Gigaom

Android this week: KitKat quickly on Moto phones; Samsung’s gamepad; a $38 Android tablet

Kevin C. Tofel — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 13:58:09 +0000

Motorola announced a pair of KitKat upgrades this week, making it the handset maker to deliver Android 4.4 the soonest. First the new Verizon(vz)(vod) line of phones — the Droid Ultra, Maxx and Mini — received the new software and as the week ended the Moto G followed suit. Motorola promised KitKat to the latter phone in early 2014. So what’s going on?

A welcome change in the Android world is what’s going on.

Motorola is doing something with the platform that has been desired for a long time. The company is keeping the user experience and interface fairly standard, like the Nexus line of phones, but engineering ways to add useful new features. This helps the handsets stand out from the crowd, keeps them simple to use and perhaps most importantly, makes it easier and faster to build software updates.

I called this approach a “Nexus for the masses” because of its similarities to the Nexus device line Google maintains. While these are typically great devices, many consumers don’t know about them or won’t buy a phone from Google Play since they want to actually hold the device before buying it.

Of course, the Motorola handsets aren’t “pure” Android, nor are they true Nexus devices. But they follow the concept closer than any others. And if you want a phone that will get Android software updates before most others, save for a Nexus or Google Play Edition device, Motorola should be your first look.

Motorola doesn’t make a tablet these days, so you’ll have to consider another hardware partner for your tablets needs. Could the $35 tablet for India be worth the look? The Aakash tablet line isn’t likely going to be your choice if you’re reading this site but for many who have no access to technology, it opens up a door.

For $38 the U.S version of the UbiSlate offers a very basic mobile web and app experience. The hardware is akin to a 2010 tablet although it does run Android 4.0.3. So it’s not something that most Gigaom readers would even look at. It’s aimed, however, at providing a first mobile experience for consumers that might not be able to afford one otherwise.

Those that can afford the latest and greatest technology surely consider Samsung’s Galaxy line. And this week the company debuted a new accessory that works not just with Samsung products but with any phone running Android 4.1 or better. The new Samsung Gamepad adds hardware controls for gaming: an 8-way directional pad, two analog sticks, four Action buttons and a pair of triggers. It’s currently available in select European markets with additional availability planned in 2014.

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Watching streaming porn is not illegal, German court says as it blocks letter campaign

David Meyer — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 09:11:43 +0000

Earlier this month it emerged that a German law firm had been sending thousands of threatening letters to people it accused of watching streaming video on the porn platform RedTube, demanding that these people pay up to €250 ($344) per clip on the basis of copyright infringement. Well, for now, Germans can happily watch free streaming video again — porn included — without worrying they’re breaking the law.

On Friday, the Cologne district court, which originally allowed law firm Urmann + Collegen (U+C) to send out the letters on behalf of Swiss rights-holder firm The Archive, said it had changed its mind following numerous complaints. Those complaints appear to have come from people pointing out that watching a stream of copyrighted content isn’t the same as downloading it – and also asking how precisely The Archive and U+C obtained their targets’ IP addresses in order to identify them and send letters to them.

Noting that the law around streaming copyrighted content was in fact far from clear, the court granted RedTube an injunction that forces U+C to stop sending the letters. It said it would issue a final decision on the more than 50 complaints it had received, in January at the earliest.

Observers had noted from the outset that it looked like the court had messed up – in asking the court to allow the letter-sending campaign, U+C had equated watching an in-browser video with making an unlawful reproduction, and claimed that it was using software called Gladii 1.1.3 to pick up streamers’ IP addresses, when that software is apparently only useful for monitoring file-sharing networks.

In trying to figure out where the IP addresses came from, some had in fact theorized that RedTube itself was involved. However, last week the porn platform said it had nothing to do with it. The Luxembourg-based firm subsequently applied for the injunction against U+C and The Archive that was granted on Friday.

