A new Canadian study suggests nearly one in three new prescriptions goes unfilled, with expensive drugs and medications used to control some chronic conditions more likely not to be taken as directed.
The first author of the paper admits that she and her colleagues were startled at the magnitude of the gap between prescriptions written and prescriptions filled.
Robyn Tamblyn says doctors need to keep this fact in mind because they may assume a patient's drugs aren't working when in fact the patient isn't taking the prescribed medication.
She says those patients may be too embarrassed or too intimidated to share that information with their doctors.
Tamblyn is an epidemiologist who teaches in McGill University's school of medicine; her paper was published Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
She and her colleagues found that antibiotic prescriptions are often filled. When the data were analyzed on a
condition-by-condition basis, prescriptions for medications for urinary tract infections were least likely to go unfilled.
But drugs prescribed for headache and coronary artery disease were only filled about half the time and prescriptions for
antidepressants were filled only 37 per cent of the time.
The Quebec study didn't look at why people didn't fill their prescriptions; Tamblyn says she and her colleagues plan to do a followup study to ask patients that question.
But there are hints in the data. Prescriptions for higher-priced drugs were more likely to go unfilled. And patients who had higher drug co-payments were more likely not to fill prescriptions.
Older patients were more likely to follow doctor's orders and those who were taking multiple medications were also more likely to fill prescriptions.
Dr. David Juurlink, a specialist in internal medicine and clinical pharmacology, says while the one-in-three number looks
surprising at first, the reality is doctors write too many prescriptions.
Juurlink, who practises at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, says some prescriptions are written with clear instructions that patients should only fill them if necessary. So in some cases not filling a prescription is the rational approach, he says, though he acknowledges a portion of these prescriptions should have been filled and were not.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Samsung Galaxy S5 is a baby monitor that reports to your smartwatch
Samsung's new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S5 , has a surprising hidden feature that tech bloggers have just discovered: the phone can double as a baby monitor—provided you've got it paired to a Galaxy Gear smartwatch. And you know, you don't mind leaving your baby and your phone behind while you're in another room.
Yes, this week, tech bloggers discovered "baby crying detector" hidden in the S5's accessibility menu. Apparently, the feature uses the smartphone's microphones to detect your baby's cry, sending a vibrating alert to your paired Galaxy Gear smartwatch . The menu says the feature works best when the phone is placed one meter from said baby, ideally in a room with no background noise. Because what baby wants to sleep next to a jackhammer, but also errant sounds could screw up your smartphone-turned-baby-monitor's cry recognition!Aside from this feature's reliance on a frustrating, half-baked smartwatch , it seems to miss the whole point of baby monitors: You use them when you want to go in the other room and play with your smartphone! Also, I sure hope you don't get any texts or phone calls while your Galaxy S5 is serving as babysitter. Naptime will be so over.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Encryption companies rise as anxiety over data mounts
Investors are pumping millions of dollars into encryption as unease about data security drives a rising need for ways to keep unwanted eyes away from personal and corporate information.
Major data breaches at Target and other retailers that have made data security a boardroom issue at companies large and small.
And stunning revelations of widespread snooping by US intelligence agencies have also rattled companies and the public.
For venture capital, that has opened up a new area of growth in the tech business.
In February, Google Ventures led a $25.5 million round of venture funding for Atlanta-based Ionic Security, a three-year old company that works in encryption, which scrambles data before it is shipped or stored.
Other encryption companies, including Toronto-based PerspecSys and San Jose, California-based CipherCloud, have announced major fundings.
The funding rush could hearken a "golden age" of encryption, as one expert puts it. But the industry also faces barriers to a tool that until recently was not a hot commodity.
Concerns about encryption range from practical challenges, such as the difficulty users have to search their encoded data, to government opposition towards encryption.
"People are afraid of it because they don't understand it," John Kindervag, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research But he called the wider use of encryption "inevitable, because there's no other way to solve the problem."
Kindervag said the industry is between one and two years away from "some big revolutions" in the field. "It just needs to happen."
But Venky Ganesan, a managing director with venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, believes major advances are further off.
"Encryption slows down," Ganesan said. "Just imagine if every room in your house was locked and you had to open and close it every time you go in. You would be frustrated."
Another problem is "the government is sensitive," said Ganesan.
"They don't want encryption technology to be open so that anybody can use it, because their goal is to make sure they can always get access to the information."
He said governments have frequently insisted that they be given a master key to decrypt files, Ganesan said.
The need for better encryption vaulted to the top of the tech industry's agenda earlier this month by fugitive intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who last year exposed the massive spying capabilities of the US National Security Agency.
Snowden urged industry leaders to make a "moral commitment" to safeguard customer data by integrating encryption into devices in a user-friendly way.
The NSA and foreign intelligence services are "setting fire to the future of the Internet," Snowden said via video from Russia. "You guys are the firefighters and we need you to help fix things."
Recent data security scandals underscore the new vulnerabilities as organizations process unprecedented amounts of data that are analyzed, shipped, stored in "the cloud" -- offsite commercial servers -- and accessed remotely by mobile technology.
It's a far cry from the days when security focused on safeguarding a stolen laptop.
"It's on every corporation's and every government's mind how they protect their data and their intellectual property," said William Bowmer, a technology stock specialist at Barclays.
Wall Street appears ready to commit more money to security companies as well. Shares of FireEye, which reportedly alerted Target to breaches in its security network even though the company did not take action, have more than tripled from the September 2013 IPO price of $20.
Industry insiders see some encryption firms as possibilities for entering the market: Voltage Security, SafeNet, Protegrity and Vormetric Data Security.
Voltage chief executive Sathvik Krishnamurthy described the market for encryption as "thriving and growing" and said the perception of government opposition to encryption is outdated.
Encryption can be integrated into policies that incorporate the lessons of the Snowden revelations with the need to protect national security, Krishnamurthy said.
Spying by authorities "has been going on forever," he said.
"In any society where you think you've had privacy, you've been grossly mistaken. It's just a question of the degree to which you were clueless about Big Brother actually looking at everything you were doing."
He called the NSA's sweep of data "really over the top."
"Did we have to spy on Angel Merkel's emails? No."
But the biggest problem with the NSA program was the lack of disclosure, Krishnamurthy said.
Disclosure by the government of its program "will normalize the line over which we would no longer cross," he said. "If you have to answer for your actions, then you are more likely to be reasonable in your actions."
Major data breaches at Target and other retailers that have made data security a boardroom issue at companies large and small.
And stunning revelations of widespread snooping by US intelligence agencies have also rattled companies and the public.
For venture capital, that has opened up a new area of growth in the tech business.
In February, Google Ventures led a $25.5 million round of venture funding for Atlanta-based Ionic Security, a three-year old company that works in encryption, which scrambles data before it is shipped or stored.
Other encryption companies, including Toronto-based PerspecSys and San Jose, California-based CipherCloud, have announced major fundings.
The funding rush could hearken a "golden age" of encryption, as one expert puts it. But the industry also faces barriers to a tool that until recently was not a hot commodity.
Concerns about encryption range from practical challenges, such as the difficulty users have to search their encoded data, to government opposition towards encryption.
"People are afraid of it because they don't understand it," John Kindervag, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research But he called the wider use of encryption "inevitable, because there's no other way to solve the problem."
Kindervag said the industry is between one and two years away from "some big revolutions" in the field. "It just needs to happen."
But Venky Ganesan, a managing director with venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, believes major advances are further off.
"Encryption slows down," Ganesan said. "Just imagine if every room in your house was locked and you had to open and close it every time you go in. You would be frustrated."
Another problem is "the government is sensitive," said Ganesan.
"They don't want encryption technology to be open so that anybody can use it, because their goal is to make sure they can always get access to the information."
He said governments have frequently insisted that they be given a master key to decrypt files, Ganesan said.
The need for better encryption vaulted to the top of the tech industry's agenda earlier this month by fugitive intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who last year exposed the massive spying capabilities of the US National Security Agency.
Snowden urged industry leaders to make a "moral commitment" to safeguard customer data by integrating encryption into devices in a user-friendly way.
The NSA and foreign intelligence services are "setting fire to the future of the Internet," Snowden said via video from Russia. "You guys are the firefighters and we need you to help fix things."
Recent data security scandals underscore the new vulnerabilities as organizations process unprecedented amounts of data that are analyzed, shipped, stored in "the cloud" -- offsite commercial servers -- and accessed remotely by mobile technology.
It's a far cry from the days when security focused on safeguarding a stolen laptop.
"It's on every corporation's and every government's mind how they protect their data and their intellectual property," said William Bowmer, a technology stock specialist at Barclays.
Wall Street appears ready to commit more money to security companies as well. Shares of FireEye, which reportedly alerted Target to breaches in its security network even though the company did not take action, have more than tripled from the September 2013 IPO price of $20.
Industry insiders see some encryption firms as possibilities for entering the market: Voltage Security, SafeNet, Protegrity and Vormetric Data Security.
Voltage chief executive Sathvik Krishnamurthy described the market for encryption as "thriving and growing" and said the perception of government opposition to encryption is outdated.
Encryption can be integrated into policies that incorporate the lessons of the Snowden revelations with the need to protect national security, Krishnamurthy said.
Spying by authorities "has been going on forever," he said.
"In any society where you think you've had privacy, you've been grossly mistaken. It's just a question of the degree to which you were clueless about Big Brother actually looking at everything you were doing."
He called the NSA's sweep of data "really over the top."
"Did we have to spy on Angel Merkel's emails? No."
But the biggest problem with the NSA program was the lack of disclosure, Krishnamurthy said.
Disclosure by the government of its program "will normalize the line over which we would no longer cross," he said. "If you have to answer for your actions, then you are more likely to be reasonable in your actions."
Soldiers killed by Lebanon car bomb
A general view of the Sunni Muslim border town of Arsal
A car bomb has exploded near a Lebanese army checkpoint near the Syrian border, killing three soldiers, reports say.
Several more soldiers were reported wounded in the blast, believed to be a suicide attack, on the outskirts of the town of Arsal.
Tensions have been high in the area since the Syrian army captured the strategic town of Yabroud a few miles over the border a fortnight ago.
Syrian forces are now threatening rebel supply routes from eastern Lebanon.
Lebanon's state news agency reported hours earlier that the Syrian army had seized two border villages from the rebels.
Unconfirmed reports suggested a Sunni Muslim militant group was behind the Arsal bombing.
Some Sunni groups have accused Lebanese soldiers of being close to the Shia militant group Hezbollah, which has been heavily involved in the fighting against the rebels in western Syria.
President Bashar al-Assad's government launched an offensive in November 2013 to push rebel fighters out of the mountainous border area.
During the bombardment of Yabroud, much of the town's population of 40,000 fled into Lebanon.
Are you in the area? Did you witness the explosion? You can send us your experiences by emailing using the subject line "Lebanon". Please include your contact details.
Or you can send us your experiences using the form below.
A car bomb has exploded near a Lebanese army checkpoint near the Syrian border, killing three soldiers, reports say.
Several more soldiers were reported wounded in the blast, believed to be a suicide attack, on the outskirts of the town of Arsal.
Tensions have been high in the area since the Syrian army captured the strategic town of Yabroud a few miles over the border a fortnight ago.
Syrian forces are now threatening rebel supply routes from eastern Lebanon.
Lebanon's state news agency reported hours earlier that the Syrian army had seized two border villages from the rebels.
Unconfirmed reports suggested a Sunni Muslim militant group was behind the Arsal bombing.
Some Sunni groups have accused Lebanese soldiers of being close to the Shia militant group Hezbollah, which has been heavily involved in the fighting against the rebels in western Syria.
President Bashar al-Assad's government launched an offensive in November 2013 to push rebel fighters out of the mountainous border area.
During the bombardment of Yabroud, much of the town's population of 40,000 fled into Lebanon.
Are you in the area? Did you witness the explosion? You can send us your experiences by emailing using the subject line "Lebanon". Please include your contact details.
Or you can send us your experiences using the form below.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Putin calls Obama to discuss Ukraine
Russia's Vladimir Putin has telephoned President Barack Obama to discuss the US proposal for a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Ukraine, the White House says.
Mr Obama suggested that Russia put a concrete response in writing, his spokesman said in a statement.
According to the Kremlin, Mr Putin suggested examining how the situation could be stabilised.
Russia's annexation of Crimea has sparked international condemnation.
The US president urged Mr Putin to avoid the build-up of forces on the Russian border with Ukraine.
The White House said the two countries' foreign ministers would meet soon to discuss the next steps.
The US proposal was developed in consultation with Ukraine and other European countries. Mr Obama received Mr Putin's call in Saudi Arabia - the latest leg of a trip which also took the US president to Europe where the Ukraine crisis dominated discussions.
The Kremlin said in a statement that the Russian president drew Mr Obama's attention to "the continued rampage of extremists" in Kiev and various regions of Ukraine.
Mr Putin suggested examining possible steps the global community could take to help stabilise the situation, the Kremlin statement said.
Meanwhile in New York, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he had been assured by President Putin that the Russian leader "had no intention to make any military move".
Russia's reported troop movements near Ukraine's eastern border - described as a "huge military build-up" by Nato - has triggered fears that Mr Putin's interest in Ukraine is not limited to Crimea.
The BBC's North America Editor, Mark Mardell, said Friday night's phone call could indicate tentative progress towards a diplomatic solution - just when fears were growing in the West that Russia could be about to stage an invasion of eastern Ukraine.
