VentureBeat |
- YouTube player adds Netflix-like storyboard feature to navigate easier
- Minecraft developer planning SOPA blackout, says “No sane person can be for SOPA”
- DeanBeat: Game companies went on a $2.8B buying spree in 2011
- Nokia’s Lumia 900 rumored to land on March 18
- iPhone 4S sales suspended in China after launch draws unruly, egg-throwing crowds
- PixelOptics shows off electronic-focusing eyeglasses (video)
- Rep. Lamar Smith is amazed SOPA opponents “don’t want to protect American consumers and businesses”
- Slot machine maker International Game Technology pays $500M for Facebook casino game maker Double Down Interactive
- Video game sales drop 21 percent in December and fall 8 percent in 2011
- Why it’s China’s turn to worry about manufacturing
- IBM Science redefines magnetic memory in 12 atoms
- Protect IP Act author backs down on piracy enforcement stipulation
- Email off the clock constitutes overtime — in Brazil
- LG signs Android patent licensing deal with Microsoft to cover phones, tablets
- Hulu to drop $500M on content in 2012, more than it earned in 2011
- Google to release optional design guidelines for Android 4.0
- Feel as light as a cloud with Yufit’s cloud-based fitness classes
- Dozens of Foxconn’s Xbox 360 production line workers threaten suicide
- Zynga hires away EA’s top mobile and social executive Barry Cottle
- Lytro’s “revolutionary” light-field camera wins Last Gadget Standing at CES
- Michelle Obama joins Twitter
- Virtual shopping with Bodymetrics will show how outfits fit on your body
- The most connected airports & airlines in the U.S. (infographic)
- Why Facebook’s “Listen With Friends” feature isn’t a threat to Turntable
- Click.to wants to make copy and paste obsolete
- Here’s how you can really oppose SOPA: Stop “raising awareness” and do something
- Kindle now has an easy way to download files from your PC
- Philips debuts headphones line for the Android fanboy in all of us
- ARM CEO: Intel’s Medfield mobile chips are “good enough”
- If SOPA passes, we’re as much to blame as Congress and Hollywood
| YouTube player adds Netflix-like storyboard feature to navigate easier Posted: 13 Jan 2012 09:21 AM PST
Netflix and Hulu’s video players already feature thumbnail previews, so YouTube is playing catch up to its video service peers. The feature, as first spotted by Digital Inspiration, lets you hover your mouse over any point in the video timeline to see a single thumbnail, making it easier to find your favorite part of that talking dog video or that catchy Internet love song. At present, YouTube only generates three thumbnails to represent a video’s beginning, middle and end. But the new feature will allow up to 100 thumbnails per video, and these thumbnail images can be arranged into a 10-by-10 grid to see how the action progresses. To get this to work, just drag your mouse point through different points of the video to collect the images for a storyboard. The new storyboard feature is rolling out right now, but it’s unclear when it will be standard for every video. A video showing the feature in action can be viewed below: Photo and video via Labnol.org Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| Minecraft developer planning SOPA blackout, says “No sane person can be for SOPA” Posted: 13 Jan 2012 09:18 AM PST Markus Persson, creator of the breakout hit indie game Minecraft, has announced that minecraft.net and mojang.com will be taken down on Jan 18th, in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act. Speaking on Twitter, Persson said “Decided. We’ll silently take down minecraft.net and mojang.com on the 18th in protest of SOPA.” Persson acknowledges that a lot of Minecraft’s success has been due to players posting screenshots and making videos of their Minecraft creations. The SOPA bill is seen by many as a direct threat to such activities. SOPA is intended to help curb internet piracy and protect copyright holders, but critics have said that the bill is over-reaching, and will be largely ineffective in the areas it is looking to target. Net Coalition, a trade association that includes Google, Amazon.com, eBay and Wikipedia, warns that SOPA will dramatically change the internet as we know it. Speaking to PC Gamer yesterday, on behalf of Mojhang, Persson said, "No sane person can be for SOPA. I don't know if we're sane, but we are strongly, uncompromisingly against SOPA, and any similar laws. Sacrificing freedom of speech for the benefit of corporate profit is abominable and disgusting." Despite selling over 4M copies of Minecraft, Persson is no stranger to the issue of internet piracy, that SOPA is partly intended to combat. He re-iterated his thoughts on piracy yesterday via Twitter, sparked by a request for a free copy of Minecraft. The initial tweet read “Hi notch, look, I really like the game but lack the money to buy it. I thought I might at least ask for a free account before piracy”. Persson, aka @Notch, replied, “Just pirate it. If you still like it when you can afford it in the future, buy it then. Also don’t forget to feel bad.” Persson elaborated on his comment later, saying,”Well, I don’t exactly “approve” [of piracy], but I think it’s a minor offense in the scale of things. Jaywalking level. Littering.” When asked whether he cared about piracy putting Mojhang out of business, Persson responded, “There are enough honest people out there who can afford the game. I’ll just focus on them.”
Persson’s SOPA stance comes in a week largely dominated by talk of the controversial bill. Other gaming industry voices have been expressing their disapproval of SOPA, including Major League Gaming, Riot Games and Epic Games, and gamers have been urged to write to Congress by Democratic Representative, and League of Legends player, Jared Polis. Persson’s decision follows community news sharing site Reddit’s move to shut down on Friday 18 in protest against the SOPA bill. You can keep on top of the SOPA story by following VentureBeat's ongoing SOPA coverage. [Persson photo via Official GDC/Flickr] Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| DeanBeat: Game companies went on a $2.8B buying spree in 2011 Posted: 13 Jan 2012 08:00 AM PST
In 2011, 77 game companies were acquired for at least $2.827 billion, according to research by VentureBeat and other sources. We didn’t count the numbers for last year, but IHS Screen Digest reported that game acquisitions and fundings are likely to be twice as large in dollar value in 2011 compared to 2010. The money going into games has fundamentally shifted from the consoles to social, mobile and online gaming, as investors and game creators chase the consumers who are playing games on many different kinds of devices and are embracing new business models, such as free-to-play games, where users play for free and pay small amounts for virtual goods. Acquisitions have heated up as the big companies scramble to gobble up more nimble startups. The war for talent has matured. Instead of fighting over employees to hire, rivals are in a battle to see who can be the first to acquire whole game studios. During 2011, Zynga bought a game studio every month, scrutinizing hundreds of companies before making a single offer. In doing so, it was capturing talent before rivals such as Electronic Arts or DeNA could buy them. And there were more game studios to buy than ever because developers were able to create startups more easily, thanks to the ecosystem that grew up around apps on Facebook and the smartphone and tablet platforms. Tim Merel, managing director at Digi-Capital, summed up the changing landscape with a few observations: the rivalry between traditional console game makers like EA and new social game makers like Zynga was driving deals; China was moving to unseat America in games; and everyone was scrambling to get a piece of the emerging mobile games market. Game companies had to invest for growth or exit the market. A number of the deals involved mobile game studios such as Rovio buying animation houses so that they could improve the animation features within their games as well as produce films for promoting the games. Here’s a look at the biggest deals of the year, in terms of the dollar value of the transactions. Where the values of the deals were not disclosed, we simply listed them in reverse chronological order. We created this list based on our own original reporting and have linked to the relevant stories. For the deals we didn’t cover, we have linked to other publications. Beyond our own sources, we also consulted lists from the Internet DealBook and Digi-Capital. If you see some deals we missed, please say so in the comments and we’ll update the list. 1. Electronic Arts bought PopCap Games for up to $1.3 billion. July 12. EA beat out Zynga in this mega-deal, which consists of $750 million in cash and stock and a bonus of $550 million if PopCap meets performance targets. At a potential $1.3 billion in overall value, the deal far eclipses last year’s biggest deal, where Disney acquired Playdom for as much as $763.2 million. 2. 3. Private equity investors bought majority stake in Bigpoint for $350M. April 27. Summit Partners and TA Associates bought out the stakes of prior investors to acquire control of Bigpoint, a publisher of free-to-play online games with hundreds of millions of users. 4. Visa approved this transaction: PlaySpan for $190M. Feb. 9. The deal helped Visa move into the lucrative virtual goods payment transaction market. 5. Changyou.com acquired online game publisher 17173.com for $162.5 million in cash. Nov. 29. The deal showed that Asian game companies were also on a buying spree. 6. Japan’s Gree bought OpenFeint mobile social gaming network for $104 million. April 21. The deal helped Gree move into the worldwide mobile social game platform market. 