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Pulitzer winner to publish new story, one tweet at a time

2012-05-25T09:00:00.000+08:00

(CNN) -- At first blush, it sounds like a torturous way to read an 8,500-word short story. But in a nod to the social media age, The New Yorker is offering up new fiction on Twitter in a series of 140-character bursts.

"Black Box," a new story by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan, was to begin appearing on the New Yorker Fiction Twitter account Thursday at 8 p.m. ET. A single line will be published every minute for the next hour, then from 8-9 p.m. on each of the following nine nights, through June 2.

While waiting for new snippets might not sound like the most fun way to consume a story, lovers of the written word can take some solace in the fact that Egan, no stranger to nontraditional storytelling, wrote "Black Box" with Twitter in mind.

Egan's 2010 novel, "A Visit From the Goon Squad," won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. "Black Box," she says, takes a character from that book and tells a "spy-thriller" version of her tale.

"This is not a new idea, of course, but it's a rich one -- because of the intimacy of reaching people through their phones, and because of the odd poetry that can happen in 140 characters," she said in a New Yorker post about the experiment. "I found myself imagining a series of terse mental dispatches from a female spy of the future, working undercover by the Mediterranean Sea. I wrote these bulletins by hand in a Japanese notebook that had eight rectangles on each page."

Egan said the story was originally twice its present length and that she spent about a year writing and revising it -- using Twitter's character-counting tool to make sure the final lines would make the cut.

As Egan's statement suggests, she's not the first to tackle fiction on Twitter and other digital short forms.

In Japan, "keitai shousetsu," or "cellphone novels" written in the form of text messages, have become perennial best-sellers since originating in the early 2000s.

In 2008, Penguin Books launched the "We Tell Stories" project in which six of its authors used interactive media, including Twitter, to tell new tales. (One, Toby Litt's "Slice," was told as a series of blog posts and tweets from the story's main character and her parents).

And in 2009, author and noted Twitter-phile Neil Gaiman worked with BBC Audiobooks on an interactive novel built from tweets.

Egan is no stranger to nontraditional approaches to writing herself.

"Goon Squad" hovers somewhere between being a novel and a series of related short stories about an aging music-industry executive and other rock 'n' roll characters. In it, one chapter appears as a PowerPoint presentation.

In July, The Guardian printed Egan's "To Do," a short story told as a seemingly innocuous list of chores.

Call "Black Box" gimmicky if you like, but you can't claim it's just Egan wanting to screw around on Twitter. She has an account, but before two tweets promoting Thursday's serialization, she'd only posted four times since signing up in 2010.

And fear not if you can't stand the thought of reading a story tucked into your Twitter feed (of, for that matter, if you can't stand the thought of Twitter).

The New Yorker will be publishing a daily summary of the story-so-far on its Page Turner fiction blog. The story also will appear in its entirety in the venerable magazine's upcoming science-fiction issue.

IBM worries iPhone's Siri has loose lips

2012-05-24T09:00:00.000+08:00

(WIRED) -- If you work for IBM, you can bring your iPhone to work, but forget about using the phone's voice-activated digital assistant. Siri isn't welcome on Big Blue's networks.

The reason? Siri ships everything you say to her to a big data center in Maiden, North Carolina. And the story of what really happens to all of your Siri-launched searches, e-mail messages and inappropriate jokes is a bit of a black box.

IBM CIO Jeanette Horan told MIT's Technology Review this week that her company has banned Siri outright because, according to the magazine, "The company worries that the spoken queries might be stored somewhere."

Apple's new 'spaceship' campus: What will the neighbors say?

It turns out that Horan is right to worry. In fact, Apple's iPhone Software License Agreement spells this out: "When you use Siri or Dictation, the things you say will be recorded and sent to Apple in order to convert what you say into text," Apple says. Siri collects a bunch of other information -- names of people from your address book and other unspecified user data, all to help Siri do a better job.

Tips for using Siri Siri: Apple's new voice recognition Siri: Apple's new voice recognition

How long does Apple store all of this stuff, and who gets a look at it? Well, the company doesn't actually say. Again, from the user agreement: "By using Siri or Dictation, you agree and consent to Apple's and its subsidiaries' and agents' transmission, collection, maintenance, processing, and use of this information, including your voice input and User Data, to provide and improve Siri, Dictation, and other Apple products and services."

Apple and Samsung begin settlement talks

Because some of the data that Siri collects can be very personal, the American Civil Liberties Union put out a warning about Siri just a couple of months ago.

Privacy was always a big concern for Siri's developers, says Edward Wrenbeck, the lead developer of the original Siri iPhone app, which was eventually acquired by Apple. And for corporate users, there are even more potential pitfalls. "Just having it known that you're at a certain customer's location might be in violation of a non-disclosure agreement," he says.

Apple designer 'winces' over some past product choices

But he agrees that many of the issues raised by Apple's Siri data handling are similar to those that other internet companies face. "I really don't think it's something to worry about," he says. "People are already doing things on these mobile devices. Maybe Siri makes their life a little bit easier, but it's not exactly opening up a new avenue that wasn't there before."

But other companies have been pressured by privacy groups over the way they store customer data. Google, for example, has come under fire in the past for the way it handles a massive database of user search data. But IBM doesn't ban Google. Neither Apple nor IBM could be reached for comment Tuesday, but there are a couple of important differences between Siri and Google that may have IBM worried: For one, Siri can be used to write e-mails or text messages. So, in theory, Apple could be storing confidential IBM messages.

Former Apple employee explains 'upside-down' logo

Another difference: After being dogged by privacy advocates, Google now anonymizes search results -- making them difficult, if not impossible, to trace back to an individual user -- after nine months.

Maybe if Apple agreed to do something like that, Siri would be welcome over in Armonk, New York.

Inventor of the TV remote dies

2012-05-23T09:00:00.000+08:00

(CNN) -- The inventor of the TV remote, Eugene Polley, died on Sunday at 96.

After his death was announced on Tuesday, the Internet paused -- get it? -- to remember the man and the wireless television remote control, which ushered in the era of channel surfing and couch potatoes.

Some tributes were humorous. Others were fawning.

"Gush all you want about Facebook, Twitter and other recent tech innovations. I'd stack Polley and his TV remote against all of them," wrote David Lazarus at LATimes.com. "After all, which would you be more willing to give up -- Facebook or your remote? ... Thought so."

Polley, who died of "natural causes," according to a news release, invented Zenith's "Flash-Matic" wireless remote control, which was introduced in 1955 and was heralded as the first of its kind. "It used a flashlight-like device to activate photocells on the television set to change channels," the Zenith news release says.

In the 1950s, the mechanics of using a remote were a little clunky:

"The viewer used a highly directional flashlight to activate the four control functions, which turned the picture and sound on and off and changed channels by turning the tuner dial clockwise and counterclockwise," Zenith says.

Rosa Golijan from MSNBC writes that eccentricities always have been part of the remote control and its odd history:

"Because the remote shined visible light, TVs could be confused by other light sources. In spite of its quirkiness, the Flash-Matic was a revolution, and the reason Polley was bestowed with humorous titles ranging from 'the founding father of the couch potato' to 'the czar of zapping' to 'the beach boy of channel surfing.' "

And an advertisement from that era underscores just how new this invention was.

"A flash of magic light from across the room (no wires, no cords) turns set on, off or changes channels," one ad says, "and you remain in your easy chair!"

Born in Chicago, Polley had a long career as an engineer at Zenith, where he worked his way up from the stockroom. His inventions, mostly in the field of television, earned 18 U.S. patents.

Technology analysts, commentators and remote users are using the occasion of Polley's death to celebrate his invention and tease a bit about its legacy.

"Thanks for the belly Eugene," someone wrote on the tech blog Gizmodo's Facebook page. "Just kidding. Great invention."

Others chose to focus on the way Polley, who won a Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for his creation, changed the world with the invention.

