Fitness machines get iPod workout

Your workout at the gym isn’t going to be any less painful. But the world’s leading commercial provider of exercise equipment might at least help make the session on a stair-climber or treadmill more entertaining.

Life Fitness, a division of Brunswick Corp., says it plans to offer seamless integration with Apple Inc.’s iPod players in upcoming products.

The new fitness machines, equipped with liquid-crystal display touch-screens, will allow users to plug in iPods and headphones and peruse their song libraries or watch their videos on the console as they would on the portable player itself. This will recharge the gadget’s battery at the same time.

Life Fitness said it would make the first product available at the end of March.

With more than 90 million units sold since 2001, Apple’s iPod dominates the portable media player market. It’s no wonder that while Life Fitness says it is the first exercise equipment maker to incorporate iPods, it is only the latest of several companies to do so. Products ranging from jackets to automobiles already have features to work directly with iPods.

Turing goes to woman

One of the most prestigious prizes in computing, the $100,000 Turing Award, went to a woman last month for the first time in the award’s 40-year history.

Frances E. Allen, 75, was honored for her work at IBM Corp. on techniques for optimizing the performance of compilers, the programs that translate one computer language into another. This process is required to turn programming code into the binary zeros and ones actually read by a computer’s colossal array of minuscule switches.

Allen joined IBM in 1957 after completing a master’s degree in mathematics at the University of Michigan. At the time, IBM recruited women by circulating a brochure on campuses that was titled “My Fair Ladies.”

When Allen joined Big Blue, an IBM team led by John Backus had just completed Fortran, one of the first high-level programming languages.

“I had the good fortune to work on one big project on good machines after another,” she said.

Her work led her into varied assignments, including writing intelligence analysis software for the National Security Agency. She retired in 2002.

Friendster leans on Google

Hoping to finally become profitable, online social-networking pioneer Friendster Inc. is joining the crowd of Web sites that rely on Internet search leader Google Inc. for a large piece of their advertising.

Google already has been feeding Friendster ads aimed at making a connection with the surrounding content displayed on a Web page. Under adeal announced last week, Friendster will display ads from Google based on search requests – a method that has proved to be one of the Internet’s biggest moneymakers.

Last year, Google pocketed a $3.1 billion profit while distributing an additional $3.3 billion in revenue to its thousands of online ad partners.

Friendster has been relying on Yahoo Inc. and Eurekster Inc. for ads. The switch to Google is scheduled for the second quarter.

After it established social networking as a hot phenomenon in 2003, Friendster became an afterthought as young Web surfers flocked to MySpace.com and Facebook.com. In January, Friendster attracted 1.3 million U.S. visitors, compared with 61.5 million at MySpace and 19 million at Facebook, according to comScore Media Metrix.

But Friendster has been faring better outside the United States, particularly in Asia. In January, Friendster’s worldwide audience totaled 19.4 million, up 25 percent from the previous year. MySpace’s worldwide audience more than doubled during the same time to 94.8 million.

Despite its global growth, Friendster remains unprofitable. The Google deal should put the company over the hump.

By Associated Press
Source: www.fortwayne.com