7. In three-way transaction, Marvelous Entertainment, AQ Interactive and Liveware merged in a $89.6 million deal. May 10. Console game companies consolidated in Japan. 8. China’s Perfect World bought Atari’s Cryptic Studios for $49.8 million. May 30. The deal showed that Chinese companies are moving into the U.S. 9. Caesars Entertainment Casino Group bought 51 percent of social game developer Playtika for an estimated $40 – $50 million. May 19. 10. Autodesk bought Scaleform to expand game middleware offerings in a $36 million deal. Feb. 16. 11. Electronic Arts bought KlickNation, maker of Superhero City and other hardcore social games, for an estimated $35 million. Dec. 2. 12. Glu Mobile bought Griptonite Games for $28 million in stock. Aug. 11. 13. Korea’s Joymax bought IO Entertainment for $17.7 million. March 24. 14. Celestial Asia (CASH) bought Oberon Media Asia Pacific for $10 million. June 8. 15. DeNA bought Chilean mobile game firm Atakama Labs for estimated $6 million. Oct. 4. 16. Glu Mobile bought Blammo for $4.6 million in stock. Aug. 11. 17. QuePasa acquired Brazilian social game maker XtFT for $4 million. Feb. 1. 18. 19. Red Robot Labs bought Supernomo for mobile game expansion. Dec. 9. 20. Japan’s Sega bought Three Rings for an undisclosed price. Nov. 17. 21. Ubisoft bought Finnish Xbox Live developer RedLynx for an undisclosed price. Nov. 2. 22. 6waves Lolapps bought social gaming firm Smartron5 in China for an undisclosed price. Oct. 28. 23. Microsoft bought Xbox Live game developer Twisted Pixel for an undisclosed price. Oct. 12. 24. MocoSpace bought Geocade for an undisclosed price. Oct. 3. 25. DeNA bought Vietnamese game maker Punch Entertainment for an undisclosed price. Sept. 15. 26. Virtuous, a video game maker in Shanghai, bought assets of Vietnamese animation house Sparx. Sept. 14. 27. Ngmoco bought Facebook sports game developer Lionside for an undisclosed price. Sept. 13. 28. Germany’s Bigppoint bought sports games specialist 49Games for an undisclosed price. Sept. 12. 29. BigDoor acquired small business gamification firm OneTrueFan for an undisclosed price. Sept. 7. 30. Zynga bought mobile game studio Astro Ape for an undisclosed price. Aug. 16. 31. Digital Chocolate bought game developer Sandlot Games for an undisclosed price. Aug. 16. 32. Nordic Games bought assets of JoWood and The Adventure Co. for an undisclosed price. Aug. 16. 33. Electronic Arts bought mobile game developer Bight Games for an undisclosed price. Aug. 15. 34. Intel’s Havok division bought Trinigy for an undisclosed price. Aug. 8. 35. AR Games bought a 25 percent stake in Syncopate for an undisclosed price. Aug. 8. 36. Wang Sicong bought pro-gaming team CCM for more than $6 million. Aug. 3. 37. Sony bought console video game maker Sucker Punch, creator of inFamous, for an undisclosed price. Aug. 2. 38. NCsoft bought smartphone game maker Hotdog Studio in Seoul. July 28. 39. Halfbrick bought stake in animation house The People’s Republic of Animation. July 20. 40. Live Gamer bought Brandport and GamerDNA for an undisclosed price. July 19. 41. 6waves merged with Lolapps for an undisclosed price. July 18. 42. Riptide merged with Projkt Nine to form mobile game firm. July 11. 43. Zynga bought Toronto mobile game firm Five Mobile for an undisclosed price. July 8. Filed under: deals, dev, games, mobile, social, VentureBeat        
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| Nokia’s Lumia 900 rumored to land on March 18 Posted: 13 Jan 2012 07:58 AM PST
That’s according to Windows guru Paul Thurrott, who dropped the date on the most recent Windows Weekly podcast. Thurrott isn’t one to share spurious rumors, and he’s often equipped with insider Microsoft knowledge, so there’s good reason to believe him. He also previously mentioned the March 18 date in December when discussing Microsoft’s Windows Phone LTE plans. Thurrott was on the podcast with ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley and named the March 18 release date when the conversation turned to a potential March launch date for the Lumia 900 based on Nokia developer documentation. The Lumia 900′s specs and features are tempting, though not surprising if you've been keeping up with rumors. It sports a 4.3-inch AMOLED Clear Black display — a big improvement over the Lumia 800′s 3.7-inch screen, 1.4 gigahertz CPU (though unfortunately not dual-core — those Windows Phones are expected later this year), and a front-facing camera for video conferencing. Notably, the Lumia 900 also features a very large battery (1830mah), which should help it survive a day's worth of heavy usage. The phone will initially be available in black and cyan, sporting the same gorgeous polycarbonate case as the Lumia 800 and N9 MeeGo phone. We’re still awaiting pricing details on the Lumia 900, though if Nokia and Microsoft are wise, they’ll aim for $150 instead of the standard $200 with contract. We’ve also heard that both companies are planning a major push for the new phone. Thurrott previously said the marketing campaign could cost around $200 million. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| iPhone 4S sales suspended in China after launch draws unruly, egg-throwing crowds Posted: 13 Jan 2012 07:02 AM PST
After waiting overnight in freezing temperatures, crowd members began shouting, fighting, and pelting the Sanlitun Apple store with eggs, Bloomberg reports. For safety reasons, Apple closed its other locations in China to avoid similar incidents. While we’re still awaiting more details, the situation seems to be the result of over-eager customers frustrated by Apple’s inability to keep up demand for the iPhone 4S. The Sanlitun Apple store was scheduled to open at 7 a.m., but at 7:15 a.m. a security officer with a bullhorn announced that the phone wouldn’t go on sale that day, without explaining why. That appears to be what set the crowd off. Scalpers in the crowd were hoping to resell the iPhone 4S at a premium, and they also hired scores of migrant workers to snap up additional phones. As M.I.C. Gadget reports:
Apple has issued the following response to the situation to All Things D:
Picture, video via M.I.C. Gadget Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| PixelOptics shows off electronic-focusing eyeglasses (video) Posted: 13 Jan 2012 07:00 AM PST
The Roanoke, Va.-based company showed off the technology at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas, where it announced the national availability of the product for the first time. It’s a clever use of technology to address a problem that millions of people have: they could use bifocals, but consider them inconvenient. Bifocals are built with two lenses, but the problem is the reading portion of the glasses is always there, whether you need them or not. If you are not reading, you are looking through a part of the lens that is meant to be used only when reading. If you look down, you see distortion. With PixelOptics’ emPower, you tap the side of the glasses when you want to read something. That turns on or off the liquid crystals embedded in the lens. You then can read without any distortions. And when you want to look at things that are farther away, you can tap the glasses again. You can also set the glasses to do this automatically. The glasses have built-in accelerometers that can sense when you are looking down at something such as a book, and can switch the lenses. The glases have no moving parts and can change the prescription in the glasses at the blink of an eye. PixelOptics has more than 300 patents. The company has been making the lens technology for 10 years and launched in August 2011. Now, 1,500 retailers are selling them for about $1,200. In the second quarter, the company will launch in Europe. PixelOptics has trained more than 4,000 eye care professionals for marketing emPower!. Check out our video interview with Mark from PixelOptics below, filmed at the Digital Experience Party. Filed under: offBeat, VentureBeat, video        
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| Rep. Lamar Smith is amazed SOPA opponents “don’t want to protect American consumers and businesses” Posted: 13 Jan 2012 05:00 AM PST
“It is amazing to me that the opponents apparently don’t want to protect American consumers and businesses,” Smith told Reuters in a report yesterday. “Are they somehow benefiting by directing customers to these foreign websites? Do they profit from selling advertising to these foreign websites? And if they do, they need to be stopped. And I don’t mind taking that on.” Unfortunately, the method SOPA intends to use to reach the goal of thwarting piracy operations overseas would make the web less secure and grow the ability of large corporations to censor things that they claim violates a copyright. Essentially, SOPA gives both the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against websites associated with infringing, pirating and/or counterfeiting intellectual property. So for instance, if a website is accused of containing copyright-infringing content (like a song, picture, video clip etc.), the site could be blocked by ISPs, de-indexed from search engines and even prevented from doing business online with services like PayPal. While these stipulations allegedly only apply to foreign websites, the bill is vague (possibly intentionally) about how it determines that a site is foreign. SOPA also doesn’t address punishment to any company that falsely accuses a site of copyright violation — at least not in any meaningful capacity. Therefore, the bill puts the burden of proof on others to verify that they didn’t violate a copyright and/or commit piracy after being accused. A SOPA vote is still on hold while congressional committees still review the bill. In the meantime, the House has invited a small group of security experts and tech industry leaders to testify Jan. 18 about potential risks associated with passing legislation like SOPA, as VentureBeat previously reported. During the day of the hearing, many large sites — including Reddit, the Cheezburger Network of blogs and a few others — are staging a blackout to raise awareness of their anti-SOPA stance. [For more information about the proposed SOPA legislation, check out this infographic about the bill's negative effect on business and innovation as well as VentureBeat's ongoing SOPA coverage.] Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| Posted: 13 Jan 2012 12:20 AM PST Slot machine maker International Game Technology said Thursday it will buy Double Down Interactive for $500 million in cash. Double Down, based in Seattle, makes Facebook games such as the DoubleDown Casino. Publicly-traded IGT is branching out from one type of casino gaming to another. DoubleDown Casino had more than 1.4 million active daily players at the end of 2011 and it was No. 4 in terms of the most popular games on Facebook in 2011. DoubleDown Casino, launched in April 2010, has 4.7 million people playing games each month, up from 3.3 million in October. With money from IGT, DoubleDown Casino plans to release more social and mobile games. Double Down Interactive has 70 full-time employees and 10 positions open. IGT said the move will propel it into the leadership of social gaming, and it comes at a time when Zynga is beefing up its own casino game business on Facebook. NVPR introduced the two parties with the Raine Group and Davis Wright Tremaine finalizing the transaction. The deal includes $250 million in cash, $85 million in retention payments over the next two years, and $165 million in bonuses if Double Down hits financial targets. Greg Enell is chief executive of Double Down and he will continue to lead the business, which will stay in Seattle. IGT had sales of $1.96 billion las year. Filed under: games, social        
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| Video game sales drop 21 percent in December and fall 8 percent in 2011 Posted: 12 Jan 2012 11:54 PM PST
The poor performance of video game sales in physical retail stores masks what’s really happening. Gamers are shifting their purchases to online, social and mobile forms of gaming — dubbed digital gaming — while the retail side is shrinking fast. And the growth in digital isn’t quite big enough to offset the shrinking retail numbers. In December, hardware sales were down 28 percent while software was down 14 percent. Full told, the estimated total consumer spending on games includes physical video and retail games, used games, game rentals, subscriptions, full-game digital downloads, social network games, downloadable content, and mobile games. Not counting hardware, this had estimated sales of $16.3 to $16.6 billion in 2011, down about 2 percent or so from a year ago. Hardware sales were down 11 percent for the year, as were accessories. Software was down 6 percent. New physical retail sales of portable, console and PC games were $9.3 billion in 2011, down 8 percent from $10.1 billion in 2010. Sales grew for used games, full-game digital downloads, downloadable content, and mobile gaming apps. "Overall industry results are not entirely surprising given that we are on the back end of the current console lifecycle, combined with the continued digital evolution of gaming,” said Anita Frazier, analyst at the NPD Group. “Core gamers continue to be engaged and spend on established franchises across both the digital and physical format using multiple devices for different gaming occasions.” Shed added, “Our overall estimate of the market continues to point toward the increased imperative for deeper visibility into digital distribution than is available today, not only in the U.S. but globally.” NPD is working with research company EEDAR to try to come up with more accurate numbers for global digital and physical game sales worldwide. For the full year, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 was the best-selling game, and it took the top honors in December. Just Dance 3 from Ubisoft was No. 2, followed by Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim from Bethesda Softworks, Battlefield 3 from Electronic Arts, and Madden NFL2012. During the year, Microsoft said it sold 1.7 million Xbox 360 consoles in December and it was the top console seller in 2011. Microsoft also said it outside the second-place player by more than 2.7 million units. It captured about 49 percent of consumer retail spending at $6.7 billion in sales for 2011. Of that, $2.1 billion was spent on accessories such as Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing system. Microsoft said it has sold 66 million Xbox 360s, has 40 million Xbox Live members, and has sold more than 18 million Kinect sensors. Microsoft said it ended the year with 40 percent share of the console hardware market. Sony said it sold 6.5 million PlayStation 3 consoles in the holiday season. Filed under: games        
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| Why it’s China’s turn to worry about manufacturing Posted: 12 Jan 2012 06:20 PM PST
But the tide may soon turn. New technologies will likely cause the same hollowing out of China's manufacturing industry over the next two decades that the U.S experienced over the past twenty years. That's right. America is destined to once again gain its supremacy in manufacturing, and it will soon be China's turn to worry. China's largest hi-tech product manufacturer Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group, made waves last August when it announced plans to install one million robots within three years to do the work that its workers presently do. These robots will perform repetitive, mechanical tasks to produce the circuit boards that go in many of the world's most popular consumer gadgets. But even these robots and circuit boards will soon be obsolete. As my colleague Neil Jacobstein, who co-chairs the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics program at Singularity University explains, there are three exponentially accelerating technologies—artificial intelligence, robotics, and digital manufacturing—that will reshape the competitive landscape for manufacturing. Specifically, these technologies will make manufacturing more creative, less expensive, more local and more personal. AI is software that makes computers do things that, if humans did them, we would call them intelligent. This is the technology that IBM's Deep Blue computer used to beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997, and that enabled IBM's Watson to beat TV-show Jeopardy champions in 2011. AI is what powers the self-driving car that Google is developing and Apple's Siri voice-recognition software. As a field, AI is now over 50 years old. People thought AI was dead after all the hype it generated in the '80s and failed to deliver. But it is fulfilling its potential now. AI technologies will find their way into manufacturing and make it "personal," but the technical challenge is simplifying the design process for products that we want to "manufacture" at home, says Jacobstein. Computer-aided-design companies like Autodesk are actively working to make what they call the Imagine, Design, Create-process much easier for mere mortals to perform. These will empower millions more people to join the ranks of the creator economy, where mass production is replaced by personalized production, and people are empowered to specify new products, design, test, and build them. There is also robotics. Robots used to be a lot like the computers of the 1960s—extremely expensive, huge, slow, finicky, and difficult to program. However, Jacobstein claims that robots are currently in the midst of a revolution in cost and ease of use not unlike the transition from mainframes to personal computers and smart phones. Ten years ago, people would have laughed at the notion that robot vacuum cleaners like the Roomba from iRobot would be in over 6 million homes. Washington Post columnist Vivek Wadhwa is a visiting scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, director of research for the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, and senior research associate for the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. Read more on Innovations from the Washington Post:
Copyright 2011, WashingtonPostFactory image via Shutterstock Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| IBM Science redefines magnetic memory in 12 atoms Posted: 12 Jan 2012 06:03 PM PST IBM Research is focusing on innovation not for tomorrow, but for the much broader future. Today, it was able to shrink down the amount of atoms we use in memory drives from millions to 12. “We’re trying to answer a simple question,” said IBM Research physicist Andreas Heinrich in an interview with VentureBeat. “How small can you make a magnetic structure and still make it useful for data storage?” The answer the IBM scientists came upon was 12. This grouping of atoms, while dramatically reduced, still behaves in the same ways our memory drives do to grab and store information. They were able to accomplish this by using antiferromagnets. These are magnets much different that your traditional magnet. A ferromagnetized atom acts the same as the magnets you put on your refrigerator. If one atom in this magnet is polarized north, all its neighboring magnets will also be polarized north. Having this kind of polarization gives off a magnetic field, or that resistance you feel when you try to put two magnets together.
