The Pop Scene: Laptops and Larynxes .

With California's Coachella Festival done with its first weekend of performances, Sweden's Refused—one of two iconic late-'90s hard-core punk bands that reformed to play at the festival—makes its way to New York (no word on when the other band, At the Drive-In, might appear). Formed back in 1991 in the northern university town of Umeå, Refused reached its creative pinnacle with 1998's frantic and eclectic swansong, "The Shape of Punk to Come." Alas, the band imploded mere months after its release, due in part to critical indifference. It was only posthumously that Refused's legacy grew in sound and influence. Frontman Dennis Lyxzén went on to launch the popular garage band the (International) Noise Conspiracy. But with the recent rumors of Refused's reunion now confirmed, "The Shape of Punk to Come" can be actualized at ear-bleeding volume some 14 years on.

Monolake

The Bunker @ Warsaw
261 Driggs Ave., Brooklyn, (718) 387-0505
Friday
Originally a duo comprising Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles, Berlin-based Monolake remains one of the most important acts in modern electronic music, and not just because of its ground-breaking minimal techno work in the 1990s and early '00s. In 1999 the two founded Ableton, the premiere music-software company, as ubiquitous for ProTools for most DJs and producers. Now Monolake is solely under the purview of Mr. Henke, who released a comeback record in 2010, then followed it with this year's "Ghosts." The new album strikes a balance between the lush soundscapes and finely attuned sonic details of Monolake's previous work with a new emphasis on buzzing and crackling dubstep-deep beats. Mr. Henke makes a rare stateside appearance as part of this week's adventurous Unsound Festival.

Biosphere & Lustmord: 'Trinity'

West Park Presbyterian Church
165 W. 86th St., (212) 362-4890
Saturday
Biosphere is the working name of the Norwegian sound artist and electronic-music producer Geir Jenssen. His soundwork started in the realms of acid house and new beat, then drifted into ambient techno with his 1997 album "Substrata," a landmark of the form. Similarly, British composer Lustmord (real name Brian Williams) worked in film and video-game soundtracks before becoming a pioneer of the "dark ambient" sound. Together, the two composers have been commissioned for a new work by Poland's Unsound Festival (in the city this week). On Saturday they'll present the world premiere of "Trinity," for which they took field recordings around the nuclear testing sites of the Los Alamos laboratories and wove them into a coherent piece.

Getty Images

Lockett Pundt of Lotus Plaza.

Lotus Plaza

Glasslands Gallery
289 Kent Ave., Brooklyn, (718) 599-1450
Thursday
the Atlanta-based rock band Deerhunter, guitarist Lockett Pundt serves as the introverted yin to frontman Bradford Cox's extroverted yang. His contributions to the band's exemplary 2010 album, "Halcyon Digest," were two of its highlights. The second full-length from Mr. Pundt's other band, Lotus Plaza, continues that trend with the recently released "Spooky Action at a Distance." While taking a phrase of modern physics as its title, the music itself is far more immediate. Mr. Pundt's songwriting and guitar playing are the perfect amalgam of jangle (think REM and Johnny Marr's work with the Smiths) and effects-pedal haze. Concise verse-chorus-verse structures soon open up into more expansive fields, as on the six-minute "Jet Out of the Tundra." Thursday at Glasslands, Lotus Plaza opens up for labelmates Disappears.

Washed Out

Music Hall of Williamsburg
66 N. Sixth St., Brooklyn, (718) 486-5400
Monday
Like many of his generation, Ernest Greene was unable to find work after college, so he retreated home and began making hazy, loping music on his laptop. In one stroke of genius, he slowed down a section of a cheesy Italo disco song from the '80s, repurposing it for a dreamy song called "Feel It All Around." It quickly spread from his bedroom to Bedford Avenue boutiques to the theme song for sketch-comedy show "Portlandia." For his full-length debut, last year's well-received "Within and Without," Mr. Greene teamed with Gnarls Barkley producer Ben Allen for a set of songs that flowed from mellow electronica to head-nodding trip-hop. A year on, it remains an idyllic soundtrack for spring and impending summer.
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Florida tight end A.C. Leonard pleads no contest to misdemeanor battery