The TV remote was the precursor to interactive entertainment -- and it's part of the reason we're able to navigate digital content so freely, says The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal.

"The new device meant people could change channels quickly and easily from the comfort of their sectionals, and that affordance meant that television stations could not continue to sell advertising or deliver programming the way that they had before when it was more difficult to change the channel," he writes. "I do not think it is an accident that we started channel surfing (1986) before we started surfing the Web."

As if taking a cue from that thought, one Twitter user wrote:

"R.I.P. Eugene Polley, inventor of the TV remote control. Please honor the man by reading this tweet for at least 5 seconds before scrolling."

Gizmodo also muses on the post-remote world:

"Cordless control allowed audiences a vastly new experience of consuming television: For the first time ever, they could switch programs without getting up to turn the dial. No longer were programs endured simply because they were too lazy to get up off the couch. Commercials could be avoided by switching channels, or muted, with just the press of a button. 'Channel surfing' become a thing."

Who owns the remote in your home, and why? Tell us about your relationship with TV remotes in the comments section.

Microsoft launches a 'social search' network

2012-05-22T09:00:00.000+08:00

(CNN) -- Does the Web have room for one more social network? Microsoft thinks so.

With Facebook hogging the spotlight last week and Google working to stay in the game with Google+, Microsoft has quietly launched So.cl, which it describes as a social-search tool to share information and meet people with common interests.

What it's not, Microsoft says, is a rival to Facebook.

"So.cl is an experimental research project focused on the future of social experiences and learning, especially among younger people," Microsoft said Monday in an e-mail.

The tool was launched late last year for students at a handful of colleges and universities. Last week, the company quietly made it available to anyone for a public beta test period.

Among the features of So.cl (pronounced, of course, "social") is a "bookmarklet" feature similar to Facebook's "Like" button. That lets users share sites or pages they find interesting with other users. You can share, comment on or tag other people's posts.

So.cl also has a "video party" feature that lets users chat with others and incorporate videos into those chats.

The tool comes from Microsoft's FUSE Labs, which works with product research and development teams on new Web and social tools.

The initial focus on students still shines through. With So.cl, users can build posts with many elements -- such as photos, video and text -- and share them. It also lets them find other users with similar interests and build communities around specific goals, educational or otherwise.

The researchers behind So.cl deliberately sought to collaborate with a student audience that is more holistic -- encompassing representation from the sciences as well as the humanities -- rather than simply technical, says Lili Cheng, general manager of FUSE Labs.

Just don't call it Microsoft's answer to Facebook. Google and smaller rivals have struggled to gain a foothold in a social-media landscape that Facebook dominates. On So.cl's FAQ page, Microsoft makes it clear that their new tool is designed as a layer on top of existing networks.

"We expect students to continue using products such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other existing social networks, as well as Bing, Google and other search tools," it says.

"We hope to encourage students to reimagine how our everyday communication and learning tools can be improved by researching, learning and sharing in their everyday lives."

Internet greets Facebook's IPO price with glee, skepticism

2012-05-18T09:00:00.000+08:00

(CNN) -- Friends may be priceless. But 'friending' is worth $38 a share.

That's what Facebook set as the initial price when its stock begins trading on Wall Street Friday morning. That's at the top end of the range analysts were expecting and gives the company a valuation of roughly $104 billion.

That stock price will be the biggest opening ever for a tech company and the third-largest IPO in history -- behind only Visa and Italian utility company ENEL.

Why Facebook won't start trading at the opening bell

On the Web, reactions ran the gamut from deliriously hopeful to harshly negative for the social-media giant's Wall Street potential.

"A $104 billion market capitalization puts Facebook at more than 100 times its trailing earnings," wrote John Constine and Kim-Mai Cutler for technology blog TechCrunch. "That's a big multiple to live up to, and it will likely need to add bold new revenue streams to justify the mammoth valuation."

And it wasn't just the pros weighing in. In fact, it seemed like everyone on the Internet had an opinion.

Business Insider posted a poll (obviously not scientific) asking readers where they thought the $38 stock would be by the end of the day Friday.

In early results, a pessimistic 17 percent said under $35. But the biggest cluster of respondents guessed somewhere between $40-55. (Thirteen percent said $40-45, another 13 percent said $45-50 and, yes, yet another 13 percent said $50-55).

A hopeful 8 percent predicted the stock would skyrocket at otherworldly levels, winding up over $90 a share.

On Twitter, many observers seemed to be rooting against Facebook and its early investors.

"Just me or anyone else really hoping for Facebook stock to take a nose dive and never come back up? I want to watch it drop like a rock," tweeted a user who identified himself as Thomas Bryant from Austin, Texas.

"Facebook just raised $16 billion in its stock offering! Let's all delete our accounts and leave investors high and dry!" tweeted Evil Wylie, the Twitter alter ego of New York author Andrew Shaffer.

On Thursday afternoon, shares were released to big-time brokers who have already agreed to buy them. Ordinary investors have to wait until Friday morning, when shares begin selling publicly

While the market opens at 9:30 am, Facebook's shares won't start trading until at least an hour or so afterward because it's newly listed.

While opinions in the business and tech communities have differed on whether the massive social network is a good investment, analysts have largely been bullish on the stock. There's been heavy demand, leading Facebook on Wednesday to announce it will sell about 25% more shares than it had originally planned, bringing its total to 421 million shares.

At CNN content partner Mashable, a blog that got its start focusing exclusively on social media and saw its popularity rise as Facebook's did, the staff geared up by creating an IPO-inspired playlist on music site Spotify (which, perhaps not coincidentally, is accessible only through a Facebook account).

Making the list? "Mo Money, Mo Problems," by The Notorious B.I.G., "Rich" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs," "Money (That's What I Want) by Barrett Strong and "If I Had $1,000,000" by Barenaked Ladies, among others.

Facebook's new billionaires

Even as tech and financial gurus (self-appointed and otherwise) waited with bated breath for the opening, opining either for or against the financial future of the site some had to face the hard truth: We have no idea what's going to happen.

"Of course, much of this is speculative and depends on the market's response to Facebook," VentureBeat's Jennifer Van Grove wrote in a post quoting analysts about the IPO. "For now, all we can do is wait and watch the clock in anticipation of tomorrow's opening. Tick tock."

CNNMoney and CNN's Brandon Griggs contributed to this report.

Google revamps search, tries to think more like a person

2012-05-17T09:00:00.000+08:00

(CNN) -- So, let's say you're doing a Google search for "Kings." Did you mean the L.A. hockey team or the Sacramento basketball team? Maybe the TV show? Or maybe you actually wanted to know something about monarchs.

Google on Wednesday announced Knowledge Graph, a significant change to how search results are delivered that the company believes will make their search engine think more like a human.

"The web pages we [currently] return for the search 'kings,' they're all good," Jack Menzel, director of product management at Google, told CNN in an interview. "You, as a human, associate those words with their real-world meaning but, for a computer, they're just a random string of characters."

With Knowledge Graph, which will begin rolling out to some users immediately, results will be arranged according to categories with which the search term has been associated. So, in the above example, boxes will appear with separate results for the hockey team, basketball team and TV show.

Google develops 'smart glasses'

The user can then click on one of those boxes to only get results for the specific topic they were searching.

"It hones your search results right in on the task that you're after," Menzel said.

More specific searches, say for the name of a celebrity, will render boxes with basic information, as well as links to what Google believes are possibly related searches.

Menzel says the initial version of Knowledge Graph has information on 500 million people, places and things and uses 3.5 billion defining attributes and connections to create categories for them.

The feature will begin rolling out as early as Wednesday afternoon for some users in the United States and eventually be available on desktop, mobile and tablet searches. It will first become available in English, then in other languages, Menzel said.

