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The Xbox One Is All-New — But Familiar, Too

Harry McCracken — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:00:45 +0000

New game consoles don’t exactly come along every week. Microsoft unveiled its current one, the Xbox 360, back on May 12, 2005 — an era when the newest version of Windows was XP, almost all forms of gadget input involved clacky little buttons and the fastest way to get Netflix into your living room involved a red envelope and the U.S. postal system. In the eight years since that announcement, the Xbox 360 has evolved — a lot. Microsoft has reworked its user interface repeatedly and added scads of features. Using Kinect, which arrived as an optional add-on in 2010, you can control the 360 with your entire body and your voice. And thanks to Netflix and other streaming services, Xbox owners spend more total time watching video than they do playing games. But at its heart, the 360 has remained a piece of hardware from another era — an old dog that works really hard to perform new tricks, and does them well. But it’s still an old dog. Microsoft On Tuesday, in a tent at its Redmond, Wash. campus, Microsoft introduced its new console, the Xbox One. Its specs reflect eight years of dramatic technological advancement since the 360′s debut: It sports a vastly more powerful eight-core processor, sixteen times the RAM of the original 360, a much more capable version of Kinect that now lets you make Skype video calls in HD, advanced Wi-Fi, a Blu-ray drive, HDMI input and output, and three — count ‘em: three — operating systems. (As Microsoft explained, the box has an Xbox OS, a special version of Windows and a bridging OS which melds the two into one experience.) But while the Xbox One is all-new from a technology standpoint — it won’t even play Xbox 360 games — it also feels like a continuance of the ideas that Microsoft has been adding to the Xbox 360 since 2005. There’s no radically new concept akin to the two-screen interface that Nintendo gave the Wii U. It’s just that all of the

Xbox One Raises the Burden of Privacy Safeguards: 5 Questions for Microsoft

Matt Peckham — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:40:10 +0000

Some things you take for granted, like the fact that in Star Trek, there’s a computer that’s always listening, always observing, always standing by cataloging data. Who owns that data? Where’s it stored? Who determines how it’s used? Who knows. The shows chose to slide by those questions and focus on others. The holodeck was creepy because, whoops, maybe you’d get trapped, or addicted, or its fictional denizens might inexplicably come to life, not because the computer was collating and archiving everything you did, whether hiking a simulation of the Appalachian trail or indulging some crazy erotic fantasy. Microsoft’s Xbox One won’t surround you with holographic fir trees, azaleas and mountain laurels, nor, as far as I know, will it dish out interactive porn. But it is going to be listening — and capturing data, and transmitting that data back to Microsoft — in ways no device in your household has ever listened to or observed you before. When Stan Lee wrote “With great power comes great responsibility” in Amazing Fantasy #15 back in 1962, he packed a longstanding philosophical notion into six culturally resonant words. Those words couldn’t be more relevant today, with our lives awash in cloud-connected technology, generating and beaming back mountains of abstractly defined information that’s quietly sifted by complex machine algorithms and pored over by corporations in search of new ways to further secure footholds in our future lives. So with Xbox One, which promises to streamline how we interact with TV, movies, music and games by introducing always-on, always-connected digital ears and eyes to our living rooms, I’d argue the burden on Microsoft to safeguard our privacy (and articulate that in a meaningful, non-pandering way) just shot through the roof. Consider what we know about Xbox One for starters: The new console will come with Microsoft’s refined Kinect sensor, a detachable hammerhead-like camera with microphone that you’ll probably position somewhere high up in your entertainment center, where its upgraded 1080p widescreen eye can easily sweep your play-space. Unlike the Xbox 360, which functions whether the Kinect camera is attached

