cards hacked in Longueuil: IntelCrawler

MONTREAL — Private data were recently pirated from 280 magnetic-stripe credit cards used at a single location in Longueuil, as part of a wide-scope attack that struck several continents, according to a California company that tracks computer malware.

The tracking firm, IntelCrawler LLC of Los Angeles, didn’t specify the type of business struck in Longueuil. It said typical targets include restaurants, stores, gas stations and hotels.

The firm attributed the attack to “a new strain of point-of-sale malware, named JackPOS,” that appears to be based on earlier malware code, dubbed Alina.

“The malware samples are pretty fresh and were created close to the beginning of February,” IntelCrawler added in a detailed summary on its website, suggesting the “bad actors” used sophisticated techniques to break into merchant systems.

IntelCrawler pinpointed a broad swath of breaches. It said 400 cards were compromised in Vancouver; 3,000 in Sao Paulo, Brazil; and others in similar fresh incidents reported in the U.S., Spain, France, India, Argentina and South Korea.

Given the widespread nature of the attack, the Longueuil police force isn’t investigating, Constable Mark David said.

“Normally,” he added, “the cards are cancelled, and the clients are advised and provided with a replacement card. Then, there’s an internal investigation,” usually by banks.

The Longueuil force hadn’t been advised of the local breach, he said, “not on this specific case.”

How to pick between Google and Facebook

Last week was a big week for earnings releases by companies that I hold in my Strategy Lab model growth portfolio. I’d like to focus in on Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. in this week’s column. I hold both stocks in my model portfolio (and in real life), but what is a reader to do if he or she wants to profit from the online advertising industry and has to select only one of the two stocks? I’ll walk you through my thinking.

Readers might recall that my model portfolio invested in Google but not Facebook upon inception in September, 2012. I picked the dominant player in online advertising and was initially skeptical of Facebook’s ability to generate ad revenue. This skepticism was not only widespread at the time, but completely wrong. When I realized the strength of Facebook’s platform, I added it to the portfolio instead of Twitter, whose IPO was a bit too rich for my taste.

Google is much larger than Facebook today. Excluding the Motorola business, which Google is selling to Lenovo, the Mountain View, Calif.-based online advertising giant brought in $15.7-billion (U.S.) in revenue last quarter. In the same quarter, Facebook brought in $2.6-billion of revenue. In market capitalization, Google is valued at $395-billion while Facebook is worth $156-billion.

So at first glance, Google has six times the revenue of Facebook, but only 2.5 times the market capitalization. If you assume a dollar of Google revenue today is worth as much as a dollar of Facebook revenue today, you’d quickly conclude that Google is the cheaper investment.

But it’s almost never the case that a dollar of today’s revenue has equal value between the two companies. Facebook has been growing much faster than Google. In fact, Facebook just posted year-over-year revenue growth of 63 per cent compared to Google’s revenue growth of 22 per cent. To be clear, both companies are growing at an impressive rate. But Facebook is smaller and faster right now, which is why investors value a dollar of today’s revenue higher than they value comparable revenue from Google.

Why focus on revenue rather than earnings? Both companies are very profitable, and today, I don’t have a good reason to assume their long-term profitability, as a percentage of revenue, will differ significantly. That might change. But until it does I prefer to keep things simple and explore revenue growth.

In my opinion, there is good reason to assume Facebook will continue to grow faster than Google for the next few years. I’m impressed with how easy it is for small businesses to target a relevant audience with a small budget on Facebook, and there are millions of businesses who have created pages on Facebook but aren’t yet advertising on the platform. That seems like a lot of low hanging fruit to go after. Also, Facebook has not yet launched a tool to allow its ads to show up on partner websites. This is something Google has been doing for years, and is responsible for about one-third of total advertising dollars.

There is also compelling evidence to suggest that Facebook has been more successful in mobile advertising than any other company. A whopping 53 per cent of Facebook’s ad revenue came from people who viewed these ads on mobile devices, not traditional computers. Facebook is practically ignoring the personal computer market, which might be a brilliant move. It’s pushing hard to create new, independent mobile apps such as “Paper,” which combines stories from traditional media with friends from your social network. Obviously these apps will, in time, also show relevant ads to users. While there will always be people who complain about any ads, I have found most ads in my Facebook timeline to be interesting and relevant to me.

I believe Facebook will grow faster than Google in the next three years. But that’s not a long enough horizon for me. What about the next decade or more? This is where I see more opportunity for Google because of its much more diversified R&D investments. I think we’ve yet to see exactly how Google can monetize the Android operating system that powers the majority of the world’s smartphones or the Chrome operating system that powers Chromebook laptops. We haven’t seen what will happen with wearable computers such as Google Glass. And I think there is a lot more growth to come to the world’s No. 2 search engine, YouTube.

As an investor, if I had to chose between the two stocks, I’d probably choose Google. It has the better mix of value, leadership and diversification while still posting growth that demands respect. Both companies are leading the industry in different ways, and I think there is a tremendous amount of growth coming to the online advertising market in the next decade. Rather than pick a single winner, I choose to own both stocks now.

Terrifying trailer of world’s tallest waterslide

A water park in Kansas City, Kansas, is building the world's tallest waterslide.