Report: New MacBook Pro to feature retina display

2012-05-16T09:00:00.000+08:00

(CNN) -- The new 15-inch MacBook Pro will be a significant departure from the current design, with a retina display and an ultra-thin profile, 9to5Mac claims, citing sources from Apple's supply chain.

It will be so thin, in fact, that it won't have room for an optical drive, just like its lightweight cousin MacBook Air.

Other design changes include a power button on the keyboard itself (replacing the eject button) and, possibly, the lack of an Ethernet port (replaced by an extra Thunderbolt port).

Rumors of new Apple iPads, iPhones The true cost of an iPhone

The MacBook Pro's new retina display -- the same technology that's in the new iPad -- is described as "definitely the most important Mac innovation in years" by the sources who've handled a prototype of the device. The specifics are unknown, but users should be able to choose between several Retina resolution modes.

Finally, the new 15-inch MacBook Pro will have USB 3.0 support, and the latest Ivy Bridge processors from Intel are a safe bet, too.

If these rumors are true, the new 15-inch MacBook Pro might be one of the most important MacBook devices to see the light of day in recent years.

How do you like these specifications? What do you think about a 15-inch MacBook Pro without an optical drive? Share your opinions in the comments.

See the original story on Mashable.

Report: Smartphones, not computers, drive most Facebook use

2012-05-09T09:00:00.000+08:00

(CNN) -- According to comScore's new Mobile Metrix 2.0 report released Monday, Facebook's mobile usage is on the rise. In fact, the report revealed that Facebook users spent more time accessing the social network on smartphones than on computers in March.

Facebook users spent an average of 441 minutes â" or 7 hours, 21 minutes â" accessing the social network via smartphones during the month. By comparison, users spent 391 minutes â" or 6 hours, 31 minutes â" checking out Facebook on PCs.

The comScore report also revealed that smartphone users spent more time on Facebook than on any other social media network, including Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Foursquare. In fact, Facebook is the second largest mobile property behind Google. The social network garners more than 78 million unique monthly smartphone visitors, 81 percent of which access Facebook through its mobile app.

Besides showing that people spend a good chunk of time on Facebook, the data underscores the importance of a mobile strategy for the social network's business success. Facebook currently makes little revenue from its mobile app â" the app doesn't include ads, and only started to include "sponsored posts" in users' news feeds last March.

Facebook admitted its mobile struggles in its recent IPO documents. "If users increasingly access mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers, and if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users," the company writes in its filing documents, "our financial performance and ability to grow revenue would be negatively affected."

In light of these stats, a Facebook smartphone makes all the more sense. The company could capitalize on its mobile leadership position. But because Facebook has not officially made any announcements about its hardware plans, it's unclear when a Facebook phone will actually enter the market. In the meantime, we can hope that the company continues to update its mobile apps.

AT&T expands into wireless home security, automation

2012-05-08T09:00:00.000+08:00

(CNN) -- AT&T is joining the expanding field of home security and automation, introducing a wireless service that will let homeowners use their mobile devices to remotely set alarms, turn on lights or even shut off water.

Called AT&T Digital Life, the service will connect users with a vast array of domestic devices and appliances, including cameras, door locks, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and thermostats.

It will run on AT&T's IP-based wireless platform and can be accessed via smartphones, tablets or PCs. And despite being from AT&T, it will work regardless of the user's wireless carrier.

The company plans to begin trials of the service in Atlanta and Dallas this summer.

"AT&T Digital Life will change the way people live, work and play -- and meets a clear need in the market," said Kevin Petersen, senior vice president of Digital Life for AT&T Mobility. "The service is smart, simple and customer-centric -- freeing homeowners to do the things they want to do without compromising on the things they need to do to care for family and home."

Digital Life joins other existing products and wireless companies that are taking advantage of people's increasing reliance on mobile devices.

Comcast offers a home-security feature through an iPhone app. Verizon offers a similar service, while home security market leader ADT features ADT Pulse on approved devices.

In a news release from AT&T, Larry Hettick, a research director for market-research company Current Analysis, says that Digital Life "promises to be as robust as anything in the marketplace today." He said he was impressed with the system's wireless platform and ability, unlike some existing services, to work with a wide range of different devices.

'Black Ops 2' trailer hints at series' dark future

2012-05-05T09:00:00.000+08:00

(CNN) -- A new teaser trailer for "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" reveals important details about the setting and gameplay options for the latest title in the blockbuster "Call of Duty" series.

The clip was posted online Tuesday night and has already attracted 1.4 million views on YouTube. It features a near-future scenario in which the U.S. military has developed technology that puts unmanned vehicles and robots on the front lines of battle. An enemy gains access to that technology and turns it against cities all over the world.

Developed by Treyarch and published by Activision, "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" will be released November 18. Its predecessor, 2010's "Call of Duty: Black Ops," is the best-selling video game ever in the United States, according to some estimates.

Mark Lamia, Treyarch studio head, said his developers did a lot of research to set the game in a plausible future. He said for its single-player campaign, the game will feature multiple plotlines and nonlinear gameplay in which a player's actions affect how the story unfolds.

Gameplay in the video shows a bombed-out Los Angeles, urban combat through city streets and ... horseback chases through the desert. It appears to mix futuristic, sci-fi themes with present-day elements.

Lamia also confirmed that zombies are returning to the game. "Our biggest, most ambitious zombies ever," he said.

He would not reveal anything about the game's multiplayer action. Lamia said more information on that will be released later.

The futuristic tone of the game seemed to polarize fans on the Internet. Some joked about whether Treyarch was making Anonymous, the real-life hacker group dedicated to promoting free flow of information, the game's main villain.

Twitter user @killyourfm said, "You know what? I'm BURNT OUT on shooters, especially Call of Duty. But that trailer got me very interested. Futuristic toys. Horses. Cool."

However, "Call of Duty Elite" forum user Oneqwkford laments, "This looks stupid! If I wanted to play a Si-fi game I would play Gears of War or Halo! I always get Very excited for a new CoD game but this one looks very Disappointing. I will not be buying this one!"

Many other gamers said they were waiting for more details on "Black Ops 2's" multiplayer action before making a decision about purchasing the game.

Samsung unveils Galaxy S III smartphone with face, voice recognition

2012-05-04T09:00:00.000+08:00

London (CNN) -- Samsung has launched its Galaxy S III smartphone, which it hopes will help solidify the company as the leading challenger to Apple and its iPhone 4S.

The new handset, with a whopping 4.8-inch screen and an 8-megapixel camera, was unveiled at a slick launch party in London on Thursday, complete with a backing orchestra.

Billed by Samsung as having been "designed for humans," the phone features voice and eye-recognition technology that the company hopes will set the handset ahead of its rivals in the crowded smartphone market.

Samsung has overtaken Nokia as the world's best-selling mobile phone maker, and Juniper Research reported Tuesday that Samsung also overtook Apple in smartphone sales in the first quarter, in what it described as "increasingly a two-horse race."

The new Galaxy handset, which runs the most up-to-date version of Google's mobile operating system -- Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich -- recognizes when a user is looking at it, and ensures the screen doesn't go dark while it has eye contact.

S Voice technology -- Samsung's equivalent of Apple's Siri -- enables users to wake up their phone with a simple voice command. And voice recognition goes further -- saying: "Hi Galaxy ... picture," for example, opens the phone's camera app, and saying "cheese" takes a picture. Face-recognition software then identifies Facebook friends within images, and prompts the user to share them.

Samsung -- a sponsor of the Olympics -- revealed it will be sending devices enabled with mobile payment technology to the 2012 games in London.

Chris Hall, editor of technology website Pocket-lint, said he was "pleasantly surprised" by the new phone.

"When you compare it to the nearest rival it feels like they have pulled off a bit of a trick," he said. "They have put some effort into software innovations, particularly the eye recognition. The voice recognition feels like a reaction to Siri on the iPhone, but I don't know many people who actually talk to their phones."