Because scientists need special tools to handle these atoms, you’re not going to see them in a store near you anytime soon. In fact, in order to use the tool at all, you must be in low temperatures, not suited for data centers. To operate at room temperature would mean upping the amount of atoms from 12 to 150. But this isn’t the goal for Heinrich. For him, it’s about showing the world what is possible. “Here at IBM, most of all people are working on making products that are slightly better than the last one,” said Heinrich. “The work that I’m working on is not in that realm. We’re doing exploratory research.” The research gives a glimpse of what the future may look like with more development and more research. It seems that other than our televisions, we are constantly trying to shrink down our products, make them smaller, more efficient. This includes data centers, with companies like Fusion-io bent on taking data centers from racks that could fill a room, to just one. But these innovations will take time, and Heinrich stresses that we should be focusing less on days, but rather on decades. “We currently in our society are too focused on whats going to happen tomorrow,” he said. “We want to have a strong focus on what’s going to happen in 10 years.” Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Protect IP Act author backs down on piracy enforcement stipulation Posted: 12 Jan 2012 05:58 PM PST
PIPA, which Leahy authored, is essentially the senate version of the House’s proposed Stop Online Piracy Act legislation. And like SOPA, it gives both the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against websites associated with infringing, pirating and/or counterfeiting intellectual property. If it becomes law, it could drastically change the way the Internet operates. Under PIPA, if a website is accused of containing copyright-infringing content (like a song, picture, video clip etc.), the site could be blocked by ISPs (like Comcast), de-indexed from search engines and even prevented from doing business online with services like PayPal. While Leahy isn’t renouncing for PIPA, he did admit that more study was needed regarding stipulations in the bill that give the U.S. attorney general authority to order ISPs to block a website in question of piracy violation. In its current form, the stipulation has drawn plenty of criticism from web security experts. By having the ISPs block select websites, it would prevent them from using DNSSEC, which is technology intended to add an extra layer of security to websites by checking for a special DNS signature to prove that the site is actually what it claims to be. “This is in fact a highly technical issue, and I am prepared to recommend we give it more study before implementing it,” Leahy said in the statement, adding that he doesn’t believe ISPs would support a bill that would have a negative impact on its business. Yet, many of the ISPs that support both PIPA and SOPA are also major media companies. For example, Comcast owns NBC-Universal and operates an internet service business. (And as VentureBeat previously reported, Comcast’s internet network is incompatible with those PIPA and SOPA website blocking stipulations.) The bill, which is currently scheduled for a vote on Jan. 24, is co-sponsored by over 40 senators. It also has public support from most major movie studios, record labels and media companies — all of which claim PIPA is necessary to thwart websites with piracy operations set up in foreign countries. For anyone interested, we’ve pasted Leahy’s entire statement below:
For more information about anti-piracy legislation, check out VentureBeat's ongoing PIPA and SOPA coverage. Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| Email off the clock constitutes overtime — in Brazil Posted: 12 Jan 2012 05:33 PM PST
The worker-friendly amendment was added to the country’s labor code and approved by Brazil President Dilma Rousseff in December. “[The legislation] says that company emails to workers are equivalent to orders given directly to the employee,” the Associated Press reported. “Labor attorneys told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper this makes it possible for workers answering emails after hours to ask for overtime pay.” The law is the latest measure designed to address the serious implications of an increasingly 24/7 mobile workforce — it’s also bound to make workers the world round more than a little covetous of their Brazilian peers. German carmaker Volkswagon recently made headlines for its decision to shut off email to some employees 30 minutes after their shifts end. [Image via Ian Lamont] Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| LG signs Android patent licensing deal with Microsoft to cover phones, tablets Posted: 12 Jan 2012 04:19 PM PST Korean electronics manufacturer LG has signed a patent licensing agreement with Microsoft so it can be protected from lawsuits concerning Android and Chrome OS, the two companies announced Thursday. Microsoft has made similar agreements with 10 other companies, including Samsung, HTC, Acer, Quanta and Wistron. The big M earns a small cut from every Android phone or tablet manufactured by the licensees. The agreement covers LG’s phones, tablets and any device that features Android and Chrome OS. Actual terms of the deal, such as how much money Microsoft will earn off each device, were not disclosed. “This agreement with LG means that more than 70 percent of all Android smartphones sold in the U.S. are now receiving coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio," said Horacio Gutierrez, deputy general counsel of the Intellectual Property Group at Microsoft, in a statement. "We are proud of the continued success of our program in resolving the IP issues surrounding Android and Chrome OS." Companies such as Barnes & Noble (with its Android-based Nook tablets) and Motorola Mobility (with Android phones and tablets) continue to battle Microsoft in court over this same issue. Back in November, Barnes & Noble said in a letter to the U.S. Justice Department that "Microsoft is embarking on a campaign of asserting trivial and outmoded patents against manufacturers of Android devices.” Do you think Microsoft is playing fair when it comes to Android patent deals? Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Hulu to drop $500M on content in 2012, more than it earned in 2011 Posted: 12 Jan 2012 04:06 PM PST
The streaming video company, which specializes in providing online access to network television content, brought in $420 million in revenue in 2011, Kilar said in a blog post on the company’s 2011 performance. The revenue figure is up 60 percent from 2010, though it is less than the $500 million revenue estimate projected back in September. Hulu also grew Hulu Plus, its all-you-can-eat $8 per month offering, to a subscriber base of 1.5 million paying customers. “Hulu Plus has reached 1.5 million paid subscribers faster than any video subscription service launch (online or offline) in U.S. history,” Kilar claimed. “We expect our subscription services to account for more than half of Hulu's overall business later this year.”
