A new “geosocial” app called Sonar is getting the attention of Steve Peltzman, CIO of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

The app, which is loaded on his iPhone, combines location information with Twitter and Facebook networks, creating an opportunity for making connections. “It will be able to tell us who is in the museum right now,” Peltzman said.

Some might see this capability as potentially creepy, and Peltzman is aware of social media’s downside. But he sees a way to make it work, as well as a need to use the kinds of capabilities Sonar and others will offer.

Participating in social media is critical, Peltzman said. “If you want to be a business leader today, you have to be on it,” he said.

Peltzman meets regularly with social media developers, investors and authors to get a sense of future trends for social networking.

Frank Gillett, an analyst at Forrester, is also focused on the future and is forecasting some of the changes in hardware over the next five years. Both he and Peltzman made presentations at Forrester’s IT Forum here.

“Hardware innovation will continue to rile the tech ecosystems through 2016, forcing software and services strategists to adjust continuously,” Gillett said. “We are entering a period of significant turmoil.”

Here are some of their predictions:

Data center diversity will increase

The “Wintel” monoculture will see increasing pushback from application-specific servers. Oracle’s Sparc-based Exadata Storage Server is one example. “There will be a growing category of application-specific boxes,” which may or may not have x86 chips in them, Gillett said.

GPU chips, which are good for highly repetitive parallel compute tasks, will also gain traction. Gillett also expects ARM chips to enter the server market, with tiny, low-power 64-bit processors that, for the right workloads, will be more efficient than x86 systems. One company working on low-power ARM servers is Calxeda.

Big displays become the norm

Users will move to 27-in. and bigger displays and increasingly use two of them, expanding the desktop to the limits of peripheral range. But by 2016, the notion of what is a display will change as well and will include opportunistic display technologies that, for instance, project desktops on walls, Gillett predicted.

There will also be increasing use of natural user interfaces with sensors that can detect movement, interpret facial expressions and get data on the local environment.

Minority Report-type advertising enters the scene

In the 2002 movie Minority Report, as lead actor Tom Cruise walks into a mall, his retinas are scanned to identify him, which leads to a series of personalized ads. Peltzman doesn’t believe retina scans will be utilized anytime soon, but he clearly sees the rapid approach of advertising connected to users via geolocation, with more one-to-one ads based on who you that arrive via social media networks.

Peltzman said he can imagine using Sonar to send a message to someone via a social network, such as a discount on museum membership.

Illustration: Christoph NiemanSmartphones won’t necessarily rule

The idea that the smartphone will morph into an all-purpose device doesn’t ring true with Gillett. He expects to see multiple devices and displays, and big improvements in the PC. He is expecting hybrid PCs that use SSDs to speed the system, but disks as well. This blending of storage with the system will require application changes to take advantage of it, he said.

Social media’s relationship to the bottom line comes into focus

MoMA has made social media a key IT direction and has a Web page devoted to all of its networking links, including a Flickr group for people to upload photos they have taken at the museum.

It has more than 750,000 fans on Facebook and 582,000 followers on Twitter.

To help manage its social networking, the museum’s IT and marketing departments share an employee who reports to both.

But Peltzman said it isn’t easy to show how social networking generates money. Using social media for direct funding efforts can undermine it, he argues.

That also makes it difficult to tell the business exactly how much value is delivered by social media. But he believes that in time, analytical tools will arrive that can show how social media does contribute.

Patrick Thibodeau covers SaaS and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @DCgov or subscribe to Patrick’s RSS feed. His e-mail address is pthibodeau@computerworld.com.

For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld. Story copyright © 2011 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved.

Years ago I met with an NFC technology company that promised me that, someday, NFC chips would be in phones and we’d be paying with them instead of using old-fashioned credit cards. Back then, France already had NFC-enabled phones. Unfortunately, it took years for the technology to reach U.S. phones and, apparently, Google to figure out how to make a system that could replace not one, but potentially all the credit cards (and rewards cards) in your wallet.

