ReadWrite

Xbox One Eighty: Microsoft Finds It Still Needs Gamers To Sell Gaming Consoles

Taylor Hatmaker — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:42:00 -0700

Apparently, Microsoft has just remembered that it needs gamers to sell a gaming console. In a complete and humbling reversal, Microsoft's next-gen console just dropped some of the contentious bits that had formerly loyal gamers shouldering pitchforks and heading to Redmond. And thank goodness — now we've got a fairer fight on our hands.

So what's out? Microsoft brought the axe down on its requirement that the Xbox One would need to connect to the Internet once every 24 hours, and also rolled back its most user unfriendly copy-protection (i.e., DRM) limitations. In an official Microsoft blog post, Interactive Entertainment President Don Mattrick invites gamers to "[t]rade-in, lend, resell, gift, and rent disc based games just like you do today." The company also dropped regional restrictions for games in the Xbox One's stable.

And unlike last week, the Xbox One leads the PlayStation 4 in launch day pre-orders today.

Features On The Chopping Block

Unfortunately, hushing the public backlash against the Xbox One comes at the cost of a few previously-announced features, at least at launch. The Xbox One will not allow users to share games with up to 10 "family" members — one of the system's cooler new perks.

And some old annoyances are back, too. For instance, users can download games from disk to the Xbox One's hard drive in order to improve performance — but they'll still need to put the physical disk in the console to play them.

Was The Xbox 360 The Gamer's Console All Along?

Why did Microsoft change its tune? As much as the company paraded the next-generation Xbox One as an all-in-one living room entertainment system, it's still a gaming console at heart.

According to a surprising 2013 Nielsen report, the Xbox is where the gamers were all along. In 2012 PlayStation 3 users lead the charge on non-gaming entertainment, spending almost a quarter of their time streaming movies or TV shows — not playing games — on the console. Xbox 360 users spent around 13% of their usage time for video-on-demand and other forms of streaming media.

PlayStation 3 owners only spent 46% of their time playing online or offline games, allocating the rest to the broader entertainment features that are supposedly the domain of Microsoft, while Xbox 360 users spent 66% of their time playing games on the console. Sure, Sony's inclusion of Blu-Ray on its last-gen console counts for something, but video on demand and streaming media accounted for the lion's share of the difference — and that's something both consoles have equal access to.

Can Microsoft's Backtrack Bring Gamers Back?

Last week, Sony jumped at the opportunity to spin the PlayStation 4 as a console built for gamers, not just for whatever family members happen to be ambling around the living room. And for once, the gaming community at large seemed agree on something — namely that it wouldn't stand for the Xbox One's restrictive policies and it was happy to pre-order the PlayStation 4 instead. Pre-orders for Sony's PS4 poured in.

Now that Microsoft has been humbled by the core gamer demographic it threw to the wolves just last week, the big question is whether it's done enough to repair the damage. We'll have to track console pre-orders and social media to see how it all plays out, at least until the consoles hit the market this fall. By that time, the rules of the game may have shifted yet again.

Xbox 180 image via imgur, provenance unknown

Microsoft Nearly Bought Nokia - WSJ

ReadWrite Editors — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:47:00 -0700

Technology pundits have long speculated that, one day, Microsoft would buy its way into manufacturing of its own mobile phones. Apparently that day came a lot closer to fruition than people had thought.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft was in “advanced talks” to acquire Finnish smartphone manufacturer Nokia before talks recently broke down. Nokia, which has a market valuation of $14 billion, would be a fairly easy pill for the cash-loaded Microsoft to swallow. The WSJ reports that Microsoft could have used some of its $66 billion in offshore accounts to acquire Nokia before talks stalled.

Since February 2011, Nokia has exclusively used Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system to power its smartphones. Nokia has produced a series of Windows Phone devices dubbed “Lumia,” the most recent of which — the Nokia Lumia 925 and Lumia 928 — it released this spring.

Qvivo Might Just Be The Cloud Media Service You've Been Waiting For

Ben Bowers — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:18:59 -0700

Editor's note: This post was originally published by our partners at Gear Patrol.

The early years of the digital media revolution promised an unprecedented era of media freedom. Consumers had the power to play vast libraries of video and music on an armada of different devices. Someone just had to make syncing it all easy. Apple realized the opportunity early, and its foresight soon transformed into a billion dollar business.

Few remember that the original iTunes was essentially a re-engineered version of SoundJam MP, a music software company Apple acquired in 2000. Most also forget that iTunes didn’t support the original iPod when it launched. That feature came with update 2.0, and it helped kick start the iPod into a global phenomenon.

Today, another personal media sea-change is afoot. Improved broadband and cellular data networks have removed concerns around limited local storage and now offer consumers access to troves of movies, TV shows and music any time they’re online. Thanks to services like Netflix Instant and Spotify, the need to own a particular song or episode may soon be a pointless compulsion in the face of unlimited access. Most of us aren’t there yet, though.

For most consumers still clinging to ownership of their digital media, Apple’s relatively new iTunes in the Cloud product tiptoes towards an untethered future, especially for Cupertino cult members who’ve amassed most of their digital library from the iTunes store. But it still leaves plenty to be desired, particularly for those dabbling in other digital ecosystems.

Enter Qvivo, Master Of Cloud Media

Qvivo is a new cloud media service startup that succeeds where most others have failed in offering a dream streaming solution for video and music fans with large digital libraries. Starting at $1.99 a month, Qvivo offers unlimited cloud storage for movies, TV shows and music that can then be streamed through any modern web browser.

For an extra dollar a month, users can access their media hoards across a host of free apps for iPhone, iPad and Android. At $4.99, Qvivo’s premium service adds priority upload speeds and the ability to share accounts with up to four family members. If it all sounds simple, it is.

In fact, Qvivo’s laser focus on simplicity is its biggest differentiation. Building your Qvivo library in the cloud is a largely painless process. iTunes users can simply drag files from their library into the Qvivo app to immediately start uploading, or alternatively select a media folder from their desktop.

While upload speeds will always vary by connection, the software deftly handles large file queues in the background; this makes setting up large batches of content to transfer overnight or at other off hours easy. Metadata for movies is automatically added on upload as well, along with a movie poster and background image, creating an elegant browsing experience on the fly. The same goes for music album artwork.

Theres’s no need to worry whether your local files will be compatible across various devices, platforms and screen resolutions: Qvivo automatically compresses and encodes all content into a variety of formats to ensure universal playback and optimal performance. That may disappoint video and audio nuts who take pride in format snobbery, but for the average user who just wants things to work seamlessly, it’s an enormous plus.

Start Watching Here, Continue Over There

Claims of integration across all media platforms aren’t just lip service. If you start watching an HD movie on your phone and want to finish it on your tablet, Qvivo remembers where you left off. The mobile app also offers the ability to download either a high quality or low quality version of any movie, show or song locally to a mobile device in situations where a solid internet connection isn’t guaranteed. Apple TV owners can leverage the AirPlay option in the iPhone and iPad apps to watch or listen via their home theater, too.

All of these features performed as advertised when we put the service to the test by uploading over 500GB of movies and music. Occasionally the app had trouble adding the correct metadata to select foreign movie titles and random albums, and a few files wouldn’t upload on the first try; streaming hiccuped once or twice, which was solved by closing and restarting the app. But these instances were rare, a minor nuisance to an otherwise mind-blowingly good experience.

We will say that the ability to host music is a welcome consideration, but the decision to group files by album, a lack of support for playlists and the inability to stream while a mobile device is sleeping or using another app limits its value in comparison to other cloud music services (the exception being for audiophiles with bigger, high-quality libraries). Movies and TV shows are clearly Qvivo’s true strong suit, largely because equivalent services simply don’t exist.

iTunes was never a particularly good piece of media management software. It just excelled at organizing and transferring music and shows across various devices. Somewhere along the way, Apple lost sight of this value in the age of cloud computing. We’ve been patiently waiting for the day when putting our personal media in the cloud didn’t require investing in a single ecosystem, media store or hardware solutions like a NAS.

But... There's No Backup

With Qvivo that moment has finally arrived. When it comes to accessing personal video from anywhere, the service is everything we could have asked for — save, that is, for a dedicated Apple TV or Roku app, which we’re sure the team must be investigating.

If we have to call out a downside, it’s that Qvivo doesn’t yet deliver on the other great benefit commonly associated with cloud hosting — backup. Streaming is great, as is the ability to download one-off files to mobile devices. But we’d also love to know that once our media was in the Qvivo cloud it could be downloaded again to any other device we owned, in its original uploaded format, just in case something terrible were to happen to our locally stored library. Or if we just needed to free up some hard drive space.

Maybe this service will be added in the future. Maybe it won’t. Either way, we’re grateful that Qvivo has figured out how to make building a personal cloud media library both easy and powerful — because Apple, Google, Dropbox, Amazon and the other major players still don’t have a clue.

