Did these guys just reinvent the Web?

Credit: iStockphoto

Steve Newcomb and Mark Lu had hit a wall. The co-founders had raised $1.1 million for their startup -- "sort of Pinterest meets About.me meets Facebook," says Newcomb. They'd been toiling long hours to build everything in HTML5, lured by the advantages of maintaining a single code base across all platforms.

They burned through $400,000 before they realized that HTML5 wasn't ready for the type of dynamic UI they wanted to create, which was around the same time that Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg publicly reached the very same conclusion. Browsers were meant to render text documents with links; trying to build a JavaScript app as slick and responsive as, say, a native iOS app was an exercise in futility. "We realized we either needed to give the money back or do something radical," Newcomb recalls.

[ For more on the next-generation Web, read "The triumph of JavaScript" and "You're already living in the cloud." | Choosing an open source JavaScript framework? See how the 10 hottest Javascript projects stack up. | For a quick, smart take on the news you'll be talking about, subscribe to the InfoWorld TechBrief newsletter. ]

Newcomb was the grizzled startup veteran whose most successful company, the natural-language search venture Powerset, had sold to Microsoft for $100 million to become part of Bing. Lu was a full stack engineer who, being just 21 years old, didn't mind attempting "things that would be Crazy Town for other people," as Newcomb puts it.

As recounted by Newcomb, a conversation between the two founders ensued that set the pair on a different path to a new startup -- a venture dubbed Famo.us that intends to empower JavaScript developers to build much more dynamic apps.

"Facebook is right. HTML5 isn't ready," sighed Newcomb.

"The fact is, it's the wrong tool," said Lu, referring to the renderer within the browser. "We're years away from this being fixed."

"I feel like we're working with a car that has a lawn mower for an engine. We need a better engine. What we really need is to create our own renderer. Like Flash, but without the need for a plug-in...and in JavaScript."

"Hmm. Yeah. Hmm. Why can't we do that?"

"What? JavaScript would be an awful slow renderer. Also, how do we circumvent the browser's renderer in JS? We're not going to use some plug-in. That would be death."

Lu thought for a little while. "I think we may already have a solution to both of those concerns. To fix the rendering problem, the primary part we need to rewrite is the part of the renderer that creates and multiplies the matrices. And luckily for us, JavaScript is about 80 percent of the speed of compiled C for those specific types of operations."

"That should give us a big advantage. How big?"

Lu did some quick calculations. "Possibly an order of magnitude."

Newcomb's jaw dropped. "That's ... really good. But how do we circumvent the browser's renderer without a plug-in?"

"We use the CSS3 primitive -webkit-transform: matrix3d, which lets us compute the composite matrix and skip the browser's renderer. No plug-in, no download, no hack. By appending this to each DIV, we can render the composite matrix and go straight to the GPU."

"Um, that sounds like really hard stuff."

"Not really. I'll have it done by tomorrow."

Source: http://akamai.infoworld.com/t/application-development/did-these-guys-just-reinvent-the-web-228713?source=rss_infoworld_top_stories_
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Basketball Wives Star Evelyn Lozada Talks Beauty Secrets

Our resident Shoeolgy blogger Evelyn Lozada stopped by the OK! office to talk about all things beauty—see which herbal drink she swear by for better skin and more energy and what’s going on with her makeup line, Vida Luxe Cosmetics!

Evelyn’s Favorite Shoe Styles Under $100

MORE VIDEOS YOU’LL LOVE: 

* FIND OUT THE SWEET THINGS TIA DOES FOR HER HUSBAND WHEN HE IS FEELING UNDER THE WEATHER

* MIRANDA KERR DOES YOGA WHILE GETTING A FACIAL

* ELIZABETH BERKLEY IS SAVED BY THE BELL ON DANCING WITH THE STARS LAST NIGHT

Source: http://okmagazine.com/videos/basketball-wives-star-evelyn-lozada-talks-beauty-secrets/
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Watch Daniela. She's Up To Something Big

Somebody should be watching Daniela Rus and her pals at MIT, because what they are doing is so crazy, so potentially important, people need to know about them. Not because they're dangerous, but because what they're doing might be changing the world and nobody should change the world without the world noticing.

In a nutshell, they are letting machines design themselves — guided, at least for now, by humans.

They're not teaching machines to copy themselves. No, it's bigger than that. They are building robots that can rearrange their parts when they need to do something new. Suppose, for example that you see an apple high up on a tree — too high to reach. What if you could grow extra long arms to get what you want? That's the notion here. As your goals change, your body can change too.

Step by step (I've already blogged about their magical bag-o-sand toolkit) they are creating the basic building blocks of what's called "a reconfigurable robot." And to my amazement — robot bits have learned to leap through the air!

