Android’s rise to the top of the mobile operating system food chain as measured by device proliferation has been remarkably swift, but not without its drawbacks. Due to the nature of Google’s open source OS and its aggressive strategy, smartphone vendors that make use of the platform have each gone their own way with software development, hardware design and other key elements. As a result, Android fragmentation, which might be defined as the spread of diverging versions of the Android OS across devices with varying core characteristics, was born.

Whether or not fragmentation is a problem in the Android ecosystem is a topic that is intensely debated by enthusiasts. Some claim the problem will eventually lead to Android’s downfall while others deny the issue even exists. Outside of these heated debates, a number of individuals and firms have tried to analyze the matter and look at fragmentation’s potential impact on the bigger picture.

In October last year, developer Michael DeGusta created a visualization of what he called Android’s fragmented update history. “Ever since the iPhone turned every smartphone into a blank slate, the value of a phone is largely derived from the software it can run and how well the phone can run it,” DeGusta wrote. “When you’re making a 2 year commitment to a device, it’d be nice to have some way to tell if the software was going to be remotely current in a year or, heck, even a month.”

Following DeGusta’s report, graphic designer Chris Sauve took data from a number of sources earlier this year in an attempt to measure fragmentation and in doing so, he determined that despite its unveiling in 2010, 2012 will be the year of Gingerbread. So far, there is no denying that he is right — Gingerbread currently resides on more than 64% of Android devices globally according to Google’s own Android distribution data.

Now, OpenSignalMaps has thrown its hat into the ring. Using data from 681,900 devices that downloaded the firm’s software over the past six months, OpenSignalMaps found there to be 3,997 distinct Android devices running its app, though the figure counts each custom ROM found to be running on various smartphones as a separate device.

The developer found a staggering array of Android version and display resolution combinations, and said the issue is likely to get worse. “[Android version] and screen fragmentation is probably going to get worse,” the firm wrote in its report. “Android has, however, shown committment [sic] to make it easier to target multiple screen sizes – by introducing the (perhaps ironically named) fragments APIs in 2011 which makes it easier to turn view elements into modules.”

But despite the current trend, OpenSignalMaps concluded that the benefits of building apps for Android far outweigh the drawbacks. ”One of the joys of developing for Android is you have no idea who’ll end up using your app,” the firm noted. “With many devices under $100 unsubsidized, Android phones and tablets are able to reach a market that can’t afford netbooks. For the majority of the world’s population smartphones (and not computers) will be the must-have devices.”

Ron Diersen, Lead Consultant with the Sustainability Practice at Infosys Limited, has more 30 years IT experience, 26 of them within the data center. He has held various responsibilities in the construction of new data centers and the build out of existing sites, working on both physical and IT infrastructures.

RON DIERSEN
Infosys Ltd.

No two data centers are alike, and they should not be, for it is the business that drives the requirements for IT and the data centers which form the heart of IT are custom built and evolve based on the requirements and the culture of the organization. The type of IT infrastructure in today’s data center is designed to provide specific business services, and this can impact the physical design of the data center.

For example, thin blade rack-mounted web servers will be required for high speed user interaction, while data mining applications will require larger mainframe-style servers.  The physical infrastructure to support these different servers can vary greatly. Given their criticality, data center design becomes an issue of paramount importance in terms of technical architecture, business requirements, energy efficiency and environmental requirements.

This two-part article focuses on elaborating on design models and trends in the data center, their significance in data center infrastructure design and which are the most planet and business friendly.

Modern data center designs broadly follow one of the following principles

(a) Raised Floor/Access Floor

(b) Hot Aisle/Cold Aisle Containment (on a slab)

(c) Containerized/Modular

Each of these principles have their pros and cons when it comes to data center build, management, total cost of ownership, ease of consolidation/migration and energy efficiency.  Each has their own unique physical infrastructure designs that should be based on the IT architecture they are going to house. For example a data center of a telecommunications company will have completely different requirements from those of a banking or IT major.

Data Centers and Business Alignment

IT architects must understand strategic business needs and strategic business direction in order to plan and design sound technical solutions for the data center that support the business in the most economical and eco-friendly means possible. The IT technical solution will support the business model by implementing the technology that supports the business. The physical data center architectural design should be the one that compliments the IT architecture in the most economical manner, while providing flexibility to change with the changing needs of the business.