Ouya Is A Tiny Box Open To Many Game Possibilities

Lauren Orsini — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 09:07:00 -0700

A few weeks before our Ouya arrived in the mail, my husband was having second thoughts. Like 63,416 others, he’d eagerly parted with his cash (in his case, a cool $225 for the limited edition color and name plate etching), during the throes of Kickstarter hype around the open source Android-based gaming platform.

Months later and still no Ouya, he was wondering if he’d made the right choice. He wondered why I, the usually-trusty voice of reason against BioShock Infinite Collector’s Edition pre-orders and Magic: The Gathering rares, hadn’t spoken up.

“Now, I kind of wish you’d talked me out of it,” he said.

But (maybe since I didn’t lose any money on the deal), I was more excited for the Ouya than ever. Un-piqued by June’s monotonous E3 lineup, I was ready for something new.

As it turned out, we didn’t have long to wait. When we returned from vacation, a tiny box from China had beat us home. Even though we couldn’t agree on the pronounciation (Me: Wee-yah; Him: Oy-yah; Actual: Ooh-ya), we opened it right away.

Inside, we found an even tinier box in “rich brown brushed metal.” How small was it? Well, since fruit is such a reliable unit of console measurement, here’s our Ouya with a banana for scale.

But neither of our lifetimes of console gaming fully prepared us for what was really inside.

An “Anything Goes” Sandbox

There’s a reason the Ouya Kickstarter was the first ever to make $8 million. It promised a gaming experience that was as much for developers as for players. And on that selling point, it looks like it has delivered.

Ouya’s biggest strength would be a weakness to any other console of this generation - it’s got zero quality control. Just by browsing Ouya Discover (the console’s store), I’ve played games with 3D engines and games that look like they were made in MS Paint.

In other words, you’ll find games on Ouya that you won’t see anywhere else because big companies don’t want to risk their budgets on the weird stuff. They stick with what works and what sells, so you can always expect lots of stubbly white male protagonists navigating war zones. Meanwhile, Ouya exclusives include unusual concepts like Soul Fjord, a combination of Norse mythology and 70s funk. Really.

Since nothing’s been tested and developers are playing by ear. Many games, including pixelated side-scroller Fist of Awesome and rhythmic shooter Dub Wars, are trials that link to Kickstarters of their own. Just like Ouya wants you to consider your console the beta version, it’s sometimes the same with the games you can play on it.

Likewise, you can start developing your own games on Ouya for free. You can download development tools and even get feedback on your in-progress projects for nothing.

Legal Troubles Ahead?

When you buy a Ouya, you’re buying complete ownership - the ability to hack, crack and root your console to your liking. With that kind of freedom, it’d be naive to assume owners won’t try anything legally dubious. And sure enough, they already have.

Ouya Discover abounds with free emulators, software that mimics the functions of other consoles. Gamers can use them to play homebrew games meant for older systems, such as the Super Nintendo. But aside from legal uses, gamers can also use emulators to play pirated copies of hard-to-find games.

On the left is a photo I took of one of the emulators available, designed to play PlayStation 1 games. While emulators inhabit a legal gray area as a whole, these uncredited screenshots are undoubtedly illegal.

Ouya’s creators are fully aware of the emulator/piracy connection, revealed in an interview with Kotaku. Ouya’s official response is that it won’t accept store submissions of emulators that come with games, nor will it accept submitted ROMs of games.

However, the Ouya’s major selling point is, once again, that you can do anything you want with it. It’s only a matter of time before piracy finds a way. Since the Ouya has a USB port, I've already thought of one option - sideloading games from a flash drive.

Can It Compete?

I’ve had a lot of fun playing with the Ouya. But as we near its June 25 release date, is it something worth buying over a mainstream console?

Quality-wise, it’s no replacement for the PlayStation 3, or in some cases, even the Nintendo 64. Since so many games are indie and homebrew, there’s no guarantee you’ll have good-looking graphics or, in some cases, even controls that work.

For some longtime gamers, this may be a small price to pay. Today’s gaming landscape is shrinking, filled with increasing DRM limits that keep us from fully owning the games and consoles we thought we bought. In this kind of world, the Ouya is a respite.

As for my husband, I don’t think he’s regretting the Ouya anymore. We’ve either played with it or showed it off to friends for four nights straight.

Still, in a few short months it'll be the holiday season and E3's offerings will all be released. It's hard to say if by that point, the Ouya will be gathering dust in the back of a closet while we make room for a shiny new PS4.

5 Games That Make The Sony-Microsoft Console War Meaningless

Nick Statt — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 06:57:00 -0700

After last week's Electronic Entertainment Expo, the console war drums are now beginning to beat in a frenzy. Microsoft and Sony have unveiled details of their next-generation video-game consoles, the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.

Which one should you buy? We have a radical proposal: neither.

Gamers can save themselves both money and mental anguish by taking note: The leading current-generation consoles, the Xbox 360 and PS3, are going to stick around for a while, and they're still getting nearly every huge game release for this year and next.

How long? Well, consider this: Sony didn't discontinue the PS2 until January of this year—nearly 13 years after its release.

Games Of Future Past

The new console generation is less of a leap than the shift to high-definition video was seven years ago. In unveiling their new game machines, Sony and Microsoft were forced to play down advancements in graphical realism and hardware punch. Instead, they trumpeted features game players don't care about, like television and social media.

The flip side of that: The latest games will be available for older consoles—and they won't be much of a downgrade. Game developers know this full well: The vast ranks of current console owners are a far more compelling market than people shelling out for new machines, and likely will be for years to come.

So what's the end result? Five of the biggest, most highly-anticipated titles at E3 were launched as cross-generation titles. That means your battle-battered Xbox 360 or PS3 can play them just fine, no new machine required.

The bottom line: If you have to have the latest-and-greatest console, more power to you. If what you want are the latest-and-greatest games, you don't have to wait.

Will these games look and feel better on the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One? Of course. Enough to matter? That's your call.

1. Grand Theft Auto V

Because it's not officially confirmed yet for the PS4 or Xbox One, the fifth installment of Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto isn't technically cross-generation yet. So right now, it's candy for current console owners. Set in the same universe as 2004's GTA: San Andreas, which involved recreations of Las Vegas, San Francisco and Los Angeles, this high-definition take on the West Coast crime underworld is slated to be the most ambitious, massive. open-world game to date.

One example of its ambition: there are three protagonists you can switch between at any point.

It's almost a given that, at some point in time, this game will make it's way to the next-generation consoles. Pre-release footage of the title is at a level of graphical fidelity unreachable by current hardware. Recent rumors suggest that these versions might come early in 2014, but you can be sure that Rockstar will be tight-lipped until long after the game launches this fall. With this strategy, Rockstar is expressly targeting late adopters.

Given that, GTA V will still be the best reason to own a current-generation console come September 17. It will likely provide years of play. Heck, I still play 2008's GTA IV regularly on my Xbox 360, and I shelled out the $15 for a PS3 version when I switched consoles earlier this year.

Check out the trailer below, which lets you toggle between the narrations of each of the game's three playable protagonists.

2. Watch Dogs

Watch Dogs is half open-world action/stealth game, half social commentary on surveillance and connectivity. (The NSA will probably hate it ... or maybe love it, depending on how the game's plot moves forward.)

Developed by publishing juggernaut Ubisoft, maker of the Assassin's Creed and Tom Clancy series, Watch Dogs features Aiden Pierce, an antihero hacker who finds his way into the networking infrastructure of an alternate version of Chicago in which every piece of tech is wed to a system called CtOS, or Central Operating System. This access lets Pierce hack smartphones, control traffic patterns, and basically leverage any form of digital connectivity as weapon while he navigates a world wrought with information warfare.

Watch Dogs is coming to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii U on November 19 and then the next-gen consoles when they launch.

3. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

From Japanese video game legend Hideo Kojima, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is the tenth installment in one of the gaming world's most cinematic and plot-heavy series.

I really won't try to explain the plot to people unfamiliar with MGS's unique brand of alternative world history, because I'd fail. There are occasional clones, some well-placed supernatural elements, and, of course, giant robots capable of launching nuclear missiles.

While the Metal Gear series has often stuck to a single console line, most recently Sony's, those not willing to upgrade to the new systems this holiday season won't be left out. Even better: Those still cross that 2008's mind-blowing MGS 4 was exclusive to the PS3 can rejoice: this title is going to be both cross-platform and cross-generation, so Xbox owners can finally join in.

Kojima Productions has yet to open up about a release date for MSG V, but here's a nice lengthy trailer showcasing some of its gameplay. For those interested, there's also a director's cut version that features some highly disturbing torture scenes that shed light on some of Kojima's boundary-pushing plans.

4. Call of Duty: Ghosts

Despite some of the mounting criticism aimed at publisher Activision for having turned its massively successful Call of Duty series into an annual update, Call of Duty: Ghosts is supposed to break the trend … sort of.

