Computers

They say springtime is a season of rebirth and renewal. Not only have we seen the birth of Cloverleaf from the ashes of Fuduntu, but now Cinnarch has gone through a similar transformation. No real death was involved this time. Rather, the Arch-based distro decided to give the Cinnamon desktop at its foundation the proverbial boot, calling it "too much a burden to maintain/update going forward." Instead, they've turned to GNOME, with the result that Cinnarch has now renamed itself "Antergos," a Galician word "to link the past with the present."

So is Apple a tax-dodging evil company with a dark heart? No. The answer is no. However, Apple is certainly a corporation, and all corporations are driven first and foremost by profit -- no matter what the company says about the joy of making great products. Astoundingly passionate and driven individuals, who sometimes run corporations -- perhaps like the late Steve Jobs -- might be driven by the joy of creation, with profit becoming just a tool to enable the chance to create a dent in the universe.

Facebook may have a budding problem on its hands with its teenagers, suggests a report released Tuesday by Pew Research Center. Teens expressed waning enthusiasm for Facebook in focus groups, according to Pew, saying they disliked the growing number of adults on the site, were annoyed by "inane" status updates, and viewed the drama commonly played out on Facebook as draining. Finally, managing their reputation on Facebook was stressful they said. However, teens seemed to be far more favorably disposed toward Twitter than in the past.

A $465 million collaborative R&D project is set to support pilot lines in Dresden and Grenoble for production of fully depleted silicon on insulator manufacturing process.View the full article HERE.

Jack Dorsey's payments startup Square is expanding beyond North America, entering the Japanese market. With the growth comes growing pains. Jason Del Rey of All Things D reports that Dorsey's company has, in recent weeks and months, dealt with a sudden rash of executive turnover. First, COO Keith Rabois split amid accusations of sexual harassment. Then, more recently, a big Square hire quit before he even started. Del Rey: That was Alex Petrov, who Square announced just three weeks ago was supposed to be the startup’s new vice president of partnerships. But he actually never started working at Square and will not be joining the company, a spokesperson confirmed. Finally, Square also just lost Alyssa Cutright the company’s vice president of international. She'd only joined a year ago, after coming over from rival Paypal. There's no reason to panic over all these departures – again, growth means growing pains – but Dorsey can't be happy having to fill seats he thought he'd already found people for. Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

walterbyrd writes "Late last year, a vigorous and secretive patent troll began sending out thousands of letters to small businesses all around the country, insisting that they owed between $900 and $1,200 per worker just for using scanners. The brazen patent-trolling scheme, carried out by a company called MPHJ technologies and dozens of shell companies with six-letter names, has caught the attention of politicians. MPHJ and its principals may have gone too far. They're now the subject of a government lawsuit targeting patent trolling—the first ever such case. Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell has filed suit in his home state, saying that MPHJ is violating Vermont consumer-protection laws." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today Mailbox, the quite popular email client that landed first on iPhone, announced the release of an iPad version of its app. The move is hardly surprising, but it does continue the Mailbox story, one that saw the firm launch to mass impact, and then exit to Dropbox for a reportedly nine-figure sum. TNW met with Mailbox at its new home in the Dropbox offices – try the bacon, it’s excellent – to see the new app. What will become immediately apparent to you provided that you are familiar with the iPhone version of the service is that the iPad build is remarkably similar. For reference, here’s Mailbox on your phone: And here is the iPad application: It’s the same app, with a reading screen appended to the right side. Other visual effects present in the iPhone version persist in the iPad edition, such as swiping to sort emails, and the color scheme. Frankly, it’s a great move. The core reason that Mailbox took off as it did was that its design, and user experience were incredible. Those success are repeated in the iPad app by not changing them. In testing, it takes under a minute to become fully comfortable on the new app if you are already a Mailbox user. It is in fact so stripped down, that you cannot use it in any view but landscape. I suspect the app will be both well received, and highly used. Mailbox: What’s Next While I had their ear, I walked with Mailbox’s co-founder Gentry Underwood about its future plans, current growth, and the move to Dropbox. Regarding when it will arrive on the Android platform, the company demurred to comment, stating that it doesn’t comment on release schedules. Though the line was delivered with a knowing smile; they have heard that question before. How has growth been since it was acquired? The service says that it is “excited” by the rate that new people are singing up, and by “the frequency that they stick around.” No hard numbers, however, it will share. The reason is actually somewhat interesting: Underwood told me that it doesn’t want to get into a position in which it is optimizing for user numbers, and not user experience. The company, instead of trumpeting user levels, merely wants to “build a great user experience,” and then “get that to as many people as possible.” If you are a fan of priority inbox, or Gmail’s labels, the company knows that you want that support inside of its product. When? No comment. Underwood did inform me that it is not complete; more, at some point, is coming. How well has Mailbox fit into the Dropbox family? The fair analogy it seems is that Mailbox fits inside of Dropbox as Instagram has slotted into Facebook. Not too much product pressure, but instead a focus on keeping up what made the service so popular to begin with. In Underwood’s words, both Dropbox and Mailbox both want to “take the friction out of work.” Finally, and just for fun: Mailbox brought a mere 14 people to Dropbox. It’s core team is now 16. Now you know. Top Image Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