How much does $500 million buy exactly? In the realm of digital content rights, not so much. Competitor Netflix is said to be paying $30 million for each DreamWorks picture it gets. Sure, that’s likely a much higher premium than Hulu is paying for say something like the rights to Community or CW content, but you get the idea. And without getting a look at Hulu’s books, it’s difficult to know just how well Hulu is really doing. Yes, the business is growing, subscribers are signing up to pay monthly fees and its content library is expanding at a healthy rate — content grew by 40 percent versus 2010, Kilar said — but Hulu is in a risky business, and the company knows it. Lest we forget, it wasn’t that long ago when Hulu was ready to throw the baby out with the bath water. Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| Google to release optional design guidelines for Android 4.0 Posted: 12 Jan 2012 03:47 PM PST
Many critics have pointed out that Android doesn’t have enough unifying elements among third-party applications (unlike Apple’s iOS), which leads to a broken user experience. However, a set of design and style guidelines could give Android more consistency that would in-turn improve usability overall. The guidelines will offer developers in-depth instructions (sort of a best practices) for design and style when they’re building new applications, according to Director of Android user experience Matias Duarte. Duarte, who made the announcement while speaking to The Verge at CES today, said the design guidelines would be made available on a new Android Design website. The guidelines themselves will be built out over time to include more detailed instructions and advice. Initially, the guide offers information about suggested design elements like typography, color palettes and more. It also contains a list of components that make up the Android UI. Since Android is an open platform with no centralized hub to approve each application before making it available to the public, developers aren’t required to use the new set of guidelines. Duarte said the guides are intended as developer resources. The design guidelines won’t give Android instant consistency in regards to the user experience. Yet, I feel pretty confident that over time I’ll personally receive fewer Android smartphone-related questions from parents, friends and other not computer people. Filed under: dev, mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Feel as light as a cloud with Yufit’s cloud-based fitness classes Posted: 12 Jan 2012 03:17 PM PST
Instead of picking up a fitness DVD and watching the same video over and over, you get new fitness videos every week with Yufit for $10 a month. Each of the 10 classes releases two new sessions each week on Monday and Thursday nights, which can be viewed on-demand. The classes, which range from dance and yoga to kickboxing and cardio, are taught by popular San Francisco-based personal trainers. Co-founder Yu Kannah Kim, a personal trainer at a high-end gym, wanted her skills to reach more than just the overweight and privileged. ”Only 25 pecent of Americans have a gym membership and of those only half actually go to the gym regularly,” Kim told VentureBeat “[My inspiration] was to help everyone get fit, not just those who can afford to belong to a gym.” In addition to its online classes, Yufit provides a social networking space that connects members with each trainer. Members can make suggestions for the classes and connect with other people who are taking the sames classes. Yufit discovered that its competitors deliver either dated online videos or live streamed content that can only be viewed at a specific time. Even Netflix, which offers fitness video on-demand, only has a limited selection of workout titles. Yufit hopes to fill a void in the fitness world by offering fresh workout videos to those who can’t make it to the gym. Yufit launched Tuesday, after about six months of development and beta testing. The company is self funded by co-founders Yu Hannah Kim and Dror Matalon and is based in San Francisco. Filed under: media        
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| Dozens of Foxconn’s Xbox 360 production line workers threaten suicide Posted: 12 Jan 2012 02:37 PM PST
While an incident of this scale is unusual, suicides at Foxconn factories are far from unheard of. A suicide cluster in 2010 saw 14 deaths, with workers throwing themselves from the tops of the company’s buildings. Last year employees were asked to sign a ‘no suicide’ pact in response to the rise in suicides, and the company unveiled plans to install safety nets around its buildings, to keep workers from jumping to their deaths. Foxconn reportedly planned to close the Wuhan plant’s production line for Microsoft’s gaming console, the Xbox 360, transferring around 600 workers to other jobs. According to some workers, they were offered severance pay if they wanted to leave, but this offer was then withdrawn. This led a group of workers to climb onto the roof of the dormitory and threaten to jump, but city officials were eventually able to talk them down. Foxconn says that transfers were offered, not severance, and that it was only to some of the workers. Workers have long been dissatisfied with some of the conditions at Foxconn factories. One, who asked not to be named, told the Daily Telegraph about their treatment at Foxconn, “We were put to work without any training, and paid piecemeal … The assembly line ran very fast and after just one morning we all had blisters and the skin on our hand was black. The factory was also really choked with dust and no one could bear it.” Others have said that Foxconn factories are run in a “military” fashion, that many workers cannot cope with. At Foxconn’s flagship plant in Longhua, five per cent of its workers, or 24,000 people, quit every month. The unnamed worker told the Daily Telegraph that the action was not about money, but because they felt they were out of options, “At first, the managers said anyone who wanted to quit could have one month’s pay as compensation, but then they withdrew that offer. So we went to the roof and threatened a mass suicide.” Not everyone believes that the workers were planning to actually follow through with the threat, but merely wanted to be compensated. Equipment engineer Wang Jungang said, “None of them were going to jump. They were there for the compensation. But the government and the company officials were just as afraid, because if even one of them jumped, the consequences would be hard to imagine.” Microsoft released the following statement in response to the incident:
Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| Zynga hires away EA’s top mobile and social executive Barry Cottle Posted: 12 Jan 2012 02:19 PM PST
The hire is a big development in the war for talent between the two companies, which are in the midst of a major battle for control of the fastest-growing parts of the game business. Cottle will report to John Schappert, chief operating officer at San Francisco-based Zynga and the former No. 2 executive at EA. Overall, gaming is undergoing a big transformation from games sold at physical stores to games that are purchased through online and digital means, from games played on Facebook to iPhone games. Cottle helped EA lead that transition at EA. Cottle will be in charge of developing new businesses for Zynga. At EA, he was the head of EA Interactive, the division that makes mobile and social games and the part of the company that led the $750 million acquisition last year of PopCap Games. Cottle has 20 years of experience in entertainment, technology and games. He was most recently executive vice president of EA Interactive and had headed EA’s mobile and social efforts over the past four years. After EA acquired the Jamdat mobile game business in 2006, Cottle helped build it from a few hundred employees into a 2,500-person division. Cottle was instrumental in the acquisitions of Playfish in 2009 and PopCap Games in 2010. At Zynga, he will help create new partnerships and run mergers and acquisitions. Now that Zynga has gone public and raised $1 billion, it could accelerate its M&A. “It’s rare that you find someone who possesses a deep operational background and also has the vision to see where your business and your industry are headed,” said Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, in a statement. “Barry is one of those executives.” Cottle called Zynga “the pioneer and driving force behind the social games industry” and said he is looking forward to his new role there. Schappert said, “Barry’s understanding of the intersection that connects technology, games and entertainment is unmatched. I’ve always admired his ability to grow businesses and inspire teams. I’m proud to say he’s a colleague again.” EA and Zynga are in a big grudge match. When Zynga went public in December, it had a bigger market capitalization than EA. But EA has since been trading at $6.47 billion, and Zynga’s value has sunk to $5.91 billion. EA’s digital business, which includes revenues from the division that Cottle headed, is now over $1 billion in sales, about as big as Zynga’s business in social games. In a message to employees, EA chief executive John Riccitiello announced a reorganization today. Under it, the company named Kristian Segerstrale, former head of the Playfish business acquired by EA in 2009, will become executive vice president of digital. Segerstrale is “assembling a team for an expansive remit to define and manage the business side of the EA platform.” He noted that Cottle was leaving the company and “we appreciate his contribution to the evolution of our mobile and social business.” Cottle previous was Palm Computing’s chief internet officer and chief operating officer of its wireless division. He also spent nine years at Disney. Filed under: games, mobile, social, VentureBeat        