Finally: DVDs That Smell Like Pizza After You’re Done Watching Them

Doug Aamoth — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:51:14 +0000

Tell you what: Why doesn’t everyone take the rest of the week off (take Monday off, too, if you’re not American) and let’s all meet back here on Tuesday. Why? Because innovation as we know it has reached its apex. There’s no sense in trying to outdo DVD rentals with magical, odorous ink that heats up as the disc is spinning and smells like pizza when all is said and done. Oh, and the ink also turns into an ad for Domino’s. Domino’s sells pizza. It’s not good pizza, but it’s pizza. So how does such a mind-bending miracle of advertising work? According to AdAge: In partnership with 10 video rental stores in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the brand used rented DVDs as media. About 10 discs each of 10 different new release titles such as Argo, 007, Dread And Dark Knight were stamped with thermal ink and flavored varnish, both sensitive to the heat. While people were watching the movie, the heat of the DVD player affected the disc. When the movie ended and they ejected the disc, they smelled pizza. They also saw pizza: the discs were printed to look like mini pies, and carried the message: “Did you enjoy the movie? The next one will be even better with a hot and delicious Domino’s Pizza.” If there’s a problem with this concept, it’s that it’ll make you want pizza after you’re done watching a movie, which is not a sensation common to our evolutionary makeup. The whole point of a rented movie is that you can push food into your face for an hour and a half while using your own torso as a plate. Pizza afterwards would just be gluttonous. (To be fair, this advertising stunt recommends ordering pizza for consumption with your next rented movie.) Another minor quibble: DVDs. They’re just not that cool anymore. HOWEVER, what better way to rekindle people’s interest in DVDs than a rentable DVD that turned into an actual personal pizza during the previews so that you could

The New Flickr Is Worth Another Look

Jared Newman — Tue, 21 May 2013 23:45:57 +0000

To get people interested in Flickr again, Yahoo is letting its terabytes do the talking. The photo service, which Yahoo acquired in 2005, is now offering a whopping one terabyte of free storage, with no size limits. Users can also upload 1080p videos, up to three minutes long, counting toward the overall storage limit. A new website and Android app have launched alongside the new storage offering as well. That’s enough to get me interested, at least. I’ve never had much use for Flickr before, but I’m taking a second look in light of Yahoo’s largess. Here’s what I’ve learned after spending the day loading old photos onto Flickr’s website by the gigabyte: Flickr vs. Facebook vs.Google+ Your main options for storing lots of photos online–that is, more than the handful of gigabytes offered by storage services like Dropbox and SkyDrive–are Flickr, Facebook and Google+. Each service has its own benefits and drawbacks. Facebook and Google+ both offer unlimited storage for your photos, but with a resolution limit of 2048 pixels wide. Google+ lets you store photos at full resolution, but these count toward the 15 GB of free storage on your Google account. If you just want to back up pristine copies of your photos to the cloud, neither of these options are ideal due to their resolution restrictions. Where Facebook and Google+ shine are their sharing options. Given Facebook’s dominance in social networking, storing your photos there is the best way to make sure they’re seen by friends, family and acquaintances. Google+ sharing offers a more controlled environment. The ability to group your contacts into “circles,” and then only share with the circles you want, is a powerful way to restrict who sees any given photo or album. On the downside, the folks you share with may never stop by Google+ to take a look. By comparison, Flickr seems more useful for archival purposes. You can upload your photos without squashing them down to a lower resolution, and most people won’t have to worry about the one-terabyte storage limit

Apple’s Tim Cook Faces Senate Questions on Taxes

AP / Marcy Gordon and Peter Svensson — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:18:12 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate dragged Apple Inc., the world’s most valuable company, into the debate over the U.S. tax code Tuesday, grilling CEO Tim Cook over allegations that its Irish subsidiaries help the company avoid billions in U.S. taxes. Cook said the subsidiaries have nothing to do with reducing its U.S. taxes, a message he struggled to convey to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. (MORE: Senate Panel Says Apple Uses Firms Outside the U.S. to Avoid Taxes) “We pay all the taxes we owe – every single dollar,” Cook said. “We don’t depend on tax gimmicks.” The senate subcommittee released a report Monday that held up Apple as an example of the legal tax avoidance made possible by the U.S. tax code. It estimates that Apple avoided at least $3.5 billion in U.S. federal taxes in 2011 and $9 billion in 2012 by using its tax strategy, and described a complex setup involving Irish subsidiaries as being a key element of this strategy. But Cook said the Irish subsidiaries don’t reduce the company’s U.S. taxes at all. Rather, the company avoids paying the 35 percent federal tax rate on profits made overseas by not bringing those profits back to the U.S., a practice it shares with other multinationals. Apple’s enormous, iPhone-fueled profits mean that it has more cash stashed overseas than any other company: $102 billion. Cook reaffirmed Apple’s position that given the current U.S. tax rate, it has no intention of bringing that cash back to the U.S. Like other companies, it has a responsibility to shareholders to pay as little as possible in taxes. In effect, Apple is holding out for a lower corporate tax rate, and Cook spent some of his time in the spotlight to advocate for one, accompanied by a streamlining of the tax code to eliminate deductions and credits. Cook, who is more accustomed to commanding a stage in front of investors and techies than facing a congressional committee, took a defensive tone with his opening statement. He punched out words when stressing

