system-ON-key

Microsoft Shows Off Xbox One Console

struct — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:18:41 +0000

By IAN SHERR and DREW FITZGERALD

Reuters

At Microsoft’s event Tuesday, cameras focused on the Xbox One, the first in the Xbox family in eight years.

Microsoft Corp.

unveiled a reinvented Xbox videogame console Tuesday, demonstrating an advanced motion and voice-control system and new television functions as it tries to thrust the machine back into the spotlight amid changing consumer habits.

Microsoft unveiled a new videogame console called the Xbox One on Tuesday. The company spent much of the time showcasing the broader entertainment features of the new console while relatively few games were shown. MarketWatch’s Dan Gallagher reports. (Photo: AP)

The Redmond, Wash., software giant said its new device, dubbed Xbox One, was designed to take advantage of new technologies to offer customers ways to play games while responding to trends such as the popularity of smartphones and tablets.

Microsoft also integrated technology from its Skype video chatting subsidiary into Xbox One, allowing customers to interact with friends using a more refined version of the Kinect motion and speech sensor.

Xbox One also can play and control live television streaming from a cable or satellite set-top box.

The device represents Microsoft’s answer to “a living room that has become too complex, too fragmented and too slow,” with features that integrate control of multiple electronics, said Don Mattrick, president of Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business.

Microsoft said the device will be released later this year, but didn’t specify when or how much it will cost. The company’s previous device, the Xbox 360, was priced starting at $299 when it launched in 2005.

Apple Inc.’s

iPhone have become go-to machines for a new swath of casual games that are either free or cost a few dollars.

Those factors combined with the videogame industry’s cycles—where sales taper off before a new game console is released—have hurt sales of new games, consoles and accessories. According to market researcher NPD Group, packaged game sales fell 25% to $495.2 million in April from $657.5 million a year earlier. Console hardware sales dropped 42% to $109.5 million.

The Xbox, which sits at the center of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division, has also seen declining sales as it has aged.

While the last Xbox has been the top selling console in the U.S. for 21 consecutive months, profits at Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division plunged 71% in fiscal 2012 to $364 million, below what it was in 2010.

Nintendo Co.

melded a touch screen into the controller for its Wii U console, which was released last November. Sony Corp.

in February showed a touch-sensor built into a redesigned controller for its PlayStation 4 console, due out later this year.

Aside from additional horsepower to make better looking games, Xbox One includes the ability to watch TV on one part of a screen while looking at other information, such as a fantasy football league scores or a Skype video chat, on another.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

chips, in a shift away from chips based on International Business Machines Corp.

designs. The change makes the new Xbox more similar to Sony’s upcoming PlayStation, making it easier to develop games for both companies’ devices.

But the two devices are also different in that Sony plans to offer a way for its advanced data centers to stream game images and button presses over the Internet to its PlayStation, allowing customers to play potentially any game instantly with a Web connection.

That includes older games, which otherwise can’t play on the new device. Microsoft didn’t unveil that technology for Xbox One.

Eight years in the making, Microsoft is finally shows off its next generation Xbox videogame console at an invitation-only event at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash.

Microsoft put more horsepower behind the technology it does offer, however. The Kinect motion sensor, which debuted three years ago, was revamped and can now better hear gamers speak at the device and more accurately understand their movements, for instance.

Microsoft is investing in new games for the device. The software company said it would release 15 titles from its own studios during the Xbox One’s first year on the market.

The company said it is developing a television show based on its popular Halo space-war game series with director Steven Spielberg. Nancy Tellem, head of Microsoft’s television studio efforts, said the effort is the beginning of Microsoft’s efforts to apply its Xbox technology to the way television works.

“Until now, television was a one-way street for the viewer,” she said. “That’s about to change.”

Write to Ian Sherr at ian.sherr@dowjones.com and Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@dowjones.com

Yahoo Overhauls Flickr; Sony Unveils PS4 Video; Teen’s 20-Second Phone …

struct — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:19:05 +0000

Yahoo was the talk of the tech world on Monday after acquiring Tumblr for $1.1 billion and unveiling a revamped version of its Flickr photo-sharing site.

