Joos Orange Solar Charger

Reviewed by Bryan Gardiner 

$100  •  solarjoos.com/

Solar Charger Juices Your Gadgets, Rain or Shine

It's an unavoidable fact of life: Your gadgets need juice —like a preacher needs pain, like thunder needs rain. (Thank you, Bono.) And when it comes to portable power-ups, our new favorite flavor is Orange.

The Joos Orange solar charger is the physical manifestation of simplicity. It's rugged, easy to store and carry, and (most importantly) quick to bestow a watt or two whenever you need it. Simply choose the correct adapter (the Orange comes with seven of the most popular ones), plug in your depleted phone or DS into the charger and let the life-giving juice flow. Yep, that's it.

Weighing in at a pound-and-a-half, the Orange is roughly the same size and weight as an iPad —and arguably a lot more useful. It can be completely submersed in water, dropped, kicked, and, in general, take the worst abuse man or nature can dish out.

Nestled inside its durable polycarbonate shell is a super-efficient 5,400-milliamp-hour replaceable lithium-ion battery capable of holding its charge for years. In our tests, we managed to dole out four full charges to a completely depleted iPhone before the Orange needed a solar recharge. It even fully charged the notoriously fickle iPad.

While PC owners will be able to download a standalone GUI for precise power metrics, the unit also has two LED status lights on the sides: one solar light (red) and other for the battery (green). When the Orange is running, the red light will blink rapidly to let you know you're getting juiced. Similarly, the green light spits out one blink for every 20 percent of the battery that's full. Four blinks and you know you have a battery that's between 60 and 80 percent full. Even better: the Orange comes with a pair of attachable reflectors that help collect somewhere between 20-30 percent more power when affixed to both ends.

No sun? No problem. While our test model wasn't equipped to charge efficiently by USB, the folks at Solar Components assured us that production models can be refilled at the standard USB charging rate (500 milliamps at 5 volts or 2.5 watts).

So go ahead and leave those outlets. Sucking down solar power has never been easier.

WIRED Cheap. Crazy-durable. Comes with nearly all connector tips you'll need for your mobile gear (you can order specific ones from Solar Components if not). Two screw-in mirror panels beef up charging efficiency by 30 percent. Nuclear fallout blot out the sun? Charge up by USB.
TIRED No Mac compatibility for GUI software. Deciphering the LED takes some getting used to. Screws for attachable mirrors are not ideal and are easily lost.

http://newscri.be/link/1085159

Brain Games Won't Make You Smarter, Study Says

Brain training games do not make you smarter - FACT

"Brain games" are certainly fun, but contrary to what many players hope, they're not likely to make you any smarter. From a six-week study paid for by the BBC and reported by Discovery News:
Photo by wetwebwork.

More than 8,600 people aged 18 to 60 were asked to play online brain games designed by the researchers to improve their memory, reasoning and other skills for at least 10 minutes a day, three times a week.
They were compared to more than 2,700 people who didn't play any brain games, but spent a similar amount of time surfing the Internet and answering general knowledge questions.
Researchers said the people who did the brain training didn't do any better on the test after six weeks than people who had simply been on the Internet. On some sections of the test, the people who surfed the Net scored higher than those playing the games.

Some brain-game manufacturers argued with the studies results, claiming that the findings didn't apply to their games. Whether or not the results of that study are on the money, professor of psychology from the University of Illinois Art Kramer points out: "There is precious little evidence to suggest the skills used in these games transfer to the real world."

It's not all bad news, though. For starters, regular mental exercise may increase your life expectancy. If you're really looking for some brain-boosting benefits, physical exercise is an extremely effective way to exercise your mind—and you're killing two birds with one stone.

Are you a big believer in the brain games? Share your experience in the comments.

Brain Games Won't Boost I.Q. [Discovery News]

Brain training games do not make you smarter - FACT

By Gerald LynchBy 

 

Nicole Kidman may have been fooled by its cute brain teasing charms, but Tech Digest were never truly convinced. Now there's proof: new research shows that brain training games do not improve your IQ.

A scientific study of 11,430 volunteers conducted by the BBC proved that while using the brain trainers made the gamers better at the games themselves, the skills gathered were not transferable to the world at large.

One third of the volunteers were tasked with training their reasoning powers, planning and problem-solving skills, another third played games designed to train short-term memory, attention, mathematical abilities and visuospatial skills, while the final group were given web-browsing tasks that didn't target any specific cognitive skills.