Developed by Activision's Infinity Ward, COD: Ghosts departs from prior storylines and introduces a new world where America is no longer a superpower. Set ten years after some currently-unknown event that shifts the world power balance, a band of soldiers fights for … well, you get the idea. To be fair, Call of Duty story lines have become increasingly more engrossing and philosophically interesting since Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops began exploring the truly darker sides of global conflict.

More importantly, players will get endless hours of highly-competitive multiplayer, the aspect of the series that has gotten it likened to an annual sports game yet still generates mind-boggling profits because players migrate en masse to the new versions every holiday season. A pleasantly refreshed storyline and a massively deep base of players have long since proven the COD games are worth their price tags.

Call of Duty: Ghosts will hit PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U, and PC on November 5, and then the next-gen consoles at launch.

5. Destiny

Destiny is the incredibly ambitious project from Bungie, the studio best known as the creators of the original Halo series. Set in a futuristic Earth, players craft their own character who gets to interact with thousands of others within a environment that is described as "alive," meaning many aspects of the game will be a dynamic result of people interacting with one another.

There's not much to know right now about the project except that it aims to be a wholly unique mix of first-person shooter and massively multiplayer online game. For instance, how many people can play at once on one server? Will there be a main storyline that players take part in together, or on their own? Will players on the old Xbox or PlayStation get to interact with those on the new consoles? These kinds of questions will fuel Destiny's popularity in the coming months, though it's already one of the most talked about titles of E3.

Destiny's release is not yet set, but it is confirmed for both the old and new Xbox and PlayStation consoles for some time in 2014. Here's a look at the extensive gameplay footage that debuted last week.

AMD Stiff-ARMs Intel By Offering ARM Server Chips

Brian Proffitt — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 06:32:00 -0700

AMD is pushing its chips in on its commitment to ARM-based server technology, announcing the new "Seattle" ARM processor for launch in the second half of 2014.

The release of an ARM-based processor built specifically for servers, instead of the smartphones and other smaller electronic devices they currently power, marks a significant step in moving away from the power-hungry and heat-generating Intel-based chips that have dominated the server market for decades, as well as a big opportunity for AMD to get out of the shadow of Intel.

AMD is not the first manufacturer to commit to the creation of ARM-based processors for servers: Applied Micro Circuits announced that it would be launching its own 64-bit ARM Systems on a Chip back in April.

The "system on a chip" (SoC) name describes pretty much what these devices are: an entire server's worth of hardware packed onto a single small chip. Only memory, which uses hard drives or solid-state storage, is not present.

AMD's announcement this week will do a lot to fuel the increasing interest in ARM-based processors, a technology that could bring significant cost savings to hardware operations by bringing low-power ARM servers to market.

The ARM And Intel Dance

In "traditional" computing devices like laptops, desktop computers, and servers, there's Intel, AMD, and well, that's pretty much it. Intel has not only developed the x86 architecture that has been powering PCs and other devices for 30-odd years, it also builds the chips itself, licensing the specs to only one other company: competitor AMD.

Intel and AMD processors, since they share many of the same features and architecture, have a lot of things in common. For one thing, they are very powerful and, since they have been around for such a long time, plenty of operating systems can run on machines with these chips, including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

ARM processors, though, are not made by just one company like Intel. Instead, ARM Holdings only develops the core architecture and licenses it to any hardware maker that wants to use the design to make its own processors. Because of the way it is designed, ARM processors use very little power, which makes them perfect for personal electronic devices where battery resources must be frugally maintained.

Cloud Computing Is Hot

With the rise of cloud computing, many people are noticing that maintaining racks and racks of servers can get expensive. Processors, like the kind produced by Intel for servers, get hot. If they get too hot, things start melting, so you need to use even more energy to keep all those servers cool. You can't make these servers too compact, either, or you can't use air or water to pull the heat away.

The average Intel server processor pulls in something like 80 watts of power just to run. But a multi-core ARM SoC draws only about 4 watts of power. Remember, that's a whole system on a chip, too, not just the processor.

Less power means less resistance and less heat. Less heat means less money wasted on cooling and more capability to compress ARM-based systems together.

If the implementation is successful - meaning that if the chips actually perform well, don't break down and don't cost more than their Intel-based equivalents - then large-scale data centers should see a significant reduction in power and cooling costs, and an increase in computing power per square foot, since theoretically you can jam a lot more SoCs into the space of a single server box.

ARM Not The Magic Solution

There is one additional catch: as nifty as ARM servers would be, applications and operating systems will still have to be ported so they can run on ARM processors. Some Linux distributions and Windows RT already do have various levels of ARM support, but the problems with the ARM-based Microsoft Surface RT reflect the fact that there are still a lot of applications that need to be ported from Windows to Windows RT.

Perhaps for these reasons, AMD isn't going all in on the Seattle chips. The company also announced it will be shipping Intel-based "Berlin," available in both a plain CPU version as well as an advanced processing unit that will integrate a graphics co-processor. "Warsaw" was also introduced, a high performance computing processor that should compete with Intel's Xeon product line.

Intel itself has yet to directly respond to this sudden interest in ARM chips for servers, but they're aware of it. In the mobile device sector, where ARM dominates for now, Intel's Clover Trail+ Atom chips are getting very good processing speed for lower power costs than equivalent ARM-based processors.

Meanwhile, in the server sector where ARM is starting to creep in, Intel's Haswell-based processors have enough power savings of their own to fend off ARM technology… but they are still pretty expensive compared to their ARM counterparts. But if Intel can make the case that the power savings in Haswell and no need to port applications from x86 to ARM-based platforms is enough to offset the cost difference, then Intel should be able to stay in the game.

A processor fight that decreases power use, in the long run, is something that all customers will be able to cash in.

Image courtesy of ARM Holdings.

Instagram Videos Could Spell A Billion Dollars Worth Of Magic For Facebook

Owen Thomas — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 06:02:00 -0700

Facebook is widely expected to announce Thursday a video feature for Instagram, the photo-sharing service it bought for $1 billion last year.

Some are speculating that this is a competitive response to Vine, Twitter's clever short-video app. But what if Facebook had a broader purpose in mind—habituating its users to seeing videos?

It's An Ad, Ad, Ad World

Marketers are eager to buy video ads on Facebook. But users, used to the quiet experience of reading updates and viewing photos from friends, may find them jarring, especially if the ads start playing automatically.

Yet Twitter's Vine has proven remarkably popular, with its six-second videos playing automatically within its app and in tweets. Twitter recently revealed Vine has 13 million users, and it's added an Android version of the app alongside the original iPhone version.

Vine presages a world where the magic of Harry Potter becomes everyday reality—where we are used to photos moving on the page, as they do in The Daily Prophet, the newspaper of Potter's wizarding world. Or, perhaps, like the dystopian future of Minority Report, all our screens will play video—and targeted to our networked identities.

See also: Sources And Sinks: The Epic Battle To Control How Content Flows On The Web

Already, teenagers live in such an animated universe. You may know it as Tumblr, the paradise of animated GIFs Yahoo just bought for $1.1 billion.

How Instagram Videos Will Play On Facebook

So let's assume Instagram's team, led by cofounder Kevin Systrom, have found a reasonably clever and smooth way to include video as an option in its app.

Let's also assume that when Instagram users take those videos, they can choose to post them simultaneously to their Facebook profiles, as they already do with photos.

Suddenly there will be a lot more video on Facebook than there is now, since it will be radically easier to capture short clips and share them with friends. And this video will, one assumes, be far more compelling to users. So instead of glazing over it, they'll eagerly watch.

The shift to mobile and context-sensitive design will be crucial factors in whether the strategy flops or succeeds. Vine's app smartly detects whether a user has headphones plugged in before deciding whether to play sound. Instagram's will hopefully do the same.

New Space For Native Ads

Harry Potter and the gobs of advertising.

To make boatloads of money off of this, Facebook doesn't need to put ads on Instagram. Instead, smart marketers will post short videos to their Instagram accounts—presumably funny, watchable stuff—and crosspost them to Facebook. They'll then pay Facebook to boost the frequency with which people see those video clips.

That's a strategy known in the marketing world as "native advertising," and it's precisely how Twitter makes money.

Twitter, of course, stands to profit in the same way from Vine, which has already been embraced by brand marketers. And it likewise doesn't have to change how it sells ads: All marketers have to do is pay Twitter to promote tweets that happen to contain Vine clips.

Conventional video advertising—that is to say, television—is a $70 billion market in the U.S. alone. It's reasonable to think Twitter and Facebook's video formats could capture at least a sliver of that. Imagine movie trailers and television teasers cut down to six-second blips: Hollywood alone could bankroll this business, with content that we already know people want to watch.

A Cold War Over Hot Video Clips

Facebook and Twitter do have a clear rivalry here. But it's not for consumers' usage of video-sharing apps. Instead, it's for marketing dollars. If anything, they both benefit from habituating users to the idea of short video clips as part of the flow of information in their feeds.