Yahoo ditched the old Flickr interface for photos that fill the screen, scroll endlessly, and are – as CEO Marissa Mayer said at a New York press event – “heart-stoppingly beautiful.” Yahoo will also now provide every Flickr user with 1 terabyte of free storage.

Meanwhile, Tumblr will continue to operate as a separate business with David Karp remaining as CEO. Amidst concerns from the Tumblr faithful that a Yahoo purchase would ruin their favorite online destination, Yahoo quipped in its announcement that it has promised “not to screw it up.” Despite her assurances, many users are reportedly jumping ship.

For more on the deal, see Expect Yahoo Ads on Tumblr Feeds, Memes on Yahoo.com. Also check out Tumblr and 9 Other Major Yahoo Deals.

On the gaming front, Sony yesterday unveiled a new teaser trailer for its own next-gen console, the PS4, ahead of today’s Xbox launch from Microsoft. The 30-second spot features what appears to be a blurry, zoomed-out shot of the new console, spliced with quick shots of what might be zoomed-in images of the next PlayStation 4, but are really too quick to decipher. For more on Xbox, meanwhile, check out 10 Things We Want in the New Microsoft Xbox.

In other news, a California teenager named Eesha Khare has invented something you’re probably going to wish you had — a supercapacitor that can charge a cell phone in about 20 seconds. The Harvard-bound teenager last week received one of two Intel Foundation Young Scientist Awards for her work with energy-efficient storage devices.

Here’s some other news you might have missed yesterday:

Apple Denies Tax ‘Gimmicks’ Ahead of Hearing: Ahead of Tim Cook’s Tuesday appearance before a Senate tax panel, Apple released its prepared testimony, which denies any wrongdoing and argues that Apple is, in fact, the U.S.’s biggest corporate income taxpayer.
Reports: 3 More Foxconn Employees Commit Suicide: Suicide continues to plague Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturing giant best known for making Apple products.
Online Food Delivery Services Seamless, GrubHub Merge: It’s a match made in deliciousness.
Google Voice Support Coming to Hangouts ‘Soon’: The Web giant confirmed that it is working to allow outbound Google Voice calls within its new Hangouts experience on Gmail and Chrome, but at this point, the service only supports inbound calls.
ATT Brings Home Automation Digital Life Service to More Cities: Beginning Friday, customers in Baltimore, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, and Washington, D.C., can receive a live demonstration and purchase Digital Life in stores.
Samsung Offering $800K for Galaxy S 4 Apps Challenge: Calling all Android developers — if you have a great idea for an app, then you could win cold hard cash from Samsung.
Apple Stores Set New Revenue-Per-Visitor Record: Perhaps if Truman Capote had made his living in modern times, he’d have written a novella titled Breakfast at the Apple Store.
YouTube Celebrates 8th Birthday: YouTube is growing up fast — the Google-owned video site today commemorates eight years of sneezing pandas and 8-bit flying cats.

Xbox 720 launch: live

struct — Tue, 21 May 2013 08:17:37 +0000

Specs The leaked tech specs for the Next Xbox, codenamed Durango,
suggest a blu-ray drive, an eight-core AMD CPU running at 1.6Ghz, 8GB of
DDR3 Ram and an in-built hard drive.

Kinect The new version of Microsoft’s motion sensor technology Kinect
is highly likely to be unveiled. There are even reports that the console
will only operate when the camera is attached.

Console One thing we can be pretty confident of is that Microsoft will
show off the console’s physical form. Sony came under a surprising amount of
flak for not displaying the PS4’s casing at their reveal event.

Always connected Rumours have been circulating for months that the Next
Xbox will be ‘always online’.

Plus… This reveal will not feature a litany of new games, as they
prefer to save such fireworks for their E3 conference, and the business
model for the Next Xbox will likely have to wait until at least E3, if not
beyond.”