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| Lytro’s “revolutionary” light-field camera wins Last Gadget Standing at CES Posted: 12 Jan 2012 02:09 PM PST Camera startup Lytro has won the Last Gadget Standing competition at the Consumer Electronics Show for its “revolutionary” light-field camera. Lytro debuted its camera in mid-October to considerable buzz, thanks to its engaging technology that changes how you can take pictures. The light field camera lets you take a photo once and go back later to change the focus point. Lytro's light field tech also lets you display pictures in 3D. The Last Gadget Standing competition at CES featured other upcoming gadgets including the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga, the PlayStation Vita handheld console and the Samsung Galaxy Note tablet/phone. Lytro’s cameras can be pre-ordered now and the units are expected to ship in the next few months. The company will sell the 8-gigabyte version of its camera for $399 and the 16-gigabyte version will run for $499. For more gadget news, be sure to check out VentureBeat's live coverage from CES 2012. Filed under: media        
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| Posted: 12 Jan 2012 01:26 PM PST
The First Lady’s first tweet (and her Obama Biden 2012-themed avatar) make it clear that the account is a part of the Obama political reelection machine. It reads:
However, the account, which is managed by the campaign staff, will also feature personal insights from Mrs. Obama herself. The from-the-First-Lady’s-own-hand messages will be signed “-mo,” just as Barack Obama’s campaign-managed account sometimes features his personally written tweets with a “-bo” signature. In fact, Mrs. Obama has already shared something non-campaign related on her account. “Here’s something dear to my heart: the MLK Day of Service,” reads the fifth tweet sent by the account. “Will you join me to serve your community on Monday? http://OFA.BO/NTYQkR -mo” The link leads to MLKDay.org, where visitors are encouraged to serve their neighbors and communities on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this coming Monday, January 16. The First Lady is also likely to promote Let’s Move, her initiative to counteract childhood obesity with healthy habits, from the account. As of this writing, the account has around 150,000 followers and that number is growing by the second. Mrs. Obama has actually used Twitter in the past. Before she had her own Twitter account, the First Lady sent a tweet in 2010 from the account of CNN’s Ed Henry, a senior White House correspondent, while the two were seated together at a dinner. Filed under: social        
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| Virtual shopping with Bodymetrics will show how outfits fit on your body Posted: 12 Jan 2012 12:59 PM PST
That gives the system — a computer or, in the future, an Xbox 360 game console — an exact image of what you look like. Then you can try on clothes in a virtual way, standing in front of your web-connected TV set and using hand gesetures to look at different selections. When you try on an outfit, you can view a heat map that shows additional data you can’t get through ordinary online shopping. For instance, you can see a heat map that shows areas where the clothing would fit your body loosely or where it would be too tight. “You can see if an outfits fits you or not or is too tight or is a perfect fit,” said Suran Goonatilake, chairman and co-founder of Bodymetrics, in an interview. It takes about a minute to be scanned into a PrimeSense camera, which maps a 3D space, including your body, and is the technology used in Kinect, which has sold 18 million units for games on the Xbox 360. Bodymetrics is a new application of the same technology in a different market. Bodymetrics has added information about clothing about fabric and how it stretches across certain body types. When it comes to size, preference accounts for a couple of sizes, Goonatilake said. “Some people like to wear clothes tighter than others,” he said. Only one in ten people shop online because they are unsure whether the clothes the buy online will fit them or not. Bodymetrics can help the whole industry grow if it solves that problem. Bodymetrics can also help physical retailers. “About 30 percent to 40 percent of clothing bought is returned to retailers. The No. 1 reason is fit,” said Goonatilake. “That’s the fundamental problem we are solving here,”We can reduce the number of returns they have.” Goonatilake said the company has tested it with retailers for a few years and is now ready to roll it out with PrimeSense in the U.S. Check out our video interview with Lainey Sheridan-Young, head of fashion at Bodymetrics, below. Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| The most connected airports & airlines in the U.S. (infographic) Posted: 12 Jan 2012 12:56 PM PST
It stands to reason that when I travel for work, I either breathe a sigh of relief or roll my eyes in frustration when I see the itinerary for work trips showing which airports and airlines I’ll be in and on. If you do require constant Internet access, it helps to know what the best options are in terms of airlines and connecting airport locations. West Coast business folks who are traveling to the other side of the country would do well to pick a Virgin America flight and connect through Cleveland, Raleigh-Durham or Charlotte (with free WiFi that gets 14Mbps download speeds) if possible. However, I tend to grab the least-connected flight paths. I live in Nashville, Tenn. and connect through Dallas-Fort Worth when traveling to the West Coast. If my flight is through Southwest or United Airlines, there’s a pretty good chance I won’t have reliable Internet until I reach my destination. For more information about the most connected airports and airlines in the U.S., check out the useful infographic below. (Click image to enlarge.) [Infographic via OnlineMBA News] Filed under: offBeat, VentureBeat        
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| Why Facebook’s “Listen With Friends” feature isn’t a threat to Turntable Posted: 12 Jan 2012 12:53 PM PST
So what is Listen With Friends, exactly? Two new features from Facebook — simultaneous listening and group chat — added to an already popular music offering that’s been around since September. The social networking company didn’t even make it possible for multiple members to DJ together, which happens to be the flagship feature of Turntable. Listen With Friends, as I see it, is not so much a cannonball directed at Turntable, as it is an obvious next step for a service that has an on-going, and continually expressed, interest in getting members to share! share! share! “We’re excited about all social music experiences,” a Facebook representative told VentureBeat. “The new Listen With feature takes what services like Spotify and Rdio launched in September to the next level so you can not only share the music you’re listening to, but listen to it together in real-time.” Turntable, as a refresher, is the hip New York-based startup that makes web and mobile applications for virtual and social music-listening parties. Members play the role of DJ, and they can start or participate in rooms and switch off choosing tracks — up to five DJs are on deck at any given time. Audiences can join the room to groove along to the beats selected by their peers, and they can rate DJs’ song selections as “lame” or “awesome,” with DJs earning points for their awesome picks. The overlap is there, but I’d argue that if Facebook did in fact cripple Turntable with the “Listen With Friends” feature that it would be an unintended side effect of a social network evolving with the times. And the very tenet of evolution, that the strong survive and the weak perish, certainly seems to apply here. Are we really to think that Turntable, and its investors, didn’t anticipate that Facebook would go down this path? It’s not as if these features are coming as a shock to anyone. I don’t know about you, but when Facebook first rolled out the “Listen” feature, my very first thought was: “Interesting, but shouldn’t I be able to listen along with my Facebook friends?” “I’m flattered Facebook was inspired by Turntable.fm and created a listen together feature,” Turntable co-founder Billy Chasen told VentureBeat. “I look forward to seeing how they interpret what social music means as we seem to have different core philosophies about it, such as the importance of discovering new music from strangers and not just friends.” Facebook has the means, motive and opportunity to bring social listening to the masses, but Turntable has an edginess about it that Facebook can’t replicate, even if it wanted to. The young service also has the advantage of being so tightly focused on the shared music experience, that it will, more often that not, appeal to musicians, DJs and artists who either want to debut new albums in a quirky way or connect with their fans in a social listening environment.
