China approves search giant's £7.9bn bid for MMI but says the Android OS must remain stay free for at least the next five years

Authorities in China have put a surprising condition on their approval of Google's $12.5bn (£7.9bn) bid to buy the US phone and set-top box maker Motorola Mobility (MMI): that the Android operating system must remain available to all for free for the next five years at least.

The Chinese approval, granted on Saturday, was the last regulatory obstacle in the way of the acquisition, which was inked in August 2011 and is expected to close this week. Previous approvals had come from the US, European Union, and Israel.

The takeover will be Google's largest ever. The expressed reason for acquiring MMI is its 17,000-strong patent portfolio, many of them relating to mobile phones, so that Google can fight back in multinational lawsuits from companies including Apple and Microsoft relating to Android devices.

The precondition on Android's remaining free for at least five years – slightly longer than it has so far been available to phone manufacturers, who first saw it at the end of 2007 – suggests that the Chinese government wants to ensure that the burgeoning number of Chinese handset makers now producing phones and other products based around Android will not be threatened by Google trying to close the platform just as they are dependent on it.

Though there is no indication that Google would ever shut off access to Android's code – because the platform of 250m devices thrives from being used by a wide number of companies – it has restricted it once, when it limited access to the source code of its Honeycomb version 3.0 for tablets in 2011.

But with Android adoption soaring, especially in China, the Honeycomb move looks more like a blip.

Motorola Mobility is involved in a number of patent fights in the US and Germany with Apple and Microsoft, which led last week to an import ban on Motorola products into the US, and in Germany has forced Apple to disable push notification to its devices.

By acquiring Motorola, Google is for the first time taking over a company which makes hardware – in MMI's case, phones, tablets and set-top boxes.

That has led to concerns among some rival Android makers that it will compete directly – which Google has aimed to assuage by insisting that it will effectively run it at arms' length.

Instead, it would use MMI's patent portfolio to fight back against the lawsuits affecting Android handset makers including Samsung, HTC, and others.

But MMI has run into trouble with competition authorities in Europe, where its assertion of standards-essential patents (SEPs) that should be licensed freely to all comers on an equal basis, in lawsuits against Apple and Motorola, led in April to the opening of an investigation by the European Commission's antitrust authorities. That questioned whether MMI abused its SEP rights in lawsuits.

Patents observers have noted that while Apple and Microsoft have pledged not to assert SEPs in lawsuits where they are licensed, Google made no such commitment relating to MMI's patents ahead of the takeover.

The EC and US are also deliberating separately on whether some Google activities relating to search and advertising breach antitrust laws.

The US Justice Department found no evidence that Google's ownership of Motorola Mobility would lessen competition in a mobile device market that is becoming increasingly important as more people connect to the internet on smartphones and tablet computers instead of desktops and laptops.

The union with Motorola Mobility will open new opportunities and pose potentially troublesome challenges for a management team that so far has concentrated on internet search, ad sales and other software-driven online services.

Motorola Mobility's expertise in mobile devices and set-top boxes for cable TV will allow Google to play an even more influential role in shaping the future of hand-held computing and home entertainment.

The $12.5bn price paid by Google is more than the combined amount that Google has paid for the 185 other acquisitions that it has completed since going public in 2004.

 

What happened when we got three innovative minds together to debate the state of the world's economy?

 

Conversation starter

Microsoft has joined the social networking revolution after unveiling its own So.cl with an emphasis on meeting new people.

So.cl is all about sharing information, such as websites and articles. Users can type in the topic they are interested in into a search bar, which in turn will bring up a list of material on that subject.?

By sharing your findings, users can prompt discussions with other friends on So.cl while strangers with similar interests can also join in.

Videos can also be added to a chat, which Microsoft has dubbed a “video party”, so a group of football fans for example, will be able to collaborate clips of the weekend’s action before discussing what their favourite goal was.

Microsoft also hopes the service will introduce people to new topics as well as help make new friends and acquaintances.

So.cl is available to try now by visiting the website www.so.cl.

Tags: Social networks So.cl Microsoft Facebook

 

Microsoft launches own social network with So.cl. originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 21 May 2012 10:00:39 +0100

 

At least 15 UAE Facebook or Twitter accounts have been shut down by order of the Dubai Police this year, The National reports,with ‘electronic crime’ cases more than doubling from...

 

Iceland's media haven, doubts about social media in the Arab Spring and culture secretary Ed Vaizey's fishy metaphors: Tom Midlane winds up Manchester's great ideas fest with his head abuzz

Star turn on day two of the FutureEverything conference is Birgitta Jónsdóttir, the Icelandic MP, hacktivist, and poet, who played a major role in Wikileaks' famous Collateral Murder video exposing war crimes in Iraq by US soldiers. She's here to discuss the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative and direct democracy, and instantly earns the room's trust by admitting to falling asleep during boring committee meetings.

Jónsdóttir's talk focuses around a central question: What is democracy? As she puts it:

Is it just voting every four years for a party whose manifesto we haven't read?

She derides the politics of left v right as "a dinosaur, a thing of the past," and asks us instead to ask ourselves who writes our laws. Her own answer is simple: lobbyists, with parliamentarians on hand only to process laws "like McDonalds burgers".

Our current democratic system is, according to Jónsdóttir, a "multi-headed dictatorship", and she cites Iceland's calamitous fall from most developed country in the world in 2007 (according to the UN Human Development Index) to the hardest-hit victim in the 2008 banking crash the following year as evidence of "a serious system error" in global politics.

Her solution? The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a parliamentary proposal unanimously approved in 2010 to turn Iceland into a safe haven for freedom of information and expression. Jónsdóttir also draws a hearty round of applause when she reveals she's just been victorious in suing the US government over the NDAA (National Defence Authorisation Act) which allows the US military to arrest anyone, anywhere on suspicion of being a terrorist. "I'm a cyber terrorist!" she declares gleefully.

Her talk repeatedly emphasises the need for citizens to participate in building a better society and move beyond mass consumerism. And as befits a former unemployed poet, she's got a lovely turn of phrase – at one point she tells us:

We're like a lobster, it's really cosy in the warm water, we don't realise we're dead until we start to boil.

Jónsdóttir signs off on an optimistic note with a self-penned poem that makes me long for the days when politicians like Michael Foot actually seemed interested in language and the arts, rather than just being managerial technocrats.