The concept of a reconfigurable robot is simple: Make a cube that can move to sit on another cube, then another, so that it can build different shapes. Sometimes like this ...

Sometimes like that ...

And eventually, the bits can turn themselves into a chair, a support beam, a tool, or a Terminator robot that saves little boys from being killed so they can save the future world.

Snap In, Snap Off, Move

The hard part is getting the bits to do this on their own. First off, they have to learn three basics: How to snap into place, unsnap, and move.

John Romanishin, who's been building robots and competing in robot derbies since he was a baby geek, figured out how to slip an itty bitty flywheel into the cube. It looks like a miniature desk fan that rotates up to 20,000 revolutions per minute — it comes with a battery, and when the flywheel is on, the cube has momentum: it can climb, roll across the ground, crawl up another cube, even leap through the air. "Which is pretty exciting," John says, "because it allows robots to jump on top of each other and go places that they couldn't go if they were only moving directly on the structure."

It has no moving parts on its outside. The motion comes from within.

When the fans turn off, a series of magnets on all six cube surfaces allow it to snap into place wherever it is, onto the cube it's next to, which creates an enormous number of possibilities ... Just take a look.

Daniela Rus, who has a knack for finding very whizzy whiz-kids, even for MIT where the whiz population is pretty high, says her grad students John Romanishin and Kyle Gilpin are still telling the cubes what to do, sending instructions via wifi — but one day, they won't have to.

“ [They] decide how, when and where to move.

- Kyle Gilpin

Says Kyle:

In the future, we envision putting the algorithms on the modules themselves so they completely autonomously, in a distributed fashion, decide how, when and where to move, so we want to be able to take a large group of cubes and tell them, "form this shape" and give those instructions at a very high level, and then have the cubes decide on their own how to go about accomplishing that task.

I'm fantasizing now ... but here's how my dreams go. First I'm creating a self-assembling hammer, then a self-assembling car, then a self-assembling hut when I'm off hiking in the mountains, and then ... one day that cannot come too soon ... a self-assembling Robert Krulwich that can "go to work" while I spend the whole day kayaking in Long Island Sound.

As long as these thingies do our bidding, all this is good. At Daniela Rus' lab, they talk of bridges that repair themselves, tools that assemble when you need them, robots that can explore, rescue and adapt to changing conditions. Part of me, of course, doesn't completely trust an increasingly autonomous, increasingly inventive machine, but I think for the moment, the plusses way outweigh the minuses, so I say "Keep goin', Daniela!" On rainy days when I'm am desperate for an umbrella, I'll be thinking of you.

Here's the MIT press release that describes what Rus' guys are doing. Thanks to Erik Olsen for sending this my way.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/10/14/232211132/watch-daniela-she-s-up-to-something-big?ft=1&f=1007
Tags: NASA   Emily Ratajkowski   pittsburgh steelers   tibetan mastiff   Whose Line Is It Anyway  

Japan Display now making 1080p WhiteMagic LCDs, hints at high-end phones with bright screens

Japan Display Inc. Announces Mass Production Start of 5.0-inch Full-HD TFT LCD WhiteMagic Module

– WhiteMagic for High Luminance, High Definition & Power-Saving –

October 11, 2013 (Tokyo, Japan): Japan Display Inc. (JDI), a global leader in mobile display technologies, announced mass production start of "WhiteMagic" 5.0-inch Full-HD (1,080 x 1,920 pixels) TFT LCD module. "WhiteMagic" is JDI's proprietary product, which utilizes unique technology to realize both high luminance and power-saving.

"WhiteMagic" adds a White (W) subpixel into a predominantly Red/Green/Blue (RGB) LCD panel and improves picture brightness. At the same time, "WhiteMagic" scans the input picture image data through a unique algorithm which derives the best signal processing to drive the LCD panel and backlight. As the result, the power consumption of the LCD backlight is reduced without deterioration of the picture quality. "WhiteMagic" has one mode to reduce the power consumption of the LCD backlight while achieving the same brightness level, and it has another mode to improve outdoor visibility by increasing luminance by almost 1.5 times with keeping the same power consumption level of the LCD backlight as conventional RGB LCD products*. "WhiteMagic" can be applied to a range of applications to meet users' requirements.

JDI produces "WhiteMagic" at its newest 6th-Generation low temperature poly-silicon (LTPS) LCD line, and other lines. Mass production of "WhiteMagic" has already begun in resolution formats of VGA (640 x 680 pixels), qHD (540 x 960 pixels), and 720HD (720 x 1280 pixels). The new 5.0-inch Full-HD module expands the "WhiteMagic" line-up to higher resolution. "WhiteMagic" can be applied to a wide range of applications, not only to smartphones but to other applications as well.

