PC Tech World: Maker

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Friday, April 12, 2013

UK finally gets access to Google's Map Maker editing tool

UK finally gets access to Google's crowdsourced mapping tool, Map Maker

Those red pins look almost like little hearts, revealing which countries have been showered with the affection of Google's crowdsourced map improvement tool and those -- like the UK -- that have so far been left out. We can now safely ignore the chart, however, as the UK has just received its dose of Map Maker love, taking its rightful place among nations like the US, France, India and even North Korea. Instead of just reporting problems, which has long been possible, Brits can use the browser-based service to contribute additional local knowledge about everything from bus stations to cycle routes, as well as natural features like parks and even bits of shrubbery. (Hopefully, only really amazing bits of shrubbery.) You can watch folks adding these sorts of things, almost in real-time, at the Google link below -- and it's weirdly addictive.

Via: BBC News

Source: Google Map Maker

More Coverage: Google's official blog

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Samsung on track to become top home appliances maker

The company logo is displayed at the Samsung news conference at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas January 7, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking

LAS VEGAS | Tue Jan 8, 2013 12:26am EST

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co said it is on course to achieve its goal of becoming the world's top home appliances maker by 2015, with sales growing an estimated 50 percent by then.

Samsung Electronics, which makes more chips, flat-screens, handsets and TVs than any of its competitors - including the world's best-selling smartphone - is aiming to boost its home appliance segment and narrow the gap with companies including Whirlpool Corp and Electrolux AB.

"I'm confident of Samsung becoming the world's top appliances maker by 2015 with $18 billion sales, as we set up a very well structured framework for key products and moving step by step to the goal, first starting with fridges," Yoon Boo-keun, president of the division, told Reuters in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Monday.

Analysts estimate Samsung Electronics earned around 13 trillion won ($12 billion) last year from home appliances, part of the firm's consumer electronics arm.

Samsung Electronics would ditch unprofitable product lines and boost research into consumer tastes across different markets, Yoon said.

"It's a business that can ensure steady cash flow with little earnings fluctuation, once you have a proper system in place," Yoon said. "It's not dull at all and has great potential to become Samsung's next earnings driver."

MR TV AIMS FOR GROWTH

Yoon, who was head of Samsung's TV business until 2011, was put in charge of the thin-margin home appliance division a year ago with a mission to match the TV outfit's success.

Known as Mr. TV, he had a pivotal role in ending Japan's more than three decades of leadership in the global TV industry in 2006.

"We see lots of opportunities in the appliances segment but we didn't strongly grow the business - simply, it didn't get proper treatment," Yoon said after unveiling a new four-door Internet-connected fridge at the electronics show.

His remarks come only hours after Samsung Electronics said it likely earned a record quarterly operating profit of $8.3 billion, aided by roaring sales of smartphones.

Samsung's CE division is estimated to have earned around 13 trillion won ($12.22 billion) of revenue in the fourth quarter, or roughly a quarter of its total revenue.

TV sales generally account for around 70 percent of CE performance, and the rest comes from selling appliances such as fridges, ovens and laundry, according to analysts. Samsung does not provide breakdowns.

It's been a low-margin business compared with smartphones, which generate around 25 percent of margin, and the division's operating profit contribution is estimated at around 4 percent.

Yoon also said Samsung, the world's top maker of TVs, was aiming to sell 55 million flat-screen TVs this year, up from 51 million last year, even as the industry is set to remain stagnant due to the weak global economy.

Betting large TVs with over 65-inch screen sizes will lead the growth, Samsung Electronics unveiled three models of ultra high-definition (HD) TVs that boast four times better picture quality than full HD models.

ACQUISITIONS IN MEDICAL SECTOR

Yoon also heads Samsung's corporate design centre and oversees the medical equipment business, which was added to the consumer electronics division this year.

Samsung Electronics acquired a controlling stake in Korean ultrasound equipment firm Medison in 2010 and its affiliate later for around $300 million in total, its biggest ever acquisition in the healthcare industry.

Yoon expected sales from its medical devices would reach $500 million this year, up from $300 million last year, and will grow with the acquisition of companies that make MRI scanners and computed tomography machines.

Samsung Electronics has said it plans to spend 1.2 trillion won in the medical equipment business by 2020 to make it a $10 billion operation by then.

In the long run, Samsung Electronics aims to become a global healthcare leader, taking on GE, Philips, Hitachi, Toshiba and Siemens. ($1 = 1064.0000 Korean won)

(Reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Stephen Coates and Ryan Woo)

View the original article here

By: Dilusha On 10:28 PM

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Mozilla launches Popcorn Maker, video editing crackling with web content

Content license holders will surely enjoy (taking down) your video remixes

Mozilla has launched a new dynamic video editing tool for the web called Popcorn Maker.

Mozilla's Maker sets out to provide a browser-based video editing tool that takes advantage of web content to enhance videos.

"Until now, video on the web has been stuck inside a little black box," said Brett Gaylor, Mozilla director of popcorn.

"Popcorn Maker changes that, making video work like the rest of the web: hackable, linkable, remixable and connected to the world around it."

Popcorn Maker uses a drag-and-drop interface that allow users to enhance and post their videos with content such as article or Wikipedia links, Google Maps and even live feeds of Flickr keywords or Twitter hashtags.

For example, a newscaster-style video could be edited to include embedded source articles or real-time weather updates.

Users can also embed a real-time Google Map in a video, or reverse it so that a small video window is overlaid on a larger Google Map, which users can zoom and scroll in real-time while the video continues to play.

Mozilla built Popcorn Maker entirely from web technologies, such as HTML, CSS and Javascript, making it compatible with all web browsers.

It's been available to developers for nearly a year through the Popcorn.js Javascript library, but now Mozilla has released the public version to enable any user to create Popcorn Maker videos.

Popcorn Maker can import any Youtube, Vimeo, Soundcloud or HTML5 video file, which can then be enhanced with web content events or limited editing such as looping, skipping, or pausing particular sections of the video.

A completed Popcorn Maker video can then be shared as a direct link or through embed code.

While embedding links to articles is nothing new to web video, the ability to embed a scrollable pop-up of the article itself is a unique twist that Popcorn Maker provides.

There's a lot of potential in Popcorn Maker, both as a valuable video enhancement tool and as a detrimental way to distract users by presenting too much content at once.

As the tool is still new, there are likely to be plenty of examples of both as web creators experiment with how, or even if, Popcorn Maker is the right fit for their video content.