With Xbox One, Microsoft Emphasizes TV over Games

Matt Peckham — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:38:58 +0000

From beneath gray skies, working a boisterous audience packed into a giant tent on its Redmond, Wash. campus, Microsoft this afternoon took the wraps off its third Xbox, dubbed Xbox One. But gamers tuning in to watch the live-stream event only caught glimpses of vaguely better-looking in-game footage, and then not until the presentation’s finale. Instead, Microsoft and its partners chose to spend most of the presentation talking about the future of TV-related entertainment as well as Xbox One’s much-refined voice command-driven interface. Kicking off the one-hour show, Microsoft president of interactive entertainment Don Mattrick helmed the stage, electric-green Xbox screens flanking him, to portray Xbox One as the center of an interactive media-verse. That universe is more heterogeneous than ever, said Mattrick, comprising casual games, live and recorded TV, sports and movies, multiple platforms, living rooms in flux with cloud-powered Internet services, voice and gesture controls and mobile devices like tablets and smartphones. ”To continue to lead, we must provide compelling answers to new questions,” he said, then asking, “Can we take what you love and make it better? Can we improve a living room that’s become too complex, too fragmented and too slow?” Microsoft’s answer: a set-top console that looked less than ever like a stylized game console and more like a traditional, almost mundane piece of orthogonal, black, glossy hi-fi stereo equipment. The new console was joined by a revamped Kinect camera — included with each Xbox One — and a refined, slightly more angular version of the Xbox 360 gamepad (making it look a hair more like a batarang). “For the first time, you and your TV are going to have a relationship,” quipped Mattrick, a statement that sounds awkward at first blush — we’ve had a relationship with our TV sets for decades — until you realized he was hyping Microsoft’s considerable ramping-up of the Xbox brand as a media-platform first, and a games console second. TV > Gaming Before delving into hardware specifics, Microsoft interactive entertainment marketing honcho Yusuf Mehdi demonstrated Microsoft’s vision of the Xbox One as a

Poll Says Teens Are Migrating from Facebook to Twitter

AP / Jennifer C. Kerr — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:23:22 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — Twitter is booming as a social media destination for teenagers who complain about too many adults and too much drama on Facebook, according to a new study published Tuesday about online behavior. It said teens are sharing more personal information about themselves even as they try to protect their online reputations. Teens told researchers there were too many adults on Facebook and too much sharing of teenage angst and inane details like what a friend ate for dinner. “The key is that there are fewer adults, fewer parents and just simply less complexity and less drama,” said Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Research Center, one of the study’s authors. “They still have their Facebook profiles, but they spend less time on them and move to places like Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.” In the poll, 94 percent of teens who are social media users have a profile on Facebook – flat from the previous year. Twenty-six percent of teen social media users were on Twitter. That’s more than double the figure in 2011 of 12 percent. In what is likely a concern to parents, more than 60 percent of the teens with Twitter accounts said their tweets were public, meaning anyone on Twitter – friend, foe or stranger – can see what they write and publish. About one-quarter of kids said their tweets were private and 12 percent said they did not know whether their tweets were public or private. Teens are also sharing much more than in the past. More than 90 percent of teen social media users said they have posted a picture of themselves – up from 79 percent in 2006. Seven in ten disclose the city or town where they live, up from about 60 percent over the same time period. And 20 percent disclose their cell phone number – up sharply from a mere two percent in 2006. At the same time, teens say they’ve taken steps to protect their reputations and mask information they don’t want others to know. For example, nearly