"I think the success of the Galaxy S II proves people want something different that isn't an iPhone, and I think the S III is a valid successor to the S II." Samsung said the phone will be available in Europe on May 29, followed by launches in Asia, Africa and Latin America. A 4G version will go on sale in North America, Japan and South Korea in the summer.

Samsung did not announce what prices on the phone are expected to be.

NBA stars have game off the court, too

2012-04-28T09:00:00.001+08:00

Editor's note: John Gaudiosi is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Gamerlive.tv video syndication network. He's covered video games for hundreds of outlets over the past 20 years and specializes in the convergence of Hollywood and games.

(CNN) -- Between games, practices, travel and promotional appearances, you'd think that the NBA's multimillionaire stars would be too busy.

But most NBA players say they find time to play video games every day. In fact, the NBA claims that 85 percent of its players are gamers.

"I would say I play about three or four hours every night," says Orlando Magic Center Dwight Howard. "I'm a night owl, so after games I'm up till about 4 or 5 a.m. playing video games."

"That's all I do," says Oklahoma City Thunder forward Kevin Durant. "If I'm not on the court, I got the controller in my hand."

"With the schedule we have this year, I don't get to play as much as I want to," says LeBron James of the Miami Heat. "But whenever I get some down time I play some Xbox."

As the NBA playoffs get under way, half the league's players are done for the season, giving them more free hours to fire up their video game consoles. The other half will have extra time off between playoff games, thanks to the league's stretched-out postseason schedule.

"I play a little bit, but I played more during the summer," says Rajon Rondo of the Boston Celtics. "This season is so crammed, it's tough."

The league's rising young stars aren't immune from the thrills of gaming, either.

Ricky Rubio (Minnesota Timberwolves), Kyrie Irving (Cleveland Cavaliers) and John Wall (Washington Wizards), made a pit stop while in Orlando for the 2012 NBA All-Star Game to check out the new "NBA Live 13" game at Electronic Arts' Tiburon studio -- the developer behind sports franchises like "Madden NFL 12," "NCAA Football 12" and the new "Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf 13."

NBA fans will have a choice of simulation games next season when "NBA Live 13" tips off against "NBA 2K13." It's been a few years now that gamers, and NBA players, have had no choice in pro-hoops games (outside of the arcade game, EA Sports NBA Jam).

"I'm excited they brought 'NBA Live' back," says Durant. "I haven't talked to anybody yet (about the cover). I'm sure I'll get a call here in a few hours or a few days or so. I haven't heard about it, this is my first time. I'm excited."

Durant was the cover athlete for "NBA Elite 11," a rebranding of EA Sports' basketball franchise that was canceled because of horrible community reaction to the glitchy gameplay. But he's still up for being on the cover of the new game.

"I'm a '2K' person now," says Andre Iguodala of the Philadelphia 76ers. "I might give 'NBA Live 13' a try, but '2K' has taken over the basketball scene."

Although a knee injury to New York Knicks sensation Jeremy Lin knocked him out for the season, he's still playable in "NBA 2K12" -- and his gameplay has improved thanks to not one, but two player rating upgrades by developer Visual Concepts.

"I actually don't know the exact numbers, but I know for a while I was in the 50s, I believe," Lin says. "I think ESPN had me as the 467th best player out of 500 or something like that coming into the season."

Now that Lin has earned a 75 in the game, up from 56 when he was a bench player, he's not focusing on how high his player rating can go.

"I'm not really too worried about that," he says. "I don't have a set number or goal, but it's cool to be able to hear about progressing. That's the important thing, is that me and my team continue to improve. As long as we're headed up, I think we're good to go."

New York Knicks star Carmelo Anthony is happy for his teammate's player rating upgrade.

"It's getting up there," he says. "It should be in the 90s. If I have a chance to play '2K12,' he's definitely in my starting lineup."

But not everyone is crazy about their NBA 2K12 player ratings. And yes, they do check out their in-game attributes.

"I like some of the ratings, but I feel like some of them could be increased a little bit," says Utah Jazz forward Gordon Hayward. "Defensively, I think they've got my grade a little low. I think they had one of my teammates, Al Jefferson, a better perimeter defender than me. I was like, 'Come on now, that can't happen.' With time, they'll probably increase them, so I'm not too worried about it."

Utah Jazz teammate Jeremy Evans, winner of the NBA All-Star Slam Dunk Contest, would also like to see his player ratings in NBA '2K12' improved.

"When I play '2K12,' and sometimes I play as myself, I get mad," he says. "It's like, 'I would have dunked that in the NBA.' It's a great game, but sometimes they don't actually make you like you want to be made."

Evans grew up on sports games like "Double Dribble" and "NBA Live" on the Nintendo 64 and now plays "FIFA 12" and the "Call of Duty" series.

When it comes to video games, some NBA players will try anything.

"I played everything...football games, basketball games, baseball games, Donkey Kong, and all of that," says Los Angeles Clippers star Blake Griffin. "Actually, probably my favorite game to play is 'Tiger Woods Golf.' It's always been fun. I've played it for a long time."

So the next time you're on Xbox Live, it may just be an NBA All-Star in that game world with you.

Review: Barnes & Noble's new glowing Nook is a winner

2012-04-27T09:00:00.001+08:00

(Mashable) -- Sometimes you just want to read. Digital's best answer for that simple urge is the now venerable E Ink e-reader. These monochromatic devices are not only holding on in the face of stiff LCD-based tablet competition, they're innovating. The latest update comes from Barnes & Noble, which added an LED-based "GlowLight" to its Nook Simple Touch e-reader.

The 6.5 x 5-inch device is not remarkably different from the e-reader Barnes & Noble introduced last year. Its dimensions are, in fact, virtually unchanged. But despite the new lighting tech, this reader is actually 5% lighter than the previous model. It's also somewhat lighter than Amazon's Kindle Touch (6.975 ounces versus 7.5 ounces).

Both Wi-Fi-only readers cost $139. You can get the Amazon Kindle Touch for $99, but then you have to accept special offers (essentially ads) in place of the screen savers.

More importantly, the Simple Touch price includes the power adapter, while Kindle sells it separately for approximately $15.

Still, what truly sets the latest Nook Simple Touch apart from all other E Ink-based e-readers is the patent-pending GlowLight. It makes the lightweight reader ready for night reading without the need for an overhead, clip-on or external light. By contrast, Amazon sells a cover with a built-in LED light for the Kindle Keyboard 3G.

Barnes & Noble is not the first to offer an E Ink reader with built-in LED lighting. Sony did it first a few years ago, but eventually discontinued the larger and more expensive e-reader.

The Simple Touch uses a single array of LED's nestled along the top edge of the device (above the screen, but below the touch-sensitive, anti-glare layer). They light the entire display.

I put the ereader to the ultimate test: bedtime reading. My wife, who was beside me, read by the super-bright light of her Apple iPad 2. I held the much smaller ereader in my hand, and pressed the physical Nook "n" button for two seconds to enable the light . Nook Simple Touch's GlowLight is adjustable, via a touch-screen menu selection.

So I cranked it all the way up (the default, which was set to about 1/3 power, was not bright enough for me). The light across the screen isn't perfectly uniform, but it is highly readable and very comfortable on the eyes. Even after my wife powered down and went to sleep, she didn't complain about my GlowLight.

I also found the touchscreen, which works either with a tap or a sweep of the finger (forward to turn the page and back to turn back the page), worked perfectly and made me wish my Kindle 2 was also a touch-screen device.

Barnes & Noble promises that the Nook Simple Touch's battery life will last for 30 days with an hour of GlowLight-enabled reading a night. I've had the ereader a few days and charged it once.

My original plan was to leave the GlowLight running and test if it could run, as Barnes & Noble told me, for 60 continuous hours. The device's own auto-sleep settings scuttled that plan by putting the Simple Touch to sleep after five minutes of inactivity.