Where they will clash is the consumption of video. Twitter and Facebook are using Vine and Instagram as proxies in their battle to control the flow of content on the Web. First Instagram cut off its photos from Twitter feeds, forcing Twitter users to click through to its website. Vine users post videos to Facebook—but the videos do not play on Facebook itself. One assumes Instagram will likewise favor Facebook, with autoplay being a feature that's reserved for Instagram and Facebook's own websites and apps.

And now, please enjoy a video—or is it an advertisement?—of my dog, Ramona the Love Terrier.

An Honest, Law-Abiding Patent Troll?

Matt Asay — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:04:00 -0700

Given the inanity that is our current patent system, it's not surprising that innocent patent holders can look like trolls. Such might well be the case with SightSound Technologies, a subsidiary of General Electric, which has spent years in patent lawsuits with Apple, CDNow, Bertelsmann, Napster and others. As SightSound's CEO Scott Sander argues in a letter to The Wall Street Journal editor, "true innovators [can be] so burdened by the cost of the very patents meant to protect them that they themselves must become an 'assertion' entity." Or, in other words, a patent troll.

But when is a patent troll not a patent troll? And is it ever right to become a patent troll as an allegedly defensive maneuver?

Is Being First Enough?

According to Sander, SightSound owns a portfolio of 50 patents related to media downloads, and claims to have been the first to sell both music (1995) and movie (1999) downloads. Of course, a quick Google search reveals that others were offering subscriber-only music downloads before 1995, e.g., Compuserve, and the Internet Underground Music Archive was offering free downloads in 1993. Movies? They were available for free before 1999 and some organizations like the American Film Institute offered movies on their website.

But let's not let historical accuracy get in the way of a good argument.

The reality is that under U.S. patent law, SightSound didn't need to be the first to file for a patent, nor did it need to be the first to make its patent-pending product available to the public. While the U.S. has recently joined the rest of the planet in adopting a "first to file" rule for patents, formerly the only requirement was that you be able to demonstrate that you were the first to invent.

Courts have sided with SightSound against both CDNow, N2K, Roxio, Bertelsmann and Napster, but Sanders asserts "We now find ourselves defending our patent rights against Apple, which copied our business, our technology, and our innovative pricing model, all of which were presented by us directly to the future infringer in 1999."

Compelling, yes? Well, maybe. If you look at SightSound's website, you won't find the obligatory customer case studies. In fact, the website is heavy on assertions that it was first to do this or that, with descriptions of its core technology, and little mention of actual products. On its news page, the company links to a series of court victories.

Trolling, much?

Yet this is where defining a "troll" becomes difficult.

Just What Is A Troll, Anyway?

Most characterize patent trolls as non-practicing entities (NPEs), that is, companies that don't actually build anything beyond lawsuits and cease-and-desist letters. In Sander's mind, the definition needs to be enlarged:

SightSound raised capital precisely because its patents protected its first-mover position. We used that capital to hire talented engineers attracted to the prospect of launching not just a company, but an entire industry. We were subsequently forced to defend our patents endlessly in court against larger, well-funded, heavily lawyered infringers. An infringer with a $100 billion war chest can make a mockery of the current patent system as much as trolls do.

To Sander, a patent troll might also include larger companies who can afford to steamroller smaller rivals, no matter the validity of their patents. The reality of our system is that few can afford to litigate their patent portfolios, and hence larger companies with deeper pockets invariably win any long-term patent suit (and given the pace of U.S. courts, they're always long-term).

A Clear Test Of Trolldom

Sander proposes that we eliminate the ambiguity with a bright-line test: "Is the patent owner the first to invent, the first to file and the first to make the product or provide the service? If so, it cannot be a troll."

What do you think? I personally like the test, but it's hard to square it with SightSound's history of litigation. Because that also makes a company a patent troll in my mind: if they're more interested in litigating than building, to me they're a troll.

Sander says it's a troll purely out of necessity, but does that hold up with you?

A Handy Guide To Google's Project Loon

Brian S Hall — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0700

No one can accuse Google of not thinking big. Project Loon, Google's audacious "moonshot" vision to bring mobile Internet connectivity to the billions without - via balloons - is one of the company's biggest ideas ever. It's madness, but it just might work.

Considering the uniqueness of the idea, its use of old technology, and the potential impact it will have should Google succeed, you no doubt have questions. Here is a handy Q&A guide to help you understand Project Loon.

Balloons? Really?

Yes, really. The balloons are made of polyethylene plastic. They are approximately 15 meters in diameter and the entire apparatus is about 12 meters tall. Each balloon is powered via solar panels.

The balloons will float along the winds in the stratosphere, approximately 20km above the surface. At such a distance, they cannot be seen with the naked eye. Each balloon is equipped with transceivers to communicate with nearby balloons and with a regional ground station and the specialized antenna Google developed to receive the signal.

While only 30 test balloons were used at launch, Google expects far more floating in the sky should this project prove viable. Google says the balloons will provide mobile data connectivity equivalent to today's 3G speeds, or possibly greater.

How Does It Work?

Each balloon is networked to one another with a radio transceiver as in a mesh, designed to ensure signal reliability. A second transceiver keeps the balloon in contact with a network station on the ground and beams an Internet signal to specialized antennas that can be placed on homes, much like a very small satellite TV receiver.

There is also a back-up transceiver and a GPS on each balloon, so Google can monitor a balloon's location. And each balloon will carry weather instruments, too.

Is This Just A Publicity Stunt?

Unlikely. Driverless cars seemed like a publicity stunt, as did Glass. Google has a way of surprising people with both the scope of their vision and its willingness to push it into reality. From the Project Loon announcement:

We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below. It’s very early days, but we’ve built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today’s 3G networks or faster. As a result, we hope balloons could become an option for connecting rural, remote, and underserved areas, and for helping with communications after natural disasters.

That said, Google also states that "this is still highly experimental technology and we have a long way to go."

What Will Project Loon Be Used For?

According to Google, for 2 out of every 3 people on Earth, "a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach." Project Loon is an early, inspiring attempt to deliver reliable connectivity to those areas where it does not exist or is prohibitively expensive - the Southern Hempishere, in particular.

The view from a Project Loon balloon

Google also mentions the ability to deliver communications using its balloons following natural disasters. Disasters such as Hurricane Sandy, which devastated Haiti last year before striking the U.S. East Coast, can cripple a region's communications infrastructure for an extended period. Loon could potentially serve as a helpful backup grid.

Is This Just A Plot To Sell More Ads?

Maybe. But does it matter?

Of course, nearly all Google's revenues come from advertisements posted onto connected screens large and small. The more people connected, the more advertisements. Google wins. This is its bold project, after all.

The Tech

Google has been tight-lipped regarding exactly how this will all work. Project Loon technology includes, at minimum, the balloons, transceivers, terrestrial control equipment, on-board battery, solar panels and GPS, network monitoring equipment and terrestrial antennas that connect to Project Loon balloons. (These earthbound antennas resemble - you guessed it - red balloons; one is pictured at left - or above if you're on a mobile device.)

The company has suggested that at this early stage, humans will be needed to monitor the system and individual balloons. This is a problem Google hopes to eventually resolve using "complex algorithms and lots of computing power."

Won't The Balloons Float Away?

Yes! Only not much as you might suspect. Google claims to have "figured out" how to control the balloons by moving them up or down into the desired band of wind in the stratosphere, though it didn't specify how, exactly.

The stratospheric winds and temperatures should presumably not present a hazard problem for the balloons or equipment.

Should Google really ramp up this project to the point where it involves hundreds or even thousands of balloons, controlling the entire system will pose some pretty complex challenges. Do not be surprised to one day read a story about a Loon balloon landing on some farm in South America, for example.

Is This A Google X Project?

Yes, and it certainly seems like Google X is about the coolest place to work for in all of tech. The company states that Project Loon is just its latest "moonshot" effort.

Has This Been Tried in the Real World?

Yes. Google ran its first public test last weekend, in New Zealand, sending 30 balloons into the sky and offering 60 lucky volunteers 15 minutes of balloon-based Internet access. Smaller, private tests were conducted in California and possibly elsewhere.

The company says that "over time" it intends to set up similar pilots in countries with the same latitude as New Zealand (40th parallel south). It hasn't provided any timeline for these pilots.

How Much Does All This Cost?

Launching a Project Loon balloon

You won't be surprised to learn that Google hasn't specified what spent on this project, nor how much it intends to spend. Neither has the company offered any cost data for any of the equipment used or any indication of how many of its own employees are Loonies. All this is par for the course for Google.

As for (eventual) end users, it seems reasonable to assume that Google plans to deliver Internet connectivity expects its solution to ultimately cost less than satellite-delivered Internet, or be scrapped.

Ultimately, the costs may prove worth it. As my ReadWrite colleague Matt Asay noted in April:

Google is giving away hugely expensive fiber-based Internet access (in the U.S.), but not because it's a charity. Google knows that the more people that spend time online, the more likely they will spend money with Google.

Will The Balloons Crash?