Three other talks touch on social media's role in civil unrest. First up, Sanaz Raji discusses the media fanfare around the role of social media in the Arab Spring. She says it is too glib to categorise Egypt as a 'Facebook revolution', Syria as the 'YouTube uprising', and Tunisia as a 'Twitter revolt', and gloss over the material and moral force of the millions of Egyptians, Syrians and Tunisians who took to the streets.

Raji discusses the role of 30-year-old Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim, head of marketing for Google Middle East and North Africa, whose Facebook page 'We are all Khaled Saeed; helped fuel the uprising. Ghonim has been quoted as saying "If you want to free a society, just give them internet access," but Raji says she feels activists like Ghonim are "techno deterministic", giving revolution a shiny, western face and fetishising the net as an autonomous sphere, while ignoring groups like the Muslim Brotherhood who don't comfortably fit into their westernized picture.

Later in the day we hear from Bilal Randeree, Social Media and Online Producer for Al Jazeera English. He reiterates the point that the cataclysmic Arab uprisings in 2011 were the result of vast human energy and effort, not the mythical power of social media, and discusses Ethan Zuckerman's fascinating Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism. Randeree is honest enough to acknowledge that web archives can be a double-edged sword – while for the reader Al Jazeera is a source of knowledge about the world, it's also monitored closely by repressive governments.

Farida Vis, a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, throws a more domestic light on the issue in discussing her work with the Guardian's Reading the Riots project. She documents the explosive growth in social media – in 2005, when she was analysing the online response to Hurricane Katrina, there were 235 Flickr pages by 106 individuals, whereas during the UK riots last year there were 2.6m tweets by 700,000 individuals.

Particularly interesting is her discussion of the role of Twitter rumours in the riots, which included the 'fact' that a 16-year-old girl had been beaten up by the police, rioters were cooking their own burgers in a chain of McDonalds, animals had been released from London zoo and, my personal favourite, that the London Eye (lest we forget, a large metallic structure) had been set on fire.

Elsewhere Juliana Roach discussed ushahidi.com ("Ushahidi" is the Swahili word for witness), her open source site which allows users to crowdsource crisis information. Originally created to help document instances of violence in Kenya (and remove what she calls the 'deniability factor' of massacres), it's since been used to create the Christchurch Recovery Map after the earthquake in New Zealand last year, giving users information on the nearest sources of food, water, toilets, fuel, ATMs and medical care. As Roach evangelically puts it:

Geeks also want to save the world. The thing is, with their skills, now they can.

Culture Minister Ed Vaizey joins a panel for a discussion on The Space, and weighs in with some frankly terrifying metaphors about the need for "whales to mate with minnows". Vaizey calls The Space "the most significant cultural intervention since the creation of the arts council," although exactly what it is remains elusive as I have to dash off to catch the panel on Net Neutrality, which sees Loz Kaye, leader of Pirate Party UK, face off against James Blessing, Chairman of the Internet Service Providers' Association. Kaye argues that net neutrality is under threat, but Blessing counters that it never really existed in the first place – the Internet, he points out, grew out of ARPANET, a military network created by the US Department of Defense.

The panel discussion also includes a fascinating presentation by artists Alison Craighead and John Thomson, showcasing their video work A Live Portrait of Tim Berners-Lee: An Early Warning System, in which they use two webcams in locations on the opposite side of the globe to create a monochrome portrait of the founding father of the Internet, with the image of Berners-Lee inverting every 12 hours as day turns to night.

As the conference winds to a close, my mind is abuzz with new ideas but my my attention span is shot to pieces. After two days in which our dreams of a glistening, frictionless techno utopia have been slightly overshadowed by the Museum of Science and Industry's stop-start wi-fi coverage, I leave feeling like I'm in need of a brisk hill walk.

You can read Tom's report on day one of FutureEverything here.

Tom Midlane is a freelance journalist based in the north-west. He has written for Leeds Guide and DeHavilland, the parliamentary monitoring service, and is a regular contributor to Manchester-based news site Mancunian Matters. His blog is here and you can also contact him on Twitter @goldenlatrine

 

With the Internet Week taking New York by storm for the last few days, it has been yet another busy week in the media world. Here’s our selection of news and...

 

Google Chrome has been long expected to leapfrog Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) to take its position as the Web’s most used browser and, according to data from Statcounter, the momentous change of...

 

Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Senator Rehman Malik, has taken to Twitter to explain that, following the Twitter blockage over the weekend, the government has contacted Interpol to take up the issue...

 

Do you feel guilty when you read a newspaper? You probably should, according to BuzzFeed’s co-founder Jonah Peretti, who has “a moral issue” with print publishing and its environmental impact....

 

So.cl has been around for some time now, but it only recently ripped off its mask, and barred its teeth to the world. Microsoft is spinning the social app as...

 

PAYG and contract

UK operator Three has confirmed that it will be selling the Sony Xperia U on both contract and Pay as You Go.?

Unveiled in February at Mobile World Congress, the phone features a 3.5-inch FWVGA Reality Display touchscreen, 1GHz dual-core processor and 5-megapixel camera with 720 HD recording.

The specs would suggest the phone will be available at a mid-tier price point. We say “suggest” as Three isn’t ready to reveal pricing or availability details at present.

The third and smallest of the Sony Xperia phones to be unveiled at MWC (the Xperia P and Xperia S being the other two), the base of the Sony Xperia U will change colour matching the primary shade that happens to be on the screen. Very retro.

Orange has already stated that they will also be selling an exclusive white version of the Sony Xperia U before the end of June.?

The phone is expected to launch on Android 2.3, though an upgrade to Ice Cream sandwich (Android 4.0) will soon follow.

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Tags: Phones three Sony Xperia U Android

 

Sony Xperia U will be available on Three originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 21 May 2012 10:52:00 +0100

 

Later today, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung head Choi Gee-sung will sit down together for the first of two days of court-ordered mediation.

Like a couple of warring parents, the US courts have decided it's time to lock the two together in a room and make them address their differences because, well, won't somebody think of the children?

Oh to be a fly on the wall in that meeting, which is just the latest episode of the great tech soap opera that is the patent war between the two tech giants being fought in courts around the globe.

Trade it in for a younger model

Both Apple and Samsung insist that the other has infringed on their patents, while each insists that they haven't infringed on the other's patents at all.

We have no evidence to suggest that either company has come out with "I know you are but what am I?", but at this point we really wouldn't be surprised.

The US case is heading to trial at the end of July, when courts will decide if Apple's iPad and iPhone or Samsung's Galaxy Tab and Galaxy S line up are indeed the intellectual property of the other.