Characterizing U+C’s actions as “a thinly disguised attempt to extort money” from RedTube’s users, company vice president Alex Taylor said in a statement on Friday:

“It is deplorable that our users were targeted in such an underhanded and malicious manner. Copyright protection is a critical issue and we are overjoyed that German citizens can once again surf the internet without threat of legal penalty. This ruling is a victory not just for RedTube users, but for anyone who accesses a streaming website. It sends a clear message that the exploitation of personal information and the violation of privacy for financial gain will not be tolerated.”

U+C, meanwhile, said in a statement on its website that it was minded to sue the Cologne public prosecutor for saying the law firm had submitted a false affidavit to the court.

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7 stories to read this weekend

Om Malik — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 08:00:41 +0000

For some odd reason, I have not been able to add a diverse enough reading materials to the mix this week and as a result, there is an unusually large number of tech-centric stories on my recommendation list. Here are the picks for this weekend.

Hunger Games: How iPhones make anorexia worse. Apps are sort of to blame, argues New Republic writer Alice Gregory.
How photographing events stops us from living them: Jillian Edelstein of The Guardian makes a fair argument about this behavior.
Bitcoin, magical thinking and political ideology: Alex Payne bursts the Bitcoin bubble with a well-reasoned argument.
Bunches of guys: Owen Bennet-Jones talks about the resurgence of al-Qaida in the London Review of books.
The math equation that explains David and Goliath. Everything is math, in case you were wondering.
There’s a 1,200 year old Phone in the Smithsonian collections. And it is pretty damn awesome and very simple.
Tech and the city: Nancy Scola asks the tough questions about New York and its desire to jumpstart an innovation economy. One of the best pieces I have read in a long time, even if it is more than a year old.

Gorgeous Robox 3D printer hopes it can do for 3D printing what the iMac did for personal computing

Signe Brewster — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 00:03:45 +0000

In 1999, my elementary school got every single kid to love computer class with a single move: It replaced a fleet of Macintosh Classic IIs with iMac G3s. The candy-colored shells, bright graphics and whimsical shape made it feel like you were spending time with some hip, space-age machine. Computing was so in that year.

The G3 bas been discontinued for a decade, but it is still an icon of the optimism of the computing industry in the 1990s. 3D printers are going through a similar phase right now, as machine after machine hits the market. While they haven’t quite hit the ease-of-use of a 1990s era computer, they’re certainly getting there.

The Robox, a $1,400 3D printer that completed a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter today after raising more than $450,000, is the G3 of the 3D printing world. It comes in bright green or blue and has bold curves. From the side, it kind of looks like an iMessage bubble. It’s a beautiful machine that comes with a claim that’s very common these days: “accessible to all.”

“At the moment, 3D printing is kind of for the geeks in the background, for engineers or education,” CEO Chris Elsworthy said. “Our dream for Robox is that eventually every home will have a 3D printer in it. If we make a printer that’s high quality and easy for everyone to use … Robox could be the printer that makes it into every home.”

We won’t know until Robox starts shipping to backers next month if it’s true the Robox is the printer people will want to have in their homes, but it does have some features that will make it more appealing. Most importantly, it has two print heads that behave differently: One prints tiny lines for a smooth, detailed finish, while the other prints a higher volume of plastic at a faster rate, lowering the time it takes to print an item. Elsworthy said a print job that would normally take three hours might take two, or even one, instead.

The Robox also doesn’t ooze out extra bits of melted plastic, which quickly gets annoying when you’re trying to print a high-quality piece. The print head can be removed and replaced with other tools. Right now, users would have to use their imagination and DIY skills for that, but Elsworthy said he foresees people attaching 3D scanners, low-power laser cutters or even nozzles that print icing on cakes.

Elsworthy said CEL, the small product design and development company behind the Robox, was cautious to only promise Kickstarter backers what they can deliver. They offered no stretch goals and launched the Kickstarter late in the printer development process. Pirate3D’s Buccaneer printer (the MacBook Pro of the 3D printing world) recently suffered serious backlash after delivery was pushed back and prototypes indicated the machine might not live up to what was advertised.