President Putin welcomed military leaders to the Kremlin on Friday
Mr Obama suggested that Russia put a concrete response in writing, his spokesman said in a statement.
According to the Kremlin, Mr Putin suggested examining how the situation could be stabilised.
Russia's annexation of Crimea has sparked international condemnation.
The US president urged Mr Putin to avoid the build-up of forces on the Russian border with Ukraine.
The White House said the two countries' foreign ministers would meet soon to discuss the next steps.
The US proposal was developed in consultation with Ukraine and other European countries. Mr Obama received Mr Putin's call in Saudi Arabia - the latest leg of a trip which also took the US president to Europe where the Ukraine crisis dominated discussions.
The Kremlin said in a statement that the Russian president drew Mr Obama's attention to "the continued rampage of extremists" in Kiev and various regions of Ukraine.
Mr Putin suggested examining possible steps the global community could take to help stabilise the situation, the Kremlin statement said.
Meanwhile in New York, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he had been assured by President Putin that the Russian leader "had no intention to make any military move".
Russia's reported troop movements near Ukraine's eastern border - described as a "huge military build-up" by Nato - has triggered fears that Mr Putin's interest in Ukraine is not limited to Crimea.
The BBC's North America Editor, Mark Mardell, said Friday night's phone call could indicate tentative progress towards a diplomatic solution - just when fears were growing in the West that Russia could be about to stage an invasion of eastern Ukraine.
President Putin welcomed military leaders to the Kremlin on Friday
Snoopy drone sniffs public's data
Security firm SensePost has unveiled its Snoopy drone, which can steal data from unsuspecting smartphone users, at the Black Hat security conference in Singapore.
The drone uses the company's software, which is installed on a computer attached to a drone.
That code can be used to hack smartphones and steal personal data - all without a user's knowledge.
It does this by exploiting handsets looking for a wireless signal.
Glenn Wilkinson, who developed Snoopy, says that when the software is attached to a drone flying around an area, it can gather everything from a user's home address to his or her bank information.
"Every device we carry emits unique signatures - even pacemakers come with wi-fi today," Mr Wilkinson tells the BBC.
"And - holy smokes, what a bad idea."
Many smartphone users leave the wireless option constantly turned on on their smartphone. That means the phones are constantly looking for a network to join - including previously used networks.
"A lot of [past] network names are unique and it's possible to easily geo-locate them," says Mr Wilkinson, who explains Snoopy uses a combination of the name of a network a user is looking for as well as the MAC address that uniquely identifies a device to track a smartphone in real-time.
Snoopy can identify the exact location and user information of a specific smartphone
Beyond that, Snoopy demonstrates how someone could also impersonate one of those past networks in a so-called karma attack, in which a rogue operator impersonates a past network that a user then joins, thinking it is safe.
Once the user has joined the disguised network, the rogue operator can then steal any information that the user enters while on that network - including e-mail passwords, Facebook account information, and even banking details.
This is why Mr Wilkinson says that smartphones and other devices that use wireless technology - such as Oyster cards using RFID (radio frequency identification) or bank cards with chips - can betray their users.
Pulling out a laptop from his bag, Mr Wilkinson opened the Snoopy programme - and immediately pulled up the smartphone information of hundreds of Black Hat conference attendees.
With just a few keystrokes, he showed that an attendee sitting in the back right corner of the keynote speech probably lived in a specific neighbourhood in Singapore. The software even provided a streetview photo of the smartphone user's presumed address.
SensePost has used the Snoopy software attached to cheap commercial drones like DJI's Phantom
"I've gathered smartphone device data from every security conference that I've been at for the last year and a half - so I can see who was at each event and whether or not they've attended multiple events," says Mr Wilkinson.
He then shows this data to conference attendees - who often ask, when presented with a photograph of their home or office, if they're on candid camera.
"There's nothing new about this - what's new is that Snoopy brings a lot of the technology together in a unique way," he explains.
For instance, the Snoopy software has been ground-based until now, operating primarily on computers, smartphones with Linux installed on them, and on open-source small computers like the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black.
But when attached to a drone, it can quickly cover large areas.
"You can also fly out of audio-visual range - so you can't see or hear it, meaning you can bypass physical security - men with guns, that sort of thing," he says.
It's not hard to imagine a scenario in which an authoritarian regime could fly the drone over an anti-government protest and collect the smartphone data of every protester and use the data to figure out the identities of everyone in attendance.
Mr Wilkinson says that this is why he has become fascinated with our "digital terrestrial footprint" - and the way our devices can betray us.
He says he wants to "talk about this to bring awareness" of the security risks posed by such simple technologies to users.
His advice? Turn off the wireless network on your phone until you absolutely need to use it.
The drone uses the company's software, which is installed on a computer attached to a drone.
That code can be used to hack smartphones and steal personal data - all without a user's knowledge.
It does this by exploiting handsets looking for a wireless signal.
Glenn Wilkinson, who developed Snoopy, says that when the software is attached to a drone flying around an area, it can gather everything from a user's home address to his or her bank information.
"Every device we carry emits unique signatures - even pacemakers come with wi-fi today," Mr Wilkinson tells the BBC.
"And - holy smokes, what a bad idea."
'The machines that betrayed their masters'
Many smartphone users leave the wireless option constantly turned on on their smartphone. That means the phones are constantly looking for a network to join - including previously used networks.
"A lot of [past] network names are unique and it's possible to easily geo-locate them," says Mr Wilkinson, who explains Snoopy uses a combination of the name of a network a user is looking for as well as the MAC address that uniquely identifies a device to track a smartphone in real-time.
Snoopy can identify the exact location and user information of a specific smartphone
Beyond that, Snoopy demonstrates how someone could also impersonate one of those past networks in a so-called karma attack, in which a rogue operator impersonates a past network that a user then joins, thinking it is safe.
Once the user has joined the disguised network, the rogue operator can then steal any information that the user enters while on that network - including e-mail passwords, Facebook account information, and even banking details.
This is why Mr Wilkinson says that smartphones and other devices that use wireless technology - such as Oyster cards using RFID (radio frequency identification) or bank cards with chips - can betray their users.
'Am I on candid camera?'
Mr Wilkinson - who began developing the Snoopy software three years ago as a side-project - gave the BBC a preview of the technology ahead of its release.Pulling out a laptop from his bag, Mr Wilkinson opened the Snoopy programme - and immediately pulled up the smartphone information of hundreds of Black Hat conference attendees.
With just a few keystrokes, he showed that an attendee sitting in the back right corner of the keynote speech probably lived in a specific neighbourhood in Singapore. The software even provided a streetview photo of the smartphone user's presumed address.
SensePost has used the Snoopy software attached to cheap commercial drones like DJI's Phantom
"I've gathered smartphone device data from every security conference that I've been at for the last year and a half - so I can see who was at each event and whether or not they've attended multiple events," says Mr Wilkinson.
He then shows this data to conference attendees - who often ask, when presented with a photograph of their home or office, if they're on candid camera.
Bringing awareness
Mr Wilkinson is quick to acknowledge that the Snoopy software is not new technology - but rather, just a different way of gathering together a series of known security risks."There's nothing new about this - what's new is that Snoopy brings a lot of the technology together in a unique way," he explains.
For instance, the Snoopy software has been ground-based until now, operating primarily on computers, smartphones with Linux installed on them, and on open-source small computers like the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black.
But when attached to a drone, it can quickly cover large areas.
"You can also fly out of audio-visual range - so you can't see or hear it, meaning you can bypass physical security - men with guns, that sort of thing," he says.
It's not hard to imagine a scenario in which an authoritarian regime could fly the drone over an anti-government protest and collect the smartphone data of every protester and use the data to figure out the identities of everyone in attendance.
Mr Wilkinson says that this is why he has become fascinated with our "digital terrestrial footprint" - and the way our devices can betray us.
He says he wants to "talk about this to bring awareness" of the security risks posed by such simple technologies to users.
His advice? Turn off the wireless network on your phone until you absolutely need to use it.
Vancouver Aquarium aims to save hundreds of sea lions
The Vancouver Aquarium’s Marine Mammal Research Team has been working to rescue an estimated 400 ensnared sea lions off of B.C.’s coasts, with the latest rescue having taken place on Thursday.
Dr. Martin Hualena, head veterinarian of the Vancouver Aquarium, has been leading the project to rescue these animals he said are trapped by garbage and marine debris off the province’s shores.
He went out in search of entangled sea lions on the east coast of Vancouver Island this past week and there he found one particularly bad case.
“We did find one California sea lion that was very entangled in fishing gear around his kind of mid-section that was cutting very, very deeply,” he said. “We recovered the animal in the water, which was very interesting, and disentangled the animal.”
He said this single incident is but one of 450 to 500 estimated cases of entangled animals happening around the province on any given day.
“The biggest issues for us is it’s very, very complicated to go ahead and disentangle these animals,” he said. “So many factors have to come into alignment.”
Haulena has worked with the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup to help identify problem areas, as well as facilitate the education to communities explaining the impact of man-made debris on our wildlife.
He hopes this program will continue to expand and to reduce the damage done to these creatures.
Dr. Martin Hualena, head veterinarian of the Vancouver Aquarium, has been leading the project to rescue these animals he said are trapped by garbage and marine debris off the province’s shores.
He went out in search of entangled sea lions on the east coast of Vancouver Island this past week and there he found one particularly bad case.
“We did find one California sea lion that was very entangled in fishing gear around his kind of mid-section that was cutting very, very deeply,” he said. “We recovered the animal in the water, which was very interesting, and disentangled the animal.”
He said this single incident is but one of 450 to 500 estimated cases of entangled animals happening around the province on any given day.
“The biggest issues for us is it’s very, very complicated to go ahead and disentangle these animals,” he said. “So many factors have to come into alignment.”
Haulena has worked with the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup to help identify problem areas, as well as facilitate the education to communities explaining the impact of man-made debris on our wildlife.
He hopes this program will continue to expand and to reduce the damage done to these creatures.
Twitter's losing sight of what makes it so great
Wednesday, Twitter introduced some major changes to the way it does business . Not only can a single tweet now hold multiple photos (each with up to 10 tagged friends), but none of that extra baggage takes away any of your precious characters. In other words, Twitter just got a whole lot more like Facebook.
Once confined to the strictest of social network diets, tweets are now free to run rampant. Theoretically, under these new rules one tweet could contain four photos, each tagged with 10 different friends. That's a canoe full of 40 people, that still leaves you room to babble. Oh, and hope you like notifications—because there's about to be a whole lot more where that came from.Allowing users to add even one photo without cutting into the 140 character limit would have been a big deal in Twitterland. But doing so with four photos isn't just a change, it's a total overhaul to how we tweet. And it's not a welcome one.
It's clear why Twitter felt it had to make this change; as it stands now, it's a wildly intimidating world that presents itself to newcomers as a massive wall of news, in-jokes, symbols, and otherwise general nonsense. It's extremely alienating—not that there's any shame in that! But it means that Twitter doesn't just have a hard time attracting new users; it's losing the ones that it manages to enlist. More pictures, more friends, more familiarity. In other words, more like Facebook.
It makes sense. Facebook is all-encompassing. It's easy. Your grandma is on Facebook. Nothing says usability like a social networking-granny. Most importantly, Facebook offers the kind of openness that Twitter lacks. Facebook allows for all types of content in a stream as limitless as your fingers can manage. But by trying to get in on that action, Twitter looses a major chunk of what made us fall in love with it in the first place.
There's a reason people Facebook's not the golden child anymore. As adorable as it may be, no one actually wants to pour through your grandma's twenty pictures of her grandchildren. No one cares about your paragraph-long rants. Facebook is full of all the noise that Twitter so geniously managed to cut through. In instilling a strict, 140-character limit, Twitter forced you to cut your tweets in to their most basic, witty, and informative forms. And that translated to Twitter being full of higher-quality content by default. Brevity, as they say, is the soul of Twitter.
That doesn't mean Twitter is wholly devoid of noise. There's still plenty of self-indulgence, nonsense, and misinformation that adds nothing to the overall conversation. But turning up the volume only exacerbates the problem. Tagging without character limit means more people involved in more photos, with more room to tweet about it. More wasted words spread around to more sort-of friends. Which is great for you and terrible for everyone reading it. Twitter had already made itself look more like Facebook. Now, by acting more like it, it's inching dangerously closer to alienating the people who actually care, without clearly doing anything that will solve its retention problem.
What Twitter needs to realize is that encompassing more ground doesn't necessarily mean more users. And that it's at its best when it gives us what Facebook doesn't.
11 objects spotted in search for MH370
Chinese and Australian ships are enroute to the new search area off the coast of Perth to track down debris thought to be part of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.
A Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion spotted 11 white rectangular objects in the Indian Ocean.
The cluster of objects is sitting just below the surface about 1600 kilometres west of Perth, New Zealand Air Vice-Marshal Kevin Short told media.
"It's hard to identify because all you're seeing is this one-metre rectangular piece of material."
The 11 objects were within five metres of each other and there were objects up to a couple of hundred miles away as well, he said.
"There seems to be patches of these objects and that's not unexpected, looking at how long the aircraft's been missing.
"If they're from that aircraft it's not unusual to have them separated by hundreds of miles."