Some of the considerations in order to arrive at the right design could be:

Raised floor – A raised floor data center may make sense in an environment that has the need for mainframe (“big iron”) or similar processing needs and the network, power and cooling needs are fairly constant. Further, an enforced raised floor or slab may be required for data centers in seismically active areas.

Aisle containment – Hot aisle/cold aisle on a slab may be driven by the need to have a flexible environment where the power bus is overhead, localized network distribution centers, and the HVAC requirements are centralized. Colocation or service providers may provide such a scenario because of how easy and quickly they must change configurations based on client needs.

Modular – Modular data centers address businesses that have space constraints and unique location needs, such as remote areas. One of the drivers may be a short time or temporary installation of IT capacity.

There is not one  ”right” solution. In fact, some datacenters can contain a hybrid scenario where part of the center is raised floor and another part is slab. Business drivers dictate the need and the designers must understand the strategic business direction in order to design the data center(s) that provide the most effective solution. Their understanding of which IT solutions meet the strategic business need will directly impact the architectural design.

 In part 2, we will highlight some of the emerging trends such as Energy Management, Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and PUE/CUE management and reporting. These, and others, can have a significant impact on the architecture of the Data Center, some of which should be incorporated in the data center as early as possible in the design phase.

Please note:  Vaibhav Bhatia, Senior Consultant with the Sustainability Practice at Infosys Limited and a certified Data Center Associate, contributed to this column. With 9 years of IT experience, he has managed operations of a data center, and worked on several data center optimizing and Green IT initiatives.

Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our Knowledge Library.

Up until Mountain Lion, OS X’s “Cat” codenames kept on evolving from Cheetah to Puma to Jaguar to Panther to Tiger to Leopard. Once Lion hit, it seemed Apple had peaked, with no bigger lions to choose from, but then Cupertino surprised everyone with Mountain Lion.

Where to next, then? As the brilliant webcomic XKCD makes clear, there’s not a lot of good cat names yet, once you count out code names that have already been tech products, like Lynx or Ocelot. OS X Housecat? Please.

I’ll take OS X Saber-Toothed Jungle Cat though. Yes please.

Source: XKCD
Via: Gizmodo]

This is certainly not due to smartphone sales, as they’ve experienced tremendous growth, with 144.4 million units sold in Q1 2012, up 44.7 percent year-over-year.

On the manufacturer front, Samsung emerged as number one with 86.6 million units sold, ahead of Nokia which sold 83.2 million units. Apple, which sells only smartphones, is a distant third with 33.1 million units sold, followed by China’s ZTE and LG.

Perhaps even more importantly for Samsung, that company is the undisputed king of the Android market. Samsung’s sales of Android smartphones in Q1 2012 represented more than 40% of Android-based smartphone sales worldwide, with all other Android makers capturing less than 10% market share.

Overall Android unit sales in Q1 2012 were 81.1 million, followed by iOS with 33.1 million and Symbian with 12.5 million.

[via Gartner]

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Over the past six months, the folks at Staircase 3 have been keeping tabs on the devices that have been downloading their OpenSignalMaps network monitoring app, and so far they’ve recorded downloads onto 681,900 separate Android devices in 195 countries. Now they’ve taken all that data and splayed it out for all to see, and it highlights rather nicely how big a headache fragmentation can be for developers.

For the most part, the results are as you’d expect � runaway hits like Samsung’s Galaxy S II was the most represented device among the 3,997 distinct models they spotted, and Samsung Android devices were far and away the most widely used. What really gets me is how many other devices and brands fill up the rest of that list. Seriously, if you haven’t yet, go look at it. Mouse over some of the smaller blocks, see if there are any brands or devices that ring a bell.

It’s pretty crazy to see just how many players are in the field, and nothing against Staircase 3 � their app is actually pretty damned useful � but it’s not an immediate must-download for every user.

That there are gobs of Android devices floating around out there isn’t exactly a shocker, but data like this really drives home the issue. With so many devices running so many versions of Android with who knows many carrier and manufacturer mandated tweaks onboard, how is a developer supposed to make sure that all of their users gets a consistent experience? They can’t, unless they’re willing to test like crazy.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt famously downplayed the term “fragmentation” at this year’s CES, suggesting instead that people call it “differentiation.” It’s hard not to agree with sentiment on some level � after all, one of Android’s key strengths is how easily it fits into different niches and price points. But according to him, as long as every Android user is able to use the same apps, there’s no problem here.