Each balloon is made of rugged polyethylene plastic. They use solar power to help remain aloft. The balloons float in the stratosphere, above rain and commercial aircraft, for example, and far below satellites.

Of course they will crash.

Google says each balloon includes a parachute to ensure a more controlled landing - not a crash, per se. The company adds that the balloons are designed to stay aloft for "100+ days."

When a balloon is known to have reached its end of life or needs repair, controllers can arrange an orderly descent. Google has plans for designated Loon balloon collection points. Google has also suggested that the balloons and equipment on board can be re-used and recycled.

Google will notify the appropriate authorities, such as air traffic controllers, during both launch and descent.

Where Can I Get Updates?

Project Loon has its own Google+ page.

Wait. Are the Skies Open?

Not, especially. There are many rules regarding airspace and who controls it, and also disagreements as to how far (up) such control extends.

Floating in the stratosphere means that almost certainly, Google will always be required to seek permission from any government whose airspace the balloons float into. In addition, while this project uses unlicensed spectrum, there's no guarantee that will always be the case.

Luckily for Google, approximately 70,000 weather balloons are launched every year, which may mitigate some, though not all, of the legal and regulatory issues.

Can I Get Balloon Powered Internet?

If you are reading this, then probably not. This solution is not intended for you. As Google states:

There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity—jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month’s income.

Given that Google can control the positioning of the balloons, it could - in theory - bring Loon to areas that have suffered connectivity outages following a disaster or conflict, for example.

Will This Be Another Failed Last Mile Solution?

We'll see. As Google notes, most people don't have affordable and reliable 3G-like access. This is obviously a difficult problem to solve.

Google has been working on delivering wireless connectivity using "white spaces" - publicly available radio spectrum - since at least 2010. Microsoft has just announced it's joining a multi-organization effort to bring white spaces connectivity to underserved areas (such as rural communities) in Europe. Typically, such efforts function similar to today's cellular networks - and most certainly do not use balloons.

Many efforts to bring WiMax, a high-speed wireless service for more densely populated areas, were clear failures, despite early hype. Similarly, satellite-delivered Internet, which has succeeded for many, continues to remain relatively expensive and fraught with issues such as line-of-sight, visibility, and cost.

Google has said that, at minimum, balloons offer the potential for widespread, affordable Internet access. And that's clearly a big part of the company's mission when you consider Project Loon, the company's other white spaces efforts and its Google FIber business in the U.S. True, it's also a self-interested mission. But that doesn't mean it's not a good thing.

Images via Google Project Loon

Google Cites First Amendment In Challenge To FISA Secrecy Order

ReadWrite Editors — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:44:00 -0700

Google, eager to salvage its security-related reputation in the wake of disclosures about the NSA's PRISM surveillance program, has asked a secretive intelligence court to let it disclose more details regarding government requests for information about its users, reports the Washington Post.

In a legal filing Tuesday, Google cited a First Amendment right to speak about the information it must legally provide to the government. The company is seeking to have the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court lift a gag order that prevents companies from discussing or describing surveillance orders issued by that court, even in general terms.

Google's Next Nexus Is Nowhere In Sight

Dan Rowinski — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 09:39:00 -0700

If you are waiting to get your hands on the latest and greatest of Google’s Nexus Android smartphones and tablets, the last month or so has been both exciting and disappointing.

Google's Hugo Barra announces Google Edition Samsung Galaxy S4

Google announces new Nexus smartphones and tablets when it ships new versions of Android. With every sugary dessert iteration, avid Android fans get flagship devices running unadulterated Android (free of the skins and bloatware from manufacturers and carriers) to satiate their geeky desires.

The only problem? Google hasn’t announced a new version of Android yet. And there is no firm timetable for when it will.

Google had set a pattern of announcing the newest Android versions at its I/O developer conference over the last couple of years. Android developers got lots of goodies from Google this year at I/O (Android Studio and a bevy of monetization tools) but a shiny new version of Android was not among the announcements.

To make up for the missing Android refresh (and the related lack of new Nexus devices), Google has made deals to bring the stock Android user interface to the most popular smartphones currently on the market.

Google announced the availability of a “Google Edition” Samsung Galaxy S4 running the Nexus user interface during the I/O keynote. The well-received HTC One will also come out with a Google Edition Nexus version. Gadget manufacturer LG shipped a white version of the Nexus 4. Both the Google Edition Galaxy S4 and HTC One with the Nexus user interface will be available on the Google Play store on June 26th and will be unlocked and ready to use on T-Mobile or AT&T in the United States. The price will be fairly steep though, with the HTC One selling for $599 and the S4 for $650. In comparison, the Nexus 4 from LG was only $299 when it was released in November 2012.

“When It’s Ready”

I was sitting in a room with a Google executive on the Android team shortly after the I/O keynote address. Ostensibly, we were taking about apps. Lots and lots of apps. Yet I couldn’t ignore the elephant in the room.

“So,” I asked, trying to sound casual, “when is the next version of Android coming out?”

The exec smiled. This question was not unexpected. Google did not announce a new version of Android during I/O. Not a new version of Android Jelly Bean or the rumored Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie. Nothing.

“When it’s ready,” she said.

That is a very Apple-like response from Google and not one that the company has employed previously with Android. Google historically has released new versions of Android at a breakneck pace as it worked to create feature parity with iOS and other mobile platforms.

That parity was largely achieved with the release of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and arguably surpassed since with the two updates of version 4.1 and 4.2 Jelly Bean. Google now has the ability to be patient with the next release of Android as opposed to iterating something minor on the top of what has become a stable, feature-rich platform.

The longest that Google has gone without announcing a major new named version of Android has been seven months (between version 2.1 Éclair and 2.2 Froyo and again between Froyo and 2.3 Gingerbread). Google has already gone seven months between its last platform update (with Jelly Bean 4.2) and almost a full year between named versions with Jelly Bean 4.1 released in July 2012.

Source: Wikipedia

By the time Google comes out with its next major Android update, it will be the longest the platform has ever gone without a new named version. We don’t know when the next version is coming, but a fair presumption is that Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie will drop sometime this fall, just in time for the holiday device buying season.

Google's Challenge: Keeping Device Makers & Android Users Happy

When it comes to Google’s Android flagship Nexus devices, the search giant has a massive balancing act to perform. On one hand, it needs to stroke the egos of its primary manufacturing partners like Samsung, HTC and LG. On the other hand, it has a legion of loyal Android fans that just want their new Nexus devices to be the best of the best, run un-skinned and unadulterated Android and be reasonably inexpensive.

The “Google Edition” versions of the Galaxy S4 and HTC One are a compromise from Google between these two factions. Users get the chance to get some of the best devices currently on the market running the stock Android user interface. Manufacturers get the privilege of having “Nexus” editions while also being able to charge full price for their top devices. Google wins because it was able to get ostensible Nexus devices to market without yet having to come out with a new version of Android.

How will this play out in the future? LG made the last Nexus smartphone but has said that it will not be making the next one. Samsung had the previous two Nexus smartphones before that (as well as the Nexus 10 tablet that shipped last November) and HTC made the first Nexus device. Asus has made the Nexus 7 tablets thus far. Google owns Motorola and has said that it treats the company like any of its other Android manufacturing partners, which would put Motorola in the running for a Nexus device in the future.

Pinterest Developers, After Years Of Waiting, Can Take Hope

Lauren Orsini — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 09:10:00 -0700

The developer community has a message for Pinterest: what’s taking so long?

Ever since March 2012, the image-sharing network has promised developers an API. And it's in demand - according to ProgrammableWeb, the Pinterest API profile is the most frequently viewed page on the site, revealing the community’s anticipation for the feature.

Whatever the reason, the lack of API access from Pinterest is not sitting well with the developer community.

Promises But Little Progress

An API, or application programming interface, is a group of requirements that permit one device to talk to another. They’re essential for developers who want to build applications on top of an existing site’s functionalities.

Most social networks have wised up to how vital APIs can be for innovative features. After Twitter launched in March 2006, it only took the company six months to release a public API. Facebook’s came less than a year later, in May 2007.

As it approaches its fourth anniversary, Pinterest is no longer the newest social network on the block, and still no API. Any particular reason?

A Pinterest spokesperson told ReadWrite the company is being “thoughtful” about the release. That’s no less vague than the comment a spokesperson gave me when I visited Pinterest HQ last September, that the API was “in the works.”

That’s not to say, however, that there hasn’t been any progress at all. In May, Pinterest launched a Developer Site as a resource for site owners and developers who are building with existing Pinterest tools, like the Pin It button and rich pins. The week of the launch the site even had a pinboard for API documentation, a pinboard that now leads to a 404.

There’s also a Google form developers can fill out to become the first to know about updates to the Pinterest API. However, since signing up on this form after the first announcement in March 2012, I haven’t heard a peep.

Why We Need It Now

Without a public API, there’s only one way to create applications that work on top of Pinterest - data scraping, the automated gathering of data through a site's interface. This is exactly what existing Pinterest applications are doing now.