The plane carrying 239 people, including six Australians and two New Zealanders, disappeared on March 8.
The objects had been marked with a sonar buoy and four ships would be in the area to retrieve them, Air Vice-Marshal Short said.
The objects would be photographed, with the images sent to investigators, then transported to Perth for further investigation, he said.
The search area was shifted 1000 kilometres north-east after international air crash investigators had their ”most credible lead” yet.
The new area was calculated after analysis of radar data indicated the aircraft was travelling faster than previously thought, meaning it would have used its fuel more quickly and travelled less distance.
At 319,000 square kilometres, the new search area revealed is massive, almost the same size as the Malaysian land mass and roughly 50 per cent larger than Victoria.
Five aircraft also spotted coloured objects in the new search area.
Photographs of the objects were taken and were to be assessed, while a Chinese ship in the new search area was directed towards the debris.
Australian Maritime Safety Authority emergency response manager John Young said all search planes and ships had been moved to the new zone.
"We have moved on from those search areas to the newest credible lead."
Any wreckage found would be handed over to Malaysian authorities.
The findings came with a warning from Malaysia Airlines of the effect that speculation about the flight's fate could have on the families.
"Whilst we understand that there will inevitably be speculation during this period, we do ask people to bear in mind the effect this has on the families of all those on board," the airline's group chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said.
"Their anguish and distress increases with each passing day, with each fresh rumour, and with each false or misleading report."
Mr Yahya said preparations were underway for family members of passengers and crew to be taken to Perth, should physical wreckage be found.
A Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion spotted 11 white rectangular objects in the Indian Ocean.
The cluster of objects is sitting just below the surface about 1600 kilometres west of Perth, New Zealand Air Vice-Marshal Kevin Short told media.
"It's hard to identify because all you're seeing is this one-metre rectangular piece of material."
The 11 objects were within five metres of each other and there were objects up to a couple of hundred miles away as well, he said.
"There seems to be patches of these objects and that's not unexpected, looking at how long the aircraft's been missing.
"If they're from that aircraft it's not unusual to have them separated by hundreds of miles."
The plane carrying 239 people, including six Australians and two New Zealanders, disappeared on March 8.
The objects had been marked with a sonar buoy and four ships would be in the area to retrieve them, Air Vice-Marshal Short said.
The objects would be photographed, with the images sent to investigators, then transported to Perth for further investigation, he said.
The search area was shifted 1000 kilometres north-east after international air crash investigators had their ”most credible lead” yet.
The new area was calculated after analysis of radar data indicated the aircraft was travelling faster than previously thought, meaning it would have used its fuel more quickly and travelled less distance.
At 319,000 square kilometres, the new search area revealed is massive, almost the same size as the Malaysian land mass and roughly 50 per cent larger than Victoria.
Five aircraft also spotted coloured objects in the new search area.
Photographs of the objects were taken and were to be assessed, while a Chinese ship in the new search area was directed towards the debris.
Australian Maritime Safety Authority emergency response manager John Young said all search planes and ships had been moved to the new zone.
"We have moved on from those search areas to the newest credible lead."
Any wreckage found would be handed over to Malaysian authorities.
The findings came with a warning from Malaysia Airlines of the effect that speculation about the flight's fate could have on the families.
"Whilst we understand that there will inevitably be speculation during this period, we do ask people to bear in mind the effect this has on the families of all those on board," the airline's group chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said.
"Their anguish and distress increases with each passing day, with each fresh rumour, and with each false or misleading report."
Mr Yahya said preparations were underway for family members of passengers and crew to be taken to Perth, should physical wreckage be found.
Still plenty of work ahead for BlackBerry: Chen
BlackBerry chief executive John Chen says there’s still plenty of work ahead in his attempt to rescue the smartphone company, but that he has no intention of moving its main operations outside of the country.
“There’s so many things that need to be fixed,” Chen told reporters Friday at the company’s headquarters in Waterloo, Ont., following the release of its latest quarterly financial results.
But he added later, “I don’t have any plans to move out of Canada.”
Other changes are in the works though, as Chen continues to reorganize the company with a goal of reducing costs. That plan includes the elimination of about 40 per cent of the company’s workforce before the end of May.
On the frontlines, BlackBerry plans to unveil more keyboard smartphpones over the next 18 months that were created primarily for its loyal business and government customers.
On Friday, BlackBerry Ltd. (TSX:BB) posted a fourth-quarter loss of US$423 million or 80 cents per share, compared with a profit of $98 million or 19 cents per diluted share a year ago.
However, excluding several one-time items, BlackBerry says it reported an adjusted loss from continuing operations of $42 million or eight cents per share for the quarter.
The average analyst estimate compiled by Thomson Reuters had been for a loss of 55 cents per share for the quarter.
Revenue fell to $976 million for the three months ended March 1 compared with $2.68 billion a year ago. Analysts had expected about $1.1 billion for the latest quarter.
When he took the leadership role last November, Chen had to immediately get a tighter control on expenses, he said, because surveying the problems at the troubled company sequentially would’ve taken too long.
“You cannot ever cut yourself to glory,” he said.
“That transition was one of the most difficult things in the beginning.”
As part of its effort to lower costs and get some value of it what it owns, BlackBerry decided to sell a majority of its Canadian real estate holdings to various buyers. Some went to the University of Waterloo under an agreement that would also allow the company to lease back select properties, while others were sold to a buyer who hasn’t been revealed yet.
Chen said he intends to keep the company’s headquarters in Waterloo and maintain its QNX division in Ottawa.
The focus in the coming months will be returning the company to profitability, he said.
In the short term, he said that means growing its software and services business including its popular BBM service, and embedded software like QNX.
He also said the company needed to beef up its marketing operations in New York and Washington, two areas where BlackBerry smartphones still have a strong customer case.
“There’s so many things that need to be fixed,” Chen told reporters Friday at the company’s headquarters in Waterloo, Ont., following the release of its latest quarterly financial results.
But he added later, “I don’t have any plans to move out of Canada.”
Other changes are in the works though, as Chen continues to reorganize the company with a goal of reducing costs. That plan includes the elimination of about 40 per cent of the company’s workforce before the end of May.
On the frontlines, BlackBerry plans to unveil more keyboard smartphpones over the next 18 months that were created primarily for its loyal business and government customers.
On Friday, BlackBerry Ltd. (TSX:BB) posted a fourth-quarter loss of US$423 million or 80 cents per share, compared with a profit of $98 million or 19 cents per diluted share a year ago.
However, excluding several one-time items, BlackBerry says it reported an adjusted loss from continuing operations of $42 million or eight cents per share for the quarter.
The average analyst estimate compiled by Thomson Reuters had been for a loss of 55 cents per share for the quarter.
Revenue fell to $976 million for the three months ended March 1 compared with $2.68 billion a year ago. Analysts had expected about $1.1 billion for the latest quarter.
When he took the leadership role last November, Chen had to immediately get a tighter control on expenses, he said, because surveying the problems at the troubled company sequentially would’ve taken too long.
“You cannot ever cut yourself to glory,” he said.
“That transition was one of the most difficult things in the beginning.”
As part of its effort to lower costs and get some value of it what it owns, BlackBerry decided to sell a majority of its Canadian real estate holdings to various buyers. Some went to the University of Waterloo under an agreement that would also allow the company to lease back select properties, while others were sold to a buyer who hasn’t been revealed yet.
Chen said he intends to keep the company’s headquarters in Waterloo and maintain its QNX division in Ottawa.
The focus in the coming months will be returning the company to profitability, he said.
In the short term, he said that means growing its software and services business including its popular BBM service, and embedded software like QNX.
He also said the company needed to beef up its marketing operations in New York and Washington, two areas where BlackBerry smartphones still have a strong customer case.
Facebook's Drone-and-Laser Plan to Give Internet to Everyone
In its quest to get the whole world online, Facebook's Internet.org project has included partnerships with companies like Samsung and Nokia, as well as with NASA. Now it seems that rumors about Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook drone dreams are true, and the social network giant is planning on internet-delivering drones, satellites, and even lasers. Here's our first look at how that might take shape.
"Today, we're sharing some details of the work Facebook's Connectivity Lab is doing to build drones, satellites and lasers to deliver the internet to everyone," Zuckerberg posted earlier, along with an animation of what it might look like to sail on one of those Facebook-enabling drones through the sky.Imagine what that would be like, the video asks—in a slightly creepy way!—when we all have the internet:
"What happens when the rest of us get access? It doesn't get twice as good, it gets a bazillion times as good. Imagine for the first time, humanity firing on all cylinders."
Internet.org is currently in the process of working with Ascenta, the British company that built the Zephyr, the world's longest flying solar-powered drone. Beyond that, details about how those drones will turn into bandwidth are scare. So far Facebook has some high-level ideas about how this would all work, but that's about it.
It's a long-term, pie in the (literal) sky notion—much like Google's internet-delivering balloons —but with acquisitions like Oculus VR in its recent past , Facebook is clearly gearing up for things that are years and years away. So if you were afraid Google was becoming Skynet, at least there's a chance it'll have to fight through an army of Facebook drones before it achieves supremacy.
Police officer shot at Brampton courthouse
A police officer has been wounded after a shooter opened fire in the Brampton courthouse.
The shooter has also been shot, the Star has confirmed.
Peel EMS confirmed they are transferring one patient to hospital from the courthouse.
Two lawyers say they have been locked down inside the sprawling, multi-floor courthouse.
It’s not clear where the shooting took place inside the courthouse.
Lawyer Corey Nishio told the Star Friday morning he was locked in a courtroom on the second floor of the courthouse.
He said he didn’t hear any shots fired, but said people in his courtroom are hearing that three or four shots were fired near the entrance of the courthouse and that the victim may have been an officer who was handling security.
Criminal defence lawyer Will Jaksa told the Star via Twitter while on lockdown that people in the hallways on the second floor of the courthouse were “scrambling” into rooms on that floor. He was locked down in courtroom 202
“Cops bravely went running towards the gunshots,” Jaksa wrote.
Court staff were being updated by administration and the latest unconfirmed update was that “someone came into the building shooting . . . An officer was taken away by ambulance,” he said.
Peel police were not immediately available to confirm this information.
The Star’s Kenyon Wallace and Rachel Mendleson are inside the courthouse and are also on lockdown. They saw a police officer in uniform taken to an ambulance out the front entrance.
One witness told the Star she saw a man lying on the ground in a pool of blood.
A police tactical team is on scene, along with more than a dozen police cruisers that have blocked and three ambulances.
The shooter has also been shot, the Star has confirmed.
Peel EMS confirmed they are transferring one patient to hospital from the courthouse.
Two lawyers say they have been locked down inside the sprawling, multi-floor courthouse.
It’s not clear where the shooting took place inside the courthouse.
Lawyer Corey Nishio told the Star Friday morning he was locked in a courtroom on the second floor of the courthouse.
He said he didn’t hear any shots fired, but said people in his courtroom are hearing that three or four shots were fired near the entrance of the courthouse and that the victim may have been an officer who was handling security.
Criminal defence lawyer Will Jaksa told the Star via Twitter while on lockdown that people in the hallways on the second floor of the courthouse were “scrambling” into rooms on that floor. He was locked down in courtroom 202
“Cops bravely went running towards the gunshots,” Jaksa wrote.
Court staff were being updated by administration and the latest unconfirmed update was that “someone came into the building shooting . . . An officer was taken away by ambulance,” he said.
Peel police were not immediately available to confirm this information.
The Star’s Kenyon Wallace and Rachel Mendleson are inside the courthouse and are also on lockdown. They saw a police officer in uniform taken to an ambulance out the front entrance.
One witness told the Star she saw a man lying on the ground in a pool of blood.
A police tactical team is on scene, along with more than a dozen police cruisers that have blocked and three ambulances.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Xbox roots out 'bad' online players
Xbox One players who cheat or display anti-social behaviour during online games will be punished, Microsoft has revealed.
Such players will be issued with a red card and have certain privileges removed.
A traffic light system will categorise players, with green meaning "good", yellow meaning "needs work" and red standing for "avoid me".
Players falling into the green category will gain rewards for good behaviour.
Michael Dunn, program manager on Xbox Live, did not go into detail about what such rewards would be but did say that "the majority of gamers will fall into this level".
"By looking at someone's Gamercard you're able to quickly see their reputation," he said.
"The more hours you play fairly online without being reported as abusive by other players, the better your reputation will be," he added.
An algorithm will be used to identify players that are repeatedly disruptive, following negative feedback about their conduct.
"We designed the algorithm so it won't penalise you for bad reports over a few weeks of play. The system also adjusts for false reports from people that might intentionally report someone of greater skill or for other griefing purposes," said Mr Dunn.
Those that fall into the yellow category of "needs work" will be sent warnings about their behaviour.
And those that fall into the red category will have reduced matchmaking pairings and may be unable to use certain privileges such as Twitch broadcasting, which allows users to share live game-play sessions with viewers around the world.
Twitter users largely seemed to welcome the new guidelines.
Such players will be issued with a red card and have certain privileges removed.
A traffic light system will categorise players, with green meaning "good", yellow meaning "needs work" and red standing for "avoid me".
Players falling into the green category will gain rewards for good behaviour.
Michael Dunn, program manager on Xbox Live, did not go into detail about what such rewards would be but did say that "the majority of gamers will fall into this level".
