Mobile App Now Available for GCPS Parents

Did you know that parents of Gwinnett County Public School students can now download a mobile app from the Apple App Store that will allow you to purchase K-12 school meals, check account balances, review purchase history and make payments from an iPad or iPhone?

The app, "MyPaymentsPlus," is now available and is the first and only K-12 online payment option available in the mobile world. This app is currently available free of charge and offers parents a secure and simple way to handle their student's account.

Interested in downloading the app? Visit the Apple iTunes store and search for "MyPaymentsPlus." The app is currently available for Apple iPhones and iPads and it is currently in the development stage for the Google Android device.

Once the mobile app is downloaded, parents login to accounts using their existing username and password. Want a more personalized feel? You can even upload a picture of your student.

source: Kristi Palmer

 

Battery inventor Stanford Ovshinsky dies

Stanford Ovshinsky, a self-taught American physicist who designed the battery now used in hybrid cars, has died aged 89 from prostate cancer.

The electronics field of ovonics was named after Mr Ovshinsky, who owned over 200 patents and has been described as a "[Thomas] Edison of our age".
He introduced the idea of "glass transistors" in 1968, which paved the way for modern flat-screen monitors.
He and his first wife Iris set up a firm called Energy Conversion Devices.
The firm specialises in manufacturing the nickel-metal hydride batteries he designed, which are still used in hybrid vehicles, and also produces large thin, flexible sheets of solar panelling also invented by Mr Ovshinsky.
He received various honorary degrees and awards but had no formal education after high school. He claimed to have taught himself science by using the public libraries of Ohio where he grew up.
His son Harvey said he was "determined to change the world".
 "My father worked tirelessly 24-7, even up until he got sick, to change the world and its attitude toward sustainable energy and alternate platforms for information," he added.

source:

Technology

 

Google's $8 billion mobile ad run rate: The fine print

Google boasted about a $8 billion mobile ad run rate, but the comparison to a year ago is a bit like comparing apples and oranges.

Specifically, Google's mobile advertising segment jumped from having a run rate of $2.5 billion by the end of Q3 2011 to roughly $8 billion last quarter. However, it's important to look at the details because there is more to understand with this sudden increase.

During the quarterly conference call on Thursday afternoon, CEO Larry Page first mentioned the leap for the mobile ad team:

This time last year I announced our run rate for mobile advertising hit $2.5 billion. That seemed like a pretty big number even for Google. But now we built up additional mobile revenue from users paying for content and apps in Google Play. Including these new sources grossed up, I can announce our new run rate for mobile is now over $8 billion. That's quite a business.

Before diving into the financial details for the quarter, Google's chief financial officer Patrick Pichette followed up with an important detail about the $8 billion annual run rate:

The new run rate is different from the one we gave you a year ago and more specifically, last year it included only our gross revenue from mobile ads. But this year in this new number, we also added the gross revenue from the mobile sales of Google Play content and finally, it also includes the consumer spending on the Play apps.

The most important point in that note is that last year's run rate only included "gross revenue from mobile ads." Thus, Q3 2011's reported run rate did not include any revenue from the Android Market/Google Play and related mobile digital content.

If Google did include that last year, the difference between 2011 and 2012 could have been a lot closer. While $8 billion is an impressive number, it's important to keep this figure in perspective.

UPDATE: When asked later in the call about Google Play content revenue, Pichette explained further, but refused to offer specifics about the non-mobile ad margin profile:

On the $8 billion, so let me give you just a bit more information on it. But clearly we don't break down each of the categories. We just wanted to kind of give you a sense of proportion. A point that's important is of the three categories I gave you: ads continues to be the bulk of it, the vast majority of it. And then on the case of the Google Play, it's important to note from a modeling perspective that the -- everything that's content that is whether a book, a movie -- content is actually booked on our books on a gross basis. Everything that is tied to apps is booked on a net basis. But it's still a huge kind of number in all cases. So without giving you -- I just wanted to give you that so you don't start thinking there is $8 billion that is booked in. Two of the three are there. The third one is done on a net basis just because of our accounting rules. The vast majority is still ads.

The bottom line is that mobile ads still account for the "vast majority" of that $8 billion figure.