Repinly, a Pinterest statistics and ranking site, is one example. According to founder Rami Madi, the lack of an API has forced him to get creative.

“Since we don't use an API, we crawl Pinterest and we index the information of top pinners, popular boards and trending pins,” Madi said in an email.

But without an API, Madi’s data is only accurate up to a point. While an API would allow Repinly to communicate with Pinterest in real time; data scraping only updates his resources hourly. The top pins on Repinly will not be up-to-the-minute. And no matter how much Madi perfects the tool, there’s no way to really improve without an API. That’s to say nothing of how labor-intensive and time-consuming data scraping makes Madi’s job.

Centered around window shopping, Pinterest is an exceptionally lucrative social network and there’s no shortage of developers who want to build applications for it. But even the best developers will have accuracy problems until the API is released.

How Much Longer?

One of Pinterest’s newest hires may be a sign that the API could finally be on the way. In June, the company hired John Yi to head “Marketing Developer Partnerships.”

According to his LinkedIn profile, Yi spent the last four years at Facebook, where he appears to have been heavily involved in API integration. If that’s the case, it could be that Pinterest has hired him to do the same thing.

Once again, Pinterest has got developers excited about its API. Hopefully they won’t be let down this time.

Microsoft's Most Wanted: A Convicted Child Molester Worked At Yammer

Owen Thomas — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 08:05:00 -0700

A few years ago, a fast-growing startup, adding staff at a breakneck pace, hired a facilities manager as a contractor without asking too many questions.

That startup was Yammer, now part of Microsoft. And that contractor - Marcus Tillman - is now behind bars, facing the 40-year sentence he dodged in Georgia years ago.

Federal investigators, acting on a tip from authorities in Georgia, went to Yammer's office in San Francisco last week seeking information about Tillman, known to his colleagues as "Stephen Warner."

Marcus Tillman, a convicted child molester, worked at Yammer under a false name for years.

"They were more than cooperative once we told them what was going on," Deputy Joe Palmer told ReadWrite.

Within days, and with help from the information Yammer provided, Palmer and his colleagues arrested Tillman at the Cup-A-Joe Coffee House in San Francisco Thursday night. Tillman was taken into custody, awaiting extradition to Georgia.

“We are as shocked and saddened as anyone to learn of these developments," a Microsoft spokesperson told us. "While we do not want to comment on a criminal matter, we can confirm that at no point was Tillman a Yammer or Microsoft employee. Tillman was a contractor assigned to facilities-related work. We cooperated with authorities in his capture and are relieved that he has been brought to justice.”

"America's Most Wanted"

In February 2009, facing trial on two charges of child molestation, Tillman cut off his ankle monitor and fled. He was convicted in absentia and sentenced. Later that year, he used a bank account opened in Atlanta to purchase a ticket at a California bus depot, drawing attention from authorities in that state. But after that, the trail appeared to have gone cold.

Tillman made several appearances on "America's Most Wanted." But until last week, he lived relatively openly in San Francisco, albeit under his assumed name. Early employees remember him working at Yammer as long ago as 2010 or 2011. His duties included stocking the refrigerator, cleaning common areas, and fixing broken equipment.

He was a constant presence at Yammer's office - including occasions when parents brought their children to work.

Surrounded by some of the industry's brightest software engineers, Tillman appears to have excelled instead at the dark arts of social engineering, or manipulating people to his own ends.

It's not clear how Yammer hired or paid Tillman. Our sources disagree on whether he worked through an agency or as an independent contractor: It appears that his status varied over the years, and that Tillman may have used these changes in payment arrangements to deflect suspicions.

Surrounded by some of the industry's brightest software engineers, Tillman appears to have excelled instead at the dark arts of social engineering.

After Microsoft bought Yammer, a maker of tools for collaboration and information sharing with businesses, for $1.2 billion in the summer of 2012, Tillman's employment arrangements became a subject of talk at the Yammer office. Microsoft does not work with independent contractors; instead, it employs them through agencies.

At the time, Yammer employees recalled discussing a widely held belief in the office that their facilities manager did not have a Social Security number. One explanation that circulated around the office: Warner's religious beliefs forbade him from getting a government-issued identification number.

But any suspicions came up at a time when Yammer was preparing hundreds of employees for a new parent company and a simultaneous move into a new office in San Francisco's Mid-Market district. Contractor or not, Tillman had worked as "Warner" for years at that point.

He appears to have created profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook under the Warner name. Several Yammer employees are friends with "Warner" on Facebook.

One thing is clear: Had Yammer hired him as a regular employee, its practice of conducting criminal background checks - an unusual scruple for a startup of its size - would almost certainly have caught Tillman's subterfuge.

Instead, he was able to pull an elaborate deception on the place where he worked for years, exploiting loopholes and perhaps the sympathies of the people whose desks he repaired and whose cafeteria he cleaned.

We asked Microsoft for the name of the agency or agencies through which it and Yammer had contracted with Warner over the years. The company declined to name them.

The software giant has slowly been integrating Yammer's operations. The companies will combine their sales teams in July. In October, human resources and finance operations will shift over to Microsoft's central groups.

Mugshot courtesy US Marshals; photo of Yammer office by Robert Scoble

Chromebook Sales Expanding Despite Tablet-Leaning Market

ReadWrite Editors — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 06:16:30 -0700

Finding a Chromebook from Google has never been particularly hard to do, since they've been available at Best Buy and Amazon for quite a while. But now Acer's $199 model Chromebooks have gotten even more prolific, now available on the shelves of 2,800 U.S. Wal-Mart stores.

The expansion of Chromebook inventories doesn't stop there, according to Google's blog post yesterday. Starting this weekend, Staples will have Chromebooks from Acer, HP and Samsung in every one of its 1,500-plus U.S. stores.

Expansion is coming to other markets as well, wrote David Shapiro, Director of Chromebook Marketing:

In addition to Dixons in the UK, now 116 Tesco stores are selling Chromebooks, as well as all Media Markt and Saturn stores in the Netherlands, FNAC stores in France and Elgiganten stores in Sweden. In Australia, all JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman stores will be carrying Chromebooks for their customers as well.

See also HP TouchPad is Clever, Not a Killer

While sales numbers of Chromebooks have not been made available, the numbers must be at least decent enough for Wal-Mart, Staples and the rest of these retail outlets to be interested in selling them. Clearly, a repeat of the HP TouchPad debacle is not happening here.

Is the Chromebook about to succeed in a market that seems to lean hard on tablets? Thinking about getting one yourself? Let us know.

Image courtesy of Google.

Yahoo Reports Its Data Request Numbers

Brian Proffitt — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 05:37:53 -0700

Yahoo has joined the ranks of Internet technology companies demonstrating their commitment to openness - and trying to rebuild trust with their users - with its own revelation of data requests received from law enforcement agencies.

Yahoo announced the numbers in a Tumblr blog from CEO Marissa Mayer and General Counsel Ron Bell, citing figures from December 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013.

During that time period, we received between 12,000 and 13,000 requests, inclusive of criminal, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and other requests. The most common of these requests concerned fraud, homicides, kidnappings, and other criminal investigations.

The FISA requests are presumably tied to the leaked program known only as PRISM, alleged to be the NSA's secret access to major Internet companies' data stores in the intelligence agency's hunt for terrorists.

See also PRISM Leaker Goes Public To Defend Claims

Since information on PRISM was leaked by Booz Allen technician Edward Snowden earlier this month, the companies implicated in the leaked material have made a point to disclose what they can about requests for information, while asking to go farther and be allowed to separate the FISA request figures from the other law enforcement requests.

The implication is that FISA requests are much fewer in number than standard law enforcement requests, which would thus let companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Yahoo release some of the intense scrutiny they have been under since Prism was first detailed. But, until they are permitted to make such distinctions, it seems that these public transparency reports will have to do.

Death By Lawsuit: SCO Resurrects And Insanity Is Restored

Matt Asay — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 08:53:00 -0700

If ever we needed confirmation that markets, not courtrooms, should decide the technologies we use, witness SCO Group's reborn dream to sue all of UNIX-dom into its wallet. It was a specious lawsuit in 2003 when SCO Group (now Xinuos) first launched its $1 billion broadside against IBM. It's even more farcical today. Sadly, it's not clear that the legal fights between Apple and Samsung, or Oracle and Google, are much better.

First, to SCO Group.

SCO Is Like A Cockroach

You can be forgiven for thinking bankruptcy, unsympathetic judges and the truth would have killed SCO's chances of getting its $1 billion IBM payday. That is, you can be forgiven for thinking that occasionally common sense prevails in the courtroom. But as Groklaw notes, a judge has just granted SCO Group (Xinuos) a new lease on its litigious life. Basically, Xinuos wants a "redo," suggesting that its bankruptcy proceedings unfairly foreclosed its ability to troll.

And let's be clear: this is all about trolling.