Reputation algorithm
In a blogpost, he explained how the system would work."By looking at someone's Gamercard you're able to quickly see their reputation," he said.
"The more hours you play fairly online without being reported as abusive by other players, the better your reputation will be," he added.
An algorithm will be used to identify players that are repeatedly disruptive, following negative feedback about their conduct.
"We designed the algorithm so it won't penalise you for bad reports over a few weeks of play. The system also adjusts for false reports from people that might intentionally report someone of greater skill or for other griefing purposes," said Mr Dunn.
Those that fall into the yellow category of "needs work" will be sent warnings about their behaviour.
And those that fall into the red category will have reduced matchmaking pairings and may be unable to use certain privileges such as Twitch broadcasting, which allows users to share live game-play sessions with viewers around the world.
Twitter users largely seemed to welcome the new guidelines.
Virtual cash thieves target Android
Android apps that have been downloaded millions of times have been subverted to mine virtual coins for cyberthieves, say security firms.
Two firms have found apps inside and outside the Google Play store seeded with the hidden mining code.
The programs have been mining coins for the Dogecoin, Litecoin and Casinocoin virtual currencies.
If installed, the booby-trapped apps will run down a phone's battery very quickly, said researchers.
Lookout said it had seen the apps in stores popular in Spain and France.
Thieves are keen to steal computer power because virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, Dogecoin and others rely on large networks of connected machines. All those computers verify who is spending what and fresh coins are handed out for being involved - a process known as mining.
The more computer power someone can amass, the more mining they can do and, potentially, the more coins they can acquire.
However, using phones to do the mining was "odd", said Trend Micro researcher Veo Zhang in a blogpost detailing the apps seeded with the crypto coin code.
"Phones do not have sufficient performance to serve as effective miners," he said.
Lookout security researcher Marc Rogers said the simplistic nature of the code made it potentially dangerous as it made no attempt to manage how much processing power it used. Instead, he said, it just grabbed as much as it can.
"It will drive the hardware to mine until it runs out of battery," he said. "Overheating associated with this kind of harsh use can also damage hardware."
Those behind the coin code might have made efforts to hide the fact that phones were mining but users were still likely to notice, said Mr Zhang.
"Slow charging and excessively hot phones will all be seen, making the miner's presence not particularly stealthy," he wrote. "Yes, they can gain money this way, but at a glacial pace."
Despite this, he said, one of the groups producing the malicious apps had managed to amass thousands of Dogecoins which they then swapped for Bitcoins. One Bitcoin is currently worth £337.
Mr Rogers from Lookout said users might notice as mining involves swapping lots of data back and forth - which could quickly eat up a monthly data allowance.
Mr Zhang said Trend Micro had told Google's Android security team about its findings. Google has yet to comment on the discovery of the mining apps.
Two firms have found apps inside and outside the Google Play store seeded with the hidden mining code.
The programs have been mining coins for the Dogecoin, Litecoin and Casinocoin virtual currencies.
If installed, the booby-trapped apps will run down a phone's battery very quickly, said researchers.
Hot phones
Some of the apps harbouring the mining code were found on non-official Android stores but two of the programs, called Songs and Prized, are still available on the Google Play store. Songs has been downloaded at least one million times.Lookout said it had seen the apps in stores popular in Spain and France.
Thieves are keen to steal computer power because virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, Dogecoin and others rely on large networks of connected machines. All those computers verify who is spending what and fresh coins are handed out for being involved - a process known as mining.
The more computer power someone can amass, the more mining they can do and, potentially, the more coins they can acquire.
However, using phones to do the mining was "odd", said Trend Micro researcher Veo Zhang in a blogpost detailing the apps seeded with the crypto coin code.
"Phones do not have sufficient performance to serve as effective miners," he said.
Lookout security researcher Marc Rogers said the simplistic nature of the code made it potentially dangerous as it made no attempt to manage how much processing power it used. Instead, he said, it just grabbed as much as it can.
"It will drive the hardware to mine until it runs out of battery," he said. "Overheating associated with this kind of harsh use can also damage hardware."
Those behind the coin code might have made efforts to hide the fact that phones were mining but users were still likely to notice, said Mr Zhang.
"Slow charging and excessively hot phones will all be seen, making the miner's presence not particularly stealthy," he wrote. "Yes, they can gain money this way, but at a glacial pace."
Despite this, he said, one of the groups producing the malicious apps had managed to amass thousands of Dogecoins which they then swapped for Bitcoins. One Bitcoin is currently worth £337.
Mr Rogers from Lookout said users might notice as mining involves swapping lots of data back and forth - which could quickly eat up a monthly data allowance.
Mr Zhang said Trend Micro had told Google's Android security team about its findings. Google has yet to comment on the discovery of the mining apps.
The Futuristic Liquid Nitrogen Machine That Makes Ice Cream To Order
Despite the warm wood and cheery red accents, Smitten Ice Cream can feel a bit like a mad scientist's shop. There's the industrial-sized tank of liquid nitrogen that greets you inside the entrance of its new flagship location in Oakland. And there's the billowing clouds of nitrogen when the stainless steel ice cream machines churn out personalized scoops to order.
With Smitten's Oakland store set to open next week, Gizmodo went to visit and get the, erh, inside scoop on how these machines make some of the best ice cream out there.I have to say I was skeptical when I first heard about Smitten's schtick, which just seemed like a way to differentiate itself from the other cultishly trendy ice cream shops in the Bay Area. (That there is more than one such ice cream shop perhaps says something about the San Francisco of 2014.) I've made liquid nitrogen ice cream before, and the lumpy result was, put charitably, no better than supermarket brands. It's kinda fun but definitely not worthy of cultish devotion. But when I tried the ice at Smitten's original San Francisco location, damned if it wasn't delicious and creamy.
In theory, liquid nitrogen is supposed to make the best ice cream because its extremely low temperature prevents the formation of large ice crystals—hence the creamier result. In practice, though, superchilling your cream causes it to stick to the cold steel bowl, creating those lumps I encountered stirring by hand. That's where Brr does its job.
Smitten's founder Robyn Sue Fisher spent two years tinkering in a basement lab with a retired engineer to make Brr, the shop's patented ice cream machine. The breakthrough behind Smitten's ice cream is not really liquid nitrogen, but the little machine that stirs. "My first kid was Brr," jokes Fisher.
At first, they tried to tinker with existing mixers, but none were up to the formidable stirring. So they threw it all out and started from scratch. Fisher recalls looking at snow plows and airplanes for inspiration—machines that are already designed to prevent ice buildup. Oe of their earlier prototypes was "literally a snowplow that went around the snow." Ultimately, they settled on two helical stirrers shaped much like strands of DNA.
With a design in place, getting a handcrafted batch of customized machines manufactured was also no small (nor cheap) feat. "You could basically buy a car for the cost of a machine," says Fisher. To keep the machines running smoothly, she also has a team of seven engineers to call for help. Smitten has now expanded to two existing locations with two more slated to open soon, including the one I visited in Oakland.
With the new stores, Smitten is also upgrading to Brr 2.0, which is more than the sum of its mechanical parts. It knows to stir every flavor a little differently because, for example, chocolate ice cream is more viscous than strawberry white balsamic.
Fisher doesn't have any plans to franchise the brand or make Brr for sale, so you'll just have to be in the Bay Area to judge the ice cream for yourself. But really, watching the machines go and getting ice cream made in front of you is half the fun.
Wal-Mart sues Visa for $5 billion over card swipe fees
Wal-Mart Stores Inc this week sued Visa Inc for $5 billion, accusing the credit and debit card network of excessively high card swipe fees, several months after the retailer opted out of a class action settlement between merchants and Visa and MasterCard Inc.
Visa declined to comment on the suit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, where Wal-Mart is headquartered.
Visa and other card networks charge retailers fees, called swipe fees or interchange fees, each time a shopper uses a debit or credit card to pay.
In December, a federal judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., approved a $5.7 billion class action settlement between merchants and Visa and MasterCard despite the objections of thousands of retailers that complained it was inadequate.
Wal-Mart, Amazon.com Inc, and Target Corp were among those opting out of the monetary components of the settlement to have the freedom to seek damages on their own.
Those businesses complained about a broad litigation release in the settlement. The release forces all merchants who accepted Visa or MasterCard, and those who will in the future, to give up their right to sue the credit card companies over rules at issue in the case or similar ones they may make in the future.
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is seeking damages from price fixing and other antitrust violations that it claims took place between January 1, 2004 and November 27, 2012.
In its lawsuit, Wal-Mart contends that Visa, in concert with banks, sought to prevent retailers from protecting themselves against those swipe fees, eventually hurting sales.
"The anticompetitive conduct of Visa and the banks forced Wal-Mart to raise retail prices paid by its customers and/or reduce retail services provided to its customers as a means of offsetting some of the artificially inflated interchange fees," Wal-Mart in court documents.
"As a result, Wal-Mart's retail sales were below what they would have been otherwise."
When asked whether Wal-Mart would file a suit against Mastercard, a spokesman for the retailer said the company would not discuss its litigation plans publicly.
Wal-Mart contends that that the way Visa set swipe fees violated antitrust regulations and generated more than $350 billion for card issuers over the nearly 9-year period in question, in part at the expense of the retailer and customers.
The case is in re: Wal-Mart Stores, U.S. District Court, Western District of Arkansas, No. 05101.
Visa declined to comment on the suit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, where Wal-Mart is headquartered.
Visa and other card networks charge retailers fees, called swipe fees or interchange fees, each time a shopper uses a debit or credit card to pay.
In December, a federal judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., approved a $5.7 billion class action settlement between merchants and Visa and MasterCard despite the objections of thousands of retailers that complained it was inadequate.
Wal-Mart, Amazon.com Inc, and Target Corp were among those opting out of the monetary components of the settlement to have the freedom to seek damages on their own.
Those businesses complained about a broad litigation release in the settlement. The release forces all merchants who accepted Visa or MasterCard, and those who will in the future, to give up their right to sue the credit card companies over rules at issue in the case or similar ones they may make in the future.
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is seeking damages from price fixing and other antitrust violations that it claims took place between January 1, 2004 and November 27, 2012.
In its lawsuit, Wal-Mart contends that Visa, in concert with banks, sought to prevent retailers from protecting themselves against those swipe fees, eventually hurting sales.
"The anticompetitive conduct of Visa and the banks forced Wal-Mart to raise retail prices paid by its customers and/or reduce retail services provided to its customers as a means of offsetting some of the artificially inflated interchange fees," Wal-Mart in court documents.
"As a result, Wal-Mart's retail sales were below what they would have been otherwise."
When asked whether Wal-Mart would file a suit against Mastercard, a spokesman for the retailer said the company would not discuss its litigation plans publicly.
Wal-Mart contends that that the way Visa set swipe fees violated antitrust regulations and generated more than $350 billion for card issuers over the nearly 9-year period in question, in part at the expense of the retailer and customers.
The case is in re: Wal-Mart Stores, U.S. District Court, Western District of Arkansas, No. 05101.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Is This Weird Little Blob The Future Of Bottled Water?
We get it. Our love of drinking water from disposable plastic bottles is a problem, enough of a problem that San Francisco actually wants to ban them . But then what will we drink water out of? Ooho, a biodegradable membrane made of brown algae, is an interesting idea.
Touted by some as an "edible water bottle," Ooho is actually more of a blob. The three London-based design students who developed the technology wanted to make something cheap, sustainable, and durable, so they improved upon a decades-old culinary technique called "spherification." Made popular by the molecular gastronomy nuts at El Bulli, spherification is exactly what it sounds like. Put simply, you turn liquid into spheres held together with a gelatinous membrane.Ooho is actually not one but two membranes, for durability's sake. The double layer also makes it possible to sandwich a label in between the membranes, though Ooho's not quite ready for the supermarket. The real fun, of course, is trying to drink from Ooho. Since the container is edible, you could just pop the whole thing in your mouth like a bon-bon, but that doesn't seem particularly sanitary. Instead, you can just poke a hole in the membrane with your teeth and suck the water out. Based on Fast Company's test, however, you'll probably end up getting water everywhere.
All things considered, Ooha is a pretty cool, though slightly absurd invention. Will it save the world from living under a mountain of plastic Dasani bottles? Probably not. Does it signal the beginning of a new way to think about food packing? Absolutely.
And Ooha's not the only one onto this edible packaging idea, either. In the next month or so, Wikipearl will make its debut on the shelves of Whole Foods around Boston. The design of these little balls was inspired by biological cells and they are actually supposed to be eaten like bon bons. For now, however, it's safe to say that products like Ooho and Wikipearl are a novelty. An intriguing novelty! But a novelty nonetheless.
Honda, Toyota to roll out fuel-cell cars in 2015
Honda Motor Co Ltd and Toyota Motor Corp plan to launch fuel-cell vehicles in the consumer market in 2015, with each producing about 1,000 eco-friendly cars a year, the Nikkei newspaper reported.
The automakers now offer fuel-cell cars on lease, with users centering on municipalities and businesses, the daily said.
Initial prices of these zero-emission vehicles, which cover longer distances than electric cars, will set below 10 million yen, the Nikkei said.
Honda is developing a sedan that it plans to roll out as early as November 2015, which will be able to travel about 500 kilometer on a single charge -- twice the range of an electric vehicle, the Nikkei reported.
Honda intends to churn out 5,000 units over five years, selling them in Japan, the United States and Europe, the daily said.