It will be a big win for whoever comes out on top, as the States is one of the biggest mobile devices markets and could lead to a sales ban and hefty fines for the loser.

Since it's unlikely that this level-headed mediation plan will actually offer any tangible results, gadget fans will be forced to come together to concoct a scheme to get Apple and Samsung to resolve their differences, possibly involving twins.

No! Wait! Identical products? That's the last thing we need...

 

iFree Innovations outlines the benefits of its personal finance app for iPhone and Android

Third up in our Apps Pitch series is finance app CoinKeeper, which was recently released for iPhone and Android. Ilya Chernetskiy, head of product group at developer iFree Innovations, explains all:

What is your app called and what does it do?

The app is called CoinKeeper and it's a personal finance management tool.
Lots of people feel the need for being financially sustainable, spending less and saving more, but to do that you need to record your transactions, how much we spend and what for.

We know how boring that can be, even if you rely on the services that track your credit card spendings you still have cash and other types of different accounts. So the problem that we address is making recording transactions fast and sort of fun. We also make the overall view of your money and budget very visual and simple.

What devices is it on, and what are your plans?

Right now there are iPhone and Android apps, and we plan to launch an iPad version soon. Windows Phone 7, Android tablet and web interface will follow later.

What is the business model and why have you chosen it?

We released a paid iPhone app first, and this is still on a paid business model (cost £1.87), but to give more people an opportunity to try our approach to financial management we decided to move towards a try-and-buy and freemium models.

So, the Android app is free of charge with 15 days trial and three subscription plans after it: 62p for 1 month, £1.87 for 6 months or £6.20 for a lifetime subscription.

What's innovative about the app - what sets it apart?

It's amazing how little financial management tools have changed over the years. Games are changing much faster and with the beginning of the iPhone era they have rapidly evolved from button-controlled to touch-based, but finance apps are still mostly "tables and charts" with lots of fields to fill about transactions.

So we took a different approach - the main screen of the app represents all your income sources, accounts and expense categories in a form of coin icons.
To make the transactions simple you drag an account icon (i.e. Cash) and move it to expense category (i.e. Street food), type an amount and press "Today" (or "Yesterday" or choose another date) to finish.

Very fast, intuitive and a little game-like. Some people even told us they tend to spend more often at first because they loved this gesture and animation, of course we didn't want that to happen but still we were very happy we managed to create a product which is not only useful, but also beautiful and engaging.

What's the competition - who else is out there in this area?

There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of personal management apps on the market, but none of them has the same approach as ours.

There is strong competition from services which access and parse your bank account, making it unnessesary to record some transactions manually, but they need to make relationships with the banks, and it is almost impossible to ensure coverage for all the countries and all the banks. But we certainly will move in that direction too.

What are your future plans for the app?

We have lots of plans: most of them are in two areas. One is how to make transaction recording even faster and nonintrusive – apart from parsing bank accounts we are thinking of check scans, voice input and some other very innovative ideas.

The second issue is helping people understand what is happening with their money. What's the forecast, how will their life change with current incomes and spendings, and give a piece of advice on that. We don't want to overload the app with dozens of charts: we want to give people clear answers.

Tell us more about the company behind it?

I-Free Innovations, a subsidiary of i-Free Ltd., features a unique team of professionals dedicated to the development and publishing of applications and games for smartphones and new network devices.

We are constantly engaged in the research of new prospective technologies and approaches to application development. For example, we have a large trending project "Everfriends" – a virtual assistant app with fun and helpful 3D characters powered by voice recognition, voice synthesis and nature language processing.

We also have several utility apps like Grocery Mate, a simple but handy shopping list app, or Shoptimus - a mobile shopping mall. We also act as publisher for games: recently we launched an addictive puzzle game Zombie Granny on Android, and soon we shall be launching two beautiful Playstation Network games that were adapted, or better said, re-invented for iOS: Cuboid and Magic Orbz.

 

What's new on the app stores on Monday 21 May 2012

A selection of 26 new and notable apps for you today:

Moshi Monsters: Moshlings

There have been a couple of branded Moshi Monsters apps before, but this is the first actually published by Mind Candy, the maker of the hugely popular online world for children. It's focused on the Moshlings characters from the site, with more than 60 to personalise with digital stickers and share with friends and family.
iPhone / iPad

Tom Daley Dive 2012

In good time for the Olympic Games, british diver Tom Daley has his own iPhone and iPad game, released by Chelsea Apps Factory and sponsored by Adidas. It's a 3D diving game where you twist, duck, somersault and bellyflop into a pool. Well, three of the four.
iPhone / iPad

Telmap Navigator

Telmap has launched a free version of its satnav software Telmap Navigator for BlackBerry, with listings and reviews built in, as well as support for RIM's BBM messaging service.
BlackBerry

Peppa Pig - Polly Parrot

Peppa Pig makes her second official app-earance on Android, courtesy of P2 Games. Here, you get four mini-games and a digital sticker book to play with, including the Talking Parrot game familiar from Peppa's Nintendo DS outing.
Android

Tivoli Radio

Radio manufacturer Tivoli Audio has launched its own iPhone app, which offers a curated selection of streaming radio stations from around the world, from Swiss jazz to Irish folk.
iPhone

Shop Scan Save

Shop Scan Save is the latest shopping app aiming to save money – in this case, with a UK focus. The app offers deals on brands from KitKat and Lenor through to Lurpak, Jack Daniels and Bacardi Breezer, with 22,500 stores in its network.
Android / iPhone

Look & Learn: Animals Vol. 1

National Geographic has launched an app aimed at children, encouraging "a child's awareness of the natural world through beautiful photography, animal sounds, and age-appropriate learning games". The three mini-games are Animal Bounce, Animal Match and Animal Words.
iPhone / iPad

CNET Global

Technology news site CNET has a new Android app providing its news, videos and podcasts from around the world, as well as product reviews, comments, user reviews and social features.
Android

Everyme

Soon we'll need a private social network for all the private social networking app. The latest looking to 'do a Path' is Everyme, which says it believes "most stories are meant to be shared with your closest friends and family, not with 500 random acquaintances". Which means "intimate Circles" of contacts.
Android

Nectar

UK loyalty scheme Nectar has ported its official app to Windows Phone according to WPCentral, although I can't get the Windows Phone Marketplace link to work. If it is live, expect a working link from Nectar's official apps webpage, which is the link above.
Windows Phone