But then that could mean that Google Play content didn't actually have much to do with that sudden increase, which would represent a huge jump for the mobile ad unit. Nevertheless, unless Google offers more specifics, it's a difficult call to make.

source:Rachel King 

Microsoft, Google eye mobile holiday sales

The companies are on different sides of a rapid industry shift away from desktops and toward mobile devices. Their holiday plans will be clearer after the companies report third quarter earnings Thursday, but their strategy is part of a larger search for continued relevance as consumers move increasingly to hand-held devices.

Microsoft and Google have a plan for this holiday season: To reach every gadget-happy shopper seeking a new smartphone or tablet.

Headed into the holiday season, Microsoft is trying to mount a comeback and planning to start a new era as the purveyor of mobile devices and services.

Consumers will get their first look at the new Microsoft next week, when the company launches a new operating system and its own Surface tablet — just one of several Windows tablets coming to compete with Apple’s market-leading iPad this fall. It’s also working on the launch of a new smartphone operating system, Windows Phone 8. Nokia, Samsung and HTC have already announced new smartphones for the system.

It’s not hard to guess why Microsoft is making the shift. Despite a massive marketing effort for ultrabook laptops earlier this year, the personal computer market is expected to shrink this year for the first time in over a decade, according to a recent study from the market research firm IHS iSuppli.

Sales of smartphones, meanwhile, are going through the roof. There are now more than 1 billion smartphones in the world, according to a study from Strategy Analytics, and the sector’s growth means that there are still plenty of customers for the taking.

“The next billion smartphones will be sold and used in just a few short years, not the decade plus that it took to reach the first billion,” said Alex Spektor, an analyst who worked on the report. “All companies involved in the mobile space will be very actively competing.”

The forecast is also bright for the tablet market, with International Data Corporation estimating 117.1 million units will ship by the end of the year.

Google seems well-positioned to ride out the shift. It even briefly passed Microsoft as the second-most valuable technology company last month. The company’s stock has grown around 30 percent since July, while Microsoft’s has remained almost the same.

While it has seen how much it can charge advertisers for every click made by a user decline, the volume of advertising has grown. With its Android operating system activating 1.3 million units a day, according to the company, Google powers most of smartphones and tablets and boosts the company’s profit stream through its mobile application store.

The firm is also now producing its own hardware, a small tablet called the Nexus 7. Headed into the holiday season, Google is expected to release another phone and tablet under its Nexus brand name.

If it does, it will come into a holiday market crowded with consumer options. The new tablets are not only competing against Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle Fire line, but also retailers launching their own devices in the hopes of catching the trend. Barnes & Noble has seen modest success with its Nook tablet, and has launched a larger version that takes advantage of the company’s new partnerships. Best Buy announced last week that it’s also jumping into the mix with a basic tablet, which is expected to cost around $250.

All are chasing Apple, which commands 60 percent of the tablet market with its iPad and is expected to launch a smaller version of the tablet next week.

The ultimate arbiters will be gadget hungry holiday shoppers. 

source:Hayley Tsukayama

Nokia Reports Loss, Desperately Needs Hit Smartphone

[ See 8 Must-Haves For Windows Phone 8. ]

It's hard to believe that Nokia's third-quarter results, which show the company lost $1.27 billion on sales of $9.44 billion, were better than investors expected. The company had warned that the results wouldn't be pretty, but it actually managed to lose less than it did during the second quarter. Its cash assets dropped from $5.5 billion $4.7 billion.

Nokia sold a total of 6.4 million smartphones during the third quarter, which is a drop of 38% when compared to the 10.2 million smartphones it sold during the second quarter. Of those 6.3 million smartphones, fewer than half were Lumia Windows Phones. Nokia sold 2.9 million Lumias during the third quarter. In the U.S., Lumia sales dropped from 600,000 in the second quarter to just 300,000 in the third quarter--a 50% decline.

What's unnerving about these numbers is that they reveal Nokia's outgoing Symbian platform is still outselling Lumia smartphones around the world. That's been the case all year long, but many had hoped the Lumia line of devices would have surpassed Symbian sales by now.

Looking at its total device sales, Nokia shipped 82.9 million cellphones around the world during the third quarter, which is just a 1% dip compared to the 83.7 million total devices it shipped in the second quarter. The balance of those devices comes from Nokia's Asha and Series 40 platforms, which combined accounted for 76.7 million devices. These are the low-cost devices that Nokia sells in emerging markets. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said he was pleased with the company's low-end device sales. Too bad the margins on entry level devices are slimmer than the hair on a gnat's hind quarters.

