Anthony Noe Blog

Don't Talk to the Police

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 31 Mar 2019 01:08:00 +0000

In this video, Professor James Duane*, expands on famous advice given by Justice Robert H. Jackson**, that "...any lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect in no uncertain terms to make no statement to the police under any circumstances." (See Watts v. Indiana)

Professor Duane is an American law professor at the Regent University School of Law, a former criminal defense attorney, and is also recognized as a Fifth Amendment expert. While his video "Don't Talk To Police" is essentially a lecture that he gave to a group of law students with Virginia Beach Police Department Officer George Bruch, the video has gone viral over the years, with one version receiving more than six million views before it was taken down because of a copyright claim. Together, Professor Duane and Officer Bruch explain in practical terms why citizens should never talk to police under any circumstances.

Viewers of the video are given several specific reasons supporting the idea that of never talking to police: (1) Even perfectly innocent citizens may get themselves into trouble even when the police are trying to do their jobs properly, because police malfeasance is entirely unnecessary for the innocent to convict themselves by mistake; (2) talking to police may bring up erroneous but believable evidence against even innocent witnesses, and; (3) individuals convinced of their own innocence may have unknowingly committed a crime which they inadvertently confess to during questioning.

^** Professor Duane is also known for his views that there are bizarre legislative drafting errors in the Virginia Statute on Privileged Marital Communications, as well as issues involving the introduction of hearsay evidence at trial (known as "bootstrapping"). Duane, a member of the advisory board of the Fully Informed Jury Association, has also written in defense of jury nullification.

^* Justice Jackson was United States Attorney General (1940–1941), an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1941–1954), and was the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. Many lawyers revere Justice Jackson as one of the best writers on the court, and one of the most committed to due process protections from overreaching federal agencies.

Will Russia Disconnect From the Internet?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 30 Mar 2019 18:14:00 +0000

Earlier this year, Russia announced plans to briefly disconnect its internet from the rest of the world by or on April 1. The scheduled exercise was intended to test its ability to create an isolated, sovereign internet. However, it’s unclear if the test will proceed on the original timeline.

The internet disconnection experiment was agreed on in January during a session of the Information Security Working Group, which includes a co-founder of Kaspersky Lab and representatives of major telecommunications companies such as Beeline and MTS. The working group is advising the Russian Duma on implementing a sovereign internet bill currently under consideration. The bill aims to create a centralized traffic control system in Russia, build a national domain database, and require Russian network operators to install government-approved tools for counteracting potential cyber threats. As Robert Morgus and Justin Sherman described recently in Future Tense, with this bill, Russia is taking steps to alter the very architecture of its internet, “which, once enacted, would be difficult to reverse.”

As lawmakers debated the draft of the bill, however, concerns arose about the feasibility and costs of the project, prompting the decision to hold a test prior to proceeding. The proposed test caught both Russian and Western media’s attention in February when the outlet RBC reported that it would take place by April 1, in line with the Information Security Working Group’s recommendation. Natalia Kaspersky, who chairs the working group, confirmed to RBC that a test “or something similar” would be needed “to understand how the project can be carried out.” However, Kaspersky didn’t provide a timeline for the testing. On March 28, Russian media again reported that a test was scheduled to take place before the second reading of the bill but gave no specific dates for the test or the reading. (Typically, a bill is required to pass through three rounds of readings, according to Duma regulations. The version of the bill presented in the second reading is supposed to contain all necessary amendments, based on lawmaker and expert feedback to the first draft. If no more changes are proposed, the bill passes to the third reading, when deputies cast their final votes on the measure.)

The goal of the test is to supply internet service providers with data about how their networks would react if the domestic internet were disconnected from global servers. It’s also meant to be a showcase of ISP capabilities to direct data to government-controlled routing points, which filter traffic and only allow data exchanged between Russians to reach its destination. So, if and when the test is conducted, Russians won’t find themselves entirely without the internet—they just won’t be able to receive and send data beyond Russian borders. It’s not clear how long the exercise is intended to last.

In order to pull this off, Russia would have to ensure that all the content Russians want to access is located inside the country, Nicole Starosielski, a professor at New York University, told Wired in February. Issues are almost certain to arise: ISPs cannot know precisely how much their networks actually rely on infrastructure outside Russian borders until they’re disconnected.

According to Noah Buyon, a research associate at Freedom House, the planned test is a lose-lose scenario for users. If Russia succeeds at isolating its internet from the global network, “users could lose access to web resources hosted beyond Russia’s territorial borders, including independent news media and pathways for circumventing existing website blocks,” he told me via email. And if the test fails, “the country may experience a self-inflicted internet shutdown. In that case, web services that users rely on every day could be disrupted.” No matter the outcome of the experiment, Russians will suffer its consequences.