GAINESVILLE — Florida tight end A.C. Leonard closed his court case by pleading no contest to a misdemeanor count of battery and accepting six months of probation.
Leonard also is required to pay $628 in court costs, get help for anger management and have no contact with the victim.
"It's good for him to resolve the case so he can move on with his life and be a student-athlete at the University of Florida," said Huntley Johnson, his attorney. "He has a lot to work on and I'm optimistic that he will."
Leonard was arrested Feb. 15 after his 21-year-old girlfriend told police he shoved her and dragged her through his apartment by her hair and feet.
Florida coach Will Muschamp immediately suspended him from team activities, though he was still allowed to use the facilities and be on the field for UF's Pro Day.
Muschamp reinstated Leonard to practice March 26, but has not decided whether he can play in Saturday's spring game or what his status is for the upcoming season.
"He still has a lot of things to work through before his status for the fall is addressed," Muschamp said.
Leonard will be a sophomore this fall and would be expected to play a significant role if Muschamp lets him play. He played nine games last year, including four starts, and had 99 yards on eight catches.
He is currently in counseling for his anger.
"He will benefit from that," Johnson said. "I think he'll deal with anger much better in the future."
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O2Micro Battery Status Indication Methodology Issued Patent

GEORGE TOWN, Grand Cayman, Apr 4, 2012 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- O2Micro(R) International Limited /quotes/zigman/98846/quotes/nls/oiim OIIM +0.36% was issued 19 claims under United States patent number 8,044,815 for its Battery Status Indication Methodology.
This invention provides Dell 6Y270 battery status using LEDs in a cost effective manner. Battery status, which is battery charging status or battery state-of-charge, alerts the end user to take action before the battery depletes and the system shuts down.
Laszlo Lipcsei, vice president at O2Micro, said, "This patented methodology offers a convenient, reliable way to indicate the battery status in portable electronic devices."
About O2Micro
Founded in April 1995, O2Micro develops and markets innovative power management and e-commerce components for the Computer, Consumer, Industrial, and Communications markets. Products include Intelligent Lighting, LENOVO IdeaPad Z360 Laptop AC Adapter  Battery Management, and Power Management.
O2Micro International maintains an extensive portfolio of intellectual property with 18,727 patent claims granted, and over 20,000 more pending. The company maintains offices worldwide. Additional company and product information can be found on the company website at www.o2micro.com .
O2Micro, the O2Micro logo, and combinations thereof are registered trademarks of O2Micro. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
The O2Micro International Limited logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=6567
Statements made in this release that are not historical, including statements regarding O2Micro's or management's intentions, hopes, beliefs, expectations, representations, projections, plans or predictions of the future, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in these statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include risks and uncertainties such as reduced demand for products of electronic equipment manufacturers which include O2Micro's products due to adverse economic conditions in general or specifically affecting O2Micro's markets, technical difficulties and delays in the developments process, and errors in the products. You are also referred to the Form F-1 in connection with the company's initial public offering in August 2000, Form F-3 in connection with the company's public offering in November 2001, and the annual reports on Form 20-F, which identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. The company assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
This news release was distributed by GlobeNewswire, www.globenewswire.com
SOURCE: O2Micro International Limited

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BMW Recalls Nearly 1.3 Million Vehicles Worldwide for Battery-Cable Flaw

BMW announced Monday that it would recall about 1.3 million 5 Series and 6 Series vehicles worldwide to fix a potential hazard involving a faulty battery-cable connection in the cars’ trunks.
About 367,000 cars are affected by the recall in the United States, according to Thomas Plucinsky, a BMW spokesman. In a document dated and sent March 23 to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, BMW noted that more than 300,000 of the affected vehicles were 5 Series sedans from the 2004-10 model years. Other vehicles named in the action were 5 Series wagons, as well as 6 Series coupes and convertibles, also from the 2004-10 model years.
In its letter to the safety agency, BMW said that a bolt connection securing the battery cables could come loose, causing increased electric resistance and an overheated cable connection. Possible results are a malfunctioning electrical system and failure to start. In extreme situations, this could lead to melted insulation and a smoldering trunk mat.
“The worst-case scenario is a fire,” Mr. Plucinsky said. “We are aware of one fire in the United States.” No injuries or accidents have been reported as a result of the problem, BMW said.
The company announced it would contact owners of affected cars by mail in April to bring their cars in to local dealers. The fix, which Mr. Plucinsky said would take half an hour, would include securing the cable if necessary, adding protective grease and replacing the plastic battery cable cover.
As of Monday afternoon, N.H.T.S.A. had not uploaded notice of the recall to its Web site.
next blog: Ad-supported apps leave smartphones in high-power states, drain batteries

Ad-supported apps leave smartphones in high-power states, drain batteries

Apps can stick hardware into a high-power-usage state even when they're not in use, resulting in excess power use.

