Computers

"Star Wars" fans rejoice: A full-size Lego X-Wing has landed in Times Square, New York City. The life-sized model is actually the largest ever Lego construction ever. It weighs in at over 23 tons, and is comprised of 5,335,200 bricks. The sculpture is 11 feet tall and 43 feet long, with a 44-foot wingspan. It was constructed at the Lego Model Shop in Kladno, Czech Republic before it was shipped out to New York. There's also a Lego Chewy, R2D2, C3PO and Porkins on display. Of course, we had to see this marvel for ourselves, so we hiked it down to Times Square to snap a few pictures. It weighs over 23 tons. There are 5,335,200 bricks. The model has a 44-foot wingspan. See the rest of the story at Business Insider Please follow The Wire on Twitter and Facebook.

Recently I splurged on a new laptop, a 13.3-inch Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook. Incredibly thin, light, and fast, it overjoyed me from the moment I unpacked it. It wasn't long, though, before my joy turned to frustration. Although it booted with lightning speed, Internet access seemed slow. In fact, sometimes I couldn't load Web pages at all. As usual when dealing with a mystery like this, I used the invaluable SpeedTest to help pin down the problem. Sure enough, the Samsung was having intermittent connectivity slowdowns and outages. My router wasn't to blame, and for once neither was Comcast. But what exactly was going on? Surely a brand new computer—especially one as advanced and expensive as this—could reliably connect to the Internet. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Two VMware executives have left to join Redpoint Ventures to help the firm extend its reach into the enterprise and mobile markets. Their leaving marks a string of recent VMware departures, following the Pivotal spinout of several of the two companies’ product groups. Both executives joining Redpoint had important roles at VMware. Javier Soltero  was responsible for driving advanced development and strategy for application level cloud services. Soltero joined VMware after the acquisition of SpringSource in 2009. Three months prior, SpringSource, a Java framework, had acquired Hyperic, a large-scale web infrastructure management software provider. Soltero was co-founder and CEO of the company. Soltero has some Internet chops that date back to the earliest days of the web. Early in his career, Soltero worked at Netscape, where he was responsible for early Internet messaging, application servers and e-commerce technologies. Kevin Henrikson joined Zimbra in 2005 and worked there until Yahoo! acquired the company in 2007. In 2010, VMware acquired Zimbra, where Henrikson directed Zimbra’s engineering and development roadmap planning and execution, including potential company acquisitions. He holds a published patent and a filed patent in conjunction with his work at Zimbra. A number of VMware executives have left the company in the past year. Last week, Microsoft hired Patrick Chanezon who recently left VMware to join Microsoft as its director of enterprise evangelism. Dave McCrory also recently left VMware to join Warner Brothers. He served as one of the chief developers of VMware’s Cloud Foundry, the platform as a service. And in January, CTO Steve Herrod left to join General Catalyst as a managing director investing and supporting early-stage enterprise companies.

Will we see an iWatch in 2014? Ming-Chi Kuo thinks so. In a research note this week, the KGI Securities analyst predicted that Apple had too much on its plate in 2013 to introduce a smartwatch, but is readying the device for next year. The company's entry into the wearable computer market will be a device that attaches to the wrist, Kuo said, but it will not be positioned as a watch or as a device that displays information from other Apple products.

Google has refreshed its music app. It's a big deal, because Google has introduced custom radio and an a la carte music streaming service, All Access, for an introductory price that's $2.00 cheaper than a la carte streaming leader Spotify. Fee-based Spotify, Rdio and now Google Play Music All Access are different from free streaming mobile apps like Pandora and Slacker because they allow a la carte listening, rather than offering a curated stream. If you start a 30-day free trial by June 30, it will then cost $7.99 a month to continue.

The decline of big corporate R&D groups such as Bell Labs has created a hole in the innovation pipeline said Bill Spencer (pictured) at an event celebrating the 40th anniversary of Ethernet.View the full article HERE.

Working group extended to establish energy efficiency benchmark for automotive microcontrollers. Volkswagen is to chair group with 11 chip companies contributing so far.View the full article HERE.

A couple of days ago, a BusinessWeek columnist, Liz Ryan, got everyone all hot and bothered by writing about sex at work. Sex at work is a reality, Liz Ryan argued. And it's time everyone just acknowledged that. (One lawyer told Ryan that his firm had had to remove cameras from office stairwells because they kept recording attorneys jumping each other late at night. Ryan herself met her husband at work. And so on...) Anyway, we figured it would be a good idea to get some actual data on sex at work. So we put together the survey below. Please take a few minutes to fill it out. We'll publish the results soon. (And rest assured: We have no idea who you are. So your secrets will be safe!) Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool. Please follow Business Insider on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