When the idea of holding a test was proposed, the Information Security Working Group said that it plans to study the results and then recommend changes to the internet bill before it proceeds to its second Duma reading. The overall budget for the Runet project is estimated at 27 billion rubles (about $415 million), although only 2 million rubles (about $31,000) have been allocated for the test disconnection.

If the test ever actually takes place, whether Sunday or some other time, it will be an indication Russia could be well on its way to its goal: routing up to 95 percent of internet traffic through domestic servers by 2020.

Incense and Peppermints

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 30 Mar 2019 03:30:00 +0000

This is the debut long-player from the southern California-based Strawberry Alarm Clock -- the title track of this album topped national singles charts in December of 1967. As the cover art might suggest, their image practically defined both the musical as well as peripheral aspects of the pseudo-psychedelic counterculture. However, below that mostly visual veneer, Strawberry Alarm Clock actually have more in common with other "Summer of Love" bands such as Love and Kak than the bubblegum acts they have long been associated with.

Prior to Strawberry Alarm Clock, the band was initially named Thee Sixpence and issued a 45 -- "In the Building" b/w "Hey Joe" -- in the spring of 1966. As legend has it, none of the actual band members sang lead on the hit single; the singer was, in fact, a vocalist named Greg Munford, who was attending the session as a visitor. The track was originally issued by Thee Sixpence on the regional All-American label. By the second pressing, however, the band's name had changed to Strawberry Alarm Clock. Sensing the possibility of a national hit, they were scooped up by the MCA Records subsidiary Uni and given the go-ahead to commence recording this, their debut LP.

Much of the band's sound is due at least in part to the writing styles of George Bunnell (bass/vocals) and the uncredited Steve Bartok (flute/vocals). The edgy fuzz-toned guitar sound of "Birds in My Tree" and the Los Angeles freeway-inspired "Paxton's Back Street Carnival" exude a garage rock flavor similar in style to that of Spirit's self-titled debut long-player. Another distinguishing factor is Strawberry Alarm Clock's multi-layered vocals. "Hummin' Happy" and "Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow" are precursors to the sophisticated harmonies that would also inform "Tomorrow" and "Pretty Song From Psych-Out," from their follow-up long-player, Wake Up... It's Tomorrow

Acme International Space Station

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 03:27:00 +0000

The Trump administration wants to turn the International Space Station into a commercially run venture, NASA document shows...

The White House plans to stop funding the station after 2024, ending direct federal support of the orbiting laboratory. But it does not intend to abandon the orbiting laboratory altogether and is working on a transition plan that could turn the station over to the private sector, according to an internal NASA document obtained by The Washington Post.

“The decision to end direct federal support for the ISS in 2025 does not imply that the platform itself will be deorbited at that time — it is possible that industry could continue to operate certain elements or capabilities of the ISS as part of a future commercial platform,” the document states. “NASA will expand international and commercial partnerships over the next seven years in order to ensure continued human access to and presence in low Earth orbit.”

Source: Washington Post

'Fat Leonard' and the Navy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 07:22:00 +0000

The scope of the Fat Leonard scandal expanded when the Navy confirmed was investigating about 190 current and retired Navy personnel — mostly officers — to determine what role they may have played in the scandal and whether disciplinary measures are warranted.

Former US Navy Cmdr. Troy Amundson, 50, admitted taking bribes, including accepting the services of several prostitutes, from foreign contractor Leonard Glenn Francis, known as "Fat Leonard," and his Singapore-based company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia.

"Amundson admitted that from September 2012 through October 2013, Francis paid for dinner, drinks, transportation, other entertainment expenses, and the services of prostitutes for Amundson and other US Navy officers."

See more at CNN

Internet, Keep Your Hands Off My Rom Coms

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 30 Dec 2017 00:26:00 +0000

The tech world is often misunderstood as hard and cold. Movies about the internet have commonly fallen into the sci-fi and dramatic genres. Romantic comedies just don’t work for us web-dwellers because we’re all robots and we have no feelings, right?

Nope. There’s nothing Meg Ryan and a little soft focus can’t warm up. Take these tech-inspired romantic comedies (rom coms) and warm up your cold, bionic heart.