Elsworthy said the company is building the first printers promised to backers this month. CEL will do a full launch to the public in early 2014, at which point the printer will be available for just less than $1,400.

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Visualizing Google’s million-row copyright claim dataset

Derrick Harris — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 22:41:53 +0000

Google released its latest transparency report on Thursday, and while much coverage of those reports rightfully focuses on governmental actions — requests for user data and requests to remove content — Google is also providing a trove of copyright data. In fact, the copyright section of its transparency report includes a massive, nearly 1-million-row dataset regarding claims of copyright infringement on URLs. (You can download all the data here. Unfortunately, it doesn’t include YouTube data, just search.) Here are some charts highlighting which copyright owners have been the most active since 2011.

British Recorded Music Industry: The king of URL takedowns

Here you can see that the British Recorded Music Industry, represented by two names — the big one labeled “BPI LTD Member Companies” and the smaller, dark-green one labeld (BPI (British))– has successfully had more than 45 million URLs removed. The Recording Industry Association of America is a close second, followed by porn copyright owner Froytal Services. Microsoft, listed as both “Microsoft” and “Microsoft Corporation,” has had more than 15 million URLs taken down. View the interactive version here, or click to expand.

Of the 20 or so largest takers down of URLs, most are in the movie, music and/or pornography industry, as this scatterplot below shows. It also gives a better sense of just how much they stand out from the other approximately 69,000 copyright owners listed in the dataset. View the interactive version here, or click to expand.

Some are better at this than others

I’m not sure whether the graph below represents greediness, poor lawyering or just inaccurate processes for identifying URLs with infringing material, but it’s pretty clear that some copyright owners are better than others at getting their way. Among the big requesters, the RIAA is particularly good while NBCUniversal, education software company Lynda.com and Ultimate Fighting Championship parent company Zuffa have relatively low hit rates. View the interactive version here, or click to expand.

The last three months: Same players, less porn

Looking at the last three month’s worth of URL removals, we see the names are pretty much the same as the historical leaders, although the number of removals for porn sites RK NetMedia and Froytal began dropping precipitously around the same time in November. Their requests for removal dropped as well. View the interactive version here, or click to expand.

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NSA paid RSA $10M to distribute crackable encryption

Barb Darrow — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 22:13:19 +0000

The NSA paid RSA Security $10 million to distribute NSA-designed encryption — crackable by the security agency — with RSA’s BSafe security software, according to Reuters. It had already been reported that RSA, now part of EMC, had distributed the NSA formula as the default setting with BSafe, what’s new is information about the $10 million payment.

Story posted at: reuters.com

To leave a comment or share, visit: NSA paid RSA $10M to distribute crackable encryption

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Honey Badger Hedge Fund: Hackers predict stock market with open source mojo

Lauren Hockenson — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 21:13:02 +0000

Can an algorithm successfully predict great stock moves? That’s the premise behind Honey Badger Hedge Fund a super-secret Twitter stock-picker that, its founders told Wired, was put together with a little economics know-how and some exploring with Python. So far, the 7 recommendations the algorithm has made have been profitable, producing a 9.38 percent return rate — not bad for something that was made during 12-week programming bootcamp Hack Reactor. Co-creators Andrew Delikat and Tae-Hwan Jo are taking advantage of their handiwork to fund their next startup venture.

Story posted at: wired.com

To leave a comment or share, visit: Honey Badger Hedge Fund: Hackers predict stock market with open source mojo

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Poll: If T-Mobile pays for you to switch carriers, will you?

Kevin C. Tofel — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 21:09:21 +0000

Invites for T-Mobile’s Consumer Electronics Show press event are hitting inboxes and speculation is that the carrier will announce a new strategy to get you on its network. As part of its “Uncarrier” effort, the idea would be that T-Mobile would pay the contractual Early Termination Fee (ETF) from your current carrier so you could switch to T-Mobile which no longer has contracts. The rumored plan is dubbed “Houdini” says the TMoNews blog.