CNNMoney for iPad

CNNMoney has launched a new iPad app offering stock prices, personalised news feeds, alerts and business/financial news, joining its existing smartphone version.
iPad

23snaps

Photography app 23snaps wants to help parents capture shots of their children and share them securely with friends and family – essentially a private social network for baby snaps. With the added benefit (possibly) that you won't be spamming your non-baby-interested friends on Facebook...
iPhone

Bejeweled HD

PopCap Games has released an all-new version of its Bejeweled puzzle game for iPad, with four modes of jewel-swapping action and visuals optimised for the latest iPad's Retina display.
iPad

ClickCard*

Android app ClickCard* is the latest attempt at taking business cards digital, with a card that can open the phone dialler, email, Google Maps, websites, and social networking profiles.
Android

Chelsea FC

Just in time for the club's Champions League triumph, Chelsea FC has an official app for Nokia phones, developed by InfoMedia. It includes news, videos, live match stats and commentary, and live streaming audio from games.
Nokia

Lee Clow's Beard

Cult Twitter spoof Lee Clow's Beard now has its own app, allowing you to "hear the beard" or "be the beard" – said beard belonging to advertising industry legend Lee Clow.
iPhone

Total Commander

One for power Android users, this: a smartphone version of desktop file-manager software Total Commander, with an impressive spread of file management features, and languages support.
Android

Orient-Express Traveller

The latest travel-browsing app for iPad comes from the Orient-Express, without a murder in sight. This focuses on tourist hotspots with photography, travel tips and social sharing features.
iPad

Tweetraffic

Tweetraffic is a nice idea, although it will need a lot of people using it to be at its most useful. It's about sending and receiving traffic info, including reports of jams, accidents and roadworks for other users to see on a map.
iPhone

CrossDJ

The music technology team behind the CrossDJ software have launched an iPad version, promising a blend of professional-grade mixing features and intuitive controls.
iPad

Hojoki

With numerous cloud services entering the market, how to keep track of all your stuff on remote servers? Hojoki wants to help, promising to "make all your cloud apps work as one". That means hooking into Google Docs, Dropbox, Evernote, Basecamp and other services.
Android

Pro Zombie Soccer

iOS undead-football hit Pro Zombie Soccer has made the jump to Android. "if you want an excuse to kick a soccer ball into space, realign an orbital weapons platform and launch a death-ray to explode the heads of the zombies sneaking into your soccer field – then THIS IS IT..."
Android

Gardeners' World Magazine - 100 Best Plants

The BBC's flagship gardening magazine has a new iPad spin-off: a selection of 100 best plants with all the information you'll need to make them flourish in your own back-patch.
iPad

Convo

Convo is an app for Android smartphones and tablets offering a business-focused mobile social network, designed for teams to communicate while on the go. Looking for a piece of Yammer's enterprise action, in other words.
Android

SmugMug

Photography community SmugMug has a new Windows Phone app, helping people to browse the day's most popular images, and log in to see their own, and share shots directly from their handset.
Windows Phone

Apptoyz Alien Attack

The latest appcessory action comes from this Android game, which is designed to be used with the gun-shaped Apptoyz Appblaster peripheral. The game is an augmented-reality shoot 'em up with hosts of aliens to shoot.
Android

 

After features underpinning its soon-to-be-released Galaxy S III smartphone leaked, Samsung is reported to have begun blocking unofficial requests generated by its S-Voice service from unsupported devices. The S-Voice APK,...

 

Where did all the fabois go?

Microsoft is claiming something of a PR win over arch rival Apple, after a senior exec reportedly revealed that its Windows Phone devices are outselling the iPhone in China after just two months.…

 

Motorola announced in a brief blog post that some of its smartphones won't be eligible for upgrades to the newest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich.

That's because Motorola says the update won't "improve" the devices. It doesn't give much more detail than that.

We first came across Motorola's announcement on Engadget.

To say Ice Cream Sandwich won't improve devices sounds pretty insane to us. It's full of a ton of awesome features that you won't find in the older versions of Android. In many ways, Ice Cream Sandwich outshines Apple's iOS. 

It gets worse though.

Take a look at Motorola's upgrade roadmap for Ice Cream Sandwich. Some phones aren't slated to get the upgrade until Q4 this year. That'll be almost a full year since Google released Ice Cream Sandwich.

By the time Motorola gets around to upgrading some of its Android phones, Google will have already moved on to the next version of Android.

It's pretty embarassing that Google's own hardware company is a year behind with Android updates.

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Join the conversation about this story »

 

The Samsung Focus 2 4G LTE pleasantly surprised me. I've had it for about a week now and I don't want to give it back. That's how much I like it.

And that says a lot about Windows Phone. This was my first time using one for an extended period of time.

The 4-inch Super AMOLED screen makes it easy to read on and I loved how clear and bright it was. Surfing the web was fast thanks to AT&T's 4G LTE. I didn't experience any hang ups.

I only found a few drawbacks. The Focus 2 only comes with 8 GB of storage, which probably won't be enough if you like to store a bunch of music and movies on your device. Luckily, you can add more storage with a micro SD card.

As with all Windows Phones, the app store needs a lot of work. There isn't nearly as large of an app selection as you'll find on Android and iPhone. I missed using SoundCloud, one of my favorite apps.

Still, those drawbacks are relatively minor, considering the Focus 2's incredible price.

I can't believe this phone costs $50. (With a two-year contract, of course.) If the iPhone wasn't so ubiquitous, then I would be OK with the Focus 2. It's a steal. 

The phone is a nice size and fits into a pocket easily.

Although the glossy finish did make the phone a little slippery to hold.

Compared to the iPhone, the phones look pretty similar. The obvious difference is the 4-inch screen on the Focus 2.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Please follow SAI: Tools on Twitter and Facebook.

 

Samsung appears to have softened its stance ahead of court-enforced peace talks with Apple, raising hope that this week's summit could see the beginning of the end of the patent wars.

The head of Samsung Mobile JK Shin and CEO Choi Gee-sung are heading to the United States ahead of the meeting with Apple boss Tim Cook on Monday.

Samsung vs Apple
Samsung 'blatantly copied' iPhone and iPad
Court orders Samsung/Apple peach talks
Opinion: Should rivals be banned on Apple's say-so?

Shin had previously indicated he would offer "no compromise" with Apple in the battle that has seen the companies file suit against each other in nice countries around the world.

However, he told reporters on Sunday: "There is still a big gap in the patent war with Apple but we still have several negotiation options including cross-licensing."