Article source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/technology-events/10071308/Xbox-720-launch-live.html

Before Tumblr, Founder Made Mom Proud. He Quit School.

struct — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:12:23 +0000

But instead of trying to pry him away from his machine or coaxing him outside to get some fresh air, his mother, Barbara Ackerman, had another solution: she suggested that he drop out of high school to be home-schooled.

“I saw him at school all day and absorbed all night into his computer,” said Ms. Ackerman, reached by phone Monday afternoon. “It became very clear that David needed the space to live his passion. Which was computers. All things computers.”

Clearly.

Now 26 years old, Mr. Karp never finished high school or enrolled in college. Instead, he played a significant role in several technology start-ups before founding Tumblr, the popular blogging service that agreed to be sold to Yahoo for $1.1 billion this week. With an expected $250 million from the deal, Mr. Karp joins a tiny circle of 20-something entrepreneurs, hoodie-wearing characters like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley, who have struck it rich before turning 30.

“When I first met David he was 20 years old and wearing sneakers and jeans,” said Bijan Sabet, a general partner at Spark Capital, who was one of the first people to invest in Tumblr. “But I knew he was one of these rare entrepreneurs that grew up on the Web and who could come up with an idea, build it himself, and then ship it that night.”

Since founding Tumblr six years ago, Mr. Karp has been admired for his programming skills and Web site design acumen but at times has been a polarizing figure in New York tech circles because he so often blogged about his personal life and party-hopping. He has popped up in the New York Post’s Page Six Magazine, and has been a recurring target for the gossip Web site Gawker, where he was labeled a “fameball,” a derogatory term for someone who has an unquenchable desire for fame.

Tall and willowy, with a mop of brown hair and piercing blue eyes, Mr. Karp typically dresses in jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers. He speaks at a rapid clip and, often, for minutes without stopping. Technically, he never graduated from high school, which he cracked in an interview is “hopefully not a condition of Yahoo employment.”

After dropping out and working for a time in small New York tech outfits, Mr. Karp made his way to Tokyo, where he worked for several months for a start-up. He returned to the United States and became the chief technology officer for UrbanBaby, an Internet message board for parents. CNET Networks bought UrbanBaby in 2006, and Mr. Karp took the several hundred thousand dollars he made from the sale to start his own company, called Davidville. One of Davidville’s projects was a simple blogging service called Tumblr.

Mr. Karp’s run at Tumblr has not been without problems. He had trouble hiring in Tumblr’s early days, unsure how to even interview recruits. He often thought large companies were too big for their own good, proclaiming he could manage Tumblr with a team of four.

But Mr. Karp stepped out of the party scene and started dating his current girlfriend, a graduate nursing school student at New York University, four years ago. He also appeared to get more serious about his company as it grew from less than a dozen employees to more than 175 today. “David has grown up in Tumblr,” said Mark Coatney, who oversees Tumblr’s relationship with media companies.

Still, Mr. Karp’s unsure footing led to discussions about his taking a different role at Tumblr, according to two people who worked with the company and who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. Because revenue was not growing as fast as they would have liked, investors considered putting Mr. Karp in charge of Tumblr’s product development and finding a more seasoned chief executive.

Mr. Karp denied in an interview that there was a plan for him to give up the chief executive’s job. He said that when Tumblr’s chief operating officer left in the middle of last year, filling that job and other critical roles like head of marketing was “top of mind,” but he said there was no plan for him to step aside.

Like many who run so-called social Internet companies, Mr. Karp can teeter on reclusive. In an interview last year at the F.ounders conference in New York, he said he preferred to come to the office early to work alone, avoiding other people.

“Where I feel the most productive and engaged is when I’m buried in code, buried in some project, tweaking some designs,” he said. “I’m certainly introverted.”

Nicole Perlroth and Michael J. de la Merced contributed reporting.

Teen’s prize-winning invention may charge your phone in 20 seconds

struct — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:11:16 +0000

(CNN) — A tiny device that can recharge cell phone batteries in as little as 30 seconds won 18-year-old Eesha Khare a major science award that will help fund her college education at Harvard University.