Google’s announcement today was as everyone expected an official unveiling of its NFC-based Google Wallet payment system. The addition of Google Offers was somewhat less expected and probably not exactly welcomed by daily-deal competitors Groupon and LivingSocial.

The Internet giant appears to have thought of everything. This in-phone system will not only work with a select set of Citibank MasterCard credit cards, but with the use of the built-in, prepaid Google card, it’ll let you add funds from virtually any credit card (but you’ll use the Google Card to pay). Paying with an NFC-enabled phone (which Google optimistically says will account for 15% of the mobile phones on the market by the summer) is pretty much like paying with any of the tap-and-go credit cards and fobs you’ve used in the past.

When I looked at NFC years ago and in most of the years since, the biggest question has always been security. By definition, NFC or “Near Field Communication” only works if you are millimeters away from the corresponding transceiver. Still, many consumers I’ve spoken to have expressed concern about the ability of hackers to brush by you and either charge on your cards or pick up your credit card info.

During the Google Wallet rollout, Google made clear that nothing is more important to them than the security of this new commerce ecosystem. Well, except for openness. That’s right; this is an open, free system. Now, Open and Secure seems like a perfect oxymoron, but Google insisted that it’ll make sure it’s “open as possible as long as we do not sacrifice choice or security.” Fair enough. I do think that Google stressed “open” as a way to attract more partners beyond the formidable likes of Citibank, MasterCard, Subway and Walgreens. On the other hand, will credit card competitors and currently not-a-partner Visa see it the same way? Or perhaps we’ll be seeing another mobile payment system from Visa and, maybe, Microsoft or, much more likely Apple.

What if during the upcoming Apple World Wide Developer Conference, Apple’s Steve Jobs stands on stage with an iPhone 4s and announces integrated NFC support and welcomes its new commerce partner Visa? What happens to Google’s open plan then? Nothing really, but we will end up with competing mobile phone payment, ecommerce and rewards plans.

This somehow seems more than likely.

Getting back to what Google unveiled here, I was impressed with its security plans, which includes a PIN number for the Wallet. Google, though, answered the concern about someone slurping your NFC data by turning off the NFC chip when the phone’s screen is dark (as it often is when it’s in your pocket) and the addition of a smart card reader chip that talks to the trusted partner First Data, the company that actually processes the transaction data. That chip will self-destruct if someone tries to hack or crack it. Sounds pretty good.

What Google didn’t say is which phones beyond Sprint’s Nexus S 4G, will have the combination of these two chips. Speaking of Sprint, it is interesting that with the heavy focus on open, Google doesn’t have more carrier support for its Wallet. That’s probably because the other three major U.S. carriers have their own plans for NFC payments in the form of Isis, but that system won’t be rolled out until next year. Sprint promises to work with Android partners Samsung, HTC and others to integrate the chips, but without Verizon and AT&T (two favored Apple partners), one wonders how many NFC- and Google Wallet-enabled handsets will actually arrive.

Google Wallet is free to users and partners, but if you give Google permission, it will use your location and transaction data to deliver you geo-specific offers. I assume Google will make money on those offers in much the same way they do ads. With all the recent issues Google has had with privacy concerns, I’m dubious as to why Google believes any consumer would trust Google with that information (though they’ve trusted credit card companies with it for decades).

For now, the Google Wallet field tests and Offers is only in New York and San Francisco. There are thousands and thousands of merchants ready to accept touch payments, but without the phones, Google Wallet will likely be sampled by a relative few.

The reality is that Google’s plan for the future on mobile commerce, rewards systems and offers, is the right one, but my bet is it will not be the only one and that, in and of itself, could slow down the adoption of your phone as your Wallet. That would be a shame, because I think I’m ready to start carrying around something like a Google Wallet.

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By Daniel Ionescu, PCWorld    May 25, 2011 8:42 AM

Over the last several years, two equipment-heavy stereotypes have formed out of the ether and the Internet: the DIYer and the geek. The stereotypical geek comes armed with soldering irons, sci-fi shows on DVD, and encyclopedic knowledge of multiple branches of science, while DIY enthusiasts carry glue guns, a lot of yarn, and books about reinventing t-shirts. They may seem diametrically opposed, but closer examination of the two reveals an overlap that contains both crafty geekery and deeply nerdy art.