Overall, Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight is a winner. It's easy to setup (entering a Wi-Fi password is easy thanks to the touch screen), feels great in the hand, slips into my back pocket and holds thousands of books.

The interface is smartly designed. I like the store design and how easy it is to buy things (pretty much a match for the Kindle store) and found the E Ink screen crisp and responsive.

My only tiny criticism is the power button on the back. You use it to fully turn off the device (and turn it on) and it wiggles a bit too much for my taste. The good news is that, considering the battery life, it's unlikely you'll use it very often.

If I were buying a new E Ink reader right now, I'd go for the Barnes & Noble Simple Touch with GlowLight. It's slightly more affordable than the Kindle Touch (when you include the charger), feature-sensible and now has the killer enhancement: a built-in light.

Those who pre-ordered the e-reader could receive it as early as this week. Barnes & Noble reps tell us that limited quantities of the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight will be available in stores next month.

What do you think? Would you buy this E Ink e-reader or have you permanently moved on to tablets? Share your thoughts in the comments.

See the original article on Mashable.com

'No permission' Android apps can see and share your data

2012-04-24T09:00:00.001+08:00

Editor's note: Amy Gahran writes about mobile tech for CNN.com. She is a San Francisco Bay Area writer and media consultant whose blog, Contentious.com, explores how people communicate in the online age.

(CNN) -- Savvy Android users tend to be wary of installing apps that request seemingly unnecessary permissions. When an app wants access to data or functions on your phone, such as your contacts list or the ability to send text messages, it can signal potential security or malware risks.

But Android apps that request no permissions at all (such as this Magic 8 ball app) are generally considered pretty free of security risks.

But are they?

Earlier this month, a test conducted by the Leviathan Security Group showed that even "no-permissions" Android apps can access potentially sensitive data on your phone -- and transmit that data elsewhere via your phone's Web browser.

Specifically, Paul Brodeur of Leviathan created a test app that requested no permissions and installed it on some Android devices. He was able to scan the phone's memory card (SD card) and display a list of all non-hidden files on it.

"While it's possible to fetch the contents of all those files, I'll leave it to someone else to decide what files should be grabbed and which are going to be boring," he wrote.

He also could see which apps were installed on the phone, and list some files belonging to those apps. He observed that this might allow nefarious people to find and exploit permission-related vulnerabilities in certain apps. Last year the Skype Android app presented this kind of problem. (Skype fixed that problem.)

And for phones that operate on GSM cell networks (in the U.S., that's AT&T and T-Mobile), Leviathan's test app was able to read identifying information about the phone from the SIM card, plus some other information.

Finally, since no-permissions apps can launch the phone's Web browser, that provides a potential route to transmit some data from the phone.

While Brodeur's test app was designed to seek out such security lapses. "It's trivial for any installed app to execute these actions without any user interaction," he wrote.

While this may sound worrying, don't panic. What Leviathan discovered probably should concern Android app developers and Google, rather than consumers who use Android phones and tablets.

"What this research found is really little cracks in Android -- not great big security holes you could drive a truck through," said Kevin Mahaffey, co-founder and chief technical officer of Lookout Mobile Security, a leading provider of security apps and services for Android devices. "That's why this kind of research is so valuable -- it ultimately helps make Android more secure."

According to Mahaffey, the bigger problem is not that people might maliciously exploit these security cracks to steal from users or compromise their phones -- but rather that many app developers are "sloppy."

For instance, developers sometimes build apps that store user data (such as usernames and passwords) in ways that could be easily accessed through the security cracks Leviathan found. Or the app might open the phone's Web browser to allow functionality that could be handled other ways.

For instance, TheVerge.com reported that the photo gallery that comes pre-installed on Android phones by Samsung, LG, and some other manufacturers stores unencrypted copies of complete addresses associated with photos. They found in a completely unencrypted file "a list of locations which matched those of our home, work, family, significant other, friends, and even holiday destinations."

These were not GPS coordinates, but rather full addresses: door number, street, town, zip code, and country. TheVerge noted that this address data apparently was generated by Picasa Web Albums. Google acquired Picasa in 2004.

"There is no reason for the application to be caching locations of private photos completely unencrypted," wrote Aaron Souppouris for The Verge. "This was information that we'd never given Google, either on a phone or within Picasa. To make matters worse, Picasa Web-Album syncing had been switched off a week before the information was found."

There's not a lot that the average consumer can do in terms of spotting whether apps are storing unnecessary data in insecure ways.

The best practice is still to notice which permissions apps require before installing them, don't install apps that seem to require too many permissions, and report to the developer any suspicious activity by an app.

If the developer is not responsive or seems evasive or shady when you report suspicious app behavior, Mahaffey advises alerting Google's Android security team by sending an e-mail to security@android.com.

"That channel is mainly used by developers, but it's worth letting them know if you have concerns about an app and you aren't getting useful responses from the developer," he said.

The opinions expressed in this post are solely those of Amy Gahran.

Review: 'Kid Icarus: Uprising' burns its wings

2012-04-19T09:00:00.001+08:00

(CNN) -- When the Nintendo 3DS was introduced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in 2010, one of the announced games that drew the most favorable reaction wasÂ "Kid Icarus: Uprising."

A follow-up to the originalÂ "Kid Icarus"Â title that came out 25 years ago, this new version offers updated graphics, classic boss battles and humorous dialogue that, unfortunately, quickly becomes cheesy and trite.

The story harkens back to the original as the forces of Light battle the forces of Darkness with the player acting as the champion for Light. The angel hero, Pit, must set out once again with the help of the goddess of Light, Palutena, to defeat Medusa and end the threat to the human race.

Players control Pit with the device's circle pad and use its stylus to aim and turn him. Firing his weapon is done with the left shoulder button on the 3DS. Fortunately, the game comes packed with a nifty stand, because trying to hold and maneuver gameplay was quite the contortion.

Even using the stylus after a while became painful in my wrist. The game does remind you from time to time to take a break, so perhaps the developers thought there might be a problem.

Combat is broken down into three sections for each chapter: flight battle, ground battle and boss battle. In the air, Pit attempts to shoot enemies while continuously flying forward. He is able to dodge around the screen but his motion is always moving ahead.

On the ground (because apparently this angel has a limit on how much he can fly), Pit navigates through a series of rooms and pathways, defeating enemies and collecting hearts. Hearts are the currency by which players can obtain new weapons and skills.

The boss battles close each chapter, involving classic characters and a combination of nimble dodging and intense firepower. The bosses are returning enemies from the original title, but offer new challenges for fans of the franchise.

The intensity of each chapter can change as well, ramping up the enemies and the loot. A device called the Fiend's Caldron allows players to spend hearts to adjust the difficulty. Want to make it easier? That'll cost you. If you want more, you bet hearts that you can complete the chapter, winning you more hearts.

Pit has nine weapon types at his disposal and can equip one before each chapter. Ranging from rifles to clubs, each offers special advantages. One nice feature is that some weapons can be fused with other weapons to create even more powerful attacks. Plus, some of the names are really quite charming.

If there is a downside to the game, it is the dialogue. It starts off being funny and cute, but I get the feeling the writers were trying too hard in the later stages of the game. There are plenty of silly pop-culture references that don't quite work in this mythological setting: "Happy meal of pain"? Really?

The talk also clashes with the action. Many times, the dialogue ran on so long that I completed the fight before the characters were done trash-talking each other. It ended up almost ruining the entire experience.

Overall,Â "Kid Icarus: Uprising"Â does offer some solid combat, some great visuals and a good soundtrack. The gameplay is good, and the story does move along at a brisk pace.

However, it's hobbled by an uncomfortable playing configuration that cries out for a second circle pad (Circle Pad Pro, anyone?) instead of the stylus pointer..