Plotter Turns the Map on Your iPhone Into a Social Discovery Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 30 Dec 2017 00:25:00 +0000

For all the talk about how much better Google Maps is than Apple’s default maps app on the iPhone, the experience for both essentially boils down to the same thing: search for a place on a map and look up directions. Plotter aims to take mapping on the iPhone to the next level by adding a social layer and some features that will appeal to your inner cartographer.

Plotter’s app users a simple way to create, share and discover maps with friends and the Plotter community. Rather than simply look up a bar on Google Maps, you can use Plotter to plot out all your favorite bars in a particular city and then share that map with friends. Likewise, if you’re new to an area, you could surf Plotter to search for maps from other users of things to do.

“Plotter was built out of necessity,” the company’s founder and CEO Tom Nolan told Mashable. “As a frequent traveler and constant user of my native maps app on the iPhone, I was always hoping for additional functionality with maps.”

In some ways, Plotter is reminiscent of Stamped, an app recently acquired by Yahoo and subsequently shut down, which let users mark their favorite venues on a map. However, the map wasn’t the central feature of Stamped and users didn’t have the option to create and share multiple maps of recommendations like they do on Plotter.

Mobile Apps In The Enterprise: 7 Essentials

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 30 Dec 2017 00:25:00 +0000

Mobile devices have become the world’s steady companions that we take anywhere and use everywhere. A recent forecast by McKinsey & Company estimates that by 2014, 1.7 billion mobile devices will be accessing the Internet – and a steady diet of online content. Widespread smartphone and tablet adoption is giving birth to a new ecosystem of mobile apps. Apple with its iTunes App Store is currently the gold-standard of the mobile experience, and it enables distribution to millions of users. In early 2013, Apple announced that users had downloaded an astounding 40 billion apps from its App Store, with almost half of that total logged in the last year.

The rollout of smart mobile apps yields numerous benefits not only to consumers but also for the enterprise. Mobile apps for business must offer the expected, Apple-easy download experience, but the enterprise requires quite a bit more for apps to be successful and risk-free. Many companies are struggling to manage the proliferation of mobile apps and connect to business content.

Here are seven critical areas for enterprises to address as apps multiply through the mobile enterprise ecosystem.

1. Not Point Products: Using An Enterprise Mobility Platform

The basic foundation of the mobile enterprise begins with deployment of the devices – employee and corporate-owned — along with a portfolio of productivity apps. The goal is simple: The user downloads an app and starts using it. All onboarding, app registration and bootstrapping is done by the enterprise mobility platform — the server strings, logon information or certificates are pushed to the user’s device automatically.

2. Configuration: Based On Roles And Responsibility

Deployment and configuration policies have to go hand-in-hand. Ultimately, enterprise workers want to be able to use any device and any app, accessing content without any roadblocks. Ideally, if an employee has an iPhone or Android phone provided to them, they will immediately have the secured content and correct business apps configured based on their roles and responsibilities (finance, HR, sales, etc.).

3. Deployment: Cloud vs. On Premise

Enterprises have a choice of where they get content and apps. They can come from the cloud, be stored on premise, or in some hybrid combination. This piece of the mobile equation doesn’t have a correct answer, but IT has to remain keenly aware where each component of mobile content resides and (most importantly) who has authorized access.

4. Beyond MDM: Managing Devices, Apps, Content And Things

IT must maintain control over how mobile devices access corporate information: At the very least, IT has to be able to turn off the device, content or app if the mobile hardware is lost or stolen. A key component of that is creating lockable configuration and security policies. Mobile Device Management (MDM) software helps IT centrally manage, secure and deploy mobile data, applications and devices, including tablets and phones. The journey continues beyond MDM to Mobile App Mgmt (MAM), Mobile Content Mgmt (MCM) and eventually takes you on the journey to securing not just devices but every machine in the Internet of Things.

5. Security: At Every Stage In The Lifecycle

A Symantec study calculated that the average annual cost of mobile breaches for an enterprise business was $429,000. Security has to be part of the fabric of mobile throughout the enterprise. It must be integrated into the initial mobile strategy – and into each subsequent stage in the mobile lifecycle. It must be nimble and designed for the post-PC era of mobile computing.

6. Interoperability: Take A Cross-Platform Approach

In a mobile enterprise, all devices, apps and cloud services need to recognize each other and be able to share content. As we deal with a combination of HTML-based mobile-Web apps and device-native apps, three key factors contribute to interoperability.

First is cross-platform support. Most enterprises will have to cater to Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, Microsoft’s Windows and BlackBerry.

