After Barbara Pivarnak had a bone marrow transplant last year, she faced a long recovery. For many weeks, she was -- in her words -- "a blob in a bed."

As soon as she could sit up, though, occupational therapists at the Mayo Clinic began taking her to what they called "Wii-hab." She became absorbed in Wii bowling. What she didn't realize was that she was also getting good physical workouts. Her strength and coordination rapidly improved.

Daily headlines can make us forget that technology is often used for "good." Among all the reports of hackers stealing sensitive information from government agencies -- and individuals -- it's easy to forget the other side of the story.

B-Sides HTML5 will allow web designers to pull off tricks that were previously only possible with Adobe Flash or convoluted JavaScript. But the technology, already widely supported by web browsers, creates plenty of opportunities for causing mischief.

During a presentation at the B-Sides Conference in London on Wednesday, Robert McArdle, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro, outlined how the revamped markup language could be used to launch browser-based botnets and other attacks. The new features in HTML5 - from WebSockets to cross-origin requests - could send tremors through the information security battleground and turn the likes of Chrome and Firefox into complete cybercrime toolkits.

Google is installing super-fast fibre optic internet service in Kansas City. Will it usher in a new era in industry and society - or just enable faster web browsing and media downloads? For technology consultant Bret Rhodus, Google's newest venture is an amazing business opportunity.

"This can be a game-changer," he says. "The opportunity for entrepreneurs is significant." For art supply clerk Danni Parelman, however, it's just a chance to download more music.

As the self-professed geeks over at Kokatu put it, this would have made a genius Project Runway challenge: Turn your favorite websites into a dress! Wanna see what they'd look like? Artist Victor Faretina used some of the web's most popular spots as inspiration for garments, and here's what he came up with. The Twitter frock is lovely as a bird, as feminine as you'd imagine.

Intel Corporation today introduced the quad-core 3rd generation Intel® Core™ processor family, delivering dramatic visual and performance computing gains for gamers, media enthusiasts and mainstream users alike. Available now in powerful, high-end desktop, laptop and sleek all-in-one (AIO) designs, the new processors are the first chips in the world made using Intel’s 22-nanometer (nm) 3-D tri-Gate transistor technology.

The combination of Intel’s cutting-edge 3-D tri-gate transistor technology and architectural enhancements help make possible up to double the 3-D graphics and HD media processing performance compared with Intel’s previous generation of chips. As a result of the stunning, built-in visual performance, all the things people love to do on their PCs — from creating and editing videos and photos, surfing the Web, watching HD movies or playing mainstream games — are quicker, crisper and more life-like. With as much as 20 percent microprocessor performance improvements and new technologies to speed the flow of data to and from the chips, the new processors further extend Intel’s overall performance leadership.

A little while back I took a look at some recently breached accounts and wrote A brief Sony password analysis. The results were alarming; passwords were relatively short (usually 6 to 10 characters), simple (less than 1% had a non-alphanumeric character) and predictable (more than a third were in a common password dictionary). What was even worse though was uniqueness; 92% of common accounts in the Sony systems reused passwords and even when I looked at a totally unrelated system – Gawker – reuse was still very high with over two thirds of common email addresses sharing the same password.

But there was one important question I left unanswered and that was how people choose their passwords. We now know that structurally, passwords almost always adhere to what we would consider “bad practices” but how are these passwords derived in the first place? What’s the personal significance which causes someone to choose a particular password?

The Nobel Prize is awarded only to a limited set of disciplines (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Economics and Peace) so some disciplines not eligible for this prestigious award have established the same range. In the world of technology, the Turing Award is one of the best known and is referenced in the computer field and there is another international award, the Millennium Technology Prize, awarded to those who have achieved outstanding technological achievements . This latest award, which is awarded by Technology Academy Finland , has already two candidates for this edition and one of them is Linus Torvalds .

Linus Torvalds , and his work of 20 years leading the Linux kernel project, have been recognized with this nomination by the impact of their work and creating an open source operating system that today is present in many devices and services part of our daily life: mobile terminals, POS terminals, embedded systems, servers, desktops, etc..

The real impact of Linux as a way to enable people and businesses build on this foundation and develop their own applications and systems

So-called Nobel Prize in the world of technology can be placed on Linus Torvalds is a great joy for the whole community of free software and a great recognition to the work in one of the largest collaborative development projects there.

Who will win is something to be unveiled on 13 June in a ceremony presided by the President of the Republic of Finland. Torvalds is a candidate with another scientist, Shinya Yamanaka has been recognized for his work in the field of stem cells and their development without using cells from the embryo.

From the Linux Foundation, how could it be otherwise, are delighted with the news and recognition. According im Zemlin, executive director of the same:

The Millennium Technology Prize is like the Nobel Peace Prize of the technology. Linus Torvalds embodies the spirit of innovation and collaboration that this award represents, and we congratulate you for this great honor

This prize, awarded every two years and has been awarded to people like Tim Berners-Lee , has an endowment of one million euros and, of course, the prestige of the award and recognition at work.

It would be a great appreciation for the free software world. Hopefully Torvalds is the winner.

One day I was looking at how many messages I have in my sent mail, and realized there are a lot of things I wanted to know about my email habits. How much of my emails do I read, and do I reply fast enough? As luck would have it, Romain Vialard, a Google Apps Script Top Contributor, developed a tool called Gmail Meter powered by Google Apps Script.

Gmail Meter is an Apps Script which runs on the first day of every month and sends you an email containing different statistics about your Inbox. In a similar way to how recently introduced Google Account Activity gives key stats about how you’ve used your Google Account, Gmail Meter gives you different types of statistics that will help you analyze your Gmail habits.

It’s still interesting to me that Microsoft is very active in the open source community. Open source operating systems at a glance would seem to be something very much at odds with what Microsoft does with its popular Windows operating systems for servers and computers. With so many enterprise customers using Microsoft servers along with open source servers running operating systems like UNIX or Linux, Microsoft has to work with open-source standards.

In fact, not long ago Microsoft made the list of the top contributors to the open source Linux kernel. Microsoft has now announced that it has formed a new subsidiary for open-source standards called Microsoft Open Technologies Incorporated. The new subsidiary will have 50 to 75 employees to start with.

The president of the new subsidiary will be Jean Paoli. Paoli did note in an interview with GeekWire that Microsoft’s existing product groups and divisions will continue to work with open-source standards initiatives. The goal for the new division is to allow it to be more flexible and able to work with outside projects at a faster pace.

After a preliminary review of its first quarter 2012 performance, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced its preliminary financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2012.

The Company reiterates its full-year outlook. Based on its robust pipeline SAP expects a strong second quarter 2012 with software revenue growth in a range of 15% – 20% at constant currencies and non-IFRS software and software-related service revenue growth in a range of 14% – 16% at constant currencies.

SAP’s growth momentum continued in 2012 with a record first quarter in Asia Pacific/Japan (APJ) and double-digit growth in many markets including Latin America and Germany.

The company had sales execution issues in North America which impacted first quarter performance. These issues have been resolved and the necessary steps have been taken to ensure that North America is back on track. After a record fourth quarter 2011, some European markets started more slowly in 2012, but are well on track.

Chromebook users who install the latest Dev channel release of Chrome OS will be surprised to notice that Chrome OS looks more like a desktop operating system.

Google has been working on a new window manager called Aura that brings many features of a desktop OS. Chrome OS now has a desktop, a taskbar, apps are placed on the desktop, there's support for wallpapers and overlapping windows.

About Symposium

Over 40 million Americans use online dating services—40 percent of all singles.
And we’re not just meeting people online — we’re marrying them. Among couples who married in the last three years, 17% of them met online. In 2009, twice as many marriages took place between couples who met online than between couples who met in bars, clubs or other social events combined.