"Kid Icarus: Uprising" is available now and only for the Nintendo 3DS. It is rated E 10+ for everyone 10 years old and older due to comic mischief, fantasy violence, and mild suggestive themes. This review was done using the Nintendo 3DS with no extra hardware attachments.

The future of gaming: It's now

2012-04-17T09:00:00.001+08:00

(CNN) -- The future of video gaming is bright, according to four industry visionaries who spoke at a recent gaming event.

Kellee Santiago, Ken Levine, Paul Barrett and Mark DeLoura were part of a panel discussion at the opening of a new Smithsonian exhibit,Â The Art of Video Games.Â Each has been successful in the gaming business and has great hope for what's to come.

Barrett, the senior creative director for BioWare-Mythic, said people who are going to make games in the future are playing them right now. He describes this time in those gaming lives as their Golden Age.

"What's interesting about my Golden Age is it is where I learned my prejudices about what games I liked and I don't like," Barrett said. "That period defined my understanding of games so that when I had the chance to make games, those are the kinds of game I wanted to make."

For the gamers of today, he said, "The current Golden Age is pretty bloody good."

Others on the panel said they were also driven to create games that reflected or expressed something they wanted to share with others. For Levine, the creative director of theÂ "BioShock"Â franchise, it is about creating worlds and telling stories that mean something in those worlds.

He related a story about the creation ofÂ "BioShock,"Â where players can save or sacrifice young girls, known as Little Sisters, to gain power. In the beginning of the creative process, the little girls were sea slugs.

"In order for the story to be meaningful, we had to create empathy between the player and the thing they were making a decision about," Levine said. "That took a while for that to come about. The actual choice became simple -- what do you want to do with this little girl?"

Santiago and DeLoura hope future game designers go beyond what games are about today and challenge themselves and the industry about what gaming could be.

DeLoura, the vice president of technology at THQ, wants the constraints of today's design to seem archaic to those who are just getting started and hopes for more diversity.

"The games that break down (the conventional) mentality is what does it for me," he said. "For us pioneers up here, one of the things I would like to challenge us to do is to reach out into communities you don't expect games to come from and really pull those out and get them shared with the broader community."

Santiago, co-founder and president of thatgamecompany, echoed that sentiment of opening up new ideas for games of the future. She is also a partner in IndieFund, which helps independent game developers reach and maintain financial independence.

"My biggest hope is that the people who will be making games, what those people look like, completely changes," she said. "We're going to see new types of stories and new types of experiences. With greater technology and distribution channels, it has flipped a switch for people and they say, 'Oh, I could do that too!'"

Levine added that with additional venues for gaming like app stores and Kickstarter, future game designers don't have to be driven to find funding to produce games anymore. He said that without that financial pressure, creativity goes up.

"Games were my companion as a kid," Levine said. "It didn't shut my world down. It opened my world up."

Barrett said there is a whole new wave of people who want to make games that are fearless, expect success and have wide ranging views. He said those future designers have one goal in mind.

"They don't want to make games that are art. They want to make games that are awesome."

Super-mayor Cory Booker gets memed

2012-04-14T09:00:00.001+08:00

(Mashable) -- Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, saved a woman from a burning house late Thursday night.

The mayor is a highly active Twitter user, and commonly uses the social network to find and help Newark residents who are in need.

Predictably, the Internet caught onto the story and it took on a life of its own.

A new Tumblr blog, SuperCoryBooker is actively creating memes about the mayor. The hashtag #CoryBookerStories, which is giving the Newark mayor the Chuck Norris treatment, is also trending in the United States.

Mayor Cory Booker's 'superhero' moment Mayor Booker downplays 'hero' label

Here's some of our favorites from the hashtag:

@StephenSteglik: Corey Booker can win a game of "Connect Four" with only three moves #CoryBookerStories

@SayethSimon: Cory Booker isn't afraid of the dark. The dark is afraid of Cory Booker. #CoryBookerStories

@ChloeAngyal: Superheroes dress up as Cory Booker on Halloween #CoryBookerStories

@SayethSimon: Ann Romney's life was filled with struggles, until she met Cory Booker. #CoryBookerStories

@jimgeraghty: Billy Joel didn't start the fire. But Cory Booker put it out. #CoryBookerStories

@sethdmichaels: The honey badger cares about @CoryBooker. #corybookerstories

See the original article on Mashable.com

Virus found in fake Android version of 'Angry Birds: Space'

2012-04-13T09:00:00.001+08:00

(CNN) -- Android users beware. Download the wrong version of your favorite pig-killing game and the birds won't be the only ones who are angry.

"Angry Birds: Space," the latest installment of the insanely popular mobile game, is being used to mask some fairly nasty malware, according to security experts and Rovio, the maker of "Angry Birds."

Graham Cluley, an analyst with Web security firm Sophos, wrote on the company's blog Thursday that they had discovered fake versions of the game on unofficial app stores. The fake games contain a "Trojan horse" virus.

A post on Rovio's blog on Thursday also warned fans to watch out for fake versions of the game, urging them to download the new title from their official store.

According to Sophos, the Trojan horse, which it identified in a file called Andr/KongFu-L, appears to be a fully functional version of the game, but instead installs a virus on the user's smartphone or tablet.

From there, the code tries to install more malware that essentially puts the phone or tablet computer under the control of the cybercriminals behind it, Cluley wrote.

"It feels like we have to keep reminding Android users to be on their guard against malware risks, and to be very careful, especially when downloading applications from unofficial Android markets," he said.

Unlike Apple, which screens all its apps and requires iPhone and iPad owners to download software from its official App Store, Google maintains less control over what people can install on devices that run its Android operating system. The company allows Android owners to download programs from official and unofficial sources.

Security experts say Android device owners should use the official Android Market if they want to avoid downloading fake apps and potentially harmful programs, although there have been instances of malicious software showing up in that official venue, too.

From Harry Potter to Ana Kournikova, it's not unusual for malicious hackers to use popular topics, often from the entertainment and celebrity world, to lure potential victims.

"Angry Birds: Space" was released March 22 for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices, as well as Macs and PCs. It soared to a mind-blowing 10 million downloads in just three days, three times faster than the franchise's last outing, "Angry Birds: Rio."

Released in 2009, "Angry Birds" is the No.1 paid mobile app of all time, crossing 300 million downloads, across multiple platforms, last year.

Based in Finland, Rovio parlayed the game's success into a virtual empire, offering everything from comic books and animated videos to plush dolls and cookbooks based on the game.

Hey Bravo, Silicon Valley is too boring for TV

2012-04-11T09:00:00.001+08:00

Editor's note: Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about tech news and digital culture. He writes regular columns about social media and tech for CNN.com.

(CNN) -- The tech world has been up in arms this past week about "Silicon Valley," an upcoming Bravo reality show documenting the lives of five aspiring entrepreneurs making their way in the world of Bay Area startups.

The TV show is co-produced by Randi Zuckerberg, former marketing director of Facebook and sister of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. Its brief preview showcases the glamorous life of a tech startup founder: Lots of parties, alcohol, attractive women and a social scene that is like "high school, but it's only the smart kids."

The problem: The tech industry isn't like that at all.

Here's how tech-company founders usually succeed in Silicon Valley: They spend endless hours in front of a computer building products people want to use. Alas, this doesn't make for interesting TV.

Hence all the Hollywood cliches. Computers on TV shows and in movies beep when a button is pressed. Characters seem able to type at a frenetic pace. Passwords can always be guessed within three attempts -- and always just in time to prevent a disaster.

These cliches once existed only in fictional shows and movies. Alas, as Silicon Valley continues to power a digital revolution that's changing the world at a rapid pace, camera crews are increasingly trying to capture startup reality and bottle it as entertainment. And they're finding it converts to film about as well as paint drying.

Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook through thousands of hours spent in front of a dimly glowing screen. His motive? He "likes to build things." And yet in 2010's "The Social Network," the Zuckerberg onscreen is more concerned with girls, parties and getting into Harvard's most exclusive social circles.