Across all the tests, none of the brain game participants gained a boost in everyday thinking tasks any more than those using the web-browser.

Dr Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at the Medical Research Council, said: "The results are clear. Statistically, there are no significant differences between the improvements seen in participants who played our brain training games, and those who just went on the internet for the same length of time."

Via: BBC

Brain games may not make you smarter

LONDON: People playing computer games to train their brains might as well be playing Super Mario, new research suggests.

In a six-week study, experts found people who played online games designed to improve their cognitive skills didn’t get any smarter.

Researchers recruited participants from viewers of the BBC’s science show Bang Goes the Theory. More than 8,600 people aged 18 to 60 were asked to play online brain games designed by the researchers to improve their memory, reasoning and other skills for at least 10 minutes a day, three times a week.

They were compared to more than 2,700 people who didn’t play any brain games, but spent a similar amount of time surfing the Internet and answering general knowledge questions. All participants were given a sort of I.Q. test before and after the experiment.

Researchers said the people who did the brain training didn’t do any better on the test after six weeks than people who had simply been on the Internet. On some sections of the test, the people who surfed the Net scored higher than those playing the games.

The study was paid for by the BBC and published online yesterday by the journal Nature.
“If you’re (playing these games) because they’re fun, that’s absolutely fine,” said Adrian Owen, assistant director of the Cognition and Brain Sciences unit at Britain’s Medical Research Council, the study’s lead author.

“But if you’re expecting (these games) to improve your I.Q., our data suggests this isn’t the case,” he said during a press briefing.

One maker of brain games said the BBC study did not apply to its products. Steve Aldrich, CEO of Posit Science, said the company’s games, some of which were funded in part by the US National Institutes of Health, have been proven to boost brain power.

“Their conclusion would be like saying, ‘I cannot run a mile in under four minutes and therefore it is impossible to do so,” Aldrich said.

Posit Science has published research in journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing their games improved memory in older people.

Small effects, Small difference

Computer games available online and marketed by companies like Nintendo that supposedly enhance memory, reasoning and other cognitive skills are played by millions of people worldwide, though few studies have examined if the games work.


“There is precious little evidence to suggest the skills used in these games transfer to the real world,” said Art Kramer, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Illinois. He was not linked to the study and has no ties to any companies that make brain training games.

Kramer had several reservations about the BBC study’s methodology and said some brain games had small effects in improving people’s cognitive skills.

“Learning is very specific,” he said. “Unless the component you are trained in actually exists in the real world, any transfer will be pretty minimal.”

Instead of playing brain games, Kramer said people would be better off getting some exercise. He said physical activity can spark new connections between neurons and produce new brain cells. “Fitness changes the building blocks of the brain’s structure,” he said.

Still, Kramer said some brain training games worked better than others. He said some games made by Posit Science had shown modest benefits, including improved memory in older people.

Difficulty levels matter

Other experts said brain games might be useful, but only if they weren’t fun.

“If you set the level for these games to a very high level where you don’t get the answers very often and it really annoys you, then it may be useful,” said Philip Adey, an emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at King’s College in London.

If people are enjoying the brain games, Adey said they probably aren’t being challenged and might as well be playing a regular videogame.

He said people should consider learning a new language or sport if they really wanted to improve their brain power. “To stimulate the intellect, you need a real challenge,” Adey said, adding computer games were not an easy shortcut. “Getting smart is hard work.” — AP
++++
www.nature.com/nature

Goldman profited during crisis

Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs made huge profits during the financial meltdown through subprime, or higher-risk, mortgage backed securities that have been linked to the origin of the crisis, Senator Carl Levin said on Saturday.

Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs made huge profits during the financial meltdown through subprime, or higher-risk, mortgage backed securities that have been linked to the origin of the crisis, Senator Carl Levin said.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Goldman Sachs with fraud earlier this month, sending the company's share price into a tailspin.



"These emails show that, in fact, Goldman made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market," said Levin in a statement alongside the internal messages that were released ahead of a hearing next week focusing on the role of investment banks in contributing to the crisis.

The SEC accused the Wall Street investment giant of "defrauding investors by mis-stating and omitting key facts" about a product based on subprime securities.

© 2010 AFP
This story is sourced direct from an overseas news agency as an additional service to readers. Spelling follows North American usage, along with foreign currency and measurement units.

Time to redefine Malaysia’s work culture

THE world of work is changing. More people are working into their so-called retirement years.
Many wish to embark on new career paths. I know of people who have said good-bye to high-stress jobs to follow their passion.