If you find your phone is often low on ACER Aspire 4736Z Battery, the free apps you use may be to blame, according to a new study. Using a monitoring tool they developed, the authors of the study—two researchers from Purdue University and another from Microsoft—found that serving ads and collecting data inside an app results in excessive use of the hardware components inside a smartphone. These parts of free apps will turn on components like the 3G chip or GPS and cause them to stay on well after an information transaction has been completed, resulting in unnecessary power loss.
Most smartphones can show a basic breakdown of which resources are consuming the ACER Aspire 5515-5879 Battery life (display, Wi-Fi, individual apps, etc.), but the way in which individual apps use that power is more opaque. To unpack the details at this level of power consumption, three researchers developed a tool called "eprof," a "fine-grained energy profiler." Eprof can track power used at the level of individual threads as well as routines running in an app, and can also track what the authors call "asynchronous power behavior."
Tracking an individual piece of software's activity—when processes stop and start, for instance—is contained, so it's easy to say how much power they use in that regard. But the authors found that tracking the hardware was more subtle, as many apps seem to stir hardware into action without turning it off right away, or ever. For example, the authors note the Wi-Fi and 3G chips may start up to communicate an app's data, and then remain in a high-power state even after the app has closed.
Likewise, smartphone OSes also include "wakelock APIs," which allow apps to prevent different pieces of hardware from sleeping, such as an app that wakes the CPU to check for new messages or a video application that stops the screen from sleeping while playing a movie. Items like the camera and GPS presented a similar problem: the researchers found that apps that use these devices start them up and put them in a high power-consuming state, and the hardware will sometimes continue this way until explicitly turned off by another service.
All of these actions mean power consumption triggered by one app can extend beyond when an app is finished using a piece of hardware and overlap into another, making good power accounting tricky (the authors note that this kind of Aspire 5738 Laptop Battery consumption, known as "tail energy," is being studied to reduce its consumption). For the purposes of this study, the authors account for the energy use triggered by an app, even if it extends beyond the period of app use.
Using eprof to monitor app power use on an HTC Passion running Android 2.3, the researchers made a few discoveries. In a study of the free version of Angry Birds, the authors found that the third-party ad generator and data aggregator Flurry consumes 45 percent of the app's energy tracking the user's location and serving ads to the app. But of that 45 percent, uploading the information and downloading the ads over 3G was only a 2KB transaction, taking 1 percent of the app's energy.
After the data exchange, the researchers found that the 3G chip continued to eat up energy, and it consumed another 24 percent of the total. Meanwhile, the core CPU-intensive thread that actually runs the program consumed 18 percent. Once the app was closed, a thread called HeapWorker performed cleanup and closed a socket, pushing the 3G chip into action and creating another tail that used 28 percent of the total energy.
The app Free Chess showed similar energy use excesses. Fifty percent of the app's energy went to running the third-party ad creator AdWhirl, and of that 50 percent, around 5 percent was used to download and render the ads; the rest was tail energy used by the 3G chip.
In total, 80 percent of the energy Angry Birds used went to I/O components (3G and GPS), and 77 percent of Free Chess's did. Others, like the New York Times app (67 percent) and MapQuest (72 percent) used somewhat less on components that had been triggered into a high power state by a short task, but the difference these states make are significant.
One simple lesson here is that if you find yourself drinking your ACER Aspire 5920G Laptop Battery dry by 7pm every day, springing for the paid versions of apps that don't need to use extra energy to serve you ads could help. The difference could be significant, depending on how much time you spend on ad-supported apps or, to a lesser extent, ones that perform frequent exchanges with GPS and data collection services like Flurry.
More importantly, there is some optimization to be done on the part of app creators. We can fault smartphones for skimping on ACER Extensa 4630Z battery size, but all the milliamp-hours in the world can only do so much good when apps use two to three times as much energy to collect data and serve ads as to run the actual program, all because these services amp up hardware components to high power states and let them stick there for too long. The authors suggest that eprof could be combined with static analysis to optimize energy use, as well as with smartphone OS schedulers to make them more aware of when components are using energy, but not actually in use.

Asus Eee PC 1025C Flare

The good: The Asus Eee PC 1025C Flare has amazing battery life, and is probably the least expensive Windows 7 laptop you'll find.
The bad: Just about everything else is substandard. A machine like this was acceptable a few years ago, but it just doesn't cut it in the post-iPad world.
The bottom line: Asus brought Netbooks into the world, and with the last-gasp Eee PC 1025C Flare, it looks like it's going to take them out as well.