That strikes me as a rather short-sighted way of looking at it. Downloading and installing apps is one thing, but what I think really counts � the user experience � can still vary from hardware configuration to hardware configuration. Not a day goes by without new Android hardware (or rumors of new Android hardware) make the rounds � hell, just an hour or so ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google will soon be filling out the new Devices section in the Google Play Store with new, unlocked “Nexus” hardware thanks to cooperation from up to five hardware manufacturers.

That’s why developers like Animoca have invested what I can only imagine is a sizable amount of money and effort testing their apps with something like 400 Android devices before pushing them out into the world. And of course, fragmentation isn’t just a hardware issue � the OSM post points out that the two most used versions of Android now only account for 75% of the devices they surveyed, down from 90% last year, yet another issue for developers to grapple with.

Does every developer need to go through a process that outlandish? Certainly not � OpenSignalMaps seems to test on a tiny fraction of that, and smaller developers can cover most of their bases with a handful of carefully chosen devices. At the end of the day though, despite the sheer amount of choice and flexibility that Android has provided users, those developers still have a choice to make � do they want to strive for perfection, or do they want to keep their sanity?

A fresh clutch of patent applications from Google hints at the mysterious search algorithm. Plus, ideas for product placement on YouTube and more on Google's Project Glass.

Google's algorithm doesn't just decide what pops up on the first page of search results. It's the stuff of complex third-party angst, law-making, lawsuits, and even the idea that the algorithm, based ultimately on decisions by human programmers, is protected under U.S. free speech laws. Google's hyper-sensitive to it too, which makes brand-new U.S. patent number 8180776 all the more interesting.

It's designed to "provide a mechanism and a methodology by which the user can variably adjust the degree to which his interests influence the results of a given search query." It seems a bit like the way you can decide which status updates from which of your friends on Facebook are flowed into your "news" feed--Google's patent outlines a set of parameters that you can adjust so that they affect which search results are featured in its response page after you type in a search query.

The problem with most searches is that while they are very good at matching the words in your query with results, they're not good at reflecting users' personal interests. As Google suggests in the introduction to the patent, this means if two people search for "drug testing in baseball" they'll get the same results even if one is, perhaps professionally, looking to understand drug use in society, and the other is just interested in the sports angle of which teams have applied drug test protocols.

As useful as this would be, it also could be hellishly controversial, upsetting the SEO industry and all the fine-tuned ways that online publications get featured in search results. There would almost certainly be legal ramifications. Brace yourselves. 

Advertisers work hard and spend a frightful amount of money trying to grab our attention by paying for carefully constructed advertising campaigns on TV and in the movie theater, both as direct ads and product placements. Now Google's got your back, big brands of the world! New U.S. patent 8180667 is all about "Rewarding creative use of product placements in user-contributed video."

Google points out that hundreds of millions of YouTube clips get uploaded every day. What if you could get paid as an uploader for cleverly including a branded product in your clip? That would encourage you to be creative in making your video, and it would act as a de facto branded advert for an advertising partner (that of course Google would control via its existing paid ad channels). This patent is all about making that process as easy as possible by verifiying that a placed product is indeed featured in a clip automatically, mainly by looking for a branded logo using image processing and pattern recognition techniques. 

And it would add an eerie, potentially sickly use of branded product placements in what we can only guess would be a deluge of YouTube clips trying to earn cash. Nyan Cat wearing Nike sneakers, anyone?

Of course YouTube is also host to plenty of content that TV networks would rather not be on there, because they'd rather you pay for a cable or satellite subscription. That's why they plaster their logos into the corners of your favorite shows ... and that's what new patent 8175413 is designed for: Automatically identifying these kinds of proprietary logos on uploaded clips so that a judgment can be made on whether they infringe someone else's IP or not.

Voice recognition on mobile devices is harder than for desktop machines because of the prevalence of background noise. Now U.S. patent 8175872 demonstrates two things about this: First it shows Google expects voice recognition systems to become pretty ubiquitous, and it suggests a way to use geotagging to remove background noise and thus improve recognition.