Microsoft Reveals Xbox One, Next-Generation Gaming

AP / Derrik J. Lang — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:33:33 +0000

REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — Microsoft thinks it has the one. The company unveiled the Xbox One, a next-generation entertainment console that promises to be the one system households will need for games, television, movies and other entertainment. It will go on sale later this year. (FOLLOW-UP: With Xbox One, Microsoft Emphasizes TV over Games) Don Mattrick, Microsoft’s president of interactive entertainment business, said the company has spent the past four years working on the “all-in-one home entertainment system.” The console was demonstrated Tuesday at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters using voice control to seamlessly switch back and forth between watching live TV, listening to music, watching a movie, browsing the Internet, as well as simultaneously running apps. Microsoft executives touted the Xbox One as a replacement for the set-top box from your cable provider. It has its own guide and you can change channels by voice command. Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi demonstrated how the console switched quickly between channels after saying show names like “Mary and Martha” or “Watch MTV.” His voice command of “What’s on HBO?” brought up the channel guide for HBO. “No more memorizing channels or hunting for the remote control,” Mehdi said. The interface for the TV goes well beyond the functionality in Nintendo’s Wii U, which still requires users to press buttons to change the input source on the TV. Xbox One seamlessly switched between games, movies and TV shows with a single voice command. “You can switch to your game like it’s a TV channel flip,” said Marc Whitten, Microsoft’s chief production officer of interactive entertainment business. He called it a “lag-free instant experience.” Microsoft also unveiled a new version of its camera-based Kinect system with better motion and voice detection. It showed how users can watch live sports on TV while getting updates on fantasy leagues on a split screen. In an effort to stay ahead of rivals, Microsoft said new content for the popular “Call of Duty” game can be downloaded on the Xbox One before any other system. Microsoft says more games

Yahoo Reboots Flickr, Offers One Terabyte of Storage

Associated Press — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:39:06 +0000

NEW YORK (AP) — Fresh on the heels of its $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr, Yahoo says it is rebooting its languishing photo-sharing site Flickr with plans to make it “awesome” again. Yahoo Inc. said at an event in New York City’s Times Square on Monday that it is now offering users 1 terabyte of online storage for free. One terabyte is 1,024 gigabytes – enough to store more than 500,000 images at a resolution common to most smartphones. Yahoo has redesigned the Flickr website to emphasize photos rather than text or white space, as was the case previously. Photos are bigger and shared in full resolution rather than compressed into a lower quality. Flickr also launched a new Android app to follow the December unveiling of a new iPhone app.

Twitter 101: Understanding the Basics

Elizabeth Harper / Techlicious — Tue, 21 May 2013 09:45:58 +0000

If you’re online—and reading this!—you’ve probably heard of Twitter. But just what is Twitter for? How does it work? And how do you get started using it? Whether you want to start using Twitter yourself or just want to know what it is, we’ll help untangle the mysteries of this social networking site. Just what is Twitter? On Twitter, you’ll find friends and family as well as celebrities, companies and strangers who may share your interests. News networks (like @AP and @CNN) will post breaking news announcements, companies may hold giveaways, celebrities post announcements on what they’re working on and everyone has conversations. Like any social network, what you get out of Twitter is based on who you follow on the site, and you can follow anyone else using Twitter (so long as their account isn’t private). Think of Twitter as a big, open room—with all of Twitter’s 200 million active users chatting away inside fromall over the world. You can roam around and listen to what everyone’s talking about or just chat with a small group of your friends. Twitter is considered a micro-blogging service, which means the posts made to Twitter have to be an extremely brief, 140 characters or less. Unlike Facebook, which has lots of options that allow you to keep your information private, Twitter is a predominately public space. Though you can make your Twitter account private, meaning only people you approve can see your messages, you only have two options—to be completely public or completely private. You may not think 140 characters is very much to get something across, but these brief messages are perfect for sharing small updates, little bites of everyday life. And while each message is short, you may find yourself replying to other people—and them replying to you—which turns a single short message into a longer conversation. Twitter also lets you easily share links, photos, and videos, which you can post for your friends—or everyone— to see with or without comment. Twitter terminology Elizabeth Harper / Techlicious Twitter isn’t exactly a foreign