End in sight?

If Apple is agreeable, it could mean the two companies could possibility reach an accord on allowing each other access to the intellectual property being debated.

However, it's difficult to see Tim Cook's charges sacrificing their long-held believe that Samsung "blatantly copied" the iPhone and iPad for its Galaxy Tab slates and Galaxy smartphones.

The respective parties are meeting following orders from a California judge, who is seemingly as bored with these too going at each other as the rest of the world.

Let's hope the end is in sight.

 

Offensive tweets put officials in a spin

Tweets offensive to Islam have prompted Pakistan’s government to block Twitter – but a strong public reaction saw the ban lifted after eight hours.…

 

A burst of game stories to get you started today

QA tester tweets revised Wii U controller design > Games Rader

A QA tester at Traveller's Tales Games (makers of the LEGO series) going by the Twitter handle @MATTYBOOSH has posted a picture to Twitter of what appears to a revised version of the Wii U controller. This correlates with rumors we'd heard earlier this year of the Wii U tablet seeing some redesigns before being shown off again at E3 next month.

The big change appears to be a swap to analogue controllers, rather than the the circular buttons on the 'previous' design.

Max Payne takes UK number one > MCV

Rockstar's Max Payne 3 has beaten Blizzard's Diablo III to the No.1 spot in the UKIA GfK Chart-Track All Formats Top 40.

It's Rockstar's first No.1 since LA Noire almost a year ago. It's the first time that a Max Payne title has claimed No.1 in the UK, bettering the week-one performance of Max Payne 2 by a ratio of 10-1.

As the story points out, the figures don't include the digital sales of Diablo III via Blizzard's battle.net service.

David Cage: the games industry is too focsed on violence > Develop

An intertesting interview with the founder of Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream.

"All I want to do is offer some diversity to the medium. I want to give people the chance to buy something other than ten different first person shooters and RPGs.

There should be games for all ages, all tastes. Whatever is possible with interactive entertainment should be explored, and I don't think we're seeing that right now.

The industry is too far balanced towards kids and teenagers. It's too focused on violence."

Possibly true, but then Quantic's last game did have scenes in which the lead character has to cut off his own finger, then shoot a drug dealer in cold blood.

Video game used in stroke rehabilitation > Engadget

Think the Wii has the market cornered on gaming rehab? Think again -- neuroscientists at Newcastle University are developing a series of motion controlled video games to make stroke rehab more fun and accessible. The team's first title, dubbed Circus Challenge, lets patients digitally throw pies, tame lions and juggle to help them build strength and regain motor skills. As players progress, the game ratchets up its difficulty, presumably to match pace with their recovery.

 

In the battle for first place between blockbuster newcomers Max Payne 3 and Diablo III, the winner is ...

UKIE Games Charts© compiled by GfK Chart-Track

 

PS3/Xbox 360; £39.99; cert 18+; Capcom

In this day and age, making video games is a hair-raising equation of risk versus reward: the risk being Hollywood blockbuster-sized budgets, and the reward being the potential to generate Hollywood blockbuster-sized income.

That's why so many developers and publishers have recently opted to play things safe by making low-budget mobile, social or download games. So Capcom deserves all the plaudits known to mankind – it's difficult to imagine how it could have undertaken a riskier project than Dragon's Dogma.

Not only is it a full-blown, open-world RPG (and therefore eye-wateringly expensive to develop), but it's the Japanese developer-publisher's first, which partly explains why it is arriving in such an unheralded manner. Luckily – and a tad unexpectedly – it's shot through with quality, and surely destined to become a cult classic.

Dragon's Dogma starts in time-honoured fashion, as far as RPGs are concerned, with an extensive character customisation phase, the ability to choose your sex and character class (warrior, mage, ranged-weapons specialist and all the usual suspects are available) and a typically mediaeval setting.

The intro shows a dragon arriving to terrorise your sleepy seaside town; you take up arms against it, but it singles you out and rips your heart out. However, you miraculously survive, and find yourself lionised as The Arisen (and not the first Arisen, you learn, in the land of Gransys). So you embark on a quest to find the dragon that stole your heart, saving Gransys from the forces of evil in the process.

So far, so bog-standard, you might think. But the whole Arisen thing has a point beyond adding a layer of back-story. Your semi-undead status means that so-called pawns will follow you: also semi-undead, they won't act autonomously, but otherwise seem like perfectly normal beings. So, you get to pick a main pawn, who stays with you throughout the whole game and levels up as you do, plus two other pawns, thus generating a full questing group.

As you play, you encounter countless supplementary pawns, who you can hire on the spot. It's crucial to do just that, since not only can you adjust your party's skill-base that way (if, say, you need to draft in an extra mage), but you can find replacement pawns with better skills and stats than your current ones. You can also hire and fire pawns at rift-stones, found it most settlements, forts and the like.

The pawn system works beautifully as, indeed, do most other aspects of Dragon's Dogma. It looks pretty good – something like a cross between Skyrim and Dark Souls. The crucial battle system is exemplary: as you learn new attacks, you can assign them to your button of choice, and you can acquire stat and skill-enhancing perks.

Early on, you learn the importance of your kit. If you're a warrior, for example, a better sword makes your attacks way more effective – and there are three upgrade levels for each item of your equipment (upgrading requires workmen, money plus raw materials). It's tempting to pick up every item you come across, but too much kit makes you awfully sluggish, so you learn to store inessential kit and distribute the rest among your pawns. Again, the inventory system is pretty well designed.

All Dragon's Dogma's processes, then, are nicely designed, as you would expect with competitors such as Skyrim out there. But it could still fall into the trap of being generic. Happily, it doesn't – indeed, it has loads of character, and plenty of the quirkiness for which Japanese games are renowned.

There are some superb, mythology-inspired enemies to fight, such as griffins and chimeras, which are part-serpent, part-lion and part-goat. And, taking a cue from Shadow of the Colossus, you can grab onto them and climb towards their weak spots – hacking away at them, for example, in mid-air.

While there are countless sub-quests to perform (such as eliminating bands of thieves, clearing mines of ogres, shadowing cultists and so on), the main storyline sees you increasing your renown until the Duke invites you into his castle, at which point things really begin to take off. Typically, your first encounter with the Duke sees you wearing a jester's hat, and being caught in the Duchess's bedchamber lands you with a spell in the dungeon.