The idea's pretty simple: If there are several folk speaking to their mobile devices in an area, chances are they'll all be sampling some of the same background sounds. By geotagging your voice uplink, a cloud server somewhere could use that information to identify background noises and then subtract those signals from everyone's audio feed. Brilliant. Clever. And quite definitely creepy.

We know Google wants to change the world with a revolutionary augmented reality device called Project Glass, and we know what it looks like because we've seen a few in the wild already. Now Google's moved to patent the design of Glass's headset in three different versions: One is the high-tech "headband" version that's been shown already, another is just the frame for that headband without a prominent over-eye projection module, and the final is for a fashion-conscious version that looks more like traditional sunglasses.

Great to see Google's concerned that we all don't look like extras from Star Trek when wearing Glass, but what we really want to see is more data on how the actual things work. Guess we'll have to wait.

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.

A secret lab inside Google called Google X has been working on a now public project called “Project Glass,” otherwise known as “Google Glasses.” The research group first published a look at the technology earlier this year, during which we were treated to a wonderfully futuristic view into what’s possible with augmented reality. In an interview with CNET, however, Google said that the first model of its Google Glasses will offer a much more limited experience that will allow users to perform basic functions, such as photo sharing.

The original teaser video showed an entire overlay over the user’s line of site, but that’s also been scaled back quite a bit. Google X Lab founder Sebastian Thrun said that Google Glasses actually only provides information in a small area that’s “about where the edge of an umbrella might be.” In other words, there won’t be maps and text messages and phone calls popping up in front of you as you try to walk down the street… yet, anyway.

“It’s still too early to know what the functions and UI will be,” CNET was told in an interview, but Google’s employees say the ”simple interactions… are making people the most excited.” Google employees can now be seen wearing the glasses out in public, so the secret is out, and Sebastian Thrun has also posted a couple of photos to the group’s Google+ page. CNET said it will still be a “while” before consumers will be able to get their hands on the glasses but didn’t provide a timeframe.

[via CNET]

Email sucks. It’s probably one of the worst parts of my day and people are always wishing they could quit it. But so much of what we do in the workplace is centered around it as a way to stay in touch and communicate.

Glassboard, a communications app for small businesses and groups, has gotten a stellar update, bringing a completely redesigned app with improved notifications, new navigation and file sharing support. More importantly, it’s good enough that it could help you kill off a ton of the email mucking up your creative process.

The app is from Sepia Labs, which is headed up by Brent Simmons, the developer originally behind incredibly popular Mac apps like NetNewsWire (now in the capable hands of Black Pixel), MarsEdit (now at Red Sweater) and TapLynx (now at Push.io).

Sepia Labs was born out of the idea to make Glassboard. The team also includes Nick Harris, who did the iPhone coding and Nick Bradbury, who worked on the Android version of the app.

What it’s about

If you’re familiar with private social networks like Pair or Path, then you know what Glassboard is all about. It allows members of a board to share messages, photos, videos and now files, with one another. You can fire up multiple boards and invite certain members of your company or social group to the board, sharing information with select people.

I asked Simmons what the genesis of the app was, when there were so many projects that the group could have tackled. “We wanted to work on something important. We all care about privacy, and we keep seeing Facebook and other networks keep doing questionable things.”

A question of free

A key feature of Glassboard is that it offers no posting to Twitter or Facebook, and no advertising at all. “While we didn’t and don’t want to create a social network like Facebook,” says Simmons, “we still wanted to create a private system. A system with no data mining or advertising.”

This is an interesting point, because there has been so much discussion of late about products (read apps or services) that are free, and whether they can be ‘trusted’ not to sell your information to advertisers. Or, for that matter, whether it is possible to build a lasting service at all on a free or freemium model. The recent relaunch of Pocket as a free app and service became a fulcrum for this debate.

Nothing about Glassboard feels cheap or exploitive. It feels like an app that you would pay money for. And when Simmons says that ads aren’t a part of the app’s future, I believe him. So, what about the economics?

“We have a number of different possibilities, different things we might charge for,” says Simmons. “We’re whittling those down and working on the first. We want to make money! But step one was to build an app that people want to use and that makes working together easier.”

Developing for Android and iOS

The app is available for Android, the web and iPhone and the new version looks great. I poked around at the original when it launched and liked the concept, but not the design so much. I also saw some of the other versions of the app that might have been, shown off at Macworld in a talk by Black Pixel designer Dave Wiskus, who spoke at TNW 2012 as well.