For others who are less financially secure, work is a necessity. Perhaps they didn’t save enough for retirement or maybe their investments have soured.

Age matters

Unfortunately, older employees are not always valued in today’s fast-moving world.

In many instances, employees in their late 40’s or 50’s find it hard to find a company that understands how valuable they are.

Unless the person has special experience or credibility that is sought after for management, directorship or advisory positions, their employability value has decreased.

Age discrimination in the workplace still persists in many companies. All young employees will ultimately age and they will experience similar treatment if we do nothing to change the negative perception aged employees currently suffer. You could soon become a victim of that discrimination.

There is a need to promote ideas for employing older employees and extending the retirement age. Savvy employers must recognise that their success depends on their employees’ contributions. It is the result of team effort, with old and young employees contributing their best. Yesterday’s employer-of-choice concept needs to be refined because the shifts in age demographics that have characterised the early 21st century have brought new challenges to the workplace. For instance:

·Brain drain: Baby Boomers and Generation-X migrating to other countries contributes to the country’s lack of talented and experienced human resource;

·Responding to the marketplace: A salaried ageing workforce will lead to more consumers. Only if businesses create job opportunities – with necessary take-home pay – for aged consumers will there be sufficient cash and demand for the products and services that are designed for that demographic;

·Manpower shortages: Employers with high percentages of older employees have begun to feel the impact of lost talent as Baby Boomers near the retirement age of 55 and above. Their concerns are exacerbated by fewer employees from the younger generation who are keen to work in routine or mundane jobs with unattractive salary packages. Sometimes, it is no longer the “work hard” but the “work easy” attitude for the young ones; and

·Lack of interest: Employers in industry sectors like agriculture, manufacturing or labour-intensive industries are facing difficulties in attracting young people. They resort to hiring foreign workers instead of retirees, who are often fully trained and capable of productive work.

It takes both hands to clap

Stereotypes of older employees have made us believe ageing brings with it physical and attitude limitations (not to mention a lack of being technology savvy). Sometimes this can lead to disengagement at work with other colleagues.

But this may not be necessarily true. There are Baby Boomers with positive mental health and attitudes, superb technical and people skills that are not being given second opportunities to excel.

Unless employers accept that age is just a number and continue the employment relationship as long as the employee can make valuable contributions to the company, nothing much can be done.

While older employees can adopt new paradigm shifts in mindset to be more engaged with young colleagues, employers can consider aligning older employees’ competencies with specific business strategies that take advantage of their wealth of experience. Whether you call them “know-how”, “gut feel” or “instinct”, these attributes are often lacking in younger employees.

Multi-generational workforce

Companies in some western countries with ageing populations are now adopting a new work culture – a multi-generational workforce – and policies that provide alternatives for both young and old employees to improve their work-life balance.

These measures have proven to help overcome manpower shortages, retain employees who want to spend time with family and attract retirees to work.

These new approaches have led to a healthy work culture for employees of all ages with different life priorities and are non gender-biased.

Employers benefit from less staff turnover and salary costs, while work gets done with multi-generational engagement ideas such as:

·Flexible work options: Flexi-time or reduced-hour options like part-time positions, job shares and phased retirement (part-time work designed for older employees to ease the transition into retirement);

·Work on project or contract basis where an employee is “self-employed”;

·Jobs with different sets of responsibilities to develop new competencies, or less demanding jobs due to health or personal reasons; and

·Work from alternative locations or home to reduce commuting time and ecological footprint.

For the 21st century multi-generational work culture to be successful and rewarding for Malaysia’s business and work community, human resource managers must implement these new concepts as soon as possible.

Employment agencies or online job portals will need to specialise in flexible work option job matching.

These are small hurdles but the result is a healthy society with higher number of employed people including retirees, leading to improved economic growth for the country and consumption growth for individuals. It is at this point that we can all stand and give ourselves a self-congratulatory clap – with both hands!

BY CAROL YIP
 ·Yip is a personal financial coach and also founder and CEO of Abacus for Money.

Australia Tightens Foreign Property Ownership Rules

 Temporary residents need approval o buy property

April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Australia will tighten rules on foreign investment in real estate, and introduce penalties to enforce the changes, to ensure pressure isn’t placed on housing availability for local residents.

Temporary residents will require approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board to buy property, and will have to sell when leaving the country, Assistant Treasurer Nick Sherry said. It ensures “working families are not being priced out of their own family homes,” Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in Canberra today, a transcript from his office shows.