It's perhaps fitting that the company that acquired SCO Group's assets, Xinuos, lists four members of management, three of whom are operations and sales-focused (read: keeping costs down while they swing for the litigation fences), and only one is an engineer. That engineer is too embarrassed to show his face:

This is a company set up to sue. In common parlance, it is a troll. Fittingly, it's headquartered in Las Vegas, where the culture of rolling the dice on speculative "investments" pervades.

SCO Group reborn as UnXis renamed to Xinuos should be dead. The lawsuit that tormented the industry for years should have been declared stillborn when first launched. And yet we continue to live with this silly charade.

More Respectable Lawsuits

Not that industry litigation between respectable companies fares much better.

Samsung just got a ban on Apple's importation of old iPhones. Previous to this, Apple won $1 billion from Samsung plus an injunction against Samsung shipping certain phones. The injunction was subsequently wiped out and the damages were trimmed 43%.

It's a tit-for-tat with no end (or victor) in sight.

The same holds true for Oracle's lawsuit against Google over the use of Java in Android. The two parties trade victories and defeats, then appeal, and cross-appeal ad nauseum. The only winners in this and other lawsuits are the attorneys collecting fees.

The Market Rolls On

Despite all of this nonsense, consumers and businesses continue to make purchasing decisions based on quality and value, not lawsuits. Linux has eclipsed UNIX and threatens Windows. Android dominates the mobile landscape. Not one of these inane lawsuits has changed these facts.

So why do credible firms like Apple and Oracle follow the lead of trolls like SCO Group?

Perhaps they hope to delay the inevitable. If Apple can slow Samsung's market share gains, it stands to make even more profits.

Or perhaps they hope to get paid for others' successes. Microsoft makes serious money on Android, despite not contributing anything of value to its development. Oracle may hope to achieve the same in its lawsuit with Google, but part of its strategy may simply be to ensure that others continue to license Java, even if Google refuses, as I've written before.

In some cases, technology firms sue in order to discover competitors' trade secrets in the course of the litigation.

Or maybe, just maybe, they're all suing, as Gizmodo opines, because the patent system is irretrievably broken and so much money is at stake in these emerging markets like mobile.

In the case of Xinuos, however, there's just one reason for its cockroach-like existence: to roll the dice one more time in the hope of getting something for nothing. Let's hope it fails in a way that it finally, truly dies.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Radical iOS 7 Design Is Threat To Some Existing Apps

Brian S Hall — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 07:34:00 -0700

iOS 7 is a truly audacious redesign of Apple's chief operating system. I have been using the beta version since last week and it's abundantly clear that Apple is determinedly focused on ensuring that iOS—the software underpinnings of the iPhone and iPad—remains the simplest, purest OS on the planet.

It's also obvious that the new iOS 7 design and enhanced functionality will kill off many non-Apple apps, including some good ones.

See also How Apple's iOS 7 Changes Everything For App Designers

A Jarring Experience

For long-time iPhone users, the new design is jarring. Everything about the light, sparing iOS 7 looks different from its predecessors—fonts, colors and iconography, especially. There is also an updated browser, a slate of redesigned default apps, new swiping functions and more robust notifications. This all takes some getting used to.

Once mastered, however, it soon becomes obvious which apps will be made irrelevant thanks to iOS 7.

For example, the new "Control Center," which is available with a swipe up from the bottom of the screen, includes a flashlight. There is no longer any need for that long-kept Flashlight app of yours. Similarly, managing Wi-Fi connections via the Control Center is a breeze. Those few of you with Wi-Fi location apps can now delete them.

I am unaware of anyone who actually uses Bump. No matter, iOS 7 negates the need for the app, as a new "AirDrop" feature wirelessly sends files to nearby iOS 7 users.

It's intriguing to consider what might come from iPhone to iPhone AirDrop use, everything from instantly sharing music and videos, for example, to a clever new take on the "hot potato" game. Such opportunities notwithstanding, Control Center and its wireless sharing features, including AirDrop and AirPlay, will likely draw first blood against several minor app stalwarts.

iTunes Radio Will Be Big

With iTunes Radio, it will now be much easier to buy and download a song you like the moment you hear it. You may not view this as a win, but make no mistake, iTunes Radio will be a winner. For those tens of millions of iOS users not currently using a music streaming service, iTunes Radio is the perfect entry point: it's available through the "Music" app, is simple to operate and costs nothing.

iTunes Radio should choke off all but the very best, most-entrenched streaming music competitors. If you already have Pandora or a similar service with which you are pleased, Apple has given you no reason to switch to their ad-supported offering. With Pandora, for example, it's slightly easier to create new radio stations, far easier to share with the world what tracks you are listening to and its enhanced features, such as liner notes, are missing in iTunes Radio. But, Apple's newest offering is more than good enough to take on other streaming services, especially for undecided or uninitiated users.

The Browser Wars Are Over

Apple's mobile Safari has always been the default browser in iOS devices. This meant there was little opportunity for competing browsers on the platform, even top-notch ones like Google Chrome. Now, however, there's even less reason to seek out alternatives. The minimal design of iOS 7 makes for a fuller, more pleasing browsing experience, with more of the webpage visible.

The new design makes it very easy to bookmark a site, to share a post or designate it for later reading. Search is built into the nav-bar and the new cover flow-like tabbed browsing makes switching across sites easier than ever. It's hard to expect the vast majority of users will opt for something different.

Weather Is Lovely

Apple has never allowed users to delete their abysmal default Weather app. This has always been egregiously anti-user. But with iOS 7, users now have little need to seek out alternatives.

The redesigned weather app is so clear, intuitive and attractive that it should suffice for most users. While not as functional as many of the paid alternatives, presentation and ease of use likely mean that far fewer users will seek out a non-Apple solution.

Legit Google Now Alternative

Apple's new Notification Center is likely to impact the reach of Google Now, Google's well-designed and popular "virtual assistant." Now delivers timely, personalized information such as today's weather and traffic in "cards" to users of the Google app.

iOS 7 does not offer a better alternative to Google Now. But, it will offer a decent solution that is built-in. Apple's notification center delivers similar information to Now's—such as stocks, weather, reminders and appointments—directly onto the lock screen. It is somewhat ugly and ungainly, though useful, and I suspect few users—of the several hundred million who use iOS today—will bother with Google's non-native app, even if it is a superior offering.

Default Apps Are Barely Acceptable

This same issue runs through many of Apple's default apps—they're just good enough, and that's more than enough. It's one of the unspoken benefits of controlling your hardware and ecosystem.

Most of Apple's redesigned apps, such as Reminders and Calendar, are so poorly constructed or so plainly ugly—such as Notes—that on any level playing field, popular alternatives for these would be under no threat whatsoever. This is not a level playing field, however.

To be fair, the obvious failings of the default apps are likely due from the pitfalls that arise from a tightly constructed user interface.

Where the new iOS design fails is when a great deal of information must be presented within a single space, such as the seemingly simple reminder app. Date, place, time, alerts and notes must all be brought to the fore to create a single reminder. The pale, minimalistic new design template has a hard time supporting this.

Where iOS 7's design template soars is when the interactive layer falls away, such as when watching a video. Controls disappear when you want and when you do need them, they are obvious but unobtrusive.

Instagram is Safe, Flickr is Better Off, Camera Apps Beware

I was not expecting the many changes to Camera nor the additional Photos sharing and reviewing functions.

With Camera, controls are simpler, and a new set of filters and editing tools have been added. Photos now (semi-automatically) organizes pictures into various "collections"—by place and time. It's hard to predict how these changes will impact competing photo services.

But for all these changes, existing services will weather the additions well. Instagram, for example, is built upon a massive user base, so nothing in iOS 7 should threaten that. Flickr is a popular photo sharing and archiving service. With iOS 7, it's now even easier to share photos with Flickr, Facebook and other services. I expect these social platforms to witness a boom in photo/video uploads.

Developers of camera apps are threatened, however. Filters and a panoramic feature are embedded in the new iOS camera, with attractive controls and a camera function that can even be accessed via the Control Center. iOS 7 will make it harder to justify paying money for any but the very best camera apps.

Mail: Return To Sender

Apple's default Mail app is slightly improved. The minimal design and new iconography offer a larger work space. A simple swipe makes it easy to trash or archive an email. It may be the best of Apple's standard default apps. That said, there's no great improvement here.

For those that have found a better alternative under iOS 6, they will likely retain their allegiance.

Siri Ready To Fight Google Voice Search

Like the Now service, Google's voice search is superior to Apple's Siri offering. For many iOS users, however, Apple's pre-loaded Siri has been good enough. Also, Siri is available at the touch of a button, from anywhere within the iOS experience. Not so the Google app and its handy voice search function.

And Siri has improved. Information is more pleasantly displayed and Apple has reportedly integrated Bing and Wikipedia to ensure better results. In my tests, Siri was slower to respond than in iOS 6 but I am going to assume this is because iOS 7 is still in beta.

Long Live the App

Many apps and some popular services will be killed off or marginalized by Apple's latest moves. However, I expect in total the app ecosystem will witness significant growth and innovation based on iOS 7's many design, hardware and presentation changes.