Toyota, the global leader in hybrid vehicles, intends to release a sedan in Japan, the United States and Europe in 2015, the Nikkei said, adding that by 2020, the automaker aims to lift annual output to tens of thousands of units.
Toyota hopes to cut prices to between 3-5 million yen in the 2020s, the Nikkei said, quoting an unnamed development staffer.
The automakers now offer fuel-cell cars on lease, with users centering on municipalities and businesses, the daily said.
Initial prices of these zero-emission vehicles, which cover longer distances than electric cars, will set below 10 million yen, the Nikkei said.
Honda is developing a sedan that it plans to roll out as early as November 2015, which will be able to travel about 500 kilometer on a single charge -- twice the range of an electric vehicle, the Nikkei reported.
Honda intends to churn out 5,000 units over five years, selling them in Japan, the United States and Europe, the daily said.
Toyota, the global leader in hybrid vehicles, intends to release a sedan in Japan, the United States and Europe in 2015, the Nikkei said, adding that by 2020, the automaker aims to lift annual output to tens of thousands of units.
Toyota hopes to cut prices to between 3-5 million yen in the 2020s, the Nikkei said, quoting an unnamed development staffer.
Blizzard warning issued for Canada's Atlantic coast
Canada's Atlantic seaboard braced Wednesday for a spring blizzard, closing schools, government offices and businesses, and cancelling flights in anticipation of a record snowfall, powerful winds and flooding.
Authorities said winds could reach up to 180 kilometers per hour (112 miles per hour) and as much as 40 centimeters (15 inches) of snow was expected to fall in parts of the region.
Visibility was nil in the morning across much of the Maritimes due to blowing snow.
Most worrying, however, is the possibility of hurricane force winds causing a high tide to swell and damage wharves and flood coastal areas.
The storm, which is forecast to be the worst in a decade, has been consolidating its energy from several low pressure areas as it moved north along the US eastern seaboard to Canada.
It is expected to reach the island province of Newfoundland on Thursday after sweeping through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Authorities said winds could reach up to 180 kilometers per hour (112 miles per hour) and as much as 40 centimeters (15 inches) of snow was expected to fall in parts of the region.
Visibility was nil in the morning across much of the Maritimes due to blowing snow.
Most worrying, however, is the possibility of hurricane force winds causing a high tide to swell and damage wharves and flood coastal areas.
The storm, which is forecast to be the worst in a decade, has been consolidating its energy from several low pressure areas as it moved north along the US eastern seaboard to Canada.
It is expected to reach the island province of Newfoundland on Thursday after sweeping through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Chicago runaway-train driver 'dozed'
The operator of a Chicago train which derailed on Monday, injuring 32 people, has said she fell asleep while on duty, according to federal officials.
The unnamed woman, employed as an operator for two months, reportedly admitted it was not the first time she had dozed off on the job.
The speeding metro train jumped its tracks at O'Hare International Airport and hurtled up an escalator.
None of the injuries at the busy airport were said to be serious.
"She did admit that she dozed off prior to entering the station," National Transportation Safety Board investigator Ted Turpin said during a news conference on Wednesday.
Mr Turpin said the woman often worked an erratic shift schedule.
She was reportedly disciplined in February after falling asleep on the job as her train partially missed a station.
The woman is said to be co-operating with investigators.
The unnamed woman, employed as an operator for two months, reportedly admitted it was not the first time she had dozed off on the job.
The speeding metro train jumped its tracks at O'Hare International Airport and hurtled up an escalator.
None of the injuries at the busy airport were said to be serious.
"She did admit that she dozed off prior to entering the station," National Transportation Safety Board investigator Ted Turpin said during a news conference on Wednesday.
Mr Turpin said the woman often worked an erratic shift schedule.
She was reportedly disciplined in February after falling asleep on the job as her train partially missed a station.
The woman is said to be co-operating with investigators.
Planes, ships chase new leads in search for Malaysian jet
PERTH/KUALA LUMPUR - New satellite images have revealed more than 100 objects in the southern Indian Ocean that could be debris from a Malaysian jetliner missing for 18 days, while planes scouring the frigid seas on Wednesday also reported seeing potential wreckage.
The latest sightings came as searchers stepped up efforts to find some trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, thought to have crashed on March 8 with the loss of all 239 people aboard after flying thousands of miles off course.
"We have now had four separate satellite leads, from Australia, China and France, showing possible debris," Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference. "It is now imperative that we link the debris to MH370."
The latest images were captured by France-based Airbus Defence & Space on Monday and showed 122 potential objects in a 400-sq-km (155-sq-mile) area of ocean,Hishammuddin said. The objects varied in size from one metre to 23 metres (75 ft) in length, he said.
Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, and investigators believe someone on the flight may have shut off the plane's communications systems.
Partial military radar tracking showed it turning west and recrossing the Malay Peninsula, apparently under the control of a skilled pilot.
Malaysia's air force has released few details of its radar tracking beyond saying the plane was last detected off the northwest coast heading towards India.
But the country's deputy defence minister, Abdul Rahim Bakri, told parliament that no action was taken when the unidentified plane was spotted because it was assumed it had been ordered to turn back, local media said.
"It was detected by our radar, but the turn back was by a non-hostile plane and we thought maybe it was at the directive of the control tower," he was quoted as saying.
Asked at the news conference whether air force radar operators thought the plane had been told to turn back by air traffic controllers, Hishammuddin, who is also defence minister, said he could not confirm it.
"The crash zone is as close to nowhere as it's possible to be but it's closer to Australia than anywhere else," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said, before leading the country's parliament in a moment's silence.
"A considerable amount of debris has been sighted in the area where the flight was last recorded. Bad weather and inaccessibility have so far prevented any of it from being recovered. But we are confident that it will be."
Wednesday's good weather was unlikely to last, in an area renowned among mariners for high winds and big waves.
"This is only going to be a narrow window of opportunity by the looks of things, because another weather system is moving in for Thursday, which looks like that will bring an increase in winds again and also lead to a reduction in visibility through the rain associated with the cold front," Neil Bennett, a spokesman for Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, said.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak this week confirmed Flight MH370 had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
Citing satellite-data analysis by British company Inmarsat, he said there was no doubt the Boeing 777 came down in one of the most remote places on Earth.
Recovery of wreckage could unlock clues about why and how the plane had diverted so far off course in one of aviation's most puzzling mysteries. Theories range from a hijacking to sabotage or a possible suicide by one of the pilots, but investigators have not ruled out technical problems.
Australia, China and France have all released satellite images over the past week showing possible debris in the same general area as the latest sighting, but no confirmed wreckage has been located.
Two Chinese ships were looking for a two-metre floating object spotted earlier in the day by an aircraft, China's state news agency Xinhua reported.
The United States has sent an undersea Navy drone and a high-tech black box detector which will be fitted to an Australian Defence vessel due in Perth in the coming days.
The so-called black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, record what happens during flight, but time is running out to pick up locator beacons that stop about a month after a crash due to limited battery life.
Malaysia said on Tuesday that the U.S. "Towed Pinger Locator" would not arrive in the search area until April 5, which would give it only a few days to find the black box before the beacon battery would be expected to run out.
At the Pentagon, the U.S. and British defence chiefs acknowledged the incident remained a mystery.
"On the terrorism question, I don't think at this point we can rule anything in or out. I think we have to continue to search," U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said.
"Unless and until we recover the cockpit voice recorder, we will not know for certain," British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said.
FBI Director James Comey said at a Washington hearing on Wednesday he expected his agency to finish an investigation of computer files related to the flight in the next day or two. He did not say what results he expected.
The prolonged and so far fruitless search and investigation have taken a toll, with dozens of distraught relatives of Chinese passengers clashing with police in Beijing on Tuesday, accusing Malaysia of "delays and deception".
Malaysia's confused initial response to the plane's disappearance and a perception of poor communications have enraged many relatives of the more than 150 Chinese passengers and have strained ties between Beijing and Kuala Lumpur.
Chinese special envoy Zhang Yesui met Malaysia's Najib on Wednesday and called for "unremitting efforts" to find the plane, Xinhua said.
The latest sightings came as searchers stepped up efforts to find some trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, thought to have crashed on March 8 with the loss of all 239 people aboard after flying thousands of miles off course.
"We have now had four separate satellite leads, from Australia, China and France, showing possible debris," Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference. "It is now imperative that we link the debris to MH370."
The latest images were captured by France-based Airbus Defence & Space on Monday and showed 122 potential objects in a 400-sq-km (155-sq-mile) area of ocean,Hishammuddin said. The objects varied in size from one metre to 23 metres (75 ft) in length, he said.
Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, and investigators believe someone on the flight may have shut off the plane's communications systems.
Partial military radar tracking showed it turning west and recrossing the Malay Peninsula, apparently under the control of a skilled pilot.
Malaysia's air force has released few details of its radar tracking beyond saying the plane was last detected off the northwest coast heading towards India.
But the country's deputy defence minister, Abdul Rahim Bakri, told parliament that no action was taken when the unidentified plane was spotted because it was assumed it had been ordered to turn back, local media said.
"It was detected by our radar, but the turn back was by a non-hostile plane and we thought maybe it was at the directive of the control tower," he was quoted as saying.
Asked at the news conference whether air force radar operators thought the plane had been told to turn back by air traffic controllers, Hishammuddin, who is also defence minister, said he could not confirm it.
MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
A dozen aircraft from Australia, the United States, New Zealand, China, Japan and South Korea were once more scouring the seas some 2,500 km (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth in the hunt for wreckage on Wednesday, after bad weather the previous day forced the suspension of the search."The crash zone is as close to nowhere as it's possible to be but it's closer to Australia than anywhere else," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said, before leading the country's parliament in a moment's silence.
"A considerable amount of debris has been sighted in the area where the flight was last recorded. Bad weather and inaccessibility have so far prevented any of it from being recovered. But we are confident that it will be."
Wednesday's good weather was unlikely to last, in an area renowned among mariners for high winds and big waves.
"This is only going to be a narrow window of opportunity by the looks of things, because another weather system is moving in for Thursday, which looks like that will bring an increase in winds again and also lead to a reduction in visibility through the rain associated with the cold front," Neil Bennett, a spokesman for Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, said.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak this week confirmed Flight MH370 had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
Citing satellite-data analysis by British company Inmarsat, he said there was no doubt the Boeing 777 came down in one of the most remote places on Earth.
Recovery of wreckage could unlock clues about why and how the plane had diverted so far off course in one of aviation's most puzzling mysteries. Theories range from a hijacking to sabotage or a possible suicide by one of the pilots, but investigators have not ruled out technical problems.
Australia, China and France have all released satellite images over the past week showing possible debris in the same general area as the latest sighting, but no confirmed wreckage has been located.
PASSENGER RELATIVES DISTRAUGHT
An Australian navy ship returned to the area after being driven away by gale force winds and 20-metre (66 ft) waves on Tuesday, while a Chinese icebreaker and three Chinese navy vessels were also in the search zone.Two Chinese ships were looking for a two-metre floating object spotted earlier in the day by an aircraft, China's state news agency Xinhua reported.
The United States has sent an undersea Navy drone and a high-tech black box detector which will be fitted to an Australian Defence vessel due in Perth in the coming days.
The so-called black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, record what happens during flight, but time is running out to pick up locator beacons that stop about a month after a crash due to limited battery life.
Malaysia said on Tuesday that the U.S. "Towed Pinger Locator" would not arrive in the search area until April 5, which would give it only a few days to find the black box before the beacon battery would be expected to run out.
At the Pentagon, the U.S. and British defence chiefs acknowledged the incident remained a mystery.
"On the terrorism question, I don't think at this point we can rule anything in or out. I think we have to continue to search," U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said.
"Unless and until we recover the cockpit voice recorder, we will not know for certain," British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said.
FBI Director James Comey said at a Washington hearing on Wednesday he expected his agency to finish an investigation of computer files related to the flight in the next day or two. He did not say what results he expected.
The prolonged and so far fruitless search and investigation have taken a toll, with dozens of distraught relatives of Chinese passengers clashing with police in Beijing on Tuesday, accusing Malaysia of "delays and deception".
Malaysia's confused initial response to the plane's disappearance and a perception of poor communications have enraged many relatives of the more than 150 Chinese passengers and have strained ties between Beijing and Kuala Lumpur.
Chinese special envoy Zhang Yesui met Malaysia's Najib on Wednesday and called for "unremitting efforts" to find the plane, Xinhua said.
Landslide town knew risks, officials insist
The US town devastated by a monster mudslide that has claimed up to 24 lives so far was warned four years ago of the risk but residents felt safe anyway, officials said Wednesday.
As workers probed the disaster site for missing residents of Oso, Washington, the little town buried last weekend under a square mile of earth and timber, emergency preparedness officials defended their own performance.
A 2010 report commissioned after a major landslide in 2006 pinpointed the hillside overlooking Oso as among the most dangerous in terms of possible collapse.
But officials -- who believe Saturday's landslide may have been triggered by a small earthquake -- say the local community was aware of the dangers.
- 'Community did feel safe' -
Townspeople "knew the risk, but they felt safe in the small events," John Pennington, head of the Snohomish County Emergency Management Department, told reporters.
"This wasn't a small event. It was large, it was very catastrophic," he added, fighting back tears at one point.