Revealed: Sony’s PlayStation 4 Is Actually a Giant Lump of Coal

Matt Peckham — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:20:08 +0000

Look up in the sky! It’s a…vent! It’s a…vaguely beveled protuberance! It’s a…oh, umm, okay, I guess it’s just the PlayStation 4, you know, viewed in the teaser video above as if held under an opaque, grayish tarp. In other words, it’s a giant lump of coal. As giant lumps of coal go, it certainly has features! Like: the PlayStation logo, because we were sure worried it wouldn’t have that; lots of black holes, possibly for thermal egress (thus giving me a chance to use “egress” in a sentence); the rounded underside possibly of the new controller, which if we go with precedent is going to look exactly like the last five-bazillion controllers (but since that’s too obvious, probably won’t); a line of chevrons, which is kind of weird; and then a bunch of stuff that goes by too fast for me to care. (If you really want to see each frame, someone’s done the world that kindness here, though spoilers, all you’re getting is that it’s black and still conforms to the tenets of Euclidean geometry.) What’s Sony up to besides sitting back, watching the headlines roll and chuckling “Made you look!”? Microsoft’s Xbox event is tomorrow at 1pm ET, during which the company’s probably going to unveil its latest Xbox-quel. Thus Sony’s PR stunt, in case you somehow missed the show back in February when Sony tipped us off to the PS4′s existence, or, you know, ever bought a game console because one looked cooler than another.

Panel: Apple Uses Firms Outside U.S. to Avoid Taxes

AP / MARCY GORDON — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:21:21 +0000

(WASHINGTON) — Apple Inc. employs a group of affiliate companies located outside the United States to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. income taxes, a Senate investigation has found. The world’s most valuable company is holding overseas some $102 billion of its $145 billion in cash, and an Irish subsidiary that earned $22 billion in 2011 paid only $10 million in taxes, according to the report issued Monday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The strategies Apple uses are legal, and many other multinational corporations use similar tax techniques to avoid paying U.S. income taxes on profits they reap overseas. But Apple uses a unique twist, the report found. The company’s tactics raise questions about loopholes in the U.S. tax code, lawmakers say. The spotlight on Apple’s tax strategy comes at a time of fevered debate in Washington over whether and how to raise revenues to help reduce the federal deficit. Many Democrats complain that the government is missing out on collecting billions because companies are stashing profits abroad and avoiding taxes. Republicans want to cut the corporate tax rate of 35 percent and ease the tax burden on money that U.S. companies make abroad. They say the move would encourage companies to invest at home. Apple CEO Tim Cook, the company’s chief financial officer and its tax chief are scheduled to testify and explain the company’s tax strategy at a hearing by the subcommittee Tuesday. They are expected to face tough questions. The subcommittee’s chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and other panel members could hold up Apple as an example of a powerful company using its privileged position to avoid taxes while ordinary Americans must pay them. The subcommittee last fall derided executives from other technology giants over similar allegations. Apple refuted the subcommittee’s assertions in testimony prepared for the hearing and released to the public Monday evening. Apple said it employs tens of thousands of Americans and pays “an extraordinary amount” in U.S. taxes, citing the roughly $6 billion it paid in fiscal 2012. Apple “complies fully