Review: Once upon a time, cheap, tiny laptops ruled the land, acting as travel, backup, and kids' computers to millions, and completely upending what consumers expected to pay for a PC. Those laptops were called Netbooks, and starting in 2007 they exploded out of the gate, first from Asus, then Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and others. Every laptop maker (save Apple) had to launch one of these $300 machines, and they were a real democratizing force in making basic computing and online access available to nearly everyone.
But, like many hot trends, the Netbook was oversold. The big PC makers struggled to ... Expand full review

Once upon a time, cheap, tiny laptops ruled the land, acting as travel, backup, and kids' computers to millions, and completely upending what consumers expected to pay for a PC. Those laptops were called Netbooks, and starting in 2007 they exploded out of the gate, first from Asus, then Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and others. Every laptop maker (save Apple) had to launch one of these $300 machines, and they were a real democratizing force in making basic computing and online access available to nearly everyone.
But, like many hot trends, the Netbook was oversold. The big PC makers struggled to differentiate their mostly identical systems from each other--which is hard to do when no one expects to pay more than $299. Even worse, the stock combination of an Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, and a 250GB hard drive was fine for very simple tasks, as long as one understood the limitations of the hardware. But too many Netbooks were pitched as replacements for full-price laptops, and consumers ended up disappointed by sluggish performance and tiny keyboards.
The final nail in the Netbook coffin was Apple's iPad, which for $499 did many of the things people wanted their Netbooks for--e-mail, Web surfing, playing videos, gaming--better than a Atom-powered laptop. Since then, we've seen a precipitous decline in the number of Netbooks released, with most companies cutting way down on available models or dropping them altogether.
The last gasp for Netbooks may be the Asus Eee PC 1025C Flare. Asus practically invented the Netbook market, so it's fitting that the company provide the only new Netbook we've seen in more than six months. The most notable change from Netbooks of the past is the use of the new 1.6GHz Intel Atom N2600 dual-core processor, but otherwise it has familiar specs: 1GB of RAM and a slightly bigger 320GB hard drive, for the standard Netbook starting price of $299.
With slightly more expensive (but much more practical) 11-inch ultraportables using Intel's Core i3 or AMD E-450 CPU, and the continued success of the Apple iPad, it's hard to see where a Netbook fits in these days. Yes, the EE PC 1025C's performance may be marginally better than that of some past Netbooks, and the laptop battery life is excellent (because this is such a low-power system). But the era of the $299 Netbook has passed, and even this decent example of the form is unlikely to bring it back, especially as it looks as if zero thought has gone into the physical design of these systems over the past couple of years.

Price as reviewed	$299
Processor	1.6GHz Intel Atom N2600
Memory	1GB, 1,333MHz DDR3
Hard drive	320GB 5,400rpm
Chipset	Intel NM10
Graphics	Intel GMA 3600
Operating system	Windows 7 Starter
Dimensions (WD)	10.3x7 inches
Height	0.8 inch to 1.4 inches
Screen size (diagonal)	10.1 inches
System weight / Weight with AC adapter	2.5 pounds / 2.9 pounds
Category	Netbook

If the Asus Eee PC 1025C Flare looks familiar, it's because it has the same general shape and styling as most of the Eee PC systems we've reviewed over the last few years. The almost entirely plastic body tapers towards the front, and is propped up in the back by a big six-cell battery.
In previous years, this would have been a very slim laptop. But today, hitting nearly 1.5 inches means you're big and bloated. To be fair, low-cost Netbooks have never been lookers, but we've seen other budget laptops update their styling over the years. At least this is still a lightweight laptop--it's about half a pound less than Dell's XPS 13 ultrabook, for example.
The keyboard and touch pad will be familiar to anyone who has picked up a Netbook before. The Eee PC 1025C's flat-topped, island-style keys look like the keys you'd find on nearly any current laptop, just slightly shrunk down. The difference between the keyboard on a 10.1-inch laptop and on an 11.6-inch laptop is pretty significant, and typing on the Eee PC is closer to typing on an iPad--doable, but not an optimal experience. Fortunately, the Enter, Backspace, left Shift, and Tab keys are big enough to hit easily, but the right Shift key and arrow keys are smaller than usual.
The touch pad is a decent size, given the overall small size of the system, and the sensitivity was cranked up enough by default to get from one end of the screen to the other in a single swipe. Multitouch gestures are, not surprisingly, weak, with a simple two-finger scroll being frustratingly laggy. The touch pad doesn't have a special drag-free surface; instead it's made of the same plastic as the rest of the chassis, and demarcated by a slight indentation in the wrist rest. A single, thin rocker bar below the pad is used for both a right and left button click.
The standard resolution for even the least expensive laptops today is generally 1,366x768 pixels. In that sense, the Eee PC 1025C Flare is a bit of throwback, using the same 1,024x600-pixel screen seen on dozens of Netbooks up through early 2011. It's fine for casual Web browsing and e-mail, but many sites are designed to be read on at least a 13x7-inch display, so excessive scrolling may be required. That said, the matte finish on the screen was welcome. Horizontal off-axis viewing was surprisingly good, while vertical off-axis viewing was terrible.