Therein lies the second issue with bringing startups to the big or small screen: Startup founders rarely have interesting social lives. Building a company takes almost every minute of the day, leaving little time for a personal life.

TV viewers demand drama: If it can't be found, it's manufactured. The small screen loves a performer, too. A celebrity. An exhibitionist. Can you dance? Sing? Act? Even once the show is over, these outgoing stars convert well to a world of tabloids and celebrity magazines.

Startup founders, however, do not.

So now comes the time to pick a side. Is representing Silicon Valley as a party haven doing a disservice to those who work countless hours to build products we'll all love? Or is there nobility in Randi Zuckerberg's mission to "make accessible and to humanize the increasingly important tech community for the average consumer"?

Perhaps it's both. Translating tech for those not living in its epicenter is a noble effort that will surely bring more new people -- and more diversity -- to Silicon Valley. And yet this can't be done in a literal way: Bringing technologists' stories to TV and movies requires a little creativity to make the subject matter fit the medium.

My science teacher didn't get our class interested in a science career by telling us that most chemists work long hours on repetitive tasks. No, he showed us explosions. And crazy, color-changing reactions. And non-Newtonian fluids dancing on speaker cones.

It's unfortunate that the story of tech revolution doesn't convert well to the dominant medium of the day. And it's regrettable that some viewers will wildly misinterpret what entrepreneurship is all about. But after grabbing the attention of viewers with dramatic exothermic reactions -- or scenes of wild parties -- perhaps we'll be able to teach them what it really takes to build a company.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Pete Cashmore.

Poll: Google more popular than Apple, Facebook

2012-04-10T09:00:00.001+08:00

(CNN) -- America's top technology companies have approval ratings that most politicians can only dream of, according to a new poll.

And Google, not Apple, is the ultimate object of our digital affection.

A robust 82% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Google, and 53% have "strongly favorable" thoughts about the Web titan, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released last last week.

The reigning king of Web search, Google has expanded its empire in the past few years, adding its Android mobile operating system and Google Plus networking site to already popular features like Google Maps and Gmail.

Only 9% of respondents to the poll, conducted from March 28-April 1, held an unfavorable view of Google, while 10% had no opinion.

Google's results put the company squarely ahead of Apple which tallied an impressive 74% favorable rating in their own right. At 13%, Apple's negatives were slightly higher than Google's.

In an analysis of results, pollsters noted that "the time is ripe for this sort of assessment, given these companies' envied positions in the marketplace."

While phones running Google's Android system represent the majority of the world's smartphones, no single phone has come anywhere near the popularity of Apple's iPhone. And the iPad -- the latest incarnation of which went on sale last month, continues to dominate the tablet computer market.

Both Google and Apple fared best with wealthier respondents. In fact, in households earning more than $100,000 a year, 93% of respondents expressed a favorable opinion of Google, 91% of Apple.

The results suggest that recent public-relations dings that both companies have taken haven't soured large chunks of their audiences.

Over the years, Google's near omnipresence online has prompted privacy concerns. Most recently, critics, including some federal regulators and U.S. Congress members, objected to a revamped Google privacy policy that pulls user-activity data from the company's multiple products together to create a single user profile.

And while Apple raked in a record $46.3 billion last quarter, some have complained that virtually all of its products are manufactured in China. Most notably, Foxconn, the manufacturing partner that makes the iPhone and iPad, has been hit with complaints of harsh working conditions.

In an increasingly tech-centric culture, the poll results suggest consumers may be willing to overlook negative news -- even news that impacts them directly -- if they're happy with their digital experiences.

"The services in question, after all, aren't just services; they are, at this point, everyday and intimate components of people's lives," wrote Megan Garber of The Atlantic. "They are, increasingly, implicit."

Facebook, the near ubiquitous social network, didn't fare as well as the top two companies, although with 58% favorable responses, it still has enough votes to get re-elected. But 28% of respondents had an unfavorable view of Facebook -- twice as many as Apple and nearly three times as many as Google.

And for all its popularity among celebrities and in tech circles, Twitter limped in a distant fourth. Just 34% of respondents viewed Twitter favorably, with 36% holding unfavorable views and 31% having no opinion of the micro-blogging site.

The poll was conducted by landline and cell phone among a random national sample of 1,007 U.S. adults. Results have a margin of error of 3.5 points.

Instagram now available for Android devices

2012-04-04T09:00:00.001+08:00

(CNN) -- After 18 months of waiting, users of Android phones and tablets can finally crash the Instagram party.

On Tuesday the fast-growing, photo-sharing network for the iPhone and iPad finally launched an app for Android devices. The free application works with Android version 2.2 and higher and is available for download at Google Play, Google's new online store for digital media.

"We've been meticulous about translating the Instagram experience to the Android platform," said a post Tuesday on Instagram's blog.

"The Android app offers an extremely familiar Instagram experience when compared to the iOS app. You'll find all the same exact filters and community as our iOS version."

Instagram lets users enhance their mobile photos with filters, share them with their friends or other people and comment on friends' pictures. Like Twitter, Instagram also allows people to follow other users.

Instagram has exploded in popularity since Apple honored it as its 2011 App of the Year. The app now has more than 30 million users, up from 15 million four months ago.

A telescope that generates more data than the whole internet

2012-04-03T09:00:00.001+08:00

(Mashable) -- There's a massive telescope on the drawing board that hasn't even started construction yet, but when it's finished in 2024, it'll generate more data in a single day than the entire Internet.

For scientists to ensure they'll be able to handle all that raw information, they need to start working on new computing technologies now. Fortunately, IBM is on it.

The computing giant is collaborating with ASTRON (the Netherlands Institute of Radio Astronomy) to develop the next-generation computer tech needed to handle the colossal amount of data captured by the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), a new radio telescope that will spread sensing equipment over a span 3,000 kilometers wide, or about the width of the continental U.S.A.

"One of the goals is to search what happened at the time of the Big Bang, 13 billion years ago," IBM researcher Ronanld Luijten told Mashable. "We need to figure out what technology needs to be chosen in order to build this large antenna."

The project is called DOME, and it's challenged to find a way to capture and process approximately one exabyte every day, which works out to about twice the amount of data that's generated every day by the World Wide Web, IBM says.

To do that in a way that doesn't consume a massive amount of energy, IBM will need to develop some entirely new processing architectures before construction on the telescope begins in 2017.

"We need to be very creative," says Luijten. "If we were to use standard servers of today, we'd need millions of them. They would use so much space and use so much energy that we couldn't afford to build the machines let alone operate them."

While the project has only just been announced, IBM already has some ideas in the hopper. Specifically, it'll be looking at novel ways of stacking chips (today's chips are flat, though stacking or "3D" tech is around the corner) and using optical technology for interconnects, something the company has already had some success with.

The promising new conductive material graphene, however, probably won't play a part.

"Graphene will not be available in time to build something we start in 2017," says Luijten. "But it might be available for a later generation. The expectation is that we will go with the traditional CMOS process."

See also: IBM: Mind-reading machines will change our lives

Even though the new computing tech hasn't even been invented yet, it'll ironically still rely on one of the oldest storage technologies in existence: magnetic tape. Luijten says tape simply can't be matched by newer storage mediums since it's so cost-, space- and power-efficient.

The project won't exclusively use tape for storage, though, also relying on phase-change media and solid-state drives.

"We're looking at new memory technologies," says Luijten, "but at the end of the day most of the data likely will remain on tape because it's still the most cost-effective storage medium. Tape will be around for a long time."

The SKA isn't planned to be completed until 2024, but the technologies that IBM creates to service it will have the potential to change entire industries in the meantime, dealing with big-data problems that the world is just now encountering.

It's possible the social networks and search engines of the future will be powered by IBM's coming tech or something like it, enabling them to process an entire Internet's worth of data for anyone and everyone.