iPhone screens have always been made out of something called Gorilla Glass, a product from Corning. But lately, there have been rumors that new iPhones will be made out of a material called sapphire crystal. Already, the glass that covers the iPhone 5's camera lense is made from sapphire cyrstal. These rumors have prompted Corning to brag about coming improvements to Gorilla Glass. They sound pretty great. Corning says that soon, Gorilla Glass will… …Reflect sunlight less, so that gadget screens are more readable in direct sunlight …incorporate antimicrobial technology, to reduce some of the seriously nasty amount of germs on your smartphone. Corning says Gorilla Glass is already thin and durable enough that it can be curved to fit into gadgets that don't have flat screens – like maybe Apple's coming "iWatch." It also says Gorilla Glass can take 2.5X as much force as sapphire crystal before it breaks. Here's the video where Corning brags. We spotted it on MacRumors: Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

ConteXtream, an early player in software-defined networking (SDN), has apparently deployed its software for around 40 million subscribers of a wireless service provider in the United States, although it refuses to say which company is using the services. Telecommunications companies have been kicking the tires on implementing software-defined networks for the sake of efficiency, cost savings and agility, but a big one like this suggests that the benefit could outweigh the cost. With offices in Israel and Palo Alto, Calif., ConteXtream was founded in 2007 and focuses on using software to help service providers virtualize network functions. It has picked up investments from Comcast Ventures and Verizon Ventures, among others. “You can imagine that those two investment arms are very interested in what we do,” said Nachman Shelef, ConteXtream’s CEO and a co-founder. The customer’s total subscriber base is least double the number that the virtualized network covers, Shelef said, meaning that it could be either AT&T or Verizon, and given that Verizon has invested in ContexTream, it seems hard to imagine it would be selling services to its investor’s biggest rival, although Shelef wouldn’t say one way or the other. Running ConteXtream’s Grid software on servers would allow a wireless carrier to more quickly roll out new revenue-generating features while also looking at traffic flows and directing certain subscribers only to the services they need, such as content filtering, customized billing, video optimization and subscriber statistics. “The old way of doing this was all the traffic goes through all functions, whether it needs to or not, without identifying each flow,” Shelef said. As a result, network appliances can be used more efficiently. It’s a step toward the future of running all network functions as software on servers. “That vision is still very far off,” Shelef said. Early SDN deployments have come from managed-hosting providers. Webscale deployments from Amazon and Facebook appear to be in the works. Enterprises have been slower to jump on board, even though many have expressed interest in SDN. ConteXtream and other SDN vendors are eager to capitalize on the continuing hype cycle, and VMware is no exception to that, following its $1.26 billion acquisition last year of Nicira. Using software to virtualize networks is one component of VMware’s software-defined data center vision, which VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger will discuss with my colleague Om Malik at GigaOM’s Structure conference in San Francisco on June 19. Also at Structure, Juniper Networks executive Bob Muglia will talk SDN with GigaOM Research Analyst David Linthicum. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.How to deliver the next-generation web experienceHow to manage the signaling storm in 2013The promise of SDNs in the enterprise

A quarter of people say that the number of messages they receive is the main way they would measure the success of their birthday, research from gift card company One4All has found. The research discovered that 76 per cent will post a greeting to friends on social media, but only 20 per cent said they expected to receive a birthday card through the post. Declan Byrne, managing director UK of One4all, said: “Social media now plays a huge part in all of our lives and it’s interesting to see how it has impacted on the traditional birthday. “It’s a social shift that is affecting many businesses who provide a service linked to birthday celebrations. For example, it’s led to us creating online group gifting, where friends can come together through social media to contribute to a joint gift.” A third of people say that they find their own birthdays stressful and would rather celebrate someone else’s, while only 15 per cent say they would always have a birthday cake. Please follow Advertising on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »