Hi-Tech News

The biggest hurdle is finding which stocks trading below $5 represent the best long-term investment. Stocks trading under $5 typically have no analysts’ coverage — never mind a “buy” rating — leaving investors to do the homework for themselves. However, a select few boast of favorable coverage from analysts, which can direct share-price movements.

Many high-volume stocks under $5 have proven to be huge winners, including Evergreen Energy(EEE) and Majesco Entertainment(COOL), which have more than doubled this year. Read more…

Tags: Buy, Buy Ratings

The second beta of Apple’s iOS 5.0 mobile operating system began making its way to developers on Friday, revealing cosmetic changes to certain lock-screen notifications, a slide away keyboard in iMessage, and other tweaks.

New Lock-Screen Alert Style

As previously discussed, users of iOS 5.0 this fall will be able to select between two distinct styles of notifications: traditional “Alert” notifications that overlay the screen (as they do in iOS 4.0) and require the user to dismiss them, and new “Banner” notifications that appear subtly at the top of the screen for a few seconds before rolling out of view and into the Notifications pull-down without any interaction. Read more…

Tags: Keyboard, Screen Notifications

When the Internet first appeared people saw it as an open communication network as well as a place to learn and share. But with its continuing success and growth the regulation and control of information on the web has increased. ISPs now monitor what subscribers download (and upload) in certain countries, anonymous accounts can have their owner uncovered with a court order, and some governments have the ability to turn off the Internet as and when they see fit. Theres also the growing question of net neutrality and how far governments are willing to go to protect it.

All of the above goes against the freedoms the Internet offers, and you might be surprised to hear that one of the first countries pushing hard against it is Afghanistan. Although that push comes out of necessity rather than choice.

Look at any country that is facing unrest and you see a government trying to control the flow of information both outside of their country and within it among protestors and troublemakers. With most connections to the Internet controlled by a few corporate entities, this is an easy thing for a government to do. The way around this is to bypass such companies completely and setup an alternative Internet.

In Afghanistan a select few people are creating such a network and have called it FabFi. Funded through a grant offered by the National Science Foundation, as well as the savings of those indviduals involved in setting it up, FabFi at the moment is a small-scale wireless Internet located in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. A similar network is also appearing in Kenya.

FabFi consists of a number of nodes transmitting a wireless signal a few miles. Each node is currently transmitting as far as 3.7 miles with connection speeds as fast as 11.5Mbps. While the distance and speed may seem limited, the thing that makes FabFi worthwhile is its cost and openness. Each node on the FabFi network is , made from building materials that are commonly available in the region, and cost a mere $60 to setup.

That low cost and open nature mean anyone can create a node suggesting FabFi could soon criss-cross the country creating Internet access completely free of government control. If a node is taken offline, another can be built easily to replace it. If enough nodes are built, then the removal of one may not even affect access.

As well as offering an open Internet link, FabFi is leading to work for those who know how to create and install a node and then maintain it. The project is also continually developing so as to support more users, embrace meshing technology, and reduce costs even further.

Tags: Network, Network 60

The Vatican, whose communications problems are no secret, is taking a leap into the world of new media next week with the launch of a news information portal that Pope Benedict XVI himself may put online with a papal click.

Vatican officials said Saturday that Benedict has been following the development of the portal, which will for the first time aggregate information from the Vatican’s various print, online, radio and television media in a one-stop-shop for Holy See news.

The portal — www.news.va — is being launched Wednesday, the 60th anniversary of Benedict’s ordination as a priest and a feast day in the church.

Monsignor Claudio Maria Celli, who heads the Vatican office that developed the portal and will maintain it, said Benedict may put the site online himself with a click from the Apostolic Palace.

It’s the latest step for the Vatican to bring its evangelizing message to a greater, Internet-savvy audience and follows its forays into Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

It’s also a significant step for the 84-year-old Benedict, who has been bedeviled by communications woes during much of his six-year papacy, much of it the fault of a large Vatican bureaucracy that doesn’t always communicate well internally.

There was his 2005 speech about Islam and violence, his recent comments about condoms and HIV that required no less than three official Vatican clarifications, and his rehabilitation of a Holocaust-denying bishop, among others.

While the portal is designed mostly to provide Vatican news in an easy-to-use setting for the outside world, Celli said he hoped it would also improve the Vatican’s own internal communications by letting various departments know what one another are up to and help provide a more coherent message to the outside world.

“I think that we must educate the Roman Curia of what is the real meaning of communication,” he said Saturday in a preview of the news portal. “Li

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Tags: Next Week, Week

Just weeks after the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a seven-year extension of the current chemical security standards, the House Homeland Security Committee recently followed suit, approving H.R. 901 by a bipartisan vote of 26 to 5.

Eight Democrats voted in favor of the legislation: Rep. Hansen Clarke (MI), Rep. Henry Cuellar (TX), Rep. Kathy Hochul (NY), Rep. William Keating (MA), Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (TX), Rep. Laura Richardson (CA), Rep. Cedric Richmond (LA) and Rep. Jackie Speier (CA).

SOCMA welcomed the committee’s endorsement of the legislation which would extend the existing Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) by seven years to 2018 and give chemical facilities and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) time to more fully implement the regulation, rather than significantly altering the existing rules. D

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Tags: Chemical Security, Committee