Khare traveled from her California home to Phoenix last week for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, where her invention was honored as one of two winners of Young Scientist Awards.

“I’m in a daze. I can’t believe this happened,” Khare, a senior at Lynbrook High School in Saratoga, told CNN affiliate KPIX 5.

Khare’s device, a black, rectangular type of supercapacitor just over an inch long, can charge a cell phone battery in 20 to 30 seconds, she said.

“I developed a new supercapacitor, which is basically an energy storage device which can hold a lot of energy in a small amount of volume,” she told KPIX 5. The technology may also be able to speed up charging of automobile batteries, she said.

A videotape of the award ceremony showed an ecstatic Khare trotting up to the stage when her name was announced in Phoenix, then standing with other winners as the audience at the fair applauded and confetti fell on them.

The award includes a $50,000 prize that will come in handy when Khare heads to Harvard in the fall, she told KPIX 5. With a laugh, she predicted that “I will be setting the world on fire.”

In announcing the winners of what it billed as the “world’s largest high school research competition,” Intel cited Khare for recognizing “the crucial need for energy-efficient storage devices” as the world rapidly adopts portable electronics.

The other winner of a Young Scientist Award with Khare was Henry Lin of Shreveport, Louisiana, who received a $50,000 prize for “simulating thousands of clusters of galaxies” to allow scientists to “better understand the mysteries of astrophysics: dark matter, dark energy and the balance of heating and cooling in the universe’s most massive objects,” the Intel statement said.

The top prize at the fair went to 19-year-old Ionut Budisteanu of Romania, who used “artificial intelligence to create a viable model for a low-cost, self-driving car,” according to an Intel statement. He received the Gordon E. Moore Award, named after the Intel co-founder, which includes a $75,000 prize.

According to Intel, more than 1,500 young scientists from around the world were chosen to compete in last week’s fair.

Five Things To Watch For During Microsoft’s Xbox Announcement Tomorrow

struct — Mon, 20 May 2013 08:07:42 +0000

At 10 AM PDT tomorrow, Microsoft will announce its next generation Xbox mere weeks ahead of E3, where such a reveal would normally take place. It’s an effort to get on equal footing with Sony, who premiered the PS4 months ago, and presumably there’s so much to talk about with each system, that two full-length presentations still probably won’t be enough. Look for plenty of coverage here on Forbes, including my own liveblog which will kick off tomorrow just before the event.

The Sony presentation gave us a rough framework of what to expect or not expect from an event like this. Though they debuted many aspects of their console, they kept certain information hidden. With Microsoft, it stands to reason that they may indeed keep some of same info under wraps, giving people a reason to tune back in a few weeks from now during E3 itself.

Here are five questions that immediately come to mind when wondering what we’ll see from Microsoft tomorrow. Feel free to add your own queries in the comments.

How Much Will It Cost?

This is an item that Sony didn’t reveal during its presentation, and if I had to guess, I think that Microsoft may keep this a secret until E3 as well. That said, if they were to come right out and say that somehow, some way, they were making the next Xbox incredibly cheap in order to rack up a massive install base, that would be a headline grabbing story that would have all the buzz heading into E3.

Everyone’s best guess for how much the PS4 will cost at launch is generally around $400. It stands to reason that the Xbox could indeed come with a similar price tag, but rumors have been floating around that it could be much, much less. The idea there would be that Microsoft would take a huge loss on the console itself, but nearly everyone and their uncle would buy one, and they’d get their box installed as the cornerstone of a household entertainment system that does far more than play games. Of course, this could just be wishful thinking, and we won’t know until we hear it from Microsoft directly.

Will They Show the System?

Sony took a lot of flak for something that in the grand scheme of things, should be relatively unimportant. Much like Nintendo did with the first Wii U reveal, Sony showed the new controller for the PS4, but not the actual system itself. Sure, it doesn’t really matter what the console box looks like, as that has no real bearing on its specs, but it is rather odd to have a console reveal where the actual console is not in fact, revealed.