It isn't, of course, perfect: like all open-world RPGs, you will encounter the odd bug and moment of raggedness. You can lose something like half an hour's play if, say, you encounter a major enemy unexpectedly at night having forgotten to save for a while; and your pawns can annoy you with their repetitive banter (although you can actually influence your main pawn's conversational skills).

But those are minor gripes in the grand RPG scheme of things, and Dragon's Dogma has everything that RPG-heads crave – you can lose yourself in tinkering around, collecting items, finding arcane quests and seeking random enemies for days. It's reassuringly complex, and astonishingly well-executed given that this is Capcom's first attempt at such a game.

It may apparently have come from nowhere, but Dragon's Dogma has the wherewithal to go places. If you've extracted all you can from Skyrim, this will fill the resulting void in your life.

• Game reviewed on PlayStation 3

Rating: 4/5

 

The place to talk about games and other things that matter

And, here we go again, with another week of game chatter. But what did you do over the weekend? Diablo III? Max Payne 3? Minecraft? Pes? Do tell.

 

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By now, Mario's cheerful, sing-song voice is as endemic to the character as his mustache and overalls. Sprightly proclamations of "It'sa me, Mario!" and the like have endeared voice actor Charles Martinet's work to the hearts and minds of millions, but it might surprise you to know that Martinet's first stint as the man behind the 'stache wasn't Super Mario 64. In fact, it wasn't a Nintendo game at all.

Martinet's first appearance as the prolific plumber was actually Mario's Game Gallery, a digital collection of card and board games for DOS, Windows and Mac OS, developed by Presage Software and published by Interplay. Mario's Game Gallery predates Super Mario 64 by roughly a year, but as you can tell from the collection of sound files above, Martinet had already settled into a ridiculous, heartwarming and hilarious groove as Mario Mario.

It's physically impossible to make it all the way through this video without laughing. In fact, it might be physically impossible just to make it all the way through this video.

Continue reading Stiq Figures, May 7 - 13: I'mma can't use any of my dominoes edition

Stiq Figures, May 7 - 13: I'mma can't use any of my dominoes edition originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 20 May 2012 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What's your game called and what's it about?

Zytron II is a neon glow, twin-stick, multiplayer, scrolling shoot-em-up for Windows PCs. I like to describe it as a scrolling version of Geometry Wars.

What's with the "II" in the Zytron title? Is this game a sequel?

Yes it is. Zytron II is the sequel to my original 1990 C64 game Zytron Megablast, Sold though the classic Commodore 64 magazine of the time, Zzap64.

Continue reading The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Zytron II

The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Zytron II originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 20 May 2012 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Video games aren't neuroscience, unless they're helping stroke victims recover physical function in a scientific, medical capacity: then they're totally neuroscience. The above video shows off Circus Challenge, an action game from Newcastle University and Limbs Alive Ltd designed to help stroke patients regain motor control of their weakened hands and arms.

Circus Challenge uses "next-gen" motion controllers - not the Wii, as other rehab systems have - to have patients fling pies at clowns, juggle, dive and perform other Big Top-inspired feats, with the difficulty progressing as motor skills improve. Newcastle received £1.5 million from the Health Innovation Challenge Fund for its project, and hopes to use the funds to provide remotely monitored, at-home therapy for stroke patients.

Aside from all the philanthropy and innovation in the Circus Challenge project, we think the game design is pretty pretty as well. Check it out for yourself up top.

Newcastle University neuroscientists use video game for stroke rehab originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 20 May 2012 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hawken keeps surprising us. First, we were surprised that the really great-looking mech shooter is being made by an indie studio, then it surprised us to learn that it would be free-to-play. And here's another surprise: Dave Perry's cloud gaming system Gaikai has signed a deal to let players see Hawken running through the service in advance of the planned December 12 release date.

Gaikai allows nearly any game to be streamed directly from its servers to any browser, which means that the first impression of the graphics-intensive Hawken will be playable anywhere Gaikai will run (including on some tablets, and computers of all shapes and sizes). This deal makes a lot of sense from both sides: Hawken needs a large audience to get its free-to-play engine running, and Gaikai could use a big title to connect users to its servers. The Gaikai demo will be on playhawken.com and a few other sites, so eyes open until then.

Continue reading Hawken to be playable via Gaikai prior to official release

Hawken to be playable via Gaikai prior to official release originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 20 May 2012 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Attempts to link last year's Norway shootings to Call of Duty are spectacularly misguided. Moral panic about violent video games is based on prejudice, ignorance and the selective use of flawed research

On June 6th, 1984, the Russian video game Tetris was released, in which players had to build a wall. On June 12th, 1987 - days after the game's third anniversary - President Reagan demanded that Mikhail Gorbachev, "Tear down this wall!" Nobody can disprove that Reagan was an avid player of the game, and it seems almost inevitable that three frustrating years trying to build walls out of misaligned bricks led to the outburst that changed the course of history.

Correlations like these would be lost to us were it not for the efforts of the Labour MP, Keith Vaz. Vaz has worked tirelessly in recent years to demonstrate the link between violent video games and historic acts of violence, tracing the correlation right back to the tragic consequences Rome: Total War inflicted on the Gauls. As far back as 2004, he was attempting to link the murder of Stefan Pakeerah to Manhunter, undeterred by the minor point that his killer didn't have the game. By 2010 he was using an Early Day Motion to tie Counter-Strike to pretty much every newsworthy use of a gun that year.

In recent weeks the tireless MP has used the 2011 Norway attacks to put Call of Duty in his sights. In a new EDM he asks the House of Commons to note "that in his submission of evidence to the court [Anders] Breivik describes how he trained for the attacks using the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare;" and to declare that it "is disturbed that Breivik used the game to help hone his 'target acquisition' and the suggestion that the simulation prepared him for the attacks."

Dealing with Vaz's various claims it's tempting to take him out to a pub, get him extremely drunk, and have "correlation does not equal causation!" tattooed on his forehead while he sleeps. Before that though, it's worth putting all this in context. Let's start by recounting a brief history of video games and violent crime, told through game releases and British Crime Survey figures. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin:

In 1993 Doom was launched, and by the 1995 release of Worms violent crime in the UK stood at over 4 million cases per year. In 1997 Carmageddon was launched, and violent crime dropped by half a million or so. In 1999 Counter-Strike was launched, and violent crime dropped to below 3.5 million cases per year. In 2001 Halo and GTA III were launched, and violent crime fell below 3 million. In 2003 Manhunt was launched, and violent crime fell to just over 2.5 million. In 2005 F.E.A.R. was launched, and violent crime fell to just under 2.5 million. In 2007 Manhunt 2 was launched, and violent crime fell to just over 2 million. Over roughly the same period, video games grew from a minority interest to more than 40% of the UK entertainment market.