Inspired by Geek Canon

[Photo: 'Angry Angel' on Flickr]

Amigurumi is a popular subset of the fiber arts, wherein cute things (usually animals, but sometimes inanimate objects) are rendered in knitting or crochet and stuffed. The amigurumi world didn’t know what it was missing until this 3.5-inch Boba Fett came along, created by Flickr user Angry Angel/Etsy shop owner Lucy Ravenscar. She sells crochet patterns for a wide variety of Star Wars denizens, including Darth Vader, C-3PO, and ewoks (it seems she specializes in Wicket).

My Little Pony, in addition to entertaining millions of five-year-old girls (and, with the Lauren Faust cartoon reboot, a growing contingent of 18-to-35-year-old guys), also provides many artists with adorable pony-shaped canvases ripe for customization. Inspired by Battlestar Galactica, DeviantArt user Spippo created My Little Starbuck.

Colorwork in knitting stereotypically takes the form of snowflakes, Nordic stars, and simple geometric shapes. A growing contingent of geeky knitters, however, would rather their blankets and sweaters be emblazoned with more current–or time-traveling–fare. This TARDIS blanket, made by Carrie Fritsche, is both available as a free pattern and is warmer on the inside.

The Internet Comes to Life

[Image: Allie Brosh]

Allie Brosh of hyperboleandahalf enthralled the grammar sticklers of the Internet with her April 2010 post on the habits and characteristics of the alot, a creature that resembles a mix between a bear, a yak, and a pug. When faced with a phrase containing the grammatical error “alot”, Allie re-imagines the sentence as could be applied to a big furry squash-faced animal.

The artists and crafters of the Internet went wild, up to the making of a (sadly, infrequently-updated) website ilikethatalot.com, which collects various versions of the grammar animal. This awesome watercolor, created by redditor MoonMonstar, received enthusiastic support from Allie, who happens to be a redditor herself.

In the three-dimensional realm of the crafting world, Alix Banegas of arixystix creations rendered the alot in plush. Then, true to the conventions of the Internet, she posed him with her cat.

[Photo: Alix Banegas]

Geeky Formulation

Many craft forms are surprisingly digital in execution, which means much of their planning is facilitated by judicious applications of graph paper. Knitting and quilting patterns often resemble a very geometric form of color-by-numbers. The pattern for this Fiery Phoenix quilt, created by instructables user, was created using Microsoft Excel, with support from MATLAB to make sure the flame effect was properly randomized.

Knitting machines are catching on in installation art: the clock that knits a scarf makes a point about creative potential, while a wind-powered model allows Mother Nature to express her crafty side. The Interactive Knitting Machine (above) displayed at Dev Camp 2010, however, takes the robot-knitter to the next level. Powered by viewers’ breaths, the machine dyes yarn in a pattern determined by the strength of the blow and the specific straw blown into, and then knits the yarn into a collaboratively-knitted piece with a colorful signature from each of many, many co-creators.

The stage curtain at the Oslo Opera House may look like it’s been Photoshopped, but it’s actually a piece of textile art made by Pae White called “Metafoil”, is as real as its component cotton, wool, and polyester fibers. Created by a computer-controlled loom from a scanned image of crumpled aluminum foil, the enormous curtain knocks viewers off balance, reminding them not to take superficial images for granted and always take a closer look.

Nerds the world over have succumbed to the soothing radiance of UV-reactive substances of all varieties. But while fluorescent paints and dyes make wearable glow possible, they also use a great deal of water, chemicals, and labor to obtain results. A new development by the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering in Singapore could render the conventional dye process obsolete: dyes, colorants and other materials, when fed to silkworms in the last four days of the larval stage, become integrated into the worms’ silk cocoons.

The technique could potentially be used to introduce many other compounds and properties into silk, creating a wide variety of functional fabrics. So it’s not just about the surprising stuffed toys or using tech to generate textiles – that intersection between craft and geek leads to fascinating applications of both art and science.