The second factor is backend connectivity: While all mobile users will run Tripit, for example, against the same hosted backend, your enterprise apps needs to run against your company’s backend systems. For example, a customer relationship management (CRM) app needs to access your customers in your CRM system. A Leave Request app has to run against your own enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

Third, enterprise apps must adhere to your company’s information technology security standards. Employees will access your corporate data from the open Internet, and you need to safeguard your business data.

7. Mobile Apps: Buy And/Or Develop Your Own

Mobility starts with the app creator, which could be an individual developer, a customer who wants to develop an app, a partner or an internal development team. Many larger organizations will benefit by designing their own apps for mobile-enabled business processes. These mobile solutions can tap into different applications and workflow tools using dashboards to monitor everything from sales to the health of the entire business in real time.

Yahoo Killing Message Boards Site and Other

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 30 Dec 2017 00:24:00 +0000

Yahoo announced in a Friday afternoon blog post that it’s killing seven products from its line of consumer offerings.

The doomed products include Yahoo’s BlackBerry app and Sports IQ. The BlackBerry app will still be available to users who have already downloaded it, but support for it will cease. The Yahoo Message Boards website is also set for shuttering, although users will still be able to access message boards for individual properties such as Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance. Yahoo avatars will no longer be supported either, while the Yahoo Clues beta product, Yahoo App Search and Yahoo Updates API round out the list of casualties.

All the changes take effect April 1, except for the Yahoo Updates API, which will stick around until April 16.

“Ultimately, we’re making these changes in an effort to sharpen our focus,” Jay Rossiter, Yahoo’s executive vice president for platforms, wrote in the blog post announcing the changes. “By continuing to hone in on our core products and experiences, we’ll be able to make our existing products the very best they can be.”

Twitter Outages = Snow Day On The Internet

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 30 Dec 2017 00:19:00 +0000

Why the schadenfreude, you might ask? Why take delight at the misfortune of others? Well, let me be clear. I have endless compassion for the brilliant engineers at Twitter. They’ve built something unbelievably powerful, and it’s a testament to their talents that it runs at all. But I think the human users who spin the wheels of that real-time interruption machine could use a break every once in a while.

When Twitter is down, it’s like a Snow Day on the Internet.

I understand that most people can and do use Twitter by choice. That’s a very good thing. As an intentional hobby, Twitter is immensely valuable. Just dipping into the stream can provide an hour’s or a day’s worth of news, humor and even friendship, if you keep your Twitter feed tidy enough. “Twitter is my rosary,” my word-hero Erin Kissane once said.

Make Better Presentations With the Instagram for Pitch Decks

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 29 Dec 2017 21:21:00 +0000

“Hey, I really enjoyed making this PowerPoint,” is one of those things nobody says. Haiku Deck aims to change that with its iPad app for making and viewing presentations.

Before addressing the pain point of bad PowerPoints, the founders of Haiku Deck were part of TechStars’ inaugural class of entrepreneurs in Seattle. Their initial idea didn’t fly but it was their experience on the ground, pitching to various investors or partners, that led them to the idea for Haiku Deck.

“We were almost never finding ourselves [pitching] in a conference room,” says Haiku Deck co-founder Adam Tratt. The app now has been downloaded 250,000 times, with more than 100,000 decks made by users.

Despite the introduction of tools including SlideRocket and Prezi, the process around creating and presenting slides hasn’t changed much in 20 years. It involves a lot of Google searching for images, resizing text and on occasion, adding animations that will make your audience chuckle, at least the first time. What you end up making is often nothing to boast about — it gets the point across, but can look jumbled or be hard to read for your audience.

Tratt looked to his past product experience at Microsoft (working on Office) where he became familiar with an important statistic about feature usage: 80% of people use 5% of product features. Often, full-featured software gives people “too much rope with which to hang themselves,” he explains.

That’s why Haiku Deck, much like the poetry format haiku, has a strict framework.
“99% of the world is not a designer.” Tratt notes most people know something looks good when they see it, but cannot pick out a color palette.

The app comes with five “themes,” or templates (with 11 more for purchase). Finding images is a no-brainer — the app actually allows you to input relevant Creative Commons images, with attribution included, as soon as you type in a slide title or body text (you can also upload your own images).

The charts included in Haiku Deck are also unique. In a time when data turns heads, bring it into pitches is crucial, but the numbers themselves don’t always tell the story. Haiku Deck offers three types of charts: bar chart, pie chart and statistic chart. For example, in the bar chart, you would drag the bar to the correct number, say, 80 — and then add a label for each bar. It’s the kind of gesture action you expect when using a touchscreen.