If I had to guess, Microsoft will try to one-up Sony by either announcing the price or showing the system, but not both. Something has to be left for E3, after all. I would wager that the price is the more important aspect they might save for later, and as the biggest criticism of Sony’s event was that they did not show the system, it would be an easy trump card for Microsoft to pull.

How Much Will They Focus on the Living Room?

I’ve said before that I can see a clear positioning framework forming between the PS4 and the next Xbox. Sony went all-in on gaming, saying that the PS4 is a dedicated gaming machine and they even literally said out loud that they care less about “the living room” than they do the games. Conversely, that leaves Microsoft a wide-open opportunity to be the console that’s more than a console, and every year they seem to add more and more things that allows the Xbox to be more than just a gaming machine. You can even order Pizza Hut from your Xbox now for crying out loud.

The question heading into this next console generation is just how much overlap the two systems will have this time around. For all their rabid fanboys, the PS3 and the 360 were ultimately very similar, with only a few major difference like PSN vs. XBL and their respective handful of exclusive series. Now of course Microsoft will still focus on games, and Sony’s system can do more than play them, but they do appear to be seeking out somewhat different niches in the market. Microsoft has the potential to make the Xbox a must-have living room object for even non-gaming households that works in conjunction with all their other products. Sony doesn’t quite have that same sort of reach. Microsoft is famous for having half their keynotes not even mention games at all, and I’m wondering to what extent that will be true tomorrow.

Will They Negate Any Controversial Rumors?

One thing many are hoping to see from Microsoft is that the company dispels some of the nasty rumors that have been floating around concerning the new Xbox. The two main ones are somewhat related. First, it’s been said that Microsoft will require a constant internet connection for games to be played. That eventually evolved into the idea that it will be up to the publishers to turn that option on and off, but hopefully they will say outright whether or not that’s the case.

Secondly, it’s also been said that games must be installed to the hard drive to be played on the new system. That could work in tandem with the above “always on” functionality, but could also mean that theoretically, the new Xbox doesn’t play used games. Sony didn’t specifically say that the PS4 would play used games (or even play discs, for that matter), but had to clarify later in interviews that was indeed the case. Microsoft needs to come out at clear give a big yes or no on both of these issues. Best case scenario is they say neither are true, but if they say nothing? That would seem like a yes to me, and look for a thousand interviewers to ask those sorts of questions as follow-ups after the event.

What are They Going to Call This Thing?

It stood to reason that the PlayStation 4 was going to be called the PlayStation 4, but I don’t think anyone believes that the new Xbox will have a “720″ attached to the end of it. Rumored names so far include Xbox Infinity (my favorite), Xbox Fusion or just Xbox, the last of which seems very hip, though I’m not particularly a fan.

Think that a name isn’t all that important? Well, just ask the Wii U, which should have been called the Wii 2 in order not to confuse its customers about what it actually was. Many casual consumers believed (and still believe, for that matter) that the Wii U was simply an addition to the current system rather than a new system in itself. The Wii 2 or Super Wii wouldn’t have created nearly as much confusion.

I don’t think the next Xbox has to worry about people not knowing it’s a new console, but a name is important, and it’s one piece of information we’re absolutely guaranteed to learn tomorrow, no matter whatever else they choose to keep hidden.

What else do you want to know about the new Xbox? Let me know in the comments.

Follow me on Twitter here and subscribe to my Forbes blog here.

Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/05/20/five-things-to-watch-for-during-microsofts-xbox-announcement-tomorrow/

Lawmakers Show Concerns About Google’s New Glasses

struct — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:05:15 +0000

The letter, addressed to Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, outlined eight questions for Google and asked for a response by June 14.

“We are curious whether this new technology could infringe on the privacy of the average American,” the letter said. “Because Google Glass has not yet been released and we are uncertain of Google’s plans to incorporate privacy protections into the device, there are still a number of unanswered questions.”