It's a good job correlation doesn't imply causation, because if it did then Keith Vaz's argument would be screwed.

In the latest EDM, Vaz invokes Breivik's claim that he used Call of Duty for 'target acquisition training', before calling for greater regulation of first-person shooters and restrictions on violent content. Like a late night kebab, the statement looks superficially fine until you inspect the meat.

Let's start with the awkward fact that Breivik was, in his own words, "generally more the fantasy RPG kind of person – Dragon Age Origins etc., and not so much into first person shooters." He played a bit of Modern Warfare 2 and "learned to love it", having not really liked the original. There's no evidence from his diaries that it played any significant role in his planning, and while he described it as the "probably the best military simulator out there", its hardly the sort of thing that would be used in real training.

As Tom Law wrote, in a superb analysis of Breivik's gaming habits last month that all journalists should read: "He saw it as an interesting tool – a neat distraction – but he certainly didn't need it. The preparations for his killing spree were being played out in his head." Every day, Breivik would perform the same ritual:

"I simulate/meditate while I go for a walk, playing my Ipod in my neighbourhood. This consists of a daily 40 minute walk while at the same time philosophising ideologically / performing self indoctrination and the mental simulation of the operation while listening to motivational and inspiring music. I simulate various future scenarios relating to resistance efforts, confrontations with police, future interrogation scenarios, future court appearances, future media interviews etc."

Quoting Tom Law again: "To put it in less grandiose terms; each day he would walk around and fantasise about killing people," sometimes, apparently, he would do this while listening the to Age of Conan soundtrack. "If Modern Warfare 2 was an influence on Breivik then so was walking; so was chintzy soundtrack music. They are all just fragments of a life dedicated towards an end goal of committing mass-murder." Modern Warfare II generated over a billion dollars in revenue and has been played by tens of millions of people: any effect it had on Anders Breivik must have been pretty damned unique to Anders Breivik.

If Keith Vaz's understanding of Breivik is poor, his grasp of the mechanics of a game like Call of Duty is even shakier. 'Shooting' in an FPS involves spotting something that needs to be clicked on, and doing so in a timely manner. It's about as close to firing a real gun as Space Invaders is to working at NORAD. The game mechanic isn't unique to the genre, nor is it inherently violent; the internet is full of 'click-the-right-dot' reaction-testing games that would train the same skill. Of course paint-balling or Laser Quest would be even better ways to train. Or you could just do what Breivik did, which is get real guns and take shooting lessons.

The more you look at Vaz's arguments, the harder it is to unravel a coherent thread through them. His EDM confuses and conflates three different things: violence, first-person shooters, and games that might help 'target acquisition'. The sprawling and bloated Venn diagram those categories make stretches from Battlefield to Worms 3D via Portal and Angry Birds. Is all violence bad, or is cartoon violence okay? To what extent does the context in which the violence occurs matter? Is shooting humans worse than shooting zombies? How do you separate the effect of violence from the effect of the adrenalin rush you can get from playing almost any kind of game? Is shooting someone in a first-person shooter worse than running someone over in a racing game?

There are obvious parallels between the video game violence debate and fears about porn and sexualization. In both cases, those demanding action seem unwilling or incapable when it comes to properly defining the problem they're tackling, preferring instead to wave airily at a vast collection of stuff they don't really understand and go "yeah, just get rid of that lot please."

The research literature is just as vague. MIT's Professor Harry Jenkins has been a vocal critic of flaws in early studies, that hinted at a link between gaming and violence. He points out that children in studies are often exposed to violence in highly artificial contexts, that their supposed 'aggression' is measured in unrealistic ways (there are some obvious problems with "punching rubber dolls as a marker of real-world aggression" for example), that research fails to account for the ability of humans (and other apes) to "make basic distinctions between play fighting and actual combat", and that correlations in some studies could easily be explained by violent children choosing to play violent video games rather than video games causing children to become more violent.

Telegraph blogger Tom Chivers dug out a fascinating paper by Christopher Ferguson that uncovered significant biases in articles published in the period 1995 to 2007. Ferguson's findings echo the concerns of Harry Jenkins, with a worrying 62% of studies included failing to measure aggression in a standardized or reliable way. "Most of the research (particularly laboratory research) employs unvalidated ad-hoc measures of 'aggression.'"

Professor Daphne Bavelier's Neuron review of the impacts of technology on children looks at longitudinal studies of exposure to violence in all forms of media, in which children are followed for months or years. Once other factors are accounted for, less than 1% of variation in children's violent thoughts, feelings or actions could be explained by exposure to violent media; and Bavelier notes that it's debatable whether "these effects are large enough to be practically relevant." Account for the publication bias that affects large swathes of the literature, and any correlation is dubious at best.

Recently I wrote a little piece on porn in which I said that "the diversity of adult entertainment is so great that just talking about 'porn' as if it's one big pink throbbing homogeneous mass is profoundly ignorant, whether its the subject of a campaign or a research question." I asked whether we would "see the same impact from Maggie Mayhem's feminist porn that we would from Playboy." I said that "lumping the two together is like trying ask, 'do video games make people violent,' without bothering to differentiate between the Grand Theft Auto series and Pacman."

Well, I'll repeat that but with the porn and gaming bits inverted. Chivers points out at his blog that it's hard "to state baldly that there is no link between violent computer games and aggressive behaviour" He's right - you can't prove a negative after all - but I'd add that it's a crappily-defined question in the first place.

Maybe the answer doesn't lie within the ivory towers of academia. Maybe there is a simpler truth to be found in the random anecdotal experiences of the people we know and love. Last week, I asked my followers on Twitter to tell me what impact video games have had on their lives. I've collected all the responses on Storify, but here's a taster of the most heart-breaking:

@hullodave: I used to play The Sims but now I just secretly watch and control the family next door.

@Nebula63: I played Final Fantasy X and tried to destroy false and corrupt religious institutions.

@joannastar: Thanks to final fantasy I now solve arguments by summoning mythical beasts.

@immoral_angeluk: Blinx the timesweeper made be go on a murderous rampage and jewellery heist with a hoover.

@SteveEvans77: I played pacman as a child. This clearly contributed to my munching pills while listening to repetitive music in my late teens.

@mofgimmers: Jet Set Willy made me tidy my mansion really really slowly in a top hat.

