High Technology : Buzz

The Tribune Company -- owner of, among other properties, the Baltimore Sun -- is exploring the idea of creating its own tablet computing device as a way to distribute content.

From the source:

The Tribune Company could be getting into the tablet game. The Chicago-based media company, which owns papers like the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, and the Los Angeles Times as well as 23 TV stations, is reportedly working on a tablet that it will market to subscribers, CNN reports.

Citing "people briefed on the plans," CNN says the tablet will run on a "modified version" of the Android platform, with software specific to the reader's paper of choice. CNN says it spoke with "more than half a dozen current and former Tribune employees" who said the Tribune company will offer the tablet for free or at a heavily reduced price to subscribers.


Read the full story.

Fresh on the heels of the conclusion of the NewsTrust project, the Baltimore City Paper has published an in-depth feature surveying Baltimore's online news landscape.

From the source:

Right now, Baltimore has around eight steady sources of online news, far more than that depending on how you broaden the definition. Some are corporately fed, such as North Baltimore Patch, Charm City Current, Bmore Media, or Baltimore Examiner, and some are independent, such as the Baltimore Brew and Investigative Voice.

For six months, Baltimore was fortunate enough to have an organization here dedicated solely to analyzing the city's journalistic output, NewsTrust Baltimore (the local pilot project of the larger NewsTrust organization). It was a bit like Yelp crossed with the Columbia Journalism Review. The project ceased operations on July 31 (it was always intended as a six-month pilot), leaving behind a collection of reports, one of which is a final comprehensive analysis of sorts. It eventually concludes, "The local news scene is in a state of flux with more than a little creative chaos. But patterns are emerging. As news startups and impassioned individuals become more rigorous and as traditional news organizations become more open and responsive to the public, there is a growing opportunity for collaboration across the local journalistic community."

Read the whole feature here.

Further reading: Bmore's February, 2011 feature on emerging news sites.

IBM wants to help cities better use technology. And Baltimore is on its radar.

The company will spend $50 million over the next three years on IT grants that will benefit cities like Austin, Rio de Janeioro, and Baltimore, writes the Associated Press in Business Week.

You can read the rest of the story here.

It's part of an IBM program called Smarter Cities that aims to help cities use technology to better manage their resources.

It won't work exactly like Gene Roddenberry envisioned on Star Trek, but teleportation will likely be a reality one day. Pioneering research being conducted at the University of Maryland's Joint Quantum Institute, among others, on quantum entanglement could lead to the ability to instantly transport an item from one end of the galaxy to another.

Here's an excerpt:

"According to the quantum theory, everything vibrates," theoretical physicist Michio Kaku tells NPR's Guy Raz. Kaku is a frequent guest on the Science and Discovery channels. "When two electrons are placed close together, they vibrate in unison. When you separate them, that's when all the fireworks start."

This is where quantum entanglement � sometimes described as "teleportation" � begins. "An invisible umbilical cord emerges connecting these two electrons. And you can separate them by as much as a galaxy if you want. Then, if you vibrate one of them, somehow on the other end of the galaxy the other electron knows that its partner is being jiggled."

This process happens even faster than the speed of light, physicists say."

Listen to or read the entire article here.