What problems would you like to see the supercomputers of tomorrow take on? Share your ideas in the comments.

See the original article on Mashable.com

Google launches monthly user-activity feature

2012-03-29T09:00:00.001+08:00

(CNN) -- Weeks after a policy change that sparked privacy concerns, Google has rolled out a new feature that will give users a monthly update to help them keep track of their activity across Google's multiple sites and tools.

It's called Account Activity, and users can receive it via e-mail with a link to a password-protected personal page. The feature was announced Wednesday in a post on Google's official blog.

"Every day, we aim to make technology so simple and intuitive that you stop thinking about it -- we want Google to work so well it just blends into your life," Andreas Tuerk, a product manager for Google, wrote in the post. "But sometimes it's helpful to step back and take stock of what you're doing online."

The report is not automatic, meaning users will have to sign up to receive it.

Based on a sample report, information such as your number of Google searches, your most popular search topics and the number of e-mails sent and received will be included.

It also will show locations where your account was used and the devices that were used to sign into it, which Tuerk called an extra layer of security.

"Knowing more about your own account activity also can help you take steps to protect your Google Account," he wrote. "For example, if you notice sign-ins from countries where you haven't been or devices you've never owned, you can change your password immediately and sign up for the extra level of security provided by two-step verification."

On March 1, Google instigated a new privacy policy in which it creates a single profile of each user based on their activity across all of its many products -- from search to Gmail to mobile devices that run on Google's Android operating system.

Privacy advocates, including some in Congress, fear that puts too much personal information in the company's hands. But Google said it wouldn't be collecting any new information -- just collating what data it already had in a way that would be more clear and help create new products and features for its users.

Wednesday's blog post from Google made no mention of the new privacy policy. But many tech observers were quick to make the connection, saying it looks like a way to make users more comfortable.

"If you're confused about what Google does and doesn't know about your online activity, take heart: Google is letting you in on the secret," Network World writer Brad Reed wrote.

Others saw potential for another goal behind the rollout -- reminding folks how ubiquitous the Web giant has become online.

"While the report is something of a data nerds' dream, its timely arrival hints at another purpose," wrote Sarah Perez of TechCrunch. "The new Account Activity report offers a way for users to see exactly what they're doing on Google, and how much of their life involves the use of Google's products."

'Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City' a disappointing chapter

2012-03-28T09:00:00.001+08:00

(CNN) -- Over the course of more than 15 years, "Resident Evil" has established a rich history as one of the video game world's most storied franchises.

Sadly, "Resident Evil: Raccoon City" fails to add to that rich history, serving up ordinary squad-based game play and limited threats from the franchise's iconic zombies.

The latest venture into the zombie-filled world by Capcom is supposed to take place in time between the last two games in the series, "Resident Evil 2" and "Resident Evil: Nemesis."

This time, you play as a member of the Wolfpack squad for the always dubious Umbrella Corporation. You're tasked with retrieving a virus that turns people into the undead creatures before the U.S. military can get it.

Raccoon City is the location where the zombie phenomena first occurred and has been the setting in many of the "Resident Evil" games.

Working for the bad guys in this title was supposed to be a refreshing change from others in the series. And it might have worked, if the largely first-person shooter game didn't feel more like a poorly lit "Call of Duty" than what we've come to expect from the "Resident Evil" franchise.

Each member of your squad specializes in a different field (stealth, explosives, recon, etc.), and you play as one of four soldiers fighting their way through Raccoon City.

Either your friends can fill in the roles of the other three squad members or the game will control the others. You get to choose your special abilities and weapons at the beginning of each mission, but these are all locked down once the game starts.

The weapons are pretty typical for a first-person shooter, and your character can carry one sidearm and one long-barreled weapon. Ammo and other weapons are sprinkled throughout the battleground and very rarely will you find yourself without bullets.

There are a couple of high-powered, single-use weapons (grenade launchers, flamethrower) that can't be replenished with additional ammo. If you use one of these, make sure you can pick up another weapon as soon as you run out of fuel or grenades.

One of the most frustrating aspects of combat is what I call "magnetic cover."

If you're trying to use cover from your enemies while you're moving, you end up essentially plastered to a wall if you get even close to it. Forget about moving stealthily from one covered spot to another. If you want to progress, you have to stand up, exposing yourself to enemy fire, then move to the next safe spot.

The artificial intelligence that runs the game is fair, but its decisions are sometimes hard to understand. Your squadmates will rush into a room with guns blazing at times when the team could have easily sneaked past. At other times, they will arbitrarily fling themselves to the ground for no apparent reason.

At least they are good in a fight and and very effective at taking the heat off your character. Be sure to have a medic in your squad to help heal injured party members.

Most of the opponents are not zombies. You'll spend a lot of time battling the U.S. military in firefights, not that the soldiers you face seem much smarter than the undead.

Character models for the soldiers and the zombies are reused often. You'll see the same zombie police officer, zombie large guy and zombie girl in short-shorts over and over again.

You will kill a lot of living and nonliving enemies in this game. The experience points you gain can be used at the beginning of each mission to upgrade weapons or personal abilities. But, even if you don't use any upgrades at all, you will still be able to succeed.

The passive abilities that help you find items and enemies on your mini-map are probably the most useful. None of the weapon upgrades felt like they were necessary.

"Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City" ultimately comes off as a mundane, average shooter that abandons its heritage in the zombie/horror genre.

There aren't enough zombies and too many living-breathing enemies to truly feel like a worthy outing for this franchise.

The ending flies in the face of "Resident Evil's" history and leaves more questions unanswered. It feels half-done with no real finale.

Obviously, the ending leaves the door open for another shooter in this series. Unfortunately, it doesn't really deserve one.

New iPad has a smart-cover problem

2012-03-21T09:00:00.001+08:00

(Mashable) -- Magnets: How do they work? Differently on the new iPad than on the iPad 2, it has emerged -- and that's bad news for anyone with an old or third-party smart cover.

A number of users who bought new iPads over the weekend (this reporter included) were dismayed to discover that the smart covers they'd bought for the iPad 2 didn't work on the new model.

Smart covers, which attach to the iPad's built-in magnets, are supposed to turn the tablet on automatically when you flip them open. But as dozens of iPad users in this Apple forum concurred, that was no longer the case with many smart covers on the new iPad.

That seemed odd, as the new iPad is physically no different from the iPad 2 -- on the surface, at least. But it turns out Apple has been messing with the polarity of its magnets under the hood.

Photographer Mark Booth uncovered this when he did some experiments with magnets, iPads and a couple of smart covers. You can see the results in a video on Booth's blog.

"The iPad 2â²s sleep/wake sensor wasn't polarity specific," Booth explains. And that apparently led to an issue for iPad 2 users who flipped their smart covers around so that they sat flush with the back of the tablet -- an everyday act that could cause the iPad 2 to switch off unintentionally.

So it seems the new iPad's sleep/wake sensor does require a specific polarity. But in fixing one issue, Apple appears to have caused another for users who want to use their old smart covers with their new tablets. (We've asked Apple to comment, and will update you if we hear back.)

Booth theorizes that Apple quietly made the polarity change in their smart covers at some point in 2011, since newer Apple-made smart covers do seem to work with the new iPad. If you got yours for the holidays, there's a good chance you won't see a problem.

If your smart cover hails from early 2011, try taking it back to the Apple store; Booth says he's hearing from users that the store will exchange old smart covers for new ones. Owners of third-party smart covers, however -- such as the beautiful wood covers from Miniot -- appear to be out of luck.

And it may not simply be a case of having to turn the new tablet on manually. In tests using my Miniot as a stand -- the other purpose of the smart cover -- the new iPad's screen was plagued by fuzzy electronic lines and flashing artifacts.

Do you own a smart cover and a new iPad? Have you noticed this issue? Let us know in the comments.

See the original article on Mashable