Some 200 rescuers digging through the debris recovered two more bodies Tuesday and believe they located eight more, officials said.
On Wednesday, they said the official confirmed death toll remained at 16, as the other bodies found had not been extricated.
The number of reports of people unaccounted for remains at 176, although that could include double-counting and people who may turn up elsewhere, and so likely does not represent how many more fatalities may be found.
"I'm very confident that that number will drop in the end," Pennington said Wednesday.
- National Guard -
A total of 49 dwellings in the rural town were hit by the one square mile (2.5 square kilometer) wall of mud, rocks and trees, which also destroyed part of a highway some 60 miles (95 kilometers) northeast of Seattle.
Officials say the massive emergency operation is still aimed at rescuing survivors as well as recovering bodies, even though the chances of finding people alive diminish with each day.
The National Guard joined local and state emergency workers after President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency for Washington state.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will help "save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in Snohomish County," said the White House.
One volunteer firefighter described the landslide as "quicksand, where you could easily sink up to your armpits."
There were signs of structures peeking through a dense layer of fallen timber and earth, he said, adding that debris had blocked the Stillaguamish river, causing floods in the Darrington area.
- 'Increasingly unstable' -
"The rising river and floodwaters are making the slide areas nearest the banks increasingly unstable," the emergency worker, who did not give his name because he was not authorized to speak to the media, told AFP.
Some believe that a small 1.1 magnitude earthquake in the area may have triggered last Saturday's landslide. The quake was mentioned in one briefing earlier in the week.
Pennington said the focus now was on rescue and recovery -- but after the emergency operation is finished, officials want answers to prevent another tragedy.
"From 2006 to 2014 the community did feel safe. People knew that this was a landslide-prone area, (but)sometimes big events just happen," he said.
"This event happened, and I want to find out why, I want to understand the dyanmic of a potential small earthquake behind it that shook it loose, and I don't have those answers right now."
As workers probed the disaster site for missing residents of Oso, Washington, the little town buried last weekend under a square mile of earth and timber, emergency preparedness officials defended their own performance.
A 2010 report commissioned after a major landslide in 2006 pinpointed the hillside overlooking Oso as among the most dangerous in terms of possible collapse.
But officials -- who believe Saturday's landslide may have been triggered by a small earthquake -- say the local community was aware of the dangers.
- 'Community did feel safe' -
Townspeople "knew the risk, but they felt safe in the small events," John Pennington, head of the Snohomish County Emergency Management Department, told reporters.
"This wasn't a small event. It was large, it was very catastrophic," he added, fighting back tears at one point.
Some 200 rescuers digging through the debris recovered two more bodies Tuesday and believe they located eight more, officials said.
On Wednesday, they said the official confirmed death toll remained at 16, as the other bodies found had not been extricated.
The number of reports of people unaccounted for remains at 176, although that could include double-counting and people who may turn up elsewhere, and so likely does not represent how many more fatalities may be found.
"I'm very confident that that number will drop in the end," Pennington said Wednesday.
- National Guard -
A total of 49 dwellings in the rural town were hit by the one square mile (2.5 square kilometer) wall of mud, rocks and trees, which also destroyed part of a highway some 60 miles (95 kilometers) northeast of Seattle.
Officials say the massive emergency operation is still aimed at rescuing survivors as well as recovering bodies, even though the chances of finding people alive diminish with each day.
The National Guard joined local and state emergency workers after President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency for Washington state.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will help "save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in Snohomish County," said the White House.
One volunteer firefighter described the landslide as "quicksand, where you could easily sink up to your armpits."
There were signs of structures peeking through a dense layer of fallen timber and earth, he said, adding that debris had blocked the Stillaguamish river, causing floods in the Darrington area.
- 'Increasingly unstable' -
"The rising river and floodwaters are making the slide areas nearest the banks increasingly unstable," the emergency worker, who did not give his name because he was not authorized to speak to the media, told AFP.
Some believe that a small 1.1 magnitude earthquake in the area may have triggered last Saturday's landslide. The quake was mentioned in one briefing earlier in the week.
Pennington said the focus now was on rescue and recovery -- but after the emergency operation is finished, officials want answers to prevent another tragedy.
"From 2006 to 2014 the community did feel safe. People knew that this was a landslide-prone area, (but)sometimes big events just happen," he said.
"This event happened, and I want to find out why, I want to understand the dyanmic of a potential small earthquake behind it that shook it loose, and I don't have those answers right now."
How a 2005 Steve Jobs Ultimatum Turned Into the iPhone We Know
Way back in 2005, Apple engineer Greg Christie was toying around with ideas for a touchscreen telephone. Then, Job's gave him an ultimatum: show serious progress in two weeks, or someone else gets the project.
There's nothing like a threat to sharpen one's focus—and Jobs' demand for " bigger ideas and bigger concepts" really did. Ahead of another legal spat between Samsung and Apple, Christie has explained how the iPhone project first started to the Wall Street Journal, and it makes for interesting reading.The article explains how a "shockingly small" team worked solidly for those two weeks to prove themselves. They developed software that they ran on a plastic touchscreen hooked up to a dated desktop Mac, which was an attempt to emulate a low-powered mobile processor. The result was a prototype phone which featured wipe-to-unlock, no physical keyboard and all the music-playing features of the company's then-successful iPod series.
Christie's team pored over details like the perfect speed for scrolling lists on the phone and the natural feel of bouncing back when arriving at the end of a list. He said his team "banged their head against the wall" over how to change text messages from a chronological list of individual messages to a series of separate ongoing conversations similar to instant messaging on a computer.
That all, fortunately for Christie, was enough to convince Jobs that the team was headed in the right direction. Not that things got any easier: what followed was, in Christie's words, a "two and a half year marathon" where Jobs obsessed over every detail and demanded covert presentations—in a windowless room!—twice a month.
Apple's Trying To Make iOS Emojis More Racially Diverse
After Miley Cyrus quite rightly grumbled about the lack of racial diversity in iOS emojis a long time ago, MTV Act decided to ask Apple what it had done about it. Surprisingly, it turns out, it's pushing for change!
The enquiry—sent directly to Tim Cook!—was replied to by Katie Cotton, Apple's vice president of worldwide corporate communications:"Tim forwarded your email to me. We agree with you. Our emoji characters are based on the Unicode standard, which is necessary for them to be displayed properly across many platforms. There needs to be more diversity in the emoji character set, and we have been working closely with the Unicode Consortium in an effort to update the standard."
There's no obvious date by which the Unicode issues will be sorted, though—so, for now, you're stuck with an overwhelming white presence in your emojis.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Toyota India hires contract workers to restart output
Japan's Toyota said Tuesday it has hired 1,000 contract workers to help restart production, after its employees refused to return to work following an end to a eight-day company lockout.
The Toyota workers and its management at two plants near the southern high-tech city of Bangalore are at loggerheads over pay issues, which they have been negotiating for 10 months.
The employees refused to resume work after the company lifted an eight-day lockout on Monday.
"As regular employees did not resume duties .... we're using services of 1,000 contract labour to restart production," a company executive, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP.
Toyota Kirloskar Motor Private Ltd, the Indian unit of the world's biggest carmaker, issued a statement confirming it was hiring contract labour to help restart the twin factories.
The complex produces some 310,000 autos annually, including Toyota's flagship Camry sedan, the Corolla, and the Prius hybrid, mostly for the domestic market.
The carmaker had said workers could return from Monday provided they signed a good conduct pledge after suspending some 30 workers over accusations they deliberately halted production and made threats to supervisors.
Toyota's union has demanded a pay hike of at least 4,000 rupees ($65) a month, while the company is offering 3,050 ($50), citing tough market conditions with India car sales set to fall for a second year in a row.
Union president Prasanna Kumar said the workers were refusing to sign the good conduct promise because "it falsely implicates some employees as responsible" for misconduct that resulted in the lockout.
The company is also using 2,000 apprentices and managerial staff to help roll out cars.
Toyota's plant problems comes in the wake of other, sometimes violent, labour disturbances, at Indian car factories in recent years.
In 2012, workers at India's top carmaker by sales, Japan's Suzuki Motor's unit Maruti Suzuki India, went on the rampage, killing one executive and injuring over 100 others in a dispute over pay and working conditions.
Toyota has appealed to the Karnataka state government to help end the row while the union has asked the state's labour ministry to protect its members' interests.
"Instead of resolving the issue amicably, management is misusing apprentices to make them work and has hired contract labour to do our job, which is skilled and involves stringent processes to ensure quality," Kumar said.
Even with a slowing car market, global vehicle manufacturers have been investing in India in the belief the country has great growth potential with just 15 out of every 1,000 people owning vehicles, according to industry figures, compared to saturated western markets.
The Toyota workers and its management at two plants near the southern high-tech city of Bangalore are at loggerheads over pay issues, which they have been negotiating for 10 months.
The employees refused to resume work after the company lifted an eight-day lockout on Monday.
"As regular employees did not resume duties .... we're using services of 1,000 contract labour to restart production," a company executive, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP.
Toyota Kirloskar Motor Private Ltd, the Indian unit of the world's biggest carmaker, issued a statement confirming it was hiring contract labour to help restart the twin factories.
The complex produces some 310,000 autos annually, including Toyota's flagship Camry sedan, the Corolla, and the Prius hybrid, mostly for the domestic market.
The carmaker had said workers could return from Monday provided they signed a good conduct pledge after suspending some 30 workers over accusations they deliberately halted production and made threats to supervisors.
Toyota's union has demanded a pay hike of at least 4,000 rupees ($65) a month, while the company is offering 3,050 ($50), citing tough market conditions with India car sales set to fall for a second year in a row.
Union president Prasanna Kumar said the workers were refusing to sign the good conduct promise because "it falsely implicates some employees as responsible" for misconduct that resulted in the lockout.
The company is also using 2,000 apprentices and managerial staff to help roll out cars.
Toyota's plant problems comes in the wake of other, sometimes violent, labour disturbances, at Indian car factories in recent years.
In 2012, workers at India's top carmaker by sales, Japan's Suzuki Motor's unit Maruti Suzuki India, went on the rampage, killing one executive and injuring over 100 others in a dispute over pay and working conditions.
Toyota has appealed to the Karnataka state government to help end the row while the union has asked the state's labour ministry to protect its members' interests.
"Instead of resolving the issue amicably, management is misusing apprentices to make them work and has hired contract labour to do our job, which is skilled and involves stringent processes to ensure quality," Kumar said.
Even with a slowing car market, global vehicle manufacturers have been investing in India in the belief the country has great growth potential with just 15 out of every 1,000 people owning vehicles, according to industry figures, compared to saturated western markets.
Monopoly invites fans to rethink rulebook
Maybe you and your friends have made Free Parking more like a winning lottery ticket by adding the proceeds from taxes and fees. Or you’ve started your own stimulus program by jacking up the take for landing on Go — or amended those pesky regulations limiting houses and hotels.
If so, you’ve been playing Monopoly incorrectly. But soon such “house rules” may receive an official blessing.
Hasbro, which has published the classic board game since 1991, is announcing Tuesday that it will incorporate the top “house rules” into a special edition of the game starting this fall.
“While the official Monopoly rules will not change,” the company said in a statement, “fans who love playing with ‘house rules’ will now have the opportunity to play them in their game.”
To kick off the promotional effort, Hasbro will invite fans to debate the pros and cons of 10 popular house rules on the game’s Facebook page through April 3. Then it will choose five to become part of a special edition and to be included as an addendum to the official rules in a Monopoly game guide next year.
The announcement may be odious to many Monopoly die-hards, who lament that most people do not play by the rules in the first place.
According to the official rules, largely unchanged since the 1930s, whenever a player lands on an unowned property and decides not to purchase it, the bank sells it to the highest bidder in an auction, speeding up the game and increasing benevolent sparring among players. Each player is to receive $1,500 - no more or less - to start the game, and the limit of 32 houses and 12 hotels that come with the game can add offer an additional layer of strategy by creating a housing shortage.
Perhaps most overlooked by lay players is the rule that if the owner of a property fails to ask for rent before the next throw of the dice, no rent is collected. It’s the cardboard version of “you snooze, you lose.”
Many common house rules cast aside prescribed limits: Injecting more cash into Free Parking; giving $400 for landing on “Go” rather than the stipulated $200 for merely passing by; using additional houses and hotels if the provided stash runs out; and providing higher tiers of cash payouts for rolling snake eyes. Some say jailbirds may not collect rent while behind bars, and others are in favor of haggling cash advances and co-ownership of properties.
Many of the house rules can prolong a game, which typically wraps up under 90 minutes in elite competition. In general, any rule that pushes more cash into the game leads to a longer time before a player goes bankrupt.
Hasbro does not break out Monopoly sales specifics, but taking into account the original tabletop edition of the game, digital versions and related -opoly games produced under a license from the company, analysts say sales have stayed strong, with several hundred million copies sold since the 1930s.
The nod to popular rule variations is the latest tactic meant to draw new attention to the old game. Last year, in addition to unrolling a corporate edition, the company announced the ouster of one token - the iron - and the introduction of the new cat. The Scottie dog token survived the decision unscathed.
But the game has been evolving since its inception. It traces its origins to Elizabeth J. Magie, a left-wing activist who received a patent for her Landlord’s Game in 1904. Over the next three decades, a collection of players modified her original rules, providing a generation’s worth of product testing before the game was sold by Parker Brothers.