Showtime Stealing CPU?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

It turns out torrenting platforms are not the only ones toying with alternative methods to convert traffic to cash. A week after The Pirate Bay admitted to secretly running a crypto miner to borrow visitors’ CPU resources to bank on Monero coins, television giant CBS was caught doing the same with Showtime.

In fact, the popular broadcaster had purportedly implemented the mining solution on two official Showtime network websites – Showtime.com and ShowtimeAnytime.com – according to information security analyst Troy Mursch, who first documented the discovery acting on a tip from Twitter user SkensNet.

What is especially outrageous is that CBS had enabled the mining software on Showtime’s sites without any notification or request for consent to its subscribers. For more context, the miner was taking up to 60 percent of the overall visitors’ CPU capacity when ShowtimeAnytime.com was sitting idle in browsers.

Following coverage from The Register and Gizmodo, CBS appears to have removed the mining tech from the websites. Fortunately, Mursch was fast enough to save screenshots from Showtime’s website before, during and after running the miner.

To continue reading, including browsing through the source code evidence click here.

Sources:
The Next Web
Google Play Newsstand

Why Android Takes Forever to Get Cool Apps

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 04 Oct 2016 13:14:00 +0000

Even though there are more Android phones than iPhones in the United States, the number and variety of Android apps lags compared to Apple’s offerings. For instance, Android users had to wait a year before they got Instagram or Pinterest apps. New research helps explain why.

There’s got to be more to the story than the number of phones. Flurry, a mobile-app analytics firm, released a report this week that helps explain the problem, laying out the challenges app developers face. It also shows that Android apps are unlikely to catch up and that small developers coding for either device will get squeezed out of the market.

For app developers to make a decent living, they have to sell 50 apps an hour, 24 hours a day, for $1 each, Johan Emil Johansson, a developer in Sweden, said in a blog post outlining the difficult conditions facing today’s app developers. New app versions are expensive to make, especially in light of the proliferation of devices.

App developers have long had to grapple with an overwhelming number of connected devices. Flurry counted 331 different models of smartphones and tablets that developers would have to code for if they wanted make their apps available on about 90% of devices.

Too ambitious? If developers can content themselves with only 50% of devices in use, the programmers would still have to make versions for 18 different models. And the complexity doesn’t stop there; developers must also adjust apps for different operating systems. For instance, any iPhone 4 user could be running iOS 4, iOS 5 or iOS 6.

But iOS still represents fewer phone and operating system combinations than does Android . And fewer combinations means less development work and testing for cash-strapped programmers.

Flurry also found an even bigger incentive to make an iOS app rather than one for Android: More people will use the apps, and more often.

“Device models running on the iOS platform average 14 times the number of active users compared to device models running on other platforms,” Mary Ellen Gordon, a Flurry analyst, said in a blog post.

In other words, one iPhone user is worth 14 Android users , based on how frequently the apps get used.

And even when Flurry isolated Samsung, the most popular Android device maker, one iOS user was still worth seven Samsung users.

Manufacturers will continue to make new devices in the hopes of standing out from competitors. The last year alone has seen the explosion of the “phablet ,” a phone the size of a small tablet. And the operating system mix of old and new will grow even more complex.
So much for the whiz kid with a quirky, brilliant app idea, like 14-year-old Robert Nay who created Bubble Ball.

“Putting all of this together, we expect a future in which app developers are less frequently individuals with a creative idea and a laptop, and more frequently companies designed to develop, produce and distribute apps at scale,” Flurry said.

Haters As A Leading Indicator Of Success

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 14:26:00 +0000

The only thing worse than dealing with haters of your company or product is not having any at all. The product without haters is destined for ignominy and failure. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that your product’s success is positively correlated with the volume of venom directed at it.
But first, let’s define a “hater.”

There’s valid criticism, and then there’s hate. A hater, according to Urban Dictionary, feasts upon schadenfreude: “A person that simply cannot be happy for another person’s success. So rather than be happy they make a point of exposing a flaw in that person.” Jealousy factors heavily into a hater’s temperament.

Quality
Entertainment
Interesting
Amazing
Twitter
Facebook

Yes, jealousy. After all, no one hates a loser. That company with 1% market share? No one bothers to expend energy trashing it. Not seriously, anyway.

Brand Marketers Totally Miss Influencers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 14:24:00 +0000

Any illusions that marketers have gotten this whole social media thing down pat will be blown away by the latest findings from Technorati Media’s 2013 Digital Influence Report, which suggests that for everything the media spends across social platforms, the most desired influencers aren’t even being reached.