Treasurer Wayne Swan eased restrictions on non-residents in late 2008, making it easier for foreigners to buy property without government approval. Surging house prices, which advanced more than 10 percent last year, were among reasons the Reserve Bank of Australia boosted the benchmark interest rate this month for the fifth time in six meetings.

“Foreign purchasers can play an important role in supporting the development of new rental properties,” Aaron Gadiel, chief executive of Urban Taskforce Australia, said in an e-mailed statement. “Given that our national housing undersupply is reaching 200,000 homes, we should welcome any investment by foreign residents or businesses in boosting our supply of newly built homes.”

The lack of housing supply is the underlying issue for housing affordability, Gadiel said. Urban Taskforce Australia is an industry group representing property developers and equity financiers.

‘Foreign Speculators’

“We want to make sure that foreign speculators are not going to force up prices for Australians seeking to buy their own home, buy their first home, and we think this is the right course of action,” said Rudd, who faces an election within a year.

Australia will back up the changes with compliance, monitoring and enforcement measures including civil penalties, Assistant Treasurer Sherry said in a statement today. These include compulsory sales of property purchased in breach of the new investment regime, Sherry said.

Temporary residents will be required to start construction on undeveloped land within two years of purchase or be forced to sell, he said. The tighter rules will also apply to people on student visas, Sherry said.

Overseas Buyers

Overseas buying may have contributed to rising house prices, Sherry told reporters in Melbourne today. The measures are precautionary and won’t have a “major impact” on the housing market in Australia, Sherry said.

David Airey, president of the Real Estate Institute of Australia, is among those blaming gains in home prices on an increase in investment from overseas buyers, particularly Chinese. The institute today supported stricter rules. Prices jumped 12.7 percent in the year through February, a March 31 report by real-estate monitoring company RP Data-Rismark showed.

Overseas purchasers accounted for about 0.62 percent of transactions by LJ Hooker in 2009, David Maher, business analyst at the real estate agency, said in a telephone interview on April 15.

‘Ridiculous Claims’

“Claims that overseas buyers are pricing people out of the market are ridiculous,” Maher said. “There’d have to be a mammoth increase in the level of overseas investment to have any real effect on affordability in the Australian market. The numbers don’t show that.”

An increase in housing through the release of more land, and measures to reduce the amount of money and time it takes to develop new projects, are required to ease prices, Charles Tarbey, local chairman of Century21 Real Estate, said April 6.

The average sales price of houses and apartments its agents sold between Jan. 1 and March 29 this year was A$407,228 ($378,000), an 18 percent increase from the same period in 2009, according to Century21 data.

--With assistance from Nichola Saminather in Sydney. Editors: Jim McDonald, Ravil Shirodkar

By Ben Sharples
To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Sharples in Melbourne at bsharples@bloomberg.net

China's Global Approval Ratings Are In

For the first time since the BBC started tracking global views in 2005, the United States' influence in the world is now more positive than negative on average. Fine. So where does China stand in the grand scheme of things?

As you might expect, it depends on who's spinning the data as well as who you ask.


China Daily unequivocally says that "China's image has seen an upswing after hitting a low last year," with 41% of nations polled seeing China as having a positive influence on the world. The survey, conducted by GlobeScan/PIPA among more than 29,000 adults, asked respondents to say whether they considered the influence of different countries in the world to be mostly positive or mostly negative.

The fun starts when you look at the details, with significant year-on-year shifts in views of China within different countries.

For example, China's image improved considerably in such countries as the Philippines. While in 2009 a majority (52%) took a negative view, this has dropped 21 points. Now a majority (55%) has a positive view (up 16 points).

Japan's attitude witnessed a remarkable change, with those holding a negative view dropping from 59% to 38%, while those holding a positive view soared from 8 to 18%.

Europe continues to be the region that is the most negative toward China, but negative views have softened in Portugal (now 54%, down from 62%), and France (64%, down from 70%). In addition, positive views have increased among Germans (now 20%, up from 11%), although a large majority (71%) remains negative.

The U.S.'s attitude toward China remains roughly unchanged, with 51% holding a negative view. The report, curiously, did not give a figure for those holding a positive view.

All told, China ranks 11th in the 28 countries or regions mentioned in the poll, behind Germany, Canada, the European Union, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, the United States, South Africa and India.
You can read about poll methodology here.

By Ray Kwong
Ray Kwong is a cross border business development geek and a Forbes contributing writer.

Source: http://newscri.be/link/1082961