How have you applied non-standard nerd knowledge to your geeky endeavors? Answer in the comments!

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By Mike Keller, PCWorld    May 24, 2011 3:46 PM

The Xfinity app, version 1.5.1, also expands available video content through Comcast’s “TV Everywhere” network, lets users filter their content by genre and network, and gives users mobile access to the same TV channel lineup they’d find in their home TVs.

Apple iPhone, iPod, and iPad users can download the update for free at the Apple App Store. Meanwhile subscribers who own a Mac can also stream movies and TV shows at the Xfinity TV website.

“Whether our customers are relaxing around the house or traveling around the country, we’re bringing them a huge selection of great content at their fingertips, all for free,” said Matt Strauss, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Comcast Interactive Media, in a statement. “Our development team will continue to add even more choices and personalized options to the Xfinity TV app, giving our customers access to the entertainment they want, where and when they want it.”

This is Comcast’s fourth update of the iOS app since it launched in November. Since then the app has reached more than two million downloads, the company said in a statement.

Comcast released a major update to its iOS app in February that let users stream on-demand content, which the Android version still lacks. Since February, Comcast said it has doubled the amount of content available for streaming to nearly 6,000 hours, by partnering with 25 more publishers.

Apart from mobile, on-demand streaming, Comcast’s Xfinity TV app works as a remote control that lets users browse and schedule videos remotely, as well as program and manage multiple DVRs.

“We have some Windows Mango phones,” Chou told Reuters in an interview at the e-G8 summit in France. “We are very committed to Windows phone products.”

HTC was one of the launch partners for Windows Phone 7 last October, and currently has three devices out in the market, theHTC Arrive, HTC HD7 and HTC Surround. Like other WP7 devices, all three ran into some delays when Microsoft tried updating devices to ‘NoDo.’ HTC’s fourth WP7 device, the HTC Trophy (pictured), hits Verizon stores on Thursday.

At the “Mango” launch on Tuesday, Microsoft also announced hardware commitments from Samsung, LG, Acer, Fujitsu, ZTE, and “especially Nokia,” according to mobile communications president Andy Lees.

In February, after Nokia announced its partnership with Microsoft HTC spokesman Keith Nowak said the partnership would not affect HTC’s commitment to Windows Phone.

“Having Nokia join into the Windows Phone ecosystem validates our decision to commit to the platform,” Nowak said.

Athough HTC has a longstanding partnership with Microsoft, its mobile fortunes come from its numerous Android devices. Earlier this month IDC reported that HTC sold nearly 10 million devices in the first quarter, its best performance ever, capturing 8.9 percent of the market.

In late 2009, before the WP7 operating system rejuvenated Microsoft’s slagging mobile strategy, Chou let slip his frustration about Windows Mobile. “Windows Mobile innovation has been a little slow and interest in Windows Mobile phones has been declining,” he told Chinese publication Alibaba News. The next month he backpedaled, calling Microsoft its “stronger partner.”

For more on “Mango,” see Windows Phone Mango Adds 500 New Features.

Editor’s note: This story corrects an earlier version. HTC has launched three, not two, WP7 phones: Arrive, HD7, and Surround.

[Photo: Pop + Shorty]

(And a special thanks to those who contributed ideas via our Facebook page!)

A Geek Should Own…

Flash Drives: Any self-respecting geek should have some form of portable drive. And not just one or two–you should have an entire collection of them. You should know then how to partition your flash drive properly. Your flash drives should contain a collection of system utilities and perhaps a Linux installation or two (hat tip to Joe S. on our Facebok page for the tip!).

My box o’wires. Yours needn’t be this messy!Cables-Lots of Cables: Having a box of miscellaneous cables is great. It isn’t only useful for finding a spare in case a cable goes missing, but you’ll also have cables for just about any unforeseen circumstance. You’ll probably find the box will be mainly made up of Ethernet cables, but this is good for wiring up your whole house.