	Asus Eee PC 1025C Flare	Average for category [Netbook]
Video	VGA plus HDMI	VGA
Audio	Stereo speakers, combo headphone/microphone jack	Stereo speakers, headphone/microphone jacks
Data	3 USB 2.0, SD card reader	3 USB 2.0, SD card reader
Networking	Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi	Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Optical drive	None	None

Netbooks offer few surprises in terms of ports and connections, and the only difference between this model and most older Netbooks is the additional of an HDMI port for outputting video to a bigger screen. Bluetooth would have been a nice extra, but there's only so much one can expect for $299.
It's been so long since we tested a Windows 7/Intel Atom laptop that direct comparisons were nearly impossible. But even compared with a Dell business Netbook with an Atom N550 or a Netbook-like Acer system with the very low-end AMD C-50 CPU, the Eee PC 1025C Flare was a slow performer. Web surfing in one or two tabs was fine, but performing any kind of system task, even calling up Windows menus, was painfully slow.
This is pretty much the Netbook performance we remember, but now that people are used to iPads and $399 ultraportable 11-inch laptops, it doesn't seem as acceptable as before. A 720p streaming video played smoothly for the most part, with a few dropped frames, so online video viewing should at least be possible.
Asus also offers a pre-Windows quick-start OS called Express Gate, but we've never found one of these modes to be all that useful, especially as they require learning the ins and outs of a non-Windows OS. Plus, instead of being more responsive, Express Gate was, if anything, more sluggish than the Windows experience.
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iPad 3’s Battery: Apple’s Latest Engineering Magic

In addition to iPad 3’s release date, the device’s battery is also making a buzz these days. Even though there’s no concrete list yet of what’s inside the upcoming model, Chris Burns posted on Slash Gear that Apple’s new tablet has a huge battery under the hood. What’s news-worthy about this feature is that the battery can make the device last longer than iPad 2.

iPad 2 vs. iPad 3
For iPad 2 owners, you know that Apple’s current tablet can keep up longer than its 10 hours rate. It only makes sense because its other features are power-hungry. However, iPad 3’s battery can live 60% longer despite both devices’ almost similar physical size.
Compared to iPad 2, iPad 3 is heavier at 1.44 pounds (652 grams) versus the former’s 1.33 pounds. In terms of thickness, the new iPad is slightly thicker at 0.37 inches (9.4 mm), while the older version is at 0.34 inches. Despite the difference, the battery occupies most of the space in both models. Regardless, it’s the reason behind why every model’s features are working well.
What Lies ahead for iPad 3
It’s apparent that Apple is making a sort of engineering magic here. According to ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, the iPad 3 has a massive 11,666 mAh battery. This bulk suits the device’s 2048 x 1536 Retina display LCD panel and 4G LTE connectivity.
Although it almost doubled iPad 2’s capacity, this larger power storage is placed into a slightly larger area. This feature alone is enough to inform people that what they’ll be seeing in the future is a superb and long-lasting device.
The Future of Battery Engineering
Even though there was a huge bump in the battery’s capacity, it’s still rated at 10-hour mark. Apparently, Apple is not interested in making a war of numbers when it comes to battery life. What the Cupertino-based company really wants to do is maintain the 10-hour mark of the upcoming device’s battery life, while incrementing new features.
Obviously, an increase in battery size is needed to boost its life span. But Apple was able to balance its size, so that it won’t affect the weight distribution of the device. With Apple’s effort to increase the life span of iPad 3 through its powerful battery, what people are seeing here is an improvement in battery engineering.
This is one component that doesn’t significantly progress fast, as compared to the development of chip sets and software. Regardless, a huge increase in battery capabilities is the component’s first step. The only thing left now is to see Apple’s iPad 3 in action, and confirm that it’s all as it seems.
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