The app was created out of a desire to leverage the ‘social network method’ of communicating for the benefit of people working together to collaborate and make. “We realized this could work well for people who work together, whether they’re co-workers or not.”

The private social network model

Here at TNW we use the Convo service, which has a desktop client and apps. There are other options out there like Campfire and Yammer as well. And it’s true. Email is a terrible collaboration tool which proves far too limiting with a widely spread team acting on fast-moving stories or projects. That’s Glassboard uses the social media model, rather than the email mode.

“It’s so much better than email — and it’s not a new thing, because Facebook and Twitter already paved the way. Everybody knows how to post statuses and pictures and click like buttons.”

The new design was done in-house by Simmons, and is massively improved. It has a great  feel that is reminiscent of Sparrow and Path, two apps whose design I happen to admire a great deal.

I asked if Path was an inspiration for the way that Glassboard works and Simmons said that it was, along with other services like Twitter and Facebook. “I can’t point to one app and say that was the one we were thinking of — but I can say that Path is a beautiful app with a lot to admire.”

Glassboard is also positioned strongly when it comes to privacy. By default, everything is private in the app. This brings to mind the tried and true network security guideline that you start out by closing all ports, only opening the ones that you absolutely need for the clients to get their jobs done. Even the icon of the app, which features a speech bubble with a lock on it, telegraphs this attention to privacy.

“I think that real-life is more complicated than what Facebook and Twitter model,” says Simmons. “Should my co-workers all be my friends on Facebook? Is my wife just another Facebook-friend? No….there are different kinds of relationships between people — and that matters.”

With Glassboard, you can fire up individual boards and control memberships to each one individually. There is no ‘main stream’ that has all of your contacts sharing information in one big morass. Instead, you can personally view all of your boards, but the individual members of those boards only see what you choose to share with them specifically. Think of it as multiple ‘Paths’ that you’re the gatekeeper for.

Since the app was developed across the iPhone and Android apps simultaneously, Simmons says that the Sepia team was able to keep design parity, minus a few platform differences. But there were no corners cut, which makes both the Android and iOS versions of the app stand out as exemplary products that work beautifully.

Both versions were done by writing for their platform specifically. “We didn’t cheat by using server-generated HTML and web views — we wrote native code, using the native SDKs, on both platforms.”

“I’ve noticed lots of small developers shipping Android later, or Android not-as-good, or both — but I don’t like that. I wanted to prove that even a three-person team of mobile app developers could ship for Android and iPhone at the same time, and make the apps equally as good. I believe we achieved that.”

Simmons credits Glassboard for helping them to coordinate the work to make the apps, along with the efforts of Bradbury, who also made the super popular FeedDemon RSS reader for Windows.

Glassboard 2.0 is a wonderful revamp of the original app, and a fantastic way to use the private social network model to share with groups of people. And it’s not all business. If you’ve enjoyed Path for personal use, but wished that you had even more control over what you shared and with whom, Glassboard could be a cool solution.

But the focus of Glassboard stays solidly with helping people collaborate for work.

“We care an awful lot about solving real problems. It’s fun to post a picture of the sweet potato french fries you’re about to eat — but there are tons of apps for that,” Simmons says. “We wanted to make it so that teams can communicate better and get things done.”

➤ Glassboard for Android
➤ Glassboard for iPhone
➤ Glassboard on the Web

米郵政公社（USPS）は5月16日から、ノートパソコンやタブレット、デジタルカメラ、携帯電話などリチウムイオン電池を内蔵する機器の海外郵送を中止する（USPSの告知、 CBS Newsの記事、 Fast Companyの記事）。

2006年以降、ドバイでのUPS機墜落事故を含め、リチウムイオン電池が原因とみられる事故が少なくとも2件発生しているとのことで、今回の処置も爆発や発火による事故を避けるためとみられている。UPSやDHL、FedExなどを利用すれば海外に送ることはできるが、送料は大幅に高くなる。また、これらの業者は海外の米軍基地内郵便局に配送できないため、海外駐留の米兵に送る場合は現地市民の住所あてに送る必要があるとのこと。なお、USPSでは個人用の電子機器にリチウムイオン電池が正しく組み込まれている場合に限り、2013年1月から数量を限定して海外郵送を再開する予定だ。

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