Fun Fact: There Was Once a Yahoo DVD Player

Doug Aamoth — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:14:30 +0000

Well, will you look this? Isn’t that a sight for sore eyes? Forget Yahoo the web portal, forget Yahoo the e-mail service, forget Yahoo the company that just bought Tumblr: Back in 2005, there was a Yahoo DVD player. As CNET’s John Falcone tweets: Remember when Yahoo made a DVD player? reviews.cnet.com/dvd-players/ya…— John P. Falcone (@falconejp) May 20, 2013 Yes, John Falcone. Yes, I do. But it’s been… oh, eight years since I’ve thought about it. Man, what a gem. Now, this was no ordinary DVD player. Well, it was sort of ordinary in its functionality, but it sure didn’t look like ordinary DVD players. Yahoo’s YDP-530 had two superfluous analog meters flanking the disc tray; one measured audio volume, its needle bouncing back and forth as dialogue ebbed and flowed. The other supposedly measured the bit rate of the video being played as it made its way from the DVD player to your TV set. To say that CNET’s 2005 review of the YDP-530 is interesting doesn’t do it justice. This quip, for instance, is marvelous: Facing pressure from Google on the search, maps, and e-mail front, Yahoo has decided to strike back with…a DVD player? While the $100 YDP-530 bears the Yahoo brand, it’s actually manufactured by Diamond Electronics, a company that, as its press release states, “supplied the DVD player that Forbes Magazine (September 2003) referenced as Wal-Mart de Mexico’s single largest dollar volume product in the entire country.” As for those cool analog meters? [W]hile they look pretty nifty and even light up, we can’t really imagine any practical purpose for them. Unfortunately for the geek who wants to know how many bits that last chase sequence averaged, the bit-rate meter is wildly inaccurate; it kind of just bounces up and down, even on still images. Standard OSD meters are much better for actually showing video bit rates. Do yourself a favor and read the entire review. It’s not long. The video embedded at the top of it shows off those funky meters, too. Yahoo YDP-530

Senate Panel Says Apple Uses Firms Outside the U.S. to Avoid Taxes

AP / Marcy Gordon — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:10:16 +0000

(WASHINGTON) — Apple Inc. employs a group of affiliate companies located outside the United States to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. income taxes, a Senate investigation has found. The world’s most valuable company is holding overseas some $102 billion of its $145 billion in cash, and an Irish subsidiary that earned $22 billion in 2011 paid only $10 million in taxes, according to the report issued Monday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The strategies Apple uses are legal, and many other multinational corporations use similar tax techniques to avoid paying U.S. income taxes on profits they reap overseas. But Apple uses a unique twist, the report found. The company’s tactics raise questions about loopholes in the U.S. tax code, lawmakers say. The spotlight on Apple’s tax strategy comes at a time of fevered debate in Washington over whether and how to raise revenues to help reduce the federal deficit. Many Democrats complain that the government is missing out on collecting billions because companies are stashing profits abroad and avoiding taxes. Republicans want to cut the corporate tax rate of 35 percent and ease the tax burden on money that U.S. companies make abroad. They say the move would encourage companies to invest at home. (MORE: Apple vs. Google vs. Microsoft: One Platform Will Not Rule Them All) Apple CEO Tim Cook, the company’s chief financial officer and its tax chief are scheduled to testify and explain the company’s tax strategy at a hearing by the subcommittee Tuesday. The company refuted the subcommittee’s assertions in testimony prepared for the hearing and released to the public Monday evening. Apple said it employs tens of thousands of Americans and pays “an extraordinary amount” in U.S. taxes, citing the roughly $6 billion it paid in fiscal 2012. Apple “complies fully with both the laws and the spirit of the laws,” the testimony says. “And Apple pays all its required taxes, both in this country and abroad.” “Apple does not use tax gimmicks,” the statement says. The company insisted that it does

Empowering Our Digital Sixth Sense with Google Glass, Augmented Reality and Wearable Health Gadgets

Tim Bajarin — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:30:33 +0000

We all know about our five senses: sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing. Many people believe we also have a kinesthetic sense, which is what some folks believe is a sort of spiritual sense — for instance, when they perceive another person is in a room with them even though the other person is behind them and hasn’t made a sound. It’s as though they sensed them unconsciously. Personally, I seem to have another type of sense that I don’t know what to call, but it relates to anticipating things just before they happen; a lot of my experiences with this have been unsettling at times. These extra senses are difficult to qualify and in many cases even hard to explain, but we are about to enter an era where a digital sixth sense will become a reality. Not only can this sixth sense be qualified, but it can be repeated as needed. One of the more basic examples of a digital sixth sense comes from the many new wearable health monitors popping up these days: products like the Nike Fuel, Jawbone UP and Fitbit, to name just a few. For the past eight months I have been wearing the Nike Fuel on my wrist, a Fitbit clipped to my belt and a watch that can give me a pulse readout on demand. I have to admit that monitoring my health in any way was foreign to me until I had a triple bypass last June. Let’s just say that this was a serious wake-up call that got me more interested in my health on a lot of levels. Part of my recovery process included walking, simple weightlifting and various movements to get my heart health back and to help my body recover from this very invasive surgery. Luckily, these digital health monitoring tools had just come onto the market and my wife and son made sure I had at least two of them to help monitor myself and motivate me to move. In every sense of the word, these became