Don’t forget to put a cable in your bag (be it a USB or a specific charger cable) just in case your latest cool gadget, laptop, or otherwise runs out of juice, or needs hooking up to a PC.

A Home-built PC: Nothing shouts Geek cred like a homemade computer. Not only are you proving how well you can navigate yourself around a PC, but it also means you got to pick what went inside–faster RAM, big memory, impressive graphics and maybe more than one monitor are just a few examples of how cool a geeky homebuild is. You should have just about every screwdriver imaginable, as well as an anti-static wrist-strap set (hat tip to Simon on our Facebook page for the tip!).

A Soldering Iron: Because…well, why not? You never know when you’ll have to hack together some hardware. (Hat tip to Joe S. on our Facebok page for the tip!)

Geek Tech blogger Chris Brandrick modelling a geeky Threadless tee.A Geeky Tee (Or Two. Or Twenty.): Chances are, you’ll wear your geekiness on your sleeve–literally–with a geeky tee. A geek slogan or motif or something to do with geek culture are all legitimate and potentially cool. If you’re looking for a cool geeky tee, there are plenty of places online to find good ones: Pop + Shorty has a couple of sweet t-shirts aimed at the fashion conscious geek, and Threadless occasionally sells some great geek-friendly designs too.

And of course, it never hurts to add some geeky buttons. If you’re a Web designer, you might appreciate this one (pictured at top).

Should Know

How to Code: All geeks should have even a basic degree of coding knowledge. Depending on what coding you find most interesting–be it computer programming or Web design–you should be able to lay down the basics from memory. For instance, if HTML is your thing, you really ought to know your img src from your a href. If you know the HTML basics–plus a little about CSS and how it works–you get bonus points.

Keyboard shortcuts: Knowing your way around the keyboard is pretty useful, especially if the time comes when your mouse stops working and you need to stop what you are doing and shut down (and we have all had those kinds of mouse issues). Plus, keyboard shortcuts are mega useful in programs such as Photoshop–they save a ton of time.

On the desktop, the best of you will know how to rotate screen (and know that not all computers can do this, as it depends on the graphics card), bypass the recycle bin, run the command prompt as an administrator, or create your own shortcuts. Then there are all the neat shortcuts available to a savvy time-saver in web browsers too (here’s a good one for mainly IE users: type a word into the address bar, then press CTRL and enter).

Any other ideas and suggestions? Leave a comment!

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On Wednesday Verizon Wireless announced that Droid X users would start receiving the update on Friday, May 27.

According to Verizon, enhancements that come with the update include a new user interface with new colors, a download manager for your apps and attachments, faster access to the numeric keyboard mode, and autosuggestions to group your contacts faster.

Update instructions are posted here. You can either download it manually, which is useful when you’re roaming, or wait for the over-the-air update.

This means that a Motorola employee wasn’t fibbing on Monday when he told a forum of disgruntled Droid users, all still running Android 2.2 Froyo, that their Gingerbread updates were on the way. He specified that Droid X was scheduled to receive the update by “the end of the second quarter of the year,” (i.e. June), barring Verizon’s approval. Other Droid phones are scheduled to receive the update by the end of the third quarter, he said.

Last year, Motorola launched a number of Droid phones through Verizon Wireless, including the Droid X in June, the Droid 2 in August, and the Droid 2 Global and Droid Pro in November. All currently run Android 2.2.

Google’s newest available Android OS build, Android 2.3 Gingerbread, debuted in December on the Samsung Nexus S smartphone. So understandably Motorola Droid users, like numerous other Android device holders, have been wondering when they are getting some Gingerbread. Oddly, even Motorola’s newly-launched Droid X2 device comes with Froyo.

Earlier this month Google announced that the next OS version, Android 3.0, or ‘Ice Cream Sandwich,’ will come out in the fourth quarter. But so far handset manufacturers and carriers have not given Android users much confidence that they will receive their OS updates in a timely manner.

According to Google, by the end of April only 4.3 percent of Android users were using six-month-old Android 2.3 and above.

For more on Android fragmentation, see “Android Fragmentation: FUD and Facts.”