The glasses, which are not yet for sale to the public, connect to the Internet and allow people to do things like take photographs, record and watch video, send text messages, post to social media sites and read text snippets. They have already raised privacy concerns on issues like unwanted recording.

The request, from the Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, came as Google held its annual I/O developers conference in San Francisco, where it showed off Glass, gave software developers information about how to build apps for the device and introduced seven new apps, including ones from Facebook, Twitter and CNN.

The group, for which Representative Joe Barton, Republican of Texas, is a co-chairman, asked questions including how Google would collect and store data from the devices, how it would ensure that it did not unintentionally collect private data, how Google would protect the privacy of people not using Glass when they are with people using it and whether the device would have facial recognition technology.

Steve Lee, director of product management for Google Glass, addressed the facial recognition question in a statement.

“We’ve consistently said that we won’t add new face recognition features to our services unless we have strong privacy protections in place,” he said.

Google has faced punishments over privacy violations with past products, including a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over a social networking tool and another one with 38 states over data collection during its Street View mapping project.

In a session at the conference, Mr. Lee addressed other concerns in the letter. Google followed all its privacy and data collection policies with Glass, he said, and built social cues into the device to help prevent certain privacy violations. For instance, users have to press a button or speak to Glass to take a photograph or record video, and look directly at whatever they are shooting.

Still, one developer said he had already built an app for Glass that enables users to take a photograph with a wink.

In a statement, Chris Dale, a Google spokesman, said, “We are thinking very carefully about how we design Glass because new technology always raises new issues.”

He added that Google was slowly selling early versions of the device, which cost $1,500, to people who sign up for them, “to ensure that our users become active participants in shaping the future of this technology.”

Yahoo Is Planning to Buy Tumblr for $1.1 Billion

struct — Sun, 19 May 2013 20:03:31 +0000

The deal, which is expected to be announced as soon as Monday, would be the largest acquisition of a social networking company in years, surpassing Facebook’s $1 billion purchase of Instagram last year.

For Yahoo and its chief executive, Marissa Mayer, buying Tumblr would be a bold move as she tries to breathe new life into the company. The deal, the seventh since Ms. Mayer defected from Google last summer to take over the company, would be her biggest yet. It is meant to give her company more appeal to young people, and to make up for years of missing out on the revolutions in social networking and mobile devices. Tumblr has over 108 million blogs, with many highly active users.

Yet even with all those users, a basic question about Tumblr and other social media sites remains open: Can they make money?

Founded six years ago, Tumblr has attracted a loyal following and raised millions from big-name investors. Still, it has not proved that it can be profitable, nor that it can succeed on mobile devices, which are becoming the gateway to the Internet. Even Facebook faces continued pressure from investors to show it can increase its profits and adapt to the mobile world.

“The challenge has always been, how do you monetize eyeballs?” said Charlene Li, the founder of the Altimeter Group, a consulting firm. “Services like Instagram and Facebook always focus on the user experience first. Once that loyalty is there, they figure out how to carefully, ideally, make money on it.”

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment. A representative for Tumblr did not respond to requests for comment.

If the deal is approved, Ms. Mayer will face the challenge of successfully managing the takeover, given Yahoo’s notorious reputation for paying big money for start-ups and then letting the prizes wither. Previous acquisitions by Yahoo, like the purchase of Flickr for $35 million and a $3.6 billion deal for GeoCities, an early pioneer in social networking, have been either shut down or neglected within the company.

Because of this, Ms. Mayer will face pressure to keep Tumblr’s staff, led by its founder, the 26-year-old David Karp, who dropped out of high school as a 15-year-old programmer. It is unclear whether all of Tumblr’s 175 employees, based in New York City, will move over to Yahoo.

At the same time, analysts and investors are likely to question whether buying a site that has struggled to generate revenue makes sense.

“This is not an inexpensive acquisition, but they’re willing to pay to get back some of what they’ve lost,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners. “They want to be hip.”