Four Location-Enabled Apps to Try This Summer

Courtney Subramanian — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:45:20 +0000

Let’s face it: location-enabled apps are not going anywhere. With more than 770 million GPS-enabled smartphones worldwide, a new crop of geo-location apps are announced every month. Regardless of user hesitation and drawn out privacy battles, which includes a recently proposed “Apps Act“ to make privacy policies more transparent, a continued surge in mobile traffic means that location-enabled apps are bound to be a permanent fixture on smartphones. So if you have yet to embrace geo-location, here are four free apps to help ease into the inevitable. Ribbon While living in the Fiji Islands, Ribbon founder and California native Tony Alfaro resorted to using an excel spreadsheet to keep track of friends and family when he made his annual trips to the U.S. So Alfaro hatched a plan to coordinate his future trips with travel plans of friends and professionals by combining a calendar with Facebook‘s social graph. The “Ribbon feed” allows users to see future trips, invite others along as well as see friends’ trips displayed with pins using a “TimeMap.” The app also organizes trips by city, eliminating privacy hesitations about revealing exact locations. Rather than perusing Facebook to see which friends are living where, you can use Ribbon to organize and plan meet-ups with old college roommates, colleagues and friends. The app also allows you to manage privacy settings to allow certain people to see your trips, naturally filtering out those residual Facebook friends you haven’t gotten around to unfriending. Though it’s only available for iOS at the moment, an Android release is expected this month. Link: Ribbon [iTunes] Tinder Tinder, a dating app that rolls off the tongue and easily doubles as a verb, has propagated the idea of meeting potential hook-ups or dates through an anonymous game of “hot or not.” It’s a simple concept of matching geo-located users by pressing a green heart to like or a red X to move on. Once two users are matched, the app introduces the users in a private chatroom to carry on a conversation. There are no profiles involved,

What Is Tumblr?

Doug Aamoth — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:56:01 +0000

Greetings, old-timer. In light of the recent Yahoo-buys-Tumblr news, my overlords at TIME have asked me to put together a guide of sorts explaining what Tumblr is. A Tumblr for Dummies, if you will. (Note: there is an actual Tumblr for Dummies book already. I did not write it.) If you’re a regular reader here at TIME Tech, you can skip this post entirely, as you already know what Tumblr is. For the rest of you, make sure your Depend elastic-leg undergarments are cinched really, really tightly, because what you’re about to read can only be fairly categorized as a technoerotic thriller. Let’s begin. What is Tumblr? Before there was social networking, there were blogs. And in an effort to muddle things, at one point in time the concept of blogging without trying too hard became known as microblogging. Tumblr is part microblogging, part social networking. If you want to write a several-thousand-word opus about something, Tumblr isn’t the place to do it. If you want to share a moving picture of a little kid acting like a detective as quickly and easily as possible, Tumblr is a good place to do it. That’s the microblogging aspect to Tumblr. Then, other Tumblr users who like moving pictures of little kids acting like detectives can follow you on Tumblr so they’re sure to see every moving little-kid-acting-like-a-detective picture you post. That’s the social networking aspect to Tumblr. For very little information about what Tumblr does, visit the main page of Tumblr.com. For more information, visit Tumblr’s About page, which says: Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music and videos from your browser, phone, desktop, e-mail or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors to your theme’s HTML. Why is the E in Tumblr missing? Tumblr Yes, it’s very unprofessional. For a website to try to convince people that it’s cool, sometimes it will drop a random vowel from its name. You’ll notice the Tumblr logo also has a cool period at the