I have my invite and I’ll be on-site to hear what the carrier has to say on January 8. The news could be the payoff of existing contracts or something else entirely. It’s interesting to consider the possibility of the network operator paying off contracts in order to boost its subscriber count. Two or three years ago, it would have been far less interesting, however.

As other U.S. network providers were building out LTE networks, T-Mobile stayed the course with HSPA+ technology. In some cases, HSPA+ can be nearly as fast as today’s LTE mobile broadband speeds, but in general, it’s not quite as cutting edge. Coverage outside of major cities has been an issue as well for the carrier. So what has changed that could actually get people to consider switching to T-Mobile?

For starters, T-Mobile has aggressively implemented LTE across the U.S. with 203 million people in 254 markets covered by LTE; just eight months after the rollout began. Last month, T-Mobile doubled speeds in 40 of the top 50 metro markets and it plans to double down again in 2014. It certainly helps that T-Mobile gained a nice chunk of spectrum as a concession from the failed AT&T deal, allowing it to boost speeds and coverage. The carrier also gained key airwaves through its Metro PCS merger.

All of a sudden then — two years is pretty quick when it comes to carrier infrastructure — T-Mobile has a relatively formidable network with better coverage than it did before. Combine that with services unbundled from device hardware, no contracts and a clever phone upgrade program and you’ve got a recipe for adding customers.

Contracts then — the ETFs for them, to be more precise — may be the the biggest currently hurdle in switching from Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint to T-Mobile. And if the planned January 8 event does remove that hurdle by having the carrier paying customers to switch, it could drive a fair number of customers to do just that.

Again, we don’t know if this is what T-Mobile plans. And if this happened two years ago, the answer to “would you switch?” would likely be a no for most people.

This isn’t the same T-Mobile as 2011 though, so what do you think: If the company is willing to pay off your ETF, will you make the move?

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New Moto X deal gives 50% off contract price or $150 off contract-free handset

Alex Colon — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 21:00:31 +0000

Motorola has already given buyers plenty of opportunities to snag a new Moto X on the cheap, but those deals came and went pretty quickly. But now a new deal is here, and it’s pretty good: You can get 50 percent off of the contract price of a Moto X on AT&T, Sprint or Verizon, or you can take $150 off the price of a contract-free handset.

There’s a couple of caveats: The deal isn’t good for the developer edition of the phone, and it also doesn’t apply to the new bamboo version. On the plus side, it does give you 50 percent off a number of different accessories as well.

To get the deal, just head over to this sign-up page and use the registration code todayshow50. Choose the promo you want, and you’ll be sent a code which you can then enter when buying a phone through Moto Maker.

You might want to jump on this fast, though, because it’s unclear how long the deal will last.

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AT&T to issue “transparency report,” denies widespread sharing of location data

Jeff John Roberts — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 20:46:01 +0000

One day after Verizon said it will start reporting on how often governments request customer data, its phone company rival AT&T said it intends to do the same.

In a press release published on Friday afternoon, AT&T stated that a current debate over how to balance personal privacy and national security is a “healthy one,” and that the company is taking steps to “provide transparency into government requests for customer information.”

In order to do so, AT&T will next year start publishing semi-annual reports to show how many subpoenas, warrants and other types of legal demands for customer information that it receives from the government.

The decision by Verizon and AT&T to publish such reports is significant because, until now, the phone carriers have largely stayed out of the controversial debate over government surveillance practices. That debate turns, in no small part, on a giant database of phone records that the government updates everyday, and that is of dubious constitutional validity.

AT&T’s release also stated that the company is restricted by law about what it can say about surveillance and government demands, but that it makes sure all such demands are lawful. In one potentially significant portion of the release, the phone company claims that:

We only provide wireless customer location data in response to a court order except in the rare cases in which an emergency compels us to do so.

This claim matters in light of ongoing leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that suggest ”two unnamed corporate partners” are collecting cellphone location data and supplying it to the NSA whenever the agency “ask nicely.”

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