@AGBear: After a marathon Mario session, I jumped on a turtle's back and expected it to bounce underfoot. Poor thing never stood a chance

@outatownstrange: Minecraft has led me to build an 8 bit tunnel in my back yard.

These anecdotes are more convincing than any amount of academic research. They tell of real consequences damaging real lives, and lead to one, inescapable question: what does Keith Vaz plan to do about Jet Set Willy?

Follow me on Twitter: @mjrobbins

 

Show your love for video games on Facebook with these neat Timeline cover pictures.

 

Kicking off our series on People, I am going to talk about the importance of culture and fit in the hiring process. What I have to say on this topic is mostly aimed at companies that are going from five employees to five hundred employees, but I do believe it is applicable to companies of all sizes.

I want to start with something I wrote in another MBA Mondays post, on the management team:

Companies are not people. But they are comprised of people. And the people side of the business is harder and way more complicated than building a product is. You have to start with culture, values, and a committment to creating a fantastic workplace. You can't fake these things. They have to come from the top. They are not bullshit. They are everything. There will be things that happen in the course of building a business that will challenge the belief in the leadership and the future of the company. If everyone is a mercenary and there is no shared culture and values, the team will blow apart. But if there is a meaningful culture that the entire team buys into, the team will stick together, double down, and get through those challenging situations.

So this is what you want to create in your hiring process. Some entrepreneurs and CEOs buy into "hire the best talent available" mantra. That can work if everything goes swimmingly well. But as I said, it often does not, and then that approach is fraught with problems. The other approach is hire for culture and fit. That is the approach I advocate.

Hiring for culture and fit does not and should not mean "hire a bunch of white guys in their late 20s and early 30s." Diversity should be a core value of the team building process. There are many reasons for this but most importantly you want a diversity of thought, experience, mindset, and angle of attack.

Don't hire a token woman. Hire as many women as you can. Don't hire a token person from another country. Hire from all around the world (and become an expert in our bullshit immigration system). Don't hire a token "gray haired" type. Hire up and down the age and experience spectrum.

But most importantly, hire people who will enjoy working together, who fit well together, who will make each other better. This is what hiring for cultural fit means. You start with the founding team and build on top of that. If your engineering team is serious and likes to work until midnight every day, you want to consider that when hiring new engineers. A new engineering team member who wants to go out drinking after work every night is not going to be a good fit on that team.

You also don't want to create silos in your organization. I see companies where the engineers sit on one side of the office and the sales people sit on the other side of the office. And it is like two different companies. That can create issues and cultural divides. It is tempting to set things up like this because sales teams are loud and animated and engineering teams tend to be quiet and serious. But try to connect these different parts of the organizations in as many ways as you can. Make sure everyone is on the same team and enjoys working together.

So when hiring, you must start with what you already have. Take measure of the vibe of the company, the work habits of the company, the strengths and weaknesses of the current team. It's like a jigsaw puzzle that is only half built. You are looking for the next piece that will fit nicely into what is already there.

This jigsaw puzzle analogy is why it is hard and a bit dangerous to hire up super fast. You can fit one new puzzle piece into an existing puzzle fairly easily. But if the puzzle is a moving target because so many pieces are coming in at once, it gets a lot harder. And it is likely you will make a bunch of bad hires who don't fit well into the organization. And when they leave the company, it will be your fault, not theirs.

It helps a lot to have a one pager that outlines the core values of the company. I just saw our portfolio company Twilio's version of that. They call it "Our 9 Things." I wish I could publish it here but I don't have permission from Jeff and so I will resist the urge. It has things like "think at scale" and "be frugal" on it. You get the idea I hope. This "guiding light" is a framework for the culture and values of the organization and each new hire should be assessed against the framework to make sure the fit is good.

You, as the founder and CEO, can drive this for a bit. Maybe up to the first twenty or thirty hires. But you are going to need help as the company grows because this is hard, really hard. So getting a person hired onto the team who is totally focused on the team and team building is critical. And make sure they are a good cultural fit when you make that hire. Because they are going to be the torch carrier for your culture along with you. It will be among the most important hire you will make in you startup. More on that to come as this series develops.

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A recent MacTech article, a startup guide for the VMware vSphere Hypervisor, makes interesting reading. The author says that the hardware compatibility for providing virtual machines can be a more flexible than VMWare’s approved list.

 

One of Apple’s “big brother” features introduced in Mac OS X Lion 10.7 (now called plain ol’ OS X Lion) is the hiding of the user’s Library folder. While this may be a fine precaution for inexperienced users, it’s a bother for Mac pros. A recent Login Script can fix this so-called feature.

 

DMesh, created by Dofl Y. H. Yun, is a simple iPhone app that instantly turns your photos into artistic, triangulated images. Not unlike pxl, this app leads to some pretty wild...

 

Remember, Searchbloggers, I’ve got a new RSS feed that you can consume so as to miss these non-work related posts. A few pics from a 25-mile mountain bike ride I just completed with my son… On way up, White Hill Trail as it goes under Sir Francis Drake Blvd. And up on Pine Mtn. Trail, ...

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Hachette, which has not made e-books available to libraries since 2010, is reconsidering the idea. In a pilot program starting this spring, the publisher is working with two e-book distributors to bring a "selection of HBG's recent bestselling e-books to 7 million library patrons."

 

If you are a developer, I encourage you to carve out an hour and watch TechStars CEO David Cohen’s presentation at RailsConf 2012 (30 minute presentation and outstanding 30 minutes of Q&A). He starts out with the assertion that “developers are the new investors”  - how could you not be interested in hearing more about that?

David and I wrote a book last year called Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup and this is his riff to a room full of developers about some of his top tips. Special bonus – see a photo of me in my pajamas at minute 7.

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The growth of camera phones and apps have together changed the way many people eat, or at least prepare to dine. Though tweeting about food was the classic early criticism...

 

Apple sent an email reminder to developers working on apps for the Mac App Store letting them know that new programs will have to be compatible with the platform's forthcoming "sandboxing" constraints in order to be offered in the Mac App Store. Developers are expected to implement sandboxing within their apps by June 1, though existing programs can be updated after that date. Apple has ...

 

After possibly infecting up to 1.8 percent of the Macintosh population with a click-fraud macro through a Java vulnerability, the Flashback creators won't get paid despite their efforts, reports Computerworld. Following a coordinated security effort between antivirus vendors and security experts, remote malicious orders were blocked or prevented from effecting an estimated peak 600,000 infected co...