And more than a century before social-media marketing campaigns, or incarnations of Monopoly on the iPhone, iPad or other devices, Magie acknowledged that players might need to make their own tweaks.
“Should any emergency arise which is not covered by the rules of the game,” Magie’s 1904 patent reads, “the players must settle the matter between themselves.”
If so, you’ve been playing Monopoly incorrectly. But soon such “house rules” may receive an official blessing.
Hasbro, which has published the classic board game since 1991, is announcing Tuesday that it will incorporate the top “house rules” into a special edition of the game starting this fall.
“While the official Monopoly rules will not change,” the company said in a statement, “fans who love playing with ‘house rules’ will now have the opportunity to play them in their game.”
To kick off the promotional effort, Hasbro will invite fans to debate the pros and cons of 10 popular house rules on the game’s Facebook page through April 3. Then it will choose five to become part of a special edition and to be included as an addendum to the official rules in a Monopoly game guide next year.
The announcement may be odious to many Monopoly die-hards, who lament that most people do not play by the rules in the first place.
According to the official rules, largely unchanged since the 1930s, whenever a player lands on an unowned property and decides not to purchase it, the bank sells it to the highest bidder in an auction, speeding up the game and increasing benevolent sparring among players. Each player is to receive $1,500 - no more or less - to start the game, and the limit of 32 houses and 12 hotels that come with the game can add offer an additional layer of strategy by creating a housing shortage.
Perhaps most overlooked by lay players is the rule that if the owner of a property fails to ask for rent before the next throw of the dice, no rent is collected. It’s the cardboard version of “you snooze, you lose.”
Many common house rules cast aside prescribed limits: Injecting more cash into Free Parking; giving $400 for landing on “Go” rather than the stipulated $200 for merely passing by; using additional houses and hotels if the provided stash runs out; and providing higher tiers of cash payouts for rolling snake eyes. Some say jailbirds may not collect rent while behind bars, and others are in favor of haggling cash advances and co-ownership of properties.
Many of the house rules can prolong a game, which typically wraps up under 90 minutes in elite competition. In general, any rule that pushes more cash into the game leads to a longer time before a player goes bankrupt.
Hasbro does not break out Monopoly sales specifics, but taking into account the original tabletop edition of the game, digital versions and related -opoly games produced under a license from the company, analysts say sales have stayed strong, with several hundred million copies sold since the 1930s.
The nod to popular rule variations is the latest tactic meant to draw new attention to the old game. Last year, in addition to unrolling a corporate edition, the company announced the ouster of one token - the iron - and the introduction of the new cat. The Scottie dog token survived the decision unscathed.
But the game has been evolving since its inception. It traces its origins to Elizabeth J. Magie, a left-wing activist who received a patent for her Landlord’s Game in 1904. Over the next three decades, a collection of players modified her original rules, providing a generation’s worth of product testing before the game was sold by Parker Brothers.
And more than a century before social-media marketing campaigns, or incarnations of Monopoly on the iPhone, iPad or other devices, Magie acknowledged that players might need to make their own tweaks.
“Should any emergency arise which is not covered by the rules of the game,” Magie’s 1904 patent reads, “the players must settle the matter between themselves.”
Candy Crush firm valued at over $7bn
Candy Crush Saga was the top downloaded free app in 2013
The games developer behind Candy Crush Saga, King, has been valued at over $7bn (£4.2bn) after it raised $500m listing on the New York Stock Exchange.
It sold 22.2 million shares priced at $22.50 per share - the mid-point of the range the firm had initially set.
King said it plans to use the money raised for "working capital" and "other general corporate purposes, which may include acquisitions".
Candy Crush was the most downloaded free mobile app of 2013.
It is the most popular offering from King - which has a portfolio of of more than 180 games.
The game's popularity saw King's revenues rise to $1.8bn in 2013, from just $64m two years ago.
But there have been concerns that the firm relies too heavily on Candy Crush and that if its popularity faded, the company's revenue and profits would be hit.
According to the company, its top three games - Candy Crush Saga, Pet Rescue Saga and Farm Heroes Saga - accounted for 95% of its total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2013.
The firm's shares will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.
The games developer behind Candy Crush Saga, King, has been valued at over $7bn (£4.2bn) after it raised $500m listing on the New York Stock Exchange.
It sold 22.2 million shares priced at $22.50 per share - the mid-point of the range the firm had initially set.
King said it plans to use the money raised for "working capital" and "other general corporate purposes, which may include acquisitions".
Candy Crush was the most downloaded free mobile app of 2013.
It is the most popular offering from King - which has a portfolio of of more than 180 games.
The game's popularity saw King's revenues rise to $1.8bn in 2013, from just $64m two years ago.
But there have been concerns that the firm relies too heavily on Candy Crush and that if its popularity faded, the company's revenue and profits would be hit.
According to the company, its top three games - Candy Crush Saga, Pet Rescue Saga and Farm Heroes Saga - accounted for 95% of its total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2013.
The firm's shares will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.
Microsoft's CEO may come out swinging
SEATTLE - Satya Nadella, the Indian-born self-described cricket fanatic who took over as Microsoft Corp's chief executive last month, makes his public debut on Thursday and is expected to go on the offensive right away with some bold strokes.
When Nadella hosts his first major press conference this week, he's likely to describe - if not officially launch - versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint designed for Apple Inc's iPad, looking to cash in on a market worth up to $7 billion a year, according to Wall Street analysts.
The technology behind the software is not ground-breaking, but the strategy is: It puts Office at the heart of the company's push to become a leading services company across a variety of platforms - possibly at the expense of Windows and its own Surface tablet.
That perceived willingness to break with the Windows tradition, which remains co-founder Bill Gates' most enduring legacy, has helped spur Microsoft shares to $40-plus levels not seen since the dotcom boom of 2000.
Wall Street is now guardedly optimistic on a company that, while still garnering billions of dollars in annual profit, risks gradual obsolescence in a mobile-powered tech industry.
"The fact that Nadella is going to pull the trigger (on Office) shows he's not just an insider that's going to continue the status quo. Right now, it's a blank sheet of paper," said Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets.
Depending what Microsoft charges for Office on the iPad, and how many of the scores of millions - and rising - iPad users adopt it, it could rake in anywhere between $840 million to $6.7 billion a year in revenue, estimates Raimo Lenschow, an analyst at Barclays.
Rick Sherlund, an analyst at Nomura who has urged Microsoft to put its most lucrative franchise on the iPad for some time, welcomed the idea but was more cautious on the rewards. He estimates that an iPad Office would generate only $1 billion or so in new revenue a year, as many potential users will already have corporate licenses that can be converted to the new product.
And it's unclear how much of its revenue will be surrendered to Apple, which generally takes a 30 percent cut of app sales through its store. Microsoft and Apple declined comment.
OPTIMISM BOOSTS SHARES
The anticipation of Nadella's mobile-centric strategy has pushed Microsoft shares up 11 percent in the seven weeks since he took the helm, and they are now rolling along at 14-year highs.
On Thursday, Nadella is officially slated to talk about mobile and cloud strategies. But investors and industry executives will be just as attuned to any signals from the new CEO on whether he's willing to take Microsoft in a radically different direction.
To some investors, steering a new course for such a massive entity - Microsoft is the second-largest U.S. tech company by market value - is a daunting task. And some, who would rather have seen an energetic outsider like Ford Motor Co's Alan Mulally get the job, are yet to be convinced Nadella has the leverage to make the necessary change.
But bold moves with Office, and signifying a renewed drive to conquer the mobile arena and 'cloud' computing after years of shackling its best products to PC-centric Windows, are seen as a promising start.
"This is something that should have happened a few years ago," said J.P. Gownder, an analyst at tech research firm Forrester. "Holding Office for iPad as a hostage in the tablet war didn't work out well for them. They have to start to undo this negative behavior."
Nadella has more work to do as well on the devices side of Microsoft's business plan. Windows-powered phones are well reviewed but held only 3 percent of the global smartphone market last year. Its Surface tablet, an iPad competitor, had 2 percent of the tablet market, according to tech research firm Gartner.
Microsoft's $7.2 billion deal to buy the handset unit of Nokia, now delayed in closing, is unpopular with many investors who view it as a doomed defensive play to curb Google Inc's Android's dominance in the smartphone market.
It is "an acquisition not even a mother could love," according to Nomura's Sherlund.
Wall Street will be listening for Nadella's thoughts on the Xbox, the subject of renewed spin-off talk recently, and his willingness to buy his way into cloud-based computing services exploited by growing startups such as Dropbox and Evernote.
"M&A specifically on cloud is going to be key, around big data, cybersecurity, software-centric deals," said Ives at FBR. "Give investors a bone, and they will believe."
When Nadella hosts his first major press conference this week, he's likely to describe - if not officially launch - versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint designed for Apple Inc's iPad, looking to cash in on a market worth up to $7 billion a year, according to Wall Street analysts.
The technology behind the software is not ground-breaking, but the strategy is: It puts Office at the heart of the company's push to become a leading services company across a variety of platforms - possibly at the expense of Windows and its own Surface tablet.
That perceived willingness to break with the Windows tradition, which remains co-founder Bill Gates' most enduring legacy, has helped spur Microsoft shares to $40-plus levels not seen since the dotcom boom of 2000.
Wall Street is now guardedly optimistic on a company that, while still garnering billions of dollars in annual profit, risks gradual obsolescence in a mobile-powered tech industry.
"The fact that Nadella is going to pull the trigger (on Office) shows he's not just an insider that's going to continue the status quo. Right now, it's a blank sheet of paper," said Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets.
Depending what Microsoft charges for Office on the iPad, and how many of the scores of millions - and rising - iPad users adopt it, it could rake in anywhere between $840 million to $6.7 billion a year in revenue, estimates Raimo Lenschow, an analyst at Barclays.
Rick Sherlund, an analyst at Nomura who has urged Microsoft to put its most lucrative franchise on the iPad for some time, welcomed the idea but was more cautious on the rewards. He estimates that an iPad Office would generate only $1 billion or so in new revenue a year, as many potential users will already have corporate licenses that can be converted to the new product.
And it's unclear how much of its revenue will be surrendered to Apple, which generally takes a 30 percent cut of app sales through its store. Microsoft and Apple declined comment.
OPTIMISM BOOSTS SHARES
The anticipation of Nadella's mobile-centric strategy has pushed Microsoft shares up 11 percent in the seven weeks since he took the helm, and they are now rolling along at 14-year highs.
On Thursday, Nadella is officially slated to talk about mobile and cloud strategies. But investors and industry executives will be just as attuned to any signals from the new CEO on whether he's willing to take Microsoft in a radically different direction.
To some investors, steering a new course for such a massive entity - Microsoft is the second-largest U.S. tech company by market value - is a daunting task. And some, who would rather have seen an energetic outsider like Ford Motor Co's Alan Mulally get the job, are yet to be convinced Nadella has the leverage to make the necessary change.
But bold moves with Office, and signifying a renewed drive to conquer the mobile arena and 'cloud' computing after years of shackling its best products to PC-centric Windows, are seen as a promising start.
"This is something that should have happened a few years ago," said J.P. Gownder, an analyst at tech research firm Forrester. "Holding Office for iPad as a hostage in the tablet war didn't work out well for them. They have to start to undo this negative behavior."
Nadella has more work to do as well on the devices side of Microsoft's business plan. Windows-powered phones are well reviewed but held only 3 percent of the global smartphone market last year. Its Surface tablet, an iPad competitor, had 2 percent of the tablet market, according to tech research firm Gartner.
Microsoft's $7.2 billion deal to buy the handset unit of Nokia, now delayed in closing, is unpopular with many investors who view it as a doomed defensive play to curb Google Inc's Android's dominance in the smartphone market.
It is "an acquisition not even a mother could love," according to Nomura's Sherlund.
Wall Street will be listening for Nadella's thoughts on the Xbox, the subject of renewed spin-off talk recently, and his willingness to buy his way into cloud-based computing services exploited by growing startups such as Dropbox and Evernote.
"M&A specifically on cloud is going to be key, around big data, cybersecurity, software-centric deals," said Ives at FBR. "Give investors a bone, and they will believe."
Search back on for MH370 wreckage
The search for wreckage of crashed Flight MH370 resumed Wednesday after the weather improved, with Chinese ships and Korean planes joining the hunt over a vast stretch of the Indian Ocean.
Gale force winds, rain and big waves prevented any sorties being flown on Tuesday but 12 aircraft will be in the air Wednesday while Australia's HMAS Success plans to conduct a surface sweep of an area where two objects were spotted this week.
China’s polar supply ship Xue Long was also due in the area, with other Chinese vessels on their way, as the search intensifies for the Malaysian Airlines jet that crashed into the sea after vanishing on March 8 with 239 passengers on board.
"Today’s search is split into three areas within the same proximity covering a cumulative 80,000 square kilometres," said the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is coordinating the search.
"AMSA has tasked a total of 12 aircraft today to search for possible objects in the search area."
Seven of them are military planes and five civilian.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the search would continue until there was no hope of finding anything.
"We are just going to keep on looking because we owe it to people to do everything we can to resolve this riddle," he told the Nine Network.
"It is not absolutely open-ended but it is not something we will lightly abandon."
Six countries are now assisting in the operation -- Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Japan, China and South Korea -- to help bring some closure to relatives with definitive physical proof of the plane's destruction.