The new report points out a huge disconnect: only 11% of corporate social media budgets are devoted to advertising on blogs and influencer sites. But fully 86% of the influencers these corporate brands are trying to reach are using blogs as their primary publishing platform.

Brands And Advertisers: It’s All About Facebook

The mismatch is pretty clear in Technorati Media’s report. Typically, just 10% of the total digital marketing budget is devoted to a social ad strategy. Of that slice of the pie, 57% gets tossed at Facebook ad buys, 13% at YouTube and another 13% at Twitter’s sponsored tweets. Just 6% is spent on influencers and 5% on blogs.

Johnny Can’t Write? Don’t Blame Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 14:20:00 +0000

Books were my best friends, when I was growing up. I read all the time, but wrote little. It wasn’t until I hit my teens that I began to write regularly for fun. None of it was very good, but I had, thanks to countless hours between book covers, learned a little something about structure, grammar, even spelling. This made me a better-than-average writer for my age and someone who peppered his conversations with big words (mostly because I loved the sound of them).

My teenage children read less than I did when I was their age. The two of them spend hours on their phones, ingesting viral content or chatting on Facebook, while I spent my time with books and TV.

Despite the generational shift in reading habits, my children are above average writers (although this could be because their parents have writing backgrounds). I’m actually surprised their writing isn’t worse.

Facebook Gets More Simpler, More Complicated

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 14:13:00 +0000

Here’s the first thing you may notice about the new Facebook — the word “Facebook” doesn’t appear anywhere on it. Just one blue-on-white, lowercase “f.”

It’s indicative of a couple of things — first of all, Facebook is so famous it doesn’t need to use its full name any more. Secondly, the company has a new religion: make the design as clean as possible. Remove all unnecessary pixels (and yes, the company talks about it in pixel-level terms). Get Facebook out of the way of your Facebook experience.

“We wanted to remove all the chrome from Facebook,” software engineer Chris Struhar told Mashable after the event. And he wasn’t talking about the Google browser. (Indeed, folks at Facebook were strenuously avoiding any usage of the G-word Thursday, possibly because of the design’s similarity to Google+.)

Struhar was using a web nerd term to describe the chrome fins on the Facebook car: the details, the frames, anything that wasn’t Facebook stories and pure, gorgeous white space.
Of course, if you were paying attention to the details of the News Feed event, you’ll notice the paradox here: at the same time Facebook got simpler, it also got more complicated.

Instead of two options for how to sort your News Feed — “Top Stories” and “Most Recent” — Facebook now offers a dizzying seven options.

You get regular old News Feed (the equivalent of Top Stories, sorted by the Facebook algorithm), “All Friends” (headed up by a photo with a selection of friends in it), “Following” for the Pages and public figures you follow; “Photos,” “Groups,” “Games,” “Music” and your old friend “Most Recent.”

In fact, you get even more options than that. Click on “see all” and you’ll be able to view your News Feed by your location, or only people you follow at your work place, or only people in your high school, and so on.

All in all, I counted 20 ways to view my News Feed. Your mileage may vary.
How much of this will you use? It’s a fair question. In talking to Facebook employees who’ve been playing around with the new design internally for months, I’ve heard much the same thing: their browsing habits didn’t change.

If they preferred the passive browsing of the “Top Stories” algorithm before, they’re not really drilling down into the multiplicity of News Feed options. If they were the kinds of Facebook users who set up dozens of Lists before, then those kinds of options are closer to their fingertips.

10 Actionable Trends For Mobile Marketers In 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 14:12:00 +0000

It is almost silly to think that in 2013, many enterprises are still struggling with mobile strategies. The fact of the matter is that enterprises can sometimes be just as big, slow and bureaucratic as the Federal government. That can also be true for the enterprise marketing departments that are, ostensibly, supposed to be ahead of the curve of the rest of the organization.

Research firm Forrester has identified the top 10 trends that enterprise marketers need to know in 2013, and the actionable responses they should take to prepare a multi-year mobile strategy to push their companies into the future. The key takeaway? It’s time to invest resources in mobile – including time, money and people.

Among its points Forrester says that “the role of mobile marketing manager will emerge.” We are beginning see these types of roles crop up in companies across the world. Whether it is the “VP of Mobile” or the mobile-only IT guy, enterprises are starting to fraction certain parts of the workforce to specifically deal with mobile issues. Cost conscious enterprises may not like to see their workforces become even more fragmented and specialized, but the fact of the matter is that mobile is like a weevil, ingraining itself into the infrastructure of enterprise protocols. Ignore it at your peril.