In her short tenure as chief executive, Ms. Mayer has bought a string of tiny start-ups. Most of those were aimed at buying engineering talent that could help freshen Yahoo’s core products, like mail, finance and sports, as well as build out new mobile services.

Ms. Mayer has had ambitions to hunt bigger game, armed with $4.3 billion in cash from selling half of Yahoo’s stake in the Chinese Internet titan Alibaba.

She has had conversations with a number of other big-ticket targets, like Foursquare, a mobile app that lets users find nearby restaurants, stores and bars, and Hulu, the video streaming service, according to people with knowledge of those discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Tumblr brings something that Ms. Mayer has sought for some time: a full-fledged social network with a loyal following. The start-up claims more than 100 million blogs on its site, reaching 44 million people in the United States and 134 million around the world, according to Quantcast.

But in some ways, Yahoo isn’t pursuing users — it already claims 700 million, one of the biggest user bases on the Web — but products and services that would again make it a central destination. Once the biggest seller of display ads in the United States, Yahoo has lost market share to the likes of Google and Facebook. Its share of all digital ad revenue tumbled to 8.4 percent last year, from 15.5 percent in 2009, even as total advertising spending grew, according to eMarketer. Google now claims about 41 percent.

Andrew Ross Sorkin and Jenna Wortham contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/technology/yahoo-to-buy-tumblr-for-1-1-billion.html?pagewanted=all

Google Glass: Privacy, policy violation worries arise with wearable gadget

struct — Sun, 19 May 2013 15:00:53 +0000

Originally published: May 19, 2013 9:59 AM
Updated: May 19, 2013 10:05 AM

By REUTERS

Photo credit: AP | Google co-rounder Sergey Brin wears Google Glass glasses at an announcement for the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences at Genentech Hall on UCSF’s Mission Bay campus in San Francisco. (Feb. 20, 2013)

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Google staged four discussions expounding on the finer points of its “Glass” wearable computer during this week’s developer conference. Missing from the agenda, however, was a session on etiquette when using the recording-capable gadget, which some attendees faithfully wore everywhere – including to the crowded bathrooms.

Google Glass, a cross between a mobile computer and eyeglasses that can both record video and surf the Internet, is now available to a select few but is already among the year’s most buzz-worthy new gadgets. The device has geeks all aflutter but is unnerving everyone from lawmakers to casino operators worried about the potential for hitherto unimagined privacy and policy violations.

“I had a friend and we’re sitting at dinner and about 30 minutes into it she said, ‘You know those things freak me out,’” said Allen Firstenberg, a technology consultant at the Google developers conference. He has been wearing Glass for about a week but offered to take them off for the comfort of his dinner companion.

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On another occasion, Firstenberg admitted to walking into a bathroom wearing his Glass without realizing it.

“Most of the day I totally forget it’s there,” he said.

Many believe wearable computers represent the next big shift in technology, just as smartphones evolved from personal computers. Apple and Samsung are said to be working on other forms of wearable technology.

The test version of Glass looks like a clear pair of eyeglasses with a hefty slab along the right side. Since it began shipping to a couple thousand carefully selected early adopters who paid about $1,500 for the device, it has inspired a bit of ridicule – from a parody on “Saturday Night Live” to a popular blog poking fun at its users.

Other industry experts take a more serious tack, pointing out the potential for misuse because Glass can record video far less conspicuously than a handheld device.

Glass also has won many fans. Google and some early users maintain that privacy fears are overblown. As with traditional video cameras, a tiny light blinks on to let people know when it is recording.

Several Glass wearers at the developers conference said they whip the device off in inappropriate situations, such as in gym locker rooms or work meetings. Michael Evans, a Web developer from Washington, D.C., attending the Google conference, said he removed his Glass when he went to the movies, even though the device would be ill-suited for recording a feature-length film.

“I just figured I don’t want to be the first guy kicked out of the movies,” he said.

