Here comes XOOM

The Motorola XOOM is now available for pre-order and is being hailed as the first real iPad competitor. It runs a new version of Android that is designed specifically for tablets, super fast, and a bit pricey. Is this what you've been waiting for? 


Read more about XOOM.
Visit the Motorola XOOM site.  

New citation app

A new smartphone application takes most of the grunt work out of citing books in scholarly papers. 

Quick Cite, which costs 99 cents and is available for both iPhones and Android-based phones, uses the camera on a smartphone to scan the bar code on the back of a book. It then e-mails you a bibliography-ready citation in one of four popular styles—APA, MLA, Chigaco, or IEEE.

Click to read the full article. 


We're interested in hearing how this works for you, please share your comments. 

Have you ever wanted to print from your phone?

With Gmail, now you can. 

Let’s say you need to print an important email attachment on your way to work so that it’s waiting for you when you walk in the door. With Gmail for mobile and Google Cloud Print — a service that allows printing from any app on any device, OS or browser without the need to install drivers — you can.


To get started, you’ll first need to connect your printer to Google Cloud Print. For now, this step requires a Windows PC but Linux and Mac support are coming soon. Once you’re set up, just go to gmail.com from your iPhone or Android browser and choose “Print” from the dropdown menu in the top right corner. You can also print eligible email attachments (such as .pdf or .doc) by clicking the “Print” link that appears next to them.

Read more about this at the Gmail Blog.

What does running out of IP addresses mean to you?

Have you ever thought about how many IP addresses exist, and what you would do if the world ran out of them? Me either. Thankfully, others have and with the rapid increase of internet capable devices we should be thankful for the foresight. Now we don't have to worry that our next internet capable gadget won't be able to connect. 

How will this effect you? An interview on NPR explains.  

BLOCK: So, the transition from IPV4 to IPV6, are you anticipating that that will be pretty smooth or are there lots of potential complications there?

Mr. SHANKLAND: I think it's going to be more in the area of hiccups and some unpleasantness, than catastrophe. That's why I think the word IPocalypse is a bit overblown. A lot of money is going to have to be spent, but I don't think the Internet is going to come to a screeching halt, for example.
Websites will get slow in some cases because when you're trying to get data from some server on the other side of the Internet, the data might have to get translated from IPV4 to IPV6 and then back to IPV4. That has to happen every time a little packet of information goes from one place to another.
So I think we'll see some delays in the performance of the Internet as we make this gradual transition from IPV4 to IPV6. 

Read the transcript or listen to the interview.