“Mobile on the cheap is over. Implementing the complex technology to make the most of mobile opportunities requires a new vision of how to interact with customers, significant changes in culture and competencies across business and IT, and more investment,” wrote Forrester analyst Thomas Husson.

What it comes down to is this: enterprises and marketers need to address multi-year use cases for smartphones and tablets, hire and organize their workforce to take advantage of the opportunities and restructure the corporate organization chart to give those people the power to make actionable decisions. Ideally, these types of changes would have started two or three years ago or before. If your enterprise is just starting to figure out how mobile is changing your processes in 2013, you are well behind the ball.

See the chart from Forrester below. What is your enterprise doing to take advantage of the Mobile Era? Let us know in the comments.

BlackBerry Z10 review: a new life, or life support?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 14:10:00 +0000

BlackBerry is about to enter the battle of its life, and as you’ll see in my review of its new flagship phone, the Z10, it’s using everything in its arsenal to win. Maybe win is the wrong word; perhaps victory for BlackBerry right now is something more like not losing everything. Because if you’ve been following this story, you know that everything is what’s at stake.

The company is coming back into the game with force, that much is clear. Its new touchscreen smartphone is the serious contender BlackBerry has been claiming it would be, packing in the specs, software prowess, and services to take on even the most entrenched players in the game. This isn’t a feint or a half-step, it’s a long bomb with all the blood, sweat, and tears behind it you would expect from a company that’s lost a significant piece of its value (to say nothing of its market power) over the last handful of years. But there are those entrenched players, and consumers as well as enterprise customers have proved fickle in the face of changing technology. The fans have gone or are going — can the Z10 win them back?

This isn’t just about a single phone or a single OS, it’s about BlackBerry’s fight to stay afloat. Can the new phone along with BlackBerry 10 put the company back in play, or is this too little, too late? Read on for my full review and find out.

Makerbot Digitizer Will Let Anyone Scan and Print

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 14:09:00 +0000

Makerbot CEO Bre Pettis excitedly announced a new Makerbot Digitizer Desktop 3D scanner on stage Friday at SXSW in Austin. Currently a prototype, the next-generation scanner will allow anyone to scan a physical item, digitize it, and then print it in 3D, regardless of whether or not they have any design experience.

Sort of like a copy/paste for real-world objects, the Digitizer works using two lasers and a webcam. The webcam sees where the lasers are shining off of an item, and wraps all those points up into a plan for a 3D model that can then be printed.

To make the magic happen the lasers spin around the object, a process Pettis describes as “like Tron.”

“This is something you would envision being a piece of fiction, but in fact, it is real — and it is so cool,” says Pettis.

Able to scan items in as little as three minutes, the Digitizer can create small to medium sized objects, 2” to 8” cylinders. The Digitizer works in indoor light, and prints watertight models that can be used for prototyping, or to replace broken items in your home.

“The MakerBot Digitizer is a great tool for archiving, prototyping, replicating, and digitizing prototypes, models, parts, artifacts, artwork, sculptures, clay figures, jewelry, etc. If something gets broken, you can print it again.”

Makerbot is currently testing the scanner, with plans to release it to the general public in the fall. You can sign up to receive updates on the Digitizer on Makerbot’s website.

Does Apple Ever Regret Making The iPad Mini?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 14:01:00 +0000

There are so many reasons to love this photo of Apple marketing boss Phil Schiller holding up an iPad Mini. For one thing, it captures the kind of hushed sanctimony and reverence with which Apple introduces things that are, essentially, little plastic gizmos. But mostly I love Phil’s weird off-camera gaze, which reminds me of this photo from Stepbrothers. What is he looking at? What’s he thinking? Is he fearful, even then, on the day of the introduction, that this cool new device is going to kill sales of the bigger iPads and thus drag down Apple’s profit margins?

If so, then Phil was right, because apparently that’s what’s happening, according to a report from Digitimes, which claims Apple is cutting back orders for components used in the big iPad and now expects to sell fewer of them than originally expected. Mostly because it’s selling so many of these goddamn iPad Minis.

Digitimes says Apple originally planned to sell 60 million big iPads and 40 million Minis, but that now Apple expects to sell 33 million big ones and 55 million little guys.

That’s great news if you’re the product manager in charge of the iPad Mini – you’re having a blowout year! But you’ll notice that the new sum total of all iPad sales for the year stands at 88 million, which is less than the previously expected 100 million. This is not good.