As Brenna Ehrlich, Mashable’s former music reporter and a senior writer at MTV, once said, Turntable is “as addictive as chocolate-covered, deep-fried crack cocaine.” Here’s a few more things to keep in mind, as pointed out by the astute editorial staff here at VentureBeat: Listen With Friends isn’t all that attractive, it comes with an additional privacy setting and it forces the user to keep Facebook (and Spotify or Rdio) open at all times, which is less than ideal in work environments. And let’s not forget that Facebook is already saturated with features these days. In essence, the dynamic between Facebook and Turntable is pretty analogous to the dynamic between Facebook and Instagram. Facebook does photo-sharing, but Instagram does it better. As a result, the latter is thriving and has a strong following of passionate hobby and professional photographers who will always favor Instagram over Facebook. After all, not everyone wants to shop at Walmart. That’s not to say that Turntable is in a cushy position and should ignore what Facebook is up to. Rather, the still fledgling startup needs to double-down on what it does best: ego-boosting features, Steve Aoki-like DJ parties and virtual music festivals. [Images via caesarsebastian/Flickr and kidrippa/Tumblr] Filed under: social, VentureBeat        
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| Click.to wants to make copy and paste obsolete Posted: 12 Jan 2012 12:46 PM PST Copy and paste is so 2011. Or so says Click.to, a new app for Mac and Windows that lets you copy content and send it exactly where you want it to go with one click — no pasting required. With Click.to, you can send email attachments, publish content to Facebook, save text to Evernote, upload images to Flickr, search products on Amazon — the list goes on and on. You can even create custom actions to send content to nearly any website or computer application. Say you’re reading an article online and come across a phrase you’d like to tweet. Instead of copying the phrase, navigating to Twitter and pasting the phrase in the new tweet field, all you have to do is copy the words and click on the Twitter button from the Click.to menu that appears. On an even simpler level, you can copy any word or phrase and use Click.to to go directly to Google to look it up. Every time you copy text, images, or files, Click.to displays a menu of icons for the websites and services where you can send the content. Click.to is very customizable; you can choose which icons pop up, which are icons are hidden in an extended menu and even where on the screen Click.to displays its menu. Productivity is Click.to’s main goal. It cuts down on the amount of clicks and browsing needed for the most common computer tasks we all do. The app even tracks your number of “Missed Opportunities” — the number of times you copy, click and paste content instead of using Click.to so you can track how click.to increases your productivity. Click.to was released in July 2011 and since added 17 official partners to its service including Amazon, eBay, Skype and Evernote. The company is in talks with other websites and services for partnership opportunities. Click.to is currently available as a free download for Mac and Windows, with Android and iOS apps set to be available in the next few months. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Here’s how you can really oppose SOPA: Stop “raising awareness” and do something Posted: 12 Jan 2012 12:29 PM PST
We’ve all been concerned lately over SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and its sister bill, PIPA (Protect IP Act). But all those petitions we’re signing and websites we’re blacking out might have the effect of preaching to the choir. Think about it: We nerdy Internet-dwellers already know that SOPA needs to die. Continuing to rant about it online is, at least to some extent, just adding more noise to the echo chamber. U.S. citizens 18 and older should be exercising their privileges by writing letters (or emails) and placing phone calls to Congress. And of course, you can do that free of charge right from the comfort of your couch, thanks to a few online services. PopVox is one service that will help you contact Congress free of charge. From PopVox’s SOPA and PIPA pages, you can see lists of organizations supporting and opposing the bills, you can read the full text of the bills, and you can tell Congress what you think about both bills. PopVox asks you to include your name and address, then it sends your message of opposition along to the appropriate members of Congress. If you’d like to take an even more direct route to getting in touch with a member of Congress (or if you want to send a stronger message than just a form letter), you can use the House of Representatives Write Your Representative page (you’ll need to know your ZIP+4, which you can find here). To get in touch with a senator, find his or her name in the Senate directory (don’t worry, there’s a drop-down list of states and just two Senators per state), then contact that member directly from his or her listing. If you’re not shy about getting on the phone, you can call your representatives in Congress directly. The Senate switchboard number is (202) 224-3121, and the House switchboard is (202) 224-3121. When writing or speaking to a House member, remember to reference SOPA, H.R. 3261. If you’re speaking or writing to a Senator, reference PIPA, Bill S.968. We realize it’s uncharacteristic for us journalists to ask you readers to take direct action, but VentureBeat strongly opposes SOPA and PIPA, as individual writers and editors and as an organization. We implore you to join us in getting off our collective butt and doing something meaningful about SOPA. To learn more about why the Internet is fighting the passage of SOPA and PIPA, read this open letter from Internet founders to Congress. To learn more about why this is our responsibility, too, read this article about Silicon Valley’s role in SOPA. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Kindle now has an easy way to download files from your PC Posted: 12 Jan 2012 12:23 PM PST
In the past, loading files that weren’t from the Kindle e-book store has been a pain. Instapaper, a service that lets you save online articles for consumption later, was really the easiest way to do it. Existing files on your computer, however, required an annoying conversion. The new plug-in, called Send to Kindle, offers quick file transfer to the Kindle, though it’s only available for Windows computers (bummer). It can be accessed through any Windows application that can connect to a printer, as well as through the right-click drop down menu in your Documents folder. If your file does not exist in the documents folder, you can download it by clicking on the print menu, which will now list your Kindle alongside your regular printers. Select the Kindle option and a version of your file is on its way. If you have multiple items in the documents folder that you would like to send, you can highlight all of them, right click, and select “Send to Kindle” in the drop down menu. Documents will be sent as PDFs to the Kindle. You will also be able to archive documents in your Kindle library for easy access later. In order to install the plug-in, you must have Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7. Mac support is “coming soon.” via Gizmodo Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Philips debuts headphones line for the Android fanboy in all of us Posted: 12 Jan 2012 12:05 PM PST Major electronics manufacturer Philips debuted a new line of headphones and earbuds targeted at Android phone owners at the Consumer Electronics Show this week. The company makes some of the best-sounding, affordable earbuds on the market, and now it is extending its focus to Android, which has the largest market share for smartphones in the world. While you can use any pair of standard headphones with an Android phone, these models are specifically designed to work with the Philips MyHeadset Android app that helps make music sound better. There are four models in the lineup, with three earbud editions and one traditional headband headset. Each model has a microphone for hands-free use, and call management features to answer/end a call, reject a call, voice dial and redial the last number. One other thing that makes the Android headphone lineup interesting is that if you go to a consumer electronics store, the number of iPhone-focused products heavily outnumbers that of Android products. Whether it’s the mobile section of Best Buy, Target or Walmart, the iPhone and iPod touch accessories always get more love. But as Android’s dominance grows and continues, we’ll likely begin to see more Android-specific offerings. The Philips Android headphone line will go io sale in the second quarter of 2012. The models range from $30 for the least-expensive earbuds to $100 for the headband headset. More photos from the upcoming Android line can be viewed below: For more news out of this week's Consumer Electronics Show, be sure to check out VentureBeat's live coverage from CES 2012. Filed under: mobile        
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| ARM CEO: Intel’s Medfield mobile chips are “good enough” Posted: 12 Jan 2012 11:41 AM PST
