Computers

As parents of children with peanut sensitivities well know, awareness of what's in their kids' food is of paramount importance. In order to detect this allergen -- and many others -- engineers at UCLA have created a system called iTube. It involves placing a small amount of food in a test tube with chemicals, shining a light on it, and then using a smartphone's camera and a specially-designed app to analyze the light for signs of particular ingredients, such as peanuts, eggs, or other allergens.

Designers of operating systems can't think of everything that should be in their programs. Utilities are a testament to that. Utilities are software programs that do things that should have been included in an operating system, but weren't. They can help you keep your system performing at top speed, solve irritating problems or just keep valuable information at your fingertips. For example, you might want to have the windows on your desktop placed just so when you're working.

Graphs are everywhere. You find them on websites adding social capabilities. Telecommunications companies use graphs to personalize customer services. Innovative bioinformatics researchers, and other organizations are adopting graph databases to model and query connected data. Neo Technology has pioneered graph databases since 2000 and has been instrumental in bringing the power of the social graph to customers such as Adobe, Cisco and Deutsche Telekom.

Amazon Web Services this week received FedRAMP certification, allowing the online retailer to lower the cost of its cloud services for U.S. government agencies.

Kyocera introduced two new waterproof phones at the CTIA trade show.

From Yahoo's big acquisition and Flickr overhaul to the latest details about Sony's PS4, here's what you missed yesterday.

AOL and VH1 announce plans to distribute Napster documentary in theaters and online.

Travelers between the U.S. and Europe have one less barrier to deal with when it comes to wireless charging a mobile phone or tablet. Powermat, a joint venture with Duracell, and Helsinki-based PowerKiss reconciled their differences and became one on Tuesday. The two wireless charging companies previously used incompatible technologies, but are both committed to the PMA standard and will be combined under the Powermat Technologies name. Between the two, they have more than 2,500 wireless charging installations at public locations such as airports, coffee shops, malls and arenas. PowerKiss recently added some charging mats at select McDonalds Europe locations. The idea behind these installs is to allow customers to place their mobile device on a wireless charging pad and add juice to the battery. Of course, the device has to natively support wireless charging or be compatible with an add-on product such as a wireless charging cover. Overall, the ability to recharge a device by placing it on a special mat really hasn’t taken off with the mainstream public. Part of the reason is a battle over the technology standards: If you have a device that supports wireless charging but doesn’t work with a compatible charging mat, you’ll have to plug in your device, of course. Powermat Technologies is part of the PMA, or Power Matters Alliance, which boasts that 80 percent of its partner members represent the entire wireless install base. That sounds good, so what’s the issue? Well, there’s another body, the Wireless Power Consortium, that’s been at this longer than the PMA by about four years and uses the Qi-branded standard. Even worse: Some partners are members of both groups. So while the PMA gained a new member through marriage, there are still plenty of fish in the sea using a different wireless standard. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Podcast: Mobile winners and losers in 2012 and what to expect in 2013Analyzing the wearable computing marketLTE-Advanced: what it is and isn’t