Yesterday, rumors re-surfaced that Waze might be acquired for $1 billion. Google and Facebook are both reportedly interested in the social navigation app. Earlier this year, Apple was said to be interested in owning Waze for a similar price. What's the attention-grabbing navigation app all about? Check out how Waze works, here > Waze is an iOS app with more than 40 million registered users. It's headquartered in Israel and was founded in 2007 by Ehud Shabtai, Amir Shinar and Uri Levine. Noam Bardin is the company's CEO. It has gone on to raise $67 million from investors. Waze is like Apple Maps and Google Maps in that it lays out directions for drivers on a street grid. It also has voice navigation. In addition to providing users with directions, it lets users scan real-time traffic information provided by other Waze users who are driving on the same roads. A Waze driver a few miles ahead of you, for example, could report an accident and that cars aren't moving. Another might tell you where a cop is hiding around the bend. I tried the app last weekend while driving up the east coast. While I enjoyed Waze, I ultimately found it more distracting than helpful. If your head is down scanning the highway ahead for traffic alerts and accidents, your eyes aren't on the road. I slammed on my brakes more than once while trying to figure out why I was in bumper-to-bumper traffic (I swear, I'm not the stereotypical bad female driver. I haven't gotten a ticket since college). In addition to being visually distracting, Waze also makes distracting sounds by default. There's a game element to the app that lets you rack up points based on tips you leave and the number of miles you drive. But it's startling to hear a loud chime play whenever Waze feels you've hit some sort of driving milestone, which is often. Waze has some safety features in place. For example, the app won't let you type while you're driving. It asks you to pull over first before you can type a destination. You can also turn yourself "invisible" on the app, if you don't want others (like Facebook friends) to be able to locate your whereabouts on Waze. And sounds can be turned off. After my first experience with Waze, I'd recommend only letting a navigator, not a driver, use the app while you're on the road. Otherwise it could cause more harm than good. Thinking about trying out Waze and seeing what the fuss is about?Welcome to Waze! Waze realizes you're new. It helps you get started. You can plug in your home and work addresses so you don't have to constantly type them in. See the rest of the story at Business Insider Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.

App.news is a social news reader app for iOS that uses App.net, an ad-free social network that recently hit 100,000 registered users, to serve up interesting articles and original journalism. It’s easy to compare App.net with Twitter, given that both services encourage users to create an account using an @username and post short messages – 140 characters for Twitter, 256 for App.net – for followers to read in real-time. App.net offers a social feed and API, however, that other developers can leverage to prioritize individual aspects of the service, such as online file-storage and photo-sharing. App.news, however, sets out to give users a streamlined news reading experience by stripping out any multimedia content contained within articles, similar to Flipboard and Pocket. How it works Launching the app will immediately show a stream of messages posted by various news publications on App.net. Users aren’t required to log-in at this point; literally anyone can download the app and start trawling the service for an interesting story. Headlines are shown as brief messages, alongside a tiny profile picture on the left hand-side and a URL on the right. The design isn’t much to look at, but it’s clean and refreshingly simple to navigate. This is a bare-bones experience, in short, with little thought given to aesthetics or visual flair. A quick tap will show an excerpt from the piece, combined with the original App.net post underneath. Users can then hit the eye icon above to see the original article on the mobile Web, or tap the page symbol to see a clean text-only version, similar to Pocket. The reading experience While looking at an excerpt, it’s also possible to flip to a new article simply by swiping from left-to-right, or vice versa, across the screen at anytime. As mentioned previously, it’s perfectly functional but lacks the polish and design enjoyed by similar services. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it certainly detracts from the overall reading experience. As with physical newspapers and magazines, part of the enjoyment that stems from reading articles is attributed to the layout and design. Creative and thoughtful design can make a huge difference when wondering whether to read a feature to the very end. App.net integration The connectivity with App.net means that users can also log-in with their dedicated account and see a stream of articles that have been shared through the individual accounts they’re following. It works in the exact same way as the global stream, but helps tailor and restrict the sheer quantity of articles being posted to the service. Through the stream, users can also reply and repost stories that they like, or choose to share by email, Twitter or Facebook. It’s not particularly innovative, but does provide a touch-point and help remind users that they’re directly interacting with App.net. Tapping the menu icon in the top left-hand corner of the screen also reveals an area where the user can search for specific stories using a hashtag. Previous hashtags appear in a list below; an accessible way to track ongoing or breaking stories. The bottom line App.news is one of the only dedicated news reader apps on iOS that showcases stories shared through App.net. It’s a robust and compelling proposition, but one that falls short due to a bland interface and design. If Information Addicts can find a way to reinvigorate the app’s image, this could be one of the most useful and compelling apps for App.net. However, it’s also worth noting that App.news displays ads along the bottom of the screen – something which goes against the philosophy of App.net – but offers an ad-free version via an $2.99 in-app purchase. “Even though App.net has promised to be an ad-free platform, we have always been open to apps using this business model and think that there is a place for them in the ADN app ecosystem,” Aaron Blyth, Marketing Manager at App.net said. ? App.news | iOS Disclosure: This article contai