Dan and Haddie discuss the legalization of cellphone unlocking, the end of the Scroogled campaign (or maybe not?), a brain to brain connection in rats, an unfortunate musical mash-up, a real life Batman, and hats and boots.
Samsung’s next big smartphone, to be introduced this month, will have a strong focus on software. A person who has tried the phone, called the Galaxy S IV, described one feature as particularly new and exciting: Eye scrolling.The phone will track a user’s eyes to determine where to scroll, said a Samsung employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. For example, when users read articles and their eyes reach the bottom of the page, the software will automatically scroll down to reveal the next paragraphs of text.
The White House on Monday came out in support of the rights of consumers to unlock their cellphones once they have fulfilled the terms of the contract.Responding to a petition on WhiteHouse.gov, the executive branch stated, “The White House agrees with the 114,000 of you who believe that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking criminal or other penalties.”They went further, saying that the same right should also extend to other mobile devices, namely tablets.
Microsoft spokespeople are still warning anyone who will listen that Google is reading its users' email and delivering biased results in Google Shopping. But it has stopped buying the controversial Scroogled ads on television, in newspapers, and social media."That part is about finished," Stefan Weitz, Microsoft senior director of online services, said on Thursday.By one measure, the ads succeeded. Over 110,000 people signed Microsoft's petition on the Care2 petition site to "Tell Google to stop going through your email to sell ads." Microsoft originally set a goal of 25,000 names.
Despite rumors to the contrary, Microsoft’s Scroogled campaign is long from over. Earlier today, a number of publications picked up on a comment by Bing Search Director Stefan Weitz who told KQED that the campaign is “about finished.” Now, however, a Microsoft spokesperson has told us that this is not true and that we should “stay tuned for the next chapter.”
Here's a piece of advice for those running classes training prisoners about information technology.It's probably not a good idea to let notorious hackers join the course - or, if you do, to keep a very close eye on what they're up to.Teenager Nicholas Webber ran the infamous GhostMarket.Net cybercrime website, which sold stolen credit card details and offered tutorials to budding criminals about how to commit identity theft and online scams.
A new school designed to teach people the necessary skills to work within the chaos that are startups is coming to New York. The Startup Institute is an eight-week program for people that want to gain the necessary skills to work in a startup and find a job. Taught by volunteers from the local tech community, Startup Institute has four tracks for students looking for the necessary acumen to work at a startup – web development, product and design, marketing and sales/business development.
A few days ago, Apple made headlines when it had to refund customers in the U.K. when their five-year-old boy accidentally spent $2,500 in in-app purchases in just 15 minutes. This leads us to ask, why hasn't Apple come up with a "kid mode?"
An experiment that used rats to create a "brain-to-brain interface" shows that instructions can be transferred between animals via electronic signals and the Internet, according to scientists who studied how rats can use brain implants to share problem-solving information.The research could be used to create "novel types of social interaction and for biological computing devices," lead scientist Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University writes in his summary of the study, published in Scientific Reports.In the study, researchers trained rats to perform simple tasks to receive a reward based on either visual or physical stimuli. Scientists then implanted microelectrodes in the brains of the animals, which were split into "encoder" and "decoder" groups.
Microsoft might have to pay the state of Denmark more than $1 billion in unpaid taxes. This is due in part to Microsoft's acquisition of Danish financial software company Navision in 2002 for $1.3 billion. Microsoft then sold the rights to Navision's enterprise resource planing and accounting software to it's Irish subsidiary.
The Danish Treasury is now going after Microsoft for the value of the taxes (plus interest) that were avoided by the low purchase price paid by the Irish subsidiary. The amount would be 5.8 billion Danish kroner, or $1.01 billion.
In 1995, sales of pagers were booming among Japan’s teenagers, and NTT Docomo’s decision to add the heart symbol to its Pocket Bell devices let high school kids across the country inject a new level of sentiment (and cuteness) into the millions of messages they were keying into telephones every day.
Shigetaka Kurita is the man who created emoji, and during his time at Docomo he saw the shift happen first-hand. He was part of the team working on i-mode — a project that was just beginning to take shape, but would be the world’s first widespread mobile internet platform, combining features like weather forecasts, entertainment reservations, news, and email.
Kurita was not a designer so for inspiration, Kurita looked to different elements of his childhood, including manga and kanji.
A man dressed as the caped crusader Batman has handed over a wanted man at a Bradford police station before disappearing into the night.
Police said the costumed crime-fighter marched the 27-year-old man into Trafalgar House Police Station, in the early hours of 25 February.
The man was charged with handling stolen goods and fraud offences.
Google is stealthily preparing to launch an Amazon Prime competitor called “Google Shopping Express.” According to one source the service will be $10 or $15 cheaper than Amazon Prime, so $69 or $64 a year and offer same-day delivery from brick-and-mortar stores like Target, Walmart, Walgreens and Safeway (though no specifics were mentioned by our sources).When and if it launches, the product will be a competitor to Amazon Prime, eBay Now, Postmates’ “Get It Now” and even smaller startups like Instacart.
In the late 1990s, an ad agency creative director I'll call Joe Smith to protect his privacy bought several hundred shares of Apple (AAPL) at $60 apiece. Last fall, at age 42, he found himself out of work and increasingly dependent on the value of those shares to make ends meet.Following the lead of a 33-year-old investment advisor named Andy Zaky who had written that Apple was going to $750 by January and to $1,000 within a year, Smith converted most of his Apple common stock -- more than he should have -- into high-risk Apple call options. When those options expired in the third week of January with Apple trading below $500, they were worth exactly zero. Smith had lost roughly $400,000 and all his Apple shares.