If you have broken down in tears or literally pulled your hair out while dealing with your Internet service provider (ISP), then you are not alone. ISPs are the least satisfying industry in America, according to the latest ratings from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which are based on extensive surveys. Despite service disruptions, high bills, and awful call center experiences, consumers are dependent on these services and often have few companies to choose from. Other low-rated industries include subscription television, social media, and power companies. The biggest drop since our last ranking went to the Long Island Power Authority, broadly criticized for its response to Hurricane Sandy. #14 (tie) Bank of America Rated 66/100 —Down two points from last year — BOA's worst rating in over a decade —The worst-rated big bank ACSI finds that customers are moving from large banks to smaller ones, and enjoying more personalized service and fewer fees. Bank of America in particular may have seen its reputation suffer from fees; it was forced to drop a proposed debit card fee after widespread customer backlash. That didn't stop it from testing out other fees in 2012. Ratings and commentary from ACSI. #14 (tie) AT&T (as an internet service provider) Rated 66/100 —Tied as the fourth-worst internet service provider —ISPs are the lowest-rated of 43 industries AT&T is more highly rated for its television (71) fixed line phone (73) and cell phone (70) services, and it improved its score in all of those categories. However, its score as a cell phone service provider is the second worst, only 2 points higher than T-Mobile, the lowest rated company. Rating from ACSI. #11 (tie) Delta Rated 65/100 —A nine-point improvement from last year Complaints about airlines often focus on poor service and mounting fees. However, people are getting smarter about not checking bags to avoid fees. The ACSI survey found that almost 20 percent fewer people are checking bags. Last year's bad score for Delta came after its merger with Northwestern, but the score improved somewhat after ironing out merger details and bringing more flights in on time. You can see the gain in its stock price. Rating and commentary from ACSI See the rest of the story at Business Insider Please follow War Room on Twitter and Facebook.

In 2009, Sean Gourley, an Oxford-trained physicist, gave a TED talk called “The Mathematics of War.” Gourley had been working with the Pentagon, the United Nations and the Iraqi Government to help them better understand the nature of the insurgency in Iraq, and in his presentation he announced something fairly striking: After analyzing the location, timing, death toll and weapons used in thousands of deadly incidents around the country, he and his small team had discovered that the violence actually had a consistent footprint. In other words, you could develop an equation that would predict the likelihood of an attack of a certain size happening at a certain time. And this wasn’t just true in Iraq: Gourley’s team had also analyzed insurgent-led wars in other parts of the world — from Colombia to Senegal — and had discovered the very same pattern, even though the underlying issues in those conflicts were totally different. Sean Gourley, Co-Founder and CTO, Quid Structure Data 2013 Albert Chau / itsmebert.com Gourley has since moved on from war zones. He helped found a company called Quid that does big data projects for companies like Intel, Visa and Samsung. In March, he spoke at our Structure:Data conference in New York, where he talked about the difference between “data science” (which is about finding correlations) and “data intelligence” (which is about solving problems). He said we need to shift our focus toward the latter if we want to tackle the biggest challenges our world is facing. I followed up with him after the conference to talk more about big data in wartime. In hindsight, we were fighting the data war in Baghdad with fairly primitive tools. It was before the explosion of social media and the flowering of open-source data. In future battles, he said, governments will be using data not just to predict violence but to fight “the war of ideas.” Just what does that mean? It means using big data to track the types of conversations that people are having about a war — and then injecting counter-stories back into the system to change those prevailing ways of thinking. A government like the U.S. could use this tactic in a war zone to, say, try to weaken a violent insurgent movement, but the government could also employ it at home to build domestic support for the war. We often talk about companies using data science to get people to buy more shoes or more airline tickets. But just as drones are helping to automate wars, we’re moving into an era where data can help automate propaganda — and that creates the potential for some pretty potent new experiments in brain washing. It makes dropping cookies on people’s browsers seem quaint. Below is an edited transcript of my Skype interview with Gourley. Q: How would you use data differently in Iraq if you were doing it all over again? A: It’s important to remind ourselves in 2013 where the information landscape was at the start of the Iraq war. In 2003, the world was very excited about something called blogging. We didn’t have Twitter. Cellphone coverage at the start of the war was exceedingly low. What we’ve seen over the past decade as the war unfolded was one of the biggest changes in the information landscape from a militaristic perspective in a long, long time. The reporters in the bureaus, from the New York Times, say, would be bunkered down in a fortified compound — they didn’t get out a lot. I mean, you wouldn’t if you were there, why would you? They would send stringers out on motorbikes with cellphones and they would text in if any attack happened. They would be paid based on their reporting of events. A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S— Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual) May 01, 2011 Since taliban (probably) don't have helicpoters, and since they're saying it was not "ours", so must be a complicated situation #abbottabad— Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual) May 01, 2011 You had a crowdsourced version of Twitter, b