NO GLASS ALLOWED

A stamp-sized electronic screen mounted on the left side of a pair of eyeglass frames, Glass can record video, access email, provide turn-by-turn driving directions and retrieve info from the Web by connecting wirelessly to a user’s cell phone.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt dismissed concerns about the brave new world of wearable computers during a talk at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in April.

“Criticisms are inevitably from people who are afraid of change or who have not figured out that there will be an adaptation of society to it,” he said.

Schmidt acknowledged that there are certain places where Glass will not be appropriate but that he believed new rules of social etiquette will coalesce over time. Firstenberg said it will take time for all sides to get comfortable with the new technology.

“I don’t think we should go into the conversation assuming that Glass is bad,” he said.

Indeed, previous technology innovations such as mobile phones and wireless headsets that initially raised concerns are now subject to tacit rules of etiquette, such as not talking loudly on the bus and turning a ringer off in a meeting.

Still, some have decided to leave nothing to chance.

Casino operator Caesar’s Entertainment recently announced that Glass is not permitted while gambling or when in showrooms, though guests can wear it in other areas. In March, Seattle’s Five Point Cafe made headlines for becoming the first bar to ban Glass. “Respect our customers privacy as we’d expect them to respect yours,” says a statement on the cafÃ©’s website.

The California Highway Patrol says there is no law that explicitly forbids a driver from wearing Glass while driving in the state. But according to Officer Elon Steers, if a driver appears to be distracted as a result of the device, an officer can take enforcement action.

PRIVACY TRACK RECORD

Lawmakers are beginning to consider Glass.

On Thursday, eight members of the U.S. Congress sent a letter to Google Chief Executive Larry Page, asking for details about how Glass handles various privacy issues, including whether it is capable of facial recognition.

According to Google, there are no facial recognition technologies built into the device and it has no plans to do so “unless we have strong privacy protections in place.” During one of this week’s conference sessions – an open discussion about Glass – members of the Glass team answered a question about privacy by noting that social implications and etiquette have been a big area of focus during the development of the product, which is still a test version.

Some of the Glass-phobia may stem from Google’s own track record on privacy. In 2010, Google revealed that its fleet of Street View cars, which criss-cross the globe taking panoramic photos for the Google Maps product, also had captured personal information such as emails and web pages that were transmitted over unencrypted home wireless networks.

“The fact that it’s Google offering the service, as opposed to say Brookstone, raises privacy issues,” said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a non-profit privacy advocacy group, citing Google’s history and its scale in Internet advertising.

Rotenberg says his main concern centers on the stream of data collected by the devices – everything from audio and video to a user’s location data – going to Google’s data centers.

Ryan Calo, a University of Washington law professor who specializes in privacy and technology, said Glass is not very different from other technologies available today, whether it is a smartphone or “spy” pens that secretly record audio.

But Glass is on people’s faces, so it feels different.

“The face is a really intimate place and to have a piece of technology on it is unsettling,” Calo said. “Much as a drone is unsettling because we have some ideas of war.” For all the hand-wringing, some early adopters are sold.

Ryan Warner, who recently graduated from college and who has developed a recipe app for Glass with Evans, said he was surprised by the reaction he got when he went to a bar.

“I was like, ‘I don’t know if I should have it on or not.’ I was kind of in that phase,” he said, “and the bouncer was like, ‘Oh, my god, is that Google Glass?’ He was excited.”

Mice return from a month in space

struct — Sun, 19 May 2013 07:58:31 +0000

MOSCOW – A Russian capsule carrying mice and lizards has returned to Earth after spending a month in space.

Scientists say the experiment is intended to test the effects of weightlessness and other factors of space flight on cell structure.

Russian state television showed the capsule and some of its inhabitants after it landed safely Sunday in a planted field near Orenburg, about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) southeast of Moscow. The report said not all of the animals survived the flight.

Vladimir Sychov, deputy director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems, said it was the first time that animals had spent so much time in space on their own.

The mice and lizards were to be flown back to Moscow to undergo a series of tests at the institute.

Article source: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/05/19/mice-return-from-month-in-space/