The app will not die, but thrive, under iOS 7. But that doesn't mean some existing apps won't suffer through Apple's iOS changes.

Enabling The Mobile-First Enterprise

Jesus Rodriguez — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 07:03:00 -0700

Guest author Jesus Rodriguez is the CEO and co-founder of KidoZen.

It has taken more than five years, but the first phase of integrating mobile into enterprises is almost over.

Enterprise mobility is evolving. The first generation of enterprise mobile solutions focused on the management of mobile devices (MDM), enabling traditional email applications and the occasional custom mobile app. It is time to take the next step. A new generation of mobile technologies is helping enterprises to reimagine entire business processes from a mobile-centric standpoint. This movement is starting to be known in the industry as “the mobile-first enterprise.”

This is an attractive concept for most organizations. But, building the mobile-first enterprise is far from an easy endeavor. Based on our experience, this type of transformational movement is a long-term process that requires various foundational components from both the technological and organizational standpoint.

What are the elements that can help to enable the mobile-first enterprise? Some of the ideas listed below might help.

BYOD Is An Enabler, Not The End Goal

The “bring your own device” movement has become a catalyst to the evolution of enterprise mobility solutions. Empowering employees to use their own tablets and smartphones for work-related activities has become a core characteristic of the modern enterprise.

However, most organizations are still building the required security, management and compliance infrastructure to enable a BYOD environment. To evolve, organizations must realize that BYOD by itself is just a starting point to build the mobile-first enterprise. Not the end result.

Enabling mobile-first enterprise applications and business processes that access corporate data from personal devices in a secure and efficient manner is the true end goal of the mobile-first enterprise.

Beyond MDM

Mobile Device Management (MDM) has been at the center of the first generation of enterprise mobile. The ability to manage and secure smartphones/tablets has been seen as a key element of any enterprise mobile infrastructure. Consequently, in recent years, the market is experiencing an explosion on the number of MDM technologies claiming to be the silver bullet to enable an enterprise mobile infrastructure.

Managing connected devices is not enough to implement mobile-first enterprise applications. Expanding beyond MDM and focusing on managing the enterprise mobile applications and the corresponding business data in your infrastructure are, arguably, more relevant capabilities to enable the mobile-first enterprise.

Contextualizing and Mobilizing Business Data

One of the holy grails of enterprise mobile infrastructure is to enable mobile applications to leverage data hosted in corporate business systems. It may be conceptually trivial, but the process of mobilizing business data can be extremely challenging.

In order to enable a mobile-first enterprise experience, organizations need to build the infrastructure to contextualize business data so that it can be effectively consumed on enterprise mobile applications. While technologically challenging, building the infrastructure to effectively mobilize data from corporate systems can drastically simplify the experience of incrementally building enterprise mobile applications.

Mobilizing Existing Business Processes

Some of the most successful organizations are the ones that have been able to redefine existing business processes using a mobile-first approach. In this model, traditional business capabilities – enabled via a desktop experience – will be simplified and redesigned for smartphones or tablets in order to provide an optimal productivity experience.

Creating Mobile-First Business Processes

In addition, enterprises are starting to create new business processes to enable new business capabilities using a mobile-first paradigm. Mobile point-of-sale (POS) or mobile customer relationship management (CRM) systems are some of the best examples of mobile-first business processes being enabled in today’s enterprises. This type of mobile-centric business capabilities is a key element in the DNA of the mobile-first enterprise and helps organizations achieve greater differentiation and agility in the current mobile economy.

Leverage Mobile-First Business Apps

The previous sections have highlighted the importance of building the infrastructure to implement new enterprise mobile apps as an essential element to enable the mobile-first enterprise. Equally important, is for organizations to invest in the infrastructure required to adopt domain-specific mobile business apps available in the marketplace.

As the adoption of mobile technologies increases in the enterprise, we are starting to witness a new generation of mobile-first business apps that are redefining both horizontal and vertical business capabilities. Enabling the infrastructure to adopt those new mobile business apps in an efficient, secure approach tailored to your enterprise can improve the journey to the mobile-first enterprise.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Google Is Starting War On Child Pornography, Not Ending

Brian Proffitt — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 06:44:06 -0700

Google is creating a global database of child abuse images that the company hopes, when shared with other search engines, will help eradicate child pornography from the Internet. While this is certainly a goal worth fighting for, sadly it is also a goal that is out of reach.

Given that Google shared their new program with U.K. publication The Telegraph, Google was certainly responding to increasing political pressure from the U.K., most notably Prime Minister David Cameron's remarks on June 10 that called Google and other search engine companies out for enabling the proliferation of such images on the Internet.

The new program certainly sounds promising: the company will be working to create a database of flagged images within a year's time that will be shared with other search engines in the hopes that such content will "be wiped from the web in one fell swoop," the Telegraph proclaimed.

Unfortunately, the end of all child pornography is not going to be the result of such a program, as images of raped and abused children will not be eliminated from the Internet but - at best - far less likely to come up in search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.

Google Giving Director Jacqueline Fuller detailed the program with far less hyperbole on Google's official blog Saturday:

Since 2008, we’ve used "hashing" technology to tag known child sexual abuse images, allowing us to identify duplicate images which may exist elsewhere. Each offending image in effect gets a unique ID that our computers can recognize without humans having to view them again. Recently, we've started working to incorporate encrypted "fingerprints" of child sexual abuse images into a cross-industry database. This will enable companies, law enforcement and charities to better collaborate on detecting and removing these images, and to take action against the criminals. Today we've also announced a $2 million Child Protection Technology Fund to encourage the development of ever more effective tools.

Even if these horrific images are identified, that doesn't automatically remove them from the Internet. It takes law enforcement and Internet service provider intervention to do that, as Filler stated.

And there's the fact that, for all their power, Google and the other search engines do not have the entire Internet tracked. Estimates vary wildly, with some guessing that Google may have up to 12% of the Web indexed, and others pegging that percentage as low as 0.04% of total Web content.

Whatever the figure, no one would ever give any of the search engines out there the credit for indexing the entire Web. Nor will the search engines ever get there, at least not the way they work now.

Search engines rely on following links to new content on the web. So, if a site containing illicit content is not linked to any other site, the search engines won't even know it's there.

And, even if they were able to find the site, search engines still abide by a site's robots.txt file, something that all automated web search crawler engines examine before stepping across a site's threshold. If the robots.txt file says no search engines allowed (and there are various legitimate reasons why an administrator might want to keep such crawlers out), then there's no indexing that will happen.

Google could, in the interests of hunting down illicit content, ignore the robots.txt restriction, but busting that honor system would negatively impact a lot of sites that have done nothing wrong.

Content can also be hidden on sites by putting it behind forms. Search engines don't index pages that are created when a form is filled in and then auto-generated by the content of that form. If they did, then search results would be inundated with product catalog content every time we looked for men's shirts.

To be clear, Google's program is a strong step in making it harder to find child pornography on the Internet - and that's a damn good thing. But sources that are known by purveyors of this content will still be available to provide material that exploits children. All the search engines are doing is making it harder for new searchers for this content to locate such content.

In the long run, politicians and citizens should be happier: if this program is successful, child pornography will be vastly decreased from easy public view. But this will be just a Potemkin village - a clean-looking version of the Internet that will not reflect the fact that these terrible images are still out there - just better hidden.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Apple Denies PRISM Knowledge, Explains Releases Of Customer Data

Dan Rowinski — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 05:49:39 -0700

Apple today released a statement revealing that it, too, has received requests for consumer data from Federal, state and local authorities in the United States, even as it denied participation in the alleged PRISM program conducted by the NSA.

Apple joins Facebook and Microsoft as companies that have made public batch data of requests from U.S authorities.

Between December 1, 2012 and May 31, 2013, Apple saw between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from U.S. law enforcement for customer data. Those requests totaled between 9,000 and 10,000 Apple accounts or devices. Apple said the requests ranged from criminal investigations to matters of national security with the most common being local police investigating robberies, searching for missing children or trying to locate patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

Apple said:

Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it.

Apple insists that it knew nothing of PRISM, the clandestine project by the federal government where it supposedly has the power to access the servers of major tech companies (like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft etc.) for consumer data related to matters of national security.

Apple reiterated its stance on protecting its consumer data and said that, “we don’t collect or maintain a mountain of personal details about our customers in the first place.”

For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers’ location, Map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable form.

Last Friday, both Facebook and Microsoft (both of which had negotiated with the Federal government for the right to report on data requests) released data on government requests. Over the last six months, Facebook saw 9,000 to 10,000 requests regarding 18,000 to 19,000 accounts while Microsoft said it saw 6,000 to 7,000 requests, affecting up to 32,000 accounts.

Both Google and Twitter have said that the batch data that the government allowed the likes of Apple, Facebook and Microsoft to report is not enough. Google would like to see more detail and volume of the data requests including the ability to separate federal government requests from those of local authorities.