We will exhibit these displays in Japan Display Inc. booth on October 23 to 25, 2013, during FPD International 2013 in Pacifico Yokohama, Japan.

Product Specification

Screen size (diagonal)	5.0inch (12.6cm)
Number of pixels	1,080 (x RGB) x 1,920 (Full-HD)
Resolution density	446ppi
Display mode	Transmissive
Dimensions	63.24mm (W) x 117.18mm (H)
Surface luminance	840cd/m2 (typ.)
NTSC ratio	70％
Contrast ratio	1000 : 1 (typ.)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/11/japan-display-now-making-1080p-whitemagic-lcds/?ncid=rss_truncated
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All UFC Fight Night 29 fighters pass drug tests

Jason Silva-USA TODAY Sports

All 20 UFC Fight Night 29 fighters passed their drug tests.

Brazilian MMA Athletic Commission (CABMMA) tested every fighter before their bouts on Oct. 9 in Barueri, Brazil. After the bouts, the headliners – Demian Maia and Jake Shields – were tested again, in addition to four other randomly selected fighters.

Four of the 20 fighters on the card had tested positive for banned substances before in the UFC – Jake Shields, Thiago Silva, Joey Beltran and Rousimar Palhares –, but all results came back negative after UFC Fight Night 29.

In the main event, Shields gave Maia his first loss as a welterweight as he won the bout via split decision. In the co-main event, Dong Hyun Kim scored the knockout of the night over Erick Silva.

Source: http://www.mmafighting.com/2013/10/14/4837654/all-ufc-fight-night-29-fighters-pass-drug-tests
Tags: james spader   obama   green bay packers   Elmore Leonard   Xbox One Release Date  

SF area transit strike looms hours before deadline

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — A San Francisco Bay Area transit system and its two largest unions were negotiating right up to a midnight deadline Monday as fear of a second gridlock-inducing strike in three months intensified.

The parties held talks throughout the day after the unions backed off a threatened strike deadline late Sunday and gave Bay Area Rapid Transit managers a 24-hour reprieve. But by late afternoon it appeared that both sides were remaining firm in their positions.

BART board president Tom Radulovich urged representatives of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 and the Service Employees International Union Local 1021 to let its more than 2,300 members vote on the agency's final offer presented Sunday.

"We've been at this for a total of 150 days at this point and we think it's time for the union leadership to let us know, to let the people in the Bay Area know whether they are going to take an offer to their membership," Radulovich said.

But SEIU 1021 executive director Pete Castelli said the unions remained unhappy with BART's last offer. He said the unions presented a counteroffer to management late Monday and warned that the strike deadline still stands. He told commuters to consider transportation alternatives in the morning.

"It rests in the district's hands at this point," he said.

About 400,000 riders take BART every weekday on the nation's fifth-largest commuter rail system.

"I am so frustrated with the way they've been holding the riders hostage," said BART commuter Toba Villatore, 45, of San Francisco as she headed to work. "I'm tired of staying up until midnight wondering if there's going to be a strike or not."

Sticking points in the 6-month-old negotiations include salaries and workers' contributions to their health and pension plans. Castelli said Monday that while the parties had made progress on pay, pension and health care benefits they also were still at odds on issues related to work rules.

BART General Manager Grace Crunican said that the offer presented to the union Sunday was $7 million higher than Friday's proposal. It includes an annual 3 percent raise over four years and requires workers to contribute 4 percent toward their pension and 9.5 percent toward medical benefits.

Workers from the two unions, which represent more than 2,300 mechanics, custodians, station agents, train operators and clerical staff, now average about $71,000 in base salary and $11,000 in overtime annually, the transit agency said. BART workers currently pay $92 a month for health care and contribute nothing toward their pensions.

Crunican said the unions have two weeks from Sunday to accept the deal before it is taken off the table.

"It is time to bring this to a close," Crunican said.

BART workers went on strike for nearly five days in early July and were about to go again on Friday when a 60-day cooling-off period ordered by Gov. Jerry Brown expired.

However, the parties continued negotiating over the weekend and into Monday, as ridership was light because of strike fears and the Columbus Day holiday.

A pending strike forced San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee to cancel a trip to China. He said that "people's very livelihoods hang in the balance."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sf-area-transit-strike-looms-hours-deadline-025423470--finance.html
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Utah holds off No. 5 Stanford 27-21

Utah quarterback Travis Wilson (7) is hoisted to the air by Utah fans after defeating Stanford 27-21 during an NCAA college football game on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Utah quarterback Travis Wilson (7) is hoisted to the air by Utah fans after defeating Stanford 27-21 during an NCAA college football game on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Stanford running back Tyler Gaffney, right, carries the ball as Utah defensive back Davion Orphey (11) pursues during the first quarter of an NCAA college football game on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Stanford quarterback Kevin Hogan (8) carries the ball as Utah defensive tackle Tenny Palepoi (91) pursues during the first quarter of an NCAA college football game on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Stanford running back Tyler Gaffney (25) scores a touchdown during the first quarter of an NCAA college football game against Utah on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Stanford wide receiver Michael Rector, bottom, is tackled by Utah defensive back Davion Orphey (11) during the first quarter of an NCAA college football game on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Travis Wilson weaved his way through the sea of red, torn between retreating to the locker room and celebrating this signature win with the Utah faithful that had stormed the field.