Yahoo-Tumblr: It’s Not What You Buy, It’s What You Do With It

Harry McCracken — Sun, 19 May 2013 19:25:15 +0000

When Yahoo first approached us eons ago, we were pretty skeptical. But after meeting the people on the Yahoo team and getting a picture of where they were going, we got religion. Maybe that’s too strong. We realized we were all eating at the same church potluck. The things that were important to us were: being open, building innovative stuff and kicking ass. Were these people our people? Yes. See the stuff Yahoo’s announced recently [including, of course, this]? They’re evolving in really interesting ways — and from our look inside, we know that there’s a lot more coming. Yahoo won’t be the Yahoo you’ve come to take for granted. Nope, that isn’t David Karp, CEO of Tumblr, talking about Yahoo’s $1.1 billion acquisition of the microblogging service he co-founded. Kara Swisher of All Things D is reporting that the deal is done and that her sources say it’ll be announced on Monday. We’ll hear from Karp then, presumably. Flickr in 2004, before it was a Yahoo property But the sound bite above is from March 2005, and the start-up founder who’s explaining a Yahoo buyout is Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Flickr. At the time, the photo-sharing start-up was as cool as any site on the Web; just as buying Tumblr is allegedly a gambit to make Yahoo cool again, buying Flickr was supposed to help reboot Yahoo, a company that was feeling a tad shopworn even eight years ago. The Flickr acquisition came at a time when Yahoo was snapping up interesting small companies by the carload — among the other ones it purchased in 2004–05 were Dialpad, del.icio.us, Konfabulator, Musicmatch, Stata Labs and Upcoming.org. All came with cool reputations, innovative services and smart people. Some of the acquisitions instantly stopped mattering under Yahoo ownership; others did O.K., at least for a while. (Flickr continued to boom at first, but eventually became staid and backward-looking; it was only in December that it released a really first-rate iPhone app.) None of them had a transformative effect on Yahoo, which is

Report: Yahoo Board Approves Billion-Dollar Tumblr Deal

Sam Gustin — Sun, 19 May 2013 17:31:45 +0000

Internet icon Yahoo is in talks to buy New York-based social blogging platform Tumblr for as much as $1 billion, according to multiple reports. via Purple Power: Yahoo! Reportedly in Talks to Buy Tumblr for Up to $1 Billion | TIME.com.

Facebook’s Stock Price Is the Least Important Thing About Facebook

Harry McCracken — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:34:36 +0000

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is fond of telling his cohorts that their journey is only one percent finished. Even if you quibble about the exact percentage, he’s right that his company’s vision is boundless and that the service, in its current incarnation, is nowhere near done exploring its potential. The man is nothing if not both ambitious and patient. Wall Street, unlike Zuck, is famously bad at taking the long view of things. When Facebook went public, a year ago today, shares were snapped up by speculators hoping to make an insta-windfall from a pop in its stock price. At the end of the first day of trading — bedeviled by NASDAQ technical gremlins — the stock flatlined rather than popping. In the year since, as my colleague Sam Gustin reports, it’s bumped around without ever returning to the initial offering price of $38. Some people are still brooding about it. If you’ve lost money on Facebook stock, I feel for ya. Really. But the fact that it didn’t turn out to be a convenient way to turn a quick buck doesn’t have much bearing on the company’s importance to the world. It doesn’t even say much about the its long-term prospects to do well by investors. Plenty of tech companies have had happier IPOs than Facebook did, but a happy IPO has never been a reliable sign of a bright future. Consider Netscape, the browser pioneer which went public in 1995, in what may remain the most iconic tech-company IPO of them all. In 2003. Jim Cramer, now the host of CNBC’s Mad Money, wrote a wistful remembrance of it for TIME: We didn’t know what it was. We had never opened a browser. We had never gone on the Net. But we had heard that the deal would be hot, so we at Cramer & Co., my $250 million hedge fund, dutifully put in our share of stock in the initial public offering of Netscape. We got several thousand shares. And we, along with most everyone who got some,