My Entire Premise Could Be False, In Which Case, Sorry

Then again this entire report could be bullshit, since it comes from Digitimes, and Digitimes is perhaps not the most reliable publication in the world, as reflected in the headline the story to which I linked, which mentions issues with Apple’s “supplpy” (sic) chains.

But if the report is true, this means Apple will sell fewer overall iPads (of all kinds) than originally expected. And more of what it does sell will be the less-expensive Mini model.
That in turn means Apple is likely to make less profit margin, as the financial wizards at Business Insider point out.

Does Phil Schiller sometimes lie awake at night wishing Apple had never made that damn Mini? Does he lurk outside Apple stores and curse the cheap bastards who keep buying Minis just because they’re $170 cheaper than the big one?

Maybe not. Maybe Phil and his team figure they pulled off a pretty amazing coup. They milked ridiculous margins out of the original iPad for a long, long time. And now that big iPad serves a purpose – it makes the iPad Mini look cheap. Which it’s not, considering that you can get roughly comparable Android tablets for a lot less.

The Madness of Guns and the Digital Cure

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 15:26:00 +0000

But what about mass shootings? The tragedy in Newton, Conn., the latest in a string of incidents, highlights the complexities of the problem. Law enforcement and legislators, community members and advocacy groups, are all debating legal remedies, but tech has yet to play a role in the conversation. Nobody expects innovation to curb the mass shootings. But it can help to prevent and solve some aspects of the problem.

President Obama, in his State of the Union address, touched on “common sense initiatives,” so we looked at some tech advances that offer a glimmer of promise to improving public safety, if not the way we think about it in the future.

The Future of Smart Guns

In mass shootings, shooters aren’t often the licensed owners of the guns they use. One solution would be to develop “smart guns” that only fire when literally in the hands of its owner. The idea dates back to 1994, when the Justice Department looked at developing a gun for the police that criminals can’t use during a struggle. That idea expanded to keep guns from firing in the hands of children.

Early prototypes used biometric measurements — like your fingerprints or grasp — to authenticate you. But models today embed Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, chips that activate when a special ring or wristband is nearby.

Some Of The Important Tips Help Relieve Digital Eye

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 15:08:00 +0000

You’ve likely heard of ergonomics, but do you know about “eyegonomics?” When you’re spending the day looking at a screen, whether it’s a tablet device or a smartphone, you can suffer from eye strain as well as neck pain. You know how it is; you start out sitting straight, but then find yourself slouched over sitting with your neck bent at an uncomfortable angle and before you know it, you have neck and back pain, not to mention red, irritated eyes.

Yes, you can get eye strain simply from using a digital device for more than two hours at a time. Think about how many screens you look at during the course of your day. Desktop and laptop computers, smartphones, e-readers, tablets, televisions and gaming systems. In fact, in a survey conducted by The Vision council, more than a third of U.S. adults reported spending four to six hours a day with digital devices.

Pebble Smartwatch Shipping To 500 Kickstarter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 14:26:00 +0000

The Pebble smartwatch will officially begun shipping today, at long last. After a record-shattering Kickstarter campaign, the tidal wave of demand for the device led to delays and production woes. Now, after announcing a hard shipping date at CES 2013 earlier this month, Pebble intends to deliver its little wonder timepiece.

Unfortunately, there are a few caveats.

According to a post on its blog, Pebble Technology admits to a few enduring “kinks and issues”. First, it aims to manufacture 2,400 Pebbles per day, but in the mean time the ol’ Pebble factory will be cranking out somewhere between 800 and 1,000 units.

The blog post also notes that due to some quirks in its manufacturing process, the first production run will be the black version of the Pebble (there’s also a cherry red, arctic white and orange “voter’s choice” version). And while the Pebble app hasn’t passed go in Apple’s App Store yet, the Android app will be live on January 24. The app will be able to push software updates and nifty stuff like alternate digital watch faces to the device.

All told, fewer than 500 Pebbles will ship out today. It’s a drop in the bucket for the gadget’s 68,929 Kickstarter backers – but at least we’ll be able to see if this whole smartwatch thing has legs.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - Trailer Debuts Online

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 15:37:00 +0000

In the original, hero Flint Lockwood invents and eventually destroys a machine that causes chaos in his hometown by turning water into food. Number two picks up shortly after, with Flint discovering that his machine is still operational — and now produces food-animal hybrids (such as the “Taco-dile Supreme”).

In the original, hero Flint Lockwood invents and eventually destroys a machine that causes chaos in his hometown by turning water into food. Number two picks up shortly after, with Flint discovering that his machine is still operational — and now produces food-animal hybrids (such as the “Taco-dile Supreme”).