Like he really had a choice, especially after the enthusiastic crowd lifted him up.

That's what happens after a quarterback helps orchestrate the biggest upset at home in school history and the most significant victory the Utah has had since moving to the Pac-12 three years. The Utes made a goal-line stand in the final minute and Wilson threw two TD passes in a 27-21 victory against No. 5 Stanford on Saturday.

It was the first time in school history the Utes (4-2, 1-2 Pac-12) have knocked off a top-five program at Rice-Eccles Stadium. They beat No. 4 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl following the 2008 season.

"Great win," Wilson simply said. "Our plan was perfect tonight."

Not surprisingly, the fans rushed the field after the final gun. The ring leader? Defensive end Trevor Reilly.

"I was waving them on, saying, 'Let's go!'" Reilly said. "We came through tonight."

The defense certainly did.

Kevin Hogan marched the Cardinal down to the 6 with a minute remaining. On third down, he threw an incomplete pass to Charlie Hopkins. Then, on fourth down, amid heavy pressure, Hogan overthrew Devon Cajuste.

The Utes took a knee twice to end the game, along with the 13-game winning streak of Stanford (5-1, 3-1).

"They're good. They've always been good and we just weren't good enough," Stanford coach David Shaw said. "This is as well as I've seen Utah play on the offensive side. They really strung things together."

Utah kept Stanford's stingy defense off balance all day with a mix of draws and wide receiver screens. Dres Anderson caught a 51-yard TD pass and scored another on a short run. Bubba Poole finished with 111 yards rushing and had another 75 on seven catches.

Ty Montgomery returned a kickoff for a touchdown for a second straight week. This time, Montgomery took the ball a few steps deep in the end zone and darted through the Utes before going 100 yards, tying a Stanford record.

Cajuste made a diving catch on a fade route to trim the Utah lead to 27-21 with 9:22 remaining, but the Cardinal couldn't complete the comeback.

"It seems to be that our thing as a team this year is toughness," Reilly said. "I think that was personified there on the last stand."

A week after throwing six interceptions, Wilson showed more poise in the pocket. His only mistake was on a screen, when his pass was tipped and picked off by Joe Hemschoot.

Wilson finished 23 of 34 for 234 yards. He cut his throwing hand on a hard tackle early in the third quarter, continuously wiping the top of it on his towel. But the injury didn't seem to affect his touch. Neither did those interceptions.

"He's a resilient kid. Tough as nails," coach Kyle Whittingham said. "We had a feeling he was going to come back and play like he did tonight. Bottom line, he bounced back. He's got a lot of competitive spirit."

Utah showed its spunk, bouncing back from a close loss last week to UCLA.

"We weren't able to make the plays (last week)," Whittingham said. "The difference tonight, we were able to make those plays."

Stanford struggled on offense in the second half, turning the ball over twice on fumbles with Reilly recovering both. The Utes turned those into field goals by Andy Phillips. Phillips, a former U.S. ski team member, is 11 for 11 this season.

Kevin Hogan dropped to 10-1 as a starter.

It was a week filled with controversy for Stanford after Washington coach Steve Sarkisian accused the Cardinal of faking injuries to slow down the tempo, leaving Stanford's David Shaw to vigorously defend his program.

That wasn't an issue. Stopping Utah in the first half was.

Utah went on a season-long 99-yard drive in the second quarter, culminating with Anderson's 3-yard score on an end-around. It gave Utah a 21-14 at halftime.

It was a day of firsts for the Stanford defense, which hadn't allowed an opening quarter TD all season until Saturday. Karl Williams scored on a 4-yard pass from Wilson on Utah's opening drive and Anderson later hauled in a 51-yard pass from Wilson. It was Anderson's fifth play of 50 or more yards this season.

Montgomery joins Bob Bryan (1950 against San Francisco) and Damon Dunn (1994 at Arizona State) with 100-yard kickoff returns for Stanford.

Last week, Montgomery had a 99-yard TD return to open the game against Washington. Montgomery finished with three returns for 160 yards against Utah.

"Utah played their hearts out," Montgomery said.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-10-12-FBC-T25-Stanford-Utah/id-9108046c1ac64072842e2ebd6b1517f0
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