At 17 storeys high — that's taller than Niagara Falls — riders will have to climb 264 steps to reach its top deck.

Once riders complete the exhausting climb — and pass the point of no return? — the slide, named Verrückt, will shoot daredevil riders, on inflatable rafts that accomodate four, down its slippery trackat a terrifying 65 miles an hour (97 km/h).

A drone-shot trailer released by Schlitterbahn Waterparks and Resorts reveals the sheer terror that will be in store for all who dare to ride Verrückt.

Warning: If you have a crippling fear of heights, you might not want to watch.

"We have always been family-friendly, but this will attract those adrenaline junkies who are always looking for that next biggest, coolest thrill," Layne Pitcher, the park’s director of marketing and sales,told the Kansas City Star.

And, yes, the ride will undergo "extensive testing" before members of the public are invited to scare themselves on it.

"Safety is paramount to us," Pitcher emphasized. "We want to provide a thrilling ride, but safety comes first."

The 17-storey drop — the exact height won't be revealed until an official "measuring event" this spring — is set to break the height record currently held by the Brazilian water slide "Kilimanjaro," which stands at 163 feet, 9 inches.

The slide will open at Schlitterbahn Kansas City Waterpark on May 23. Ride at your own risk. (And wear sunscreen. Don't get too crazy.)

Official: '24' returns May 2014

Jack Bauer will be back, baby: EW has confirmed that Fox will bring back its long-running hit 24 next May.

The network will air 12 episodes of 24: Live Another Day as part of its new directive to air event programming in the summer as a way to tie together the regular seasons. A miniseries from M. Night Shyamalan called “Wayward Pines” will air after the run of 24, which will (naturally) feature the return of Kiefer Sutherland.

The 24 producers “always had the idea of maybe someday doing feature films, but as got into it they all agreed24 being compressed in two hours is not 24,” Fox Entertainment Chairman Kevin Reilly told reporters today. “A light bulb went off with (former Executive Producer) Howard Gordon. The spine of the 24 episodes is about 12 hours. Those were big events that occurred and little connective tissue in between.”

Unlike what happened in the regular series — where each episode represented an hour in Bauer’s action-packed life — the new version will jump around during the day, Reilly explained. And the star power could be better than ever.

“A lot of who’s who in Hollywood wanted to participate in this,” Reilly said.

Asked why the show was cancelled in 2010, Reilly admitted that it felt like the right time — at the time.

“We wanted it to go out strong,” he said. “We didn’t want to keep it limping for two more seasons.”

Though Reilly says he doesn’t envision 24 becoming a regular series, he won’t rule out its “franchise-ability.”

“People are that much more excited about this,” he said.

Google Is Testing A 'Smart Contact Lens, 'Putting Tiny Sensors In Your Eye

Google unveiled Thursday a contact lens that monitors glucose levels in tears, a potential reprieve for millions of diabetics who have to jab their fingers to draw their own blood as many as 10 times a day.

The prototype, which Google says will take at least five years to reach consumers, is one of several medical devices being designed by companies to make glucose monitoring for diabetic patients more convenient and less invasive than the traditional finger pricks.

The lenses use a minuscule glucose sensor and a wireless transmitter to help those among the world’s 382 million diabetics who need insulin to keep a close watch on their blood sugar and adjust their doses.

The contact lenses were developed during the past 18 months in the clandestine Google X lab that also came up with a driverless car, Google’s Web-surfing eyeglasses (Google Glass) and Project Loon, a network of large balloons designed to beam the Internet to unwired places.

But research on the contact lenses began several years earlier at the University of Washington, where scientists worked under National Science Foundation funding. 

“You can take it to a certain level in an academic setting, but at Google we were given the latitude to invest in this project,” said one of the lead researchers, Brian Otis. “The beautiful thing is we’re leveraging all of the innovation in the semiconductor industry that was aimed at making cellphones smaller and more powerful.”

American Diabetes Association board Chairman Dwight Holing said he’s gratified that creative scientists are searching for solutions for people with diabetes but warned that the device must provide accurate and timely information.

“People with diabetes base very important health-care decisions on the data we get from our monitors,” he said.

The device looked like a typical contact lens when Otis held one on his index finger. On closer examination, sandwiched in the lens are two twinkling glitter-specks loaded with tens of thousands of miniaturized transistors. It’s ringed with a hair-thin antenna.

“It doesn’t look like much, but it was a crazy amount of work to get everything so very small,” Otis said at Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters. It took years of soldering hair-thin wires to miniaturize electronics, essentially building tiny chips from scratch, to make what Otis said is the smallest wireless glucose sensor ever made.

Other non-needle glucose monitoring systems are also in the works, including a similar contact lens by Netherlands-based NovioSense, a minuscule, flexible spring that is tucked under an eyelid. Israel-based OrSense has already tested a thumb cuff, and there have been early designs for tattoos and saliva sensors.

A wristwatch monitor was approved by the FDA in 2001, but patients said the low-level electric current pulling fluid from their skin was painful, and it was buggy.

“There are a lot of people who have big promises,” said Dr. Christopher Wilson, CEO of NovioSense. “It’s just a question of who gets to market with something that really works first.”