The average selling price (ASP) of Nokia's smartphones during the quarter was about $210. The average price of Nokia's entry-level devices was $31.

Nokia said that the ASP of its smartphones dropped during the third quarter thanks to fewer sales of its high-end Lumia 800 and 900 and more sales of discounted Lumia 610 and 710 devices. The ASP of entry-level devices was flat quarter-over-quarter.

Nokia partially shot itself in the foot in June when Microsoft first gave the world a peek at Windows Phone 8. Nokia said at the time that none of its first batch of Lumia devices would be upgradable to Windows Phone 8. Instead, the 610, 710, and 800 will remain on Windows Phone 7.5, and the 900 will be updated to Windows Phone 7.8. With no upgrade path to WP8, it's no surprise that sales of Nokia's high-end devices nosedived during the third quarter.

This is where the Lumia 920, and 820/810 come into play. Nokia announced the devices--sans pricing and availability--in early September. The phones aren't expected to hit U.S. carriers until early November. By announcing the new Lumia series so far in advance of their availability, it further hobbled sales of Nokia's existing lineup.

Nokia can't afford any more failures. The Lumia 920 and 820/810 received a lukewarm response at introduction by investors, who were worried that they aren't different/compelling enough to win over iPhone and Android users. Nokia needs to do more than retain its existing customer base, it needs to steal new customers back from its competitors.

It doesn't help that there's a massive unknown still at play: Windows Phone 8. Microsoft has revealed only a few details about its next-generation smartphone platform, which shares its base code with Windows 8. Microsoft is scheduled to fully unveil the new platform at an event in San Francisco on October 29. Sales of the Lumia 920 are expected to follow soon thereafter.

source:Eric Zeman

 

Giant Strand of Elusive Dark Matter Seen in 3D

Astronomers have taken their first 3D look at a gigantic filament of dark matter, an invisible cosmic structure that can only be detected by its gravitational effects it has on its surroundings.

The universe is thought to be structured like a tangled web, with long strings of mostly dark matterintersecting at giant galaxy clusters. Since dark matter cannot be seen directly, these filaments are difficult to observe. But using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have managed to probe one of the elusive cosmic strands in 3D.

The researchers sought out a 60 million light-year strand of dark matter around the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0717. The galaxy cluster is one of the largest yet seen and is about 5.4 billion light-years from Earth.

source:SPACE.com Staff 

Nearest star boasts Earth-sized roaster planet

Our nearest stellar neighbor possesses an Earth-sized planet, report European astronomers. But nobody likely lives on its furnace-hot surface.

Alpha Centauri, a triple-star system, resides some 4.3 four light-years away, about 25.4 trillion miles. In a study led by Xavier Dumusque of Switzerland's Geneva Observatory and released Tuesday by the journal Nature, astronomers have announced the discovery of the first planet detected orbiting one of the stars in this system.

Dubbed Alpha Centauri Bb, the planet orbits the sun-like star Alpha Centauri B, circling so closely -- once every 3.2 days -- that its surface likely roasts at temperatures above 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit, Dumusque says.

The observation is based on four years of telescope observations of wobbles in the star induced by its close-orbiting companion. The chance of a false-detection of the planet in the data is 1-in-1,000, the researchers suggest.

Astronomers estimate that about 30% of stars possess Earth-like rocky planets, based on the roughly 800 planets detected orbiting nearby stars in the last two decades. The new planet is the closest yet found to our solar system, if confirmed, and orbits a star visible to the naked eye.

"That is a real wow factor," says planetary theorist Alan Boss, author of The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets, who was not on the discovery team. "Humans have been staring at this stellar system for many thousands of years without knowing that there was another Earth-mass planet there all the time."

However, astronomer Artie Hatzes of Germany's Thuringian State Observatory is more cautious about the planet detection claim in a commentary accompanying the study. "It is a weak signal in the presence of a larger, more complicated signal," Hatzes says. "In my opinion, the matter is still open to debate."

Dumusque says that more looks at the star should strengthen the finding and notes that there is a possibility that the planet may slightly eclipse, or transit, in front of the star, another tell-tale sign of its existence measurable by astronomers. He adds that more planets may await discovery at Alpha Centauri, including ones at habitable distances from the stars there.

source:Dan Vergano