“It’s inevitable Intel will get a few smartphone design wins — we regard Intel as a serious competitor,” ARM CEO Warren East told Reuters at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. “Are they ever going to be the leaders in power efficiency? No, of course not. But they have a lot more to offer.” At CES, Intel unveiled its long-awaited Medfield mobile processor, now called the Atom Z2460, which is low power and meant for use in smartphones and tablets. The company also announced that Motorola and Lenovo will be the first to make Android devices using the Medfield chip. But Intel faces an uphill battle with the Atom Z2460 since it’s coming to the market so late, and it’s also fundamentally incompatible with ARM’s designs since it’s x86-based. That means a vast majority of the more than 400,000 Android apps on the market won’t run on Intel’s processor without being recompiled. The company has hinted it has some solution in the works to run ARM-based apps, but that will likely come at some sort of performance cost. East said Intel’s chip was “good enough,” but ultimately not competitive with ARM’s chip designs. “They (Intel) have taken some designs that were never meant for mobile phones and they’ve literally wrenched those designs and put them into a power-performance space which is roughly good enough for mobile phones,” he said. After playing around with Intel’s reference Android phone, which was running a surprisingly ugly version of Android, I’d have to side with East for now. The phone performed decently, but it was a bit thicker than most high-end Android phones now, and there didn’t seem to be anything very compelling about it. Perhaps the final models will show the real value in Intel’s new mobile platform, but for now it seems like the Atom Z2460 is too little, too late. For more news out of this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, be sure to check out VentureBeat’s live coverage from CES 2012. Filed under: mobile        
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| If SOPA passes, we’re as much to blame as Congress and Hollywood Posted: 12 Jan 2012 11:12 AM PST
Mike_FTW made this great observation: “If SOPA passes after we all added those ribbons to our avatars it certainly won't be our fault.” I changed my own avatar, but almost in an ironic way. I know full well that nearly everyone who follows me already agrees with me. If you want to take real action, here’s how you can write or call your Congress members now. Blogging amongst ourselves won’t change things. We need to do a much better job of educating Congress, the media and the people. Part of the problem is that Silicon Valley has a belief in meritocracy. We believe that if we are right, we will win. It’s a nice thought, but that’s not how Washington works. A common refrain in Silicon Valley is that Congress should be smart enough to know how the Internet works. It may sound reasonable, but it isn’t. There are 535 people in Congress who are responsible for passing laws that relate to the environment, pharmaceuticals, transportation, infrastructure, foreign policy, social services — every topic under the sun. Although it’s a top-of-mind issue for us, neither California Senator Dianne Feinstein nor Senator Barbara Boxer list PIPA (the Senate equivalent of SOPA) on their top issues pages. A recent example is Senator Chuck Schumer of New York’s involvement in the cancellation of a mall operator’s plan to track users anonymously based on cell phones. The mall would have used the equivalent of a cookie to track shoppers as they went from store to store. According to the New York Post: In a letter to Path Intelligence CEO Sharon Biggar, Schumer urged the company to obtain the explicit consent of shoppers through an opt-in policy. He also called on Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz to examine how this new technology fits in with existing consumer privacy regulations. If you extrapolate Schumer’s position to the online world, cookies would be banned (or required to be opt-in). That would have a serious negative effect on online advertising and commerce. Schumer is in favor of PIPA. In an accident of geography, technology has to fight for advocacy in Congress with Hollywood because both are represented by senators from California. If you look at campaign contributions alone, Hollywood does a much better job at reaching out to Senators Feinstein and Boxer than the Internet industry does. According to OpenSecrets.org, Feinstein has received $168,000 from the TV/movie/music industry vs. $86,465 from the Internet industry in the 2012 campaign cycle. Boxer has received $898,568 from Hollywood vs. $431,489 from the Internet industry. Both of California’s senators are listed as co-sponsors of PIPA. When I called Senator Boxer’s office, a staffer took several minutes to look up her position on PIPA and then gave me the wrong answer. Clearly, not enough people have expressed their opinion if our senator’s Oakland office doesn’t know this answer immediately. The cynical thing to do is assume that members of Congress are acting purely in their own financial interests. That may be true for some, but just as many believe that they are doing the right thing. That’s because we suck at presenting our side. Getting the word out Unfortunately, Silicon Valley lost one of its best and smartest advocates in Washington when The Washington Post eliminated the technology columnist position held by Rob Pegoraro. In a move that still boggles my mind, the Post decided it needed more rewrites of tech blog stories and the latest iPhone rumors than substantive discussions of technology policy. (Disclosure: Rob is a friend.) Educating the media is an ongoing process. Much as Congress has a lot to worry about, so do many journalists. A mainstream journalist might be covering dozens of different topics. While many readers know my work from what I’ve written on VentureBeat and other technology blogs, I’ve also spent a substantial portion of the last year talking with other journalists about the economics of the deals space, mobile technologies and antitrust. We need to help journalists separate the real issues from the bogus privacy scares, like Google’s StreetView WiFi data collection. These are complex topics and we are the experts. We need to share that expertise, even if sometimes things seem really basic and obvious to us. (I once explained to a reporter for a major business publication who was doing a story about privatization of airports what a Jetway is.) Educating the public Think about how much buzz a Google doodle creates among ordinary people. We can use a similar tool to advocate against SOPA. Here’s one example of how: When you do a search on Google, you’d get only one result. Under that result would be a link that explains SOPA and provides contact information for your representatives in Congress. If you went to share a photo or a link on Facebook, you’d get a message that you can’t share the link. Again, there would be an explanation of SOPA. These campaigns could be frequency capped so that each user only experiences it once. This would be substantially more effective than relying on users to read op-eds or media coverage. This is essentially the same advice that VCs give to entrepreneurs: Instead of walking in with a pitch deck (a long story hypothesizing about the effect of SOPA), come in with a demo (a real-life illustration of what may happen if SOPA passes). Show, don’t tell. The campaigns could also be targeted. You would only see them if you live in a district or a state where your representatives support SOPA. This may sound extreme, but it’s not. Cable companies and TV networks do things like this during carriage disputes. Networks will run crawls across their programming with messages like “Time Warner Cable is trying to take away your television. Call them and tell them you want to keep it.” Cable operators will run ads saying things like “Fox is trying to keep you from seeing the World Series.” As a product guy, I’m not a fan of breaking products and damaging the user experience. But something like this is better than the alternatives if SOPA passes. Individual action still matters I still send out paper birthday cards; they often elicit a positive response because people recognize that it takes a lot more effort than the three seconds it takes to write on someone’s Facebook wall. The same is true with Congress. A phone call, written letter or a personal visit count disproportionately because they take more effort. While writing this piece, I called both of my senators and lodged my opposition to PIPA. If you’re a California resident, try calling Feinstein’s office at (415) 393-0707 and Boxer’s office at (510) 286-8537. If you’re not, find your own representatives online. More than just SOPA If others view us as weak, they will keep pushing harder. Things that we think are obscene today will seem tame tomorrow. Although this has been framed as an us-against-them debate, it’s also important to recognize that Hollywood creates content that people value. And we create great technology that can help distribute that content to the right people more efficiently. It’s a relationship where both sides benefit. But we need to ensure that we’re on equal footing. Beyond Hollywood, there are more reasons to cozy up to Washington: patent reform, immigration, spectrum allocation and antitrust will become even more important to the future of Silicon Valley. Companies like Fitbit are facing the prospect of regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. As the reach of Silicon Valley expands into finance, medicine and other areas, we will face more entrenched players with strong lobbies. It’s tempting to say that “Washington doesn’t get it” or “the media don’t get it,” just like some say “consumers don’t get it.” We need to educate Congress, the media and the public about our industry, not just when major legislation like SOPA is on the line, but year round. Ideally, we’d stop really bad legislation from getting to this point. We need to apply the same creativity that we use to create great consumer products to advocating for good technology policy. So far, we’ve been less creative than a Hollywood slasher film. For more SOPA coverage, check out our SOPA category page and some key stories below:
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