The US Navy has also sent a specialised device to help find the "black box" of flight and cockpit voice data, along with a robotic underwater vehicle that can scan the ocean's depths.
Before the weather halted operations on Tuesday hopes had been high that wreckage would be found after two new objects -- a green circular item and an orange rectangular one -- were spotted on Monday by an Australian military plane.
This followed larger "white and square" objects seen by a Chinese Ilyushin IL-76 reconnaissance plane, which came after satellite images and data captured by Australia, China and France showed indistinct items in the southern Indian Ocean
Mark Binskin, vice chief of Australia's Defence Force, underscored the daunting size of the area under scrutiny by air crews flying exhausting sorties out of Perth.
"We're not trying to find a needle in a haystack, we're still trying to define where the haystack is," he told reporters on Tuesday.
Gale force winds, rain and big waves prevented any sorties being flown on Tuesday but 12 aircraft will be in the air Wednesday while Australia's HMAS Success plans to conduct a surface sweep of an area where two objects were spotted this week.
China’s polar supply ship Xue Long was also due in the area, with other Chinese vessels on their way, as the search intensifies for the Malaysian Airlines jet that crashed into the sea after vanishing on March 8 with 239 passengers on board.
"Today’s search is split into three areas within the same proximity covering a cumulative 80,000 square kilometres," said the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is coordinating the search.
"AMSA has tasked a total of 12 aircraft today to search for possible objects in the search area."
Seven of them are military planes and five civilian.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the search would continue until there was no hope of finding anything.
"We are just going to keep on looking because we owe it to people to do everything we can to resolve this riddle," he told the Nine Network.
"It is not absolutely open-ended but it is not something we will lightly abandon."
Six countries are now assisting in the operation -- Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Japan, China and South Korea -- to help bring some closure to relatives with definitive physical proof of the plane's destruction.
The US Navy has also sent a specialised device to help find the "black box" of flight and cockpit voice data, along with a robotic underwater vehicle that can scan the ocean's depths.
Before the weather halted operations on Tuesday hopes had been high that wreckage would be found after two new objects -- a green circular item and an orange rectangular one -- were spotted on Monday by an Australian military plane.
This followed larger "white and square" objects seen by a Chinese Ilyushin IL-76 reconnaissance plane, which came after satellite images and data captured by Australia, China and France showed indistinct items in the southern Indian Ocean
Mark Binskin, vice chief of Australia's Defence Force, underscored the daunting size of the area under scrutiny by air crews flying exhausting sorties out of Perth.
"We're not trying to find a needle in a haystack, we're still trying to define where the haystack is," he told reporters on Tuesday.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Sportonomics: What gear makers are doing with all that data from running apps
Eight years after hitting the market the Nike Plus run-tracking app boasts more than 20 million downloads worldwide, with its users logging more than 1.6 billion kilometers.
And while websites and software dedicated to storing run statistics proliferate, running manufacturers are hustling to integrate them into product offerings.
Adidas is currently re-vamping its MiCoach program, while industry newcomer Under Armour recently paid $150 million (U.S.) to acquire Map My Fitness, an online community that boast 80 million users and includes MapMyRun.com.
For shoe companies, embracing run-tracking technology makes sense. These apps give manufacturers valuable data on their customers both as athletes and as consumers. And they facilitate social networks that allow runners to compare and share run data with friends.
But after nearly a decade of Nike Plus and similar programs, what are shoe companies doing with all the information they’ve gleaned?
Experts say they’re not using it to bombard you with marketing messages, though in the long term apps like Nike Plus and MapMyRun can strengthen sales.
But in the short term, says Nike spokesperson Claire Rankine, programs like Nike Plus build brand loyalty while giving companies feedback they can use to improve future products.
“The payoff for us is athletes having access to something that allows them to perform better,” says Rankine, Nike Canada’s director of communications. “The data allows us to better inform runners on what they’re doing.”
While apps allow you to record exactly how many kilometers you’ve run in a given pair of shoes, and when a runner accesses their Nike Plus profile from a desktop computer, the page includes links to purchase merchandise. But online marketing consultant Trevor Turnbull says emailing a runner a reminder to buy new shoes constitutes a major breach of etiquette.
Instead, he says, the apps create sales and marketing value indirectly by creating a connection with the brand behind the app, and by encouraging users to run more.
“They’re trying to create a really intimate experience with the end consumer,” says Turnbull, president of the marketing firm WP Authorities. “People become loyal and attached to a brand because you’re creating value. It just happens to be the more you run, the more shoes you’re going to buy. That’s the spinoff.”
Apps that build communities of runners take on increasing importance as the competition for customers intensifies.
According to SportsOneSource, a sports retail analytics firm, Nike retains a 58.9 percent share of the U.S. running shoe market, followed by Asics with 13 percent and Adidas with just over 10 percent.
Under Armour has moved aggressively since entering the running shoe market, carving out a 2.3 percent share and marketing products like the SpeedForm Apollo, a premium runner that will retail for a relatively modest $100 (U.S.).
“This may very well be our next defining product,” Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank told investors during a January conference call. “I’m not ready to claim that it is, but it has that potential.”
Running apps don’t necessarily tie a runner to a brand — anyone with an iPhone can download and use Nike Plus, which displays real-time run metrics on the screen, or relays them to runners via earphones.
The popularity of these apps has exploded, experts say, because they connect with an increasingly wired, data-driven audience, while transforming running from a solitary act to a group pursuit.
“Fitness has become very social, so part of what makes these apps work is that you can share your results,” says SportsOneSource analyst Matt Powell. “There’s a feedback loop to the user, and there’s the gentle nudging to get out and run.”
Rankine says eight years of data from runs worldwide have helped Nike learn runners’ habits and how to influence them. She says, for example that Nike Plus stats indicate runners are relatively inactive on Fridays, so some Nike run clubs have organized Friday runs that end at pubs.
And she says concerns that Nike or another company keeps tabs on your mileage so they can send well-timed ads for new shoes are unfounded.
“There’s an estimated time the shoe will last, but the onus is on the athlete to look at the shoe and figure out if they’re falling apart,” she says. “If you reach 500 kilomtres on your (shoes) the one alert you probably will feel is from your feet, telling you it’s time.”
And while websites and software dedicated to storing run statistics proliferate, running manufacturers are hustling to integrate them into product offerings.
Adidas is currently re-vamping its MiCoach program, while industry newcomer Under Armour recently paid $150 million (U.S.) to acquire Map My Fitness, an online community that boast 80 million users and includes MapMyRun.com.
For shoe companies, embracing run-tracking technology makes sense. These apps give manufacturers valuable data on their customers both as athletes and as consumers. And they facilitate social networks that allow runners to compare and share run data with friends.
But after nearly a decade of Nike Plus and similar programs, what are shoe companies doing with all the information they’ve gleaned?
Experts say they’re not using it to bombard you with marketing messages, though in the long term apps like Nike Plus and MapMyRun can strengthen sales.
But in the short term, says Nike spokesperson Claire Rankine, programs like Nike Plus build brand loyalty while giving companies feedback they can use to improve future products.
“The payoff for us is athletes having access to something that allows them to perform better,” says Rankine, Nike Canada’s director of communications. “The data allows us to better inform runners on what they’re doing.”
While apps allow you to record exactly how many kilometers you’ve run in a given pair of shoes, and when a runner accesses their Nike Plus profile from a desktop computer, the page includes links to purchase merchandise. But online marketing consultant Trevor Turnbull says emailing a runner a reminder to buy new shoes constitutes a major breach of etiquette.
Instead, he says, the apps create sales and marketing value indirectly by creating a connection with the brand behind the app, and by encouraging users to run more.
“They’re trying to create a really intimate experience with the end consumer,” says Turnbull, president of the marketing firm WP Authorities. “People become loyal and attached to a brand because you’re creating value. It just happens to be the more you run, the more shoes you’re going to buy. That’s the spinoff.”
Apps that build communities of runners take on increasing importance as the competition for customers intensifies.
According to SportsOneSource, a sports retail analytics firm, Nike retains a 58.9 percent share of the U.S. running shoe market, followed by Asics with 13 percent and Adidas with just over 10 percent.
Under Armour has moved aggressively since entering the running shoe market, carving out a 2.3 percent share and marketing products like the SpeedForm Apollo, a premium runner that will retail for a relatively modest $100 (U.S.).
“This may very well be our next defining product,” Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank told investors during a January conference call. “I’m not ready to claim that it is, but it has that potential.”
Running apps don’t necessarily tie a runner to a brand — anyone with an iPhone can download and use Nike Plus, which displays real-time run metrics on the screen, or relays them to runners via earphones.
The popularity of these apps has exploded, experts say, because they connect with an increasingly wired, data-driven audience, while transforming running from a solitary act to a group pursuit.
“Fitness has become very social, so part of what makes these apps work is that you can share your results,” says SportsOneSource analyst Matt Powell. “There’s a feedback loop to the user, and there’s the gentle nudging to get out and run.”
Rankine says eight years of data from runs worldwide have helped Nike learn runners’ habits and how to influence them. She says, for example that Nike Plus stats indicate runners are relatively inactive on Fridays, so some Nike run clubs have organized Friday runs that end at pubs.
And she says concerns that Nike or another company keeps tabs on your mileage so they can send well-timed ads for new shoes are unfounded.
“There’s an estimated time the shoe will last, but the onus is on the athlete to look at the shoe and figure out if they’re falling apart,” she says. “If you reach 500 kilomtres on your (shoes) the one alert you probably will feel is from your feet, telling you it’s time.”
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Flappy Bird to return, says creator
Addictive mobile game Flappy Birds will return to Apple's app store confirms creator Dong Nguyen, without giving a specific date
Addictive mobile game Flappy Bird will return to Apple's app store, creator Dong Nguyen has confirmed - although he declined to give a specific date.
On Twitter, a fan had asked if he was going to put the game back in the app store.
"Yes. But not soon," Mr Nguyen replied, later adding: "I don't work by plan. I will release it when it is done."
Mr Nguyen removed the popular game in February, saying its popularity had ruined his "simple life".
Despite its simple graphics, Flappy Bird was a notoriously difficult game since many users could only keep the bird in the air for a few seconds before it hit an obstacle and fell.
The game went viral after being promoted almost entirely by social media users and was reviewed on a YouTube channel by more than 22 million subscribers.
It was downloaded 50 million times, and at the height of its popularity, Mr Nguyen was reportedly earning $50,000 (£30,450) a day from advertising
In an interview earlier this month with Rolling Stone, Mr Nguyen said he was moved to remove the popular mobile game from the App store after users wrote to him detailing how the game had destroyed their lives.
After the game was taken down, users started several passionate petitions to get the game reinstated.
Addictive mobile game Flappy Bird will return to Apple's app store, creator Dong Nguyen has confirmed - although he declined to give a specific date.
On Twitter, a fan had asked if he was going to put the game back in the app store.
"Yes. But not soon," Mr Nguyen replied, later adding: "I don't work by plan. I will release it when it is done."
Mr Nguyen removed the popular game in February, saying its popularity had ruined his "simple life".
Ruined lives
Launched in May 2013, Flappy Bird was free to download and required players to tap the screen to keep the bird in flight.Despite its simple graphics, Flappy Bird was a notoriously difficult game since many users could only keep the bird in the air for a few seconds before it hit an obstacle and fell.
The game went viral after being promoted almost entirely by social media users and was reviewed on a YouTube channel by more than 22 million subscribers.
It was downloaded 50 million times, and at the height of its popularity, Mr Nguyen was reportedly earning $50,000 (£30,450) a day from advertising
In an interview earlier this month with Rolling Stone, Mr Nguyen said he was moved to remove the popular mobile game from the App store after users wrote to him detailing how the game had destroyed their lives.
After the game was taken down, users started several passionate petitions to get the game reinstated.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Two objects spotted possibly related to MH370: Australia
Two objects possibly related to the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have been sighted, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Thursday in a potential breakthrough.
Abbott told parliament "new and credible information" had come to light nearly two weeks after the plane vanished.
He said an Australian air force Orion had already been diverted to look into the objects with three more surveillance planes to follow. He did not specify where they were but Australia has taken charge of the search in the southern Indian Ocean.
"The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has received information based on satellite information of objects possibly related to the search," Abbott said, adding that he had informed Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.
"Following specialist analysis of this satellite imagery, two possible objects related to the search have been identified."
But he warned against drawing any premature conclusions.
"We must keep in mind the task of locating these objects will be extremely difficult and it may turn out that they are not related to the search for flight MH370," he said.
AMSA was due to hold a news conference with more details at 0430 GMT.
Authorities in Kuala Lumpur on Monday asked Canberra to take responsibility for the "southern vector" of the operation to locate the Boeing 777, which disappeared on March 8 en route to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.
The Malaysian government believes the jet was deliberately diverted and flew for several hours after leaving its scheduled flight path -- either north towards Central Asia, or towards the southern Indian Ocean.
Australian, US and New Zealand long-range surveillance planes have been scouring a vast tract of the southern Indian Ocean since Tuesday with the search focused on an area of 305,000 square kilometres (122,000 square miles), some 2,600 kilometres southeast of Perth.
Abbott told parliament "new and credible information" had come to light nearly two weeks after the plane vanished.
He said an Australian air force Orion had already been diverted to look into the objects with three more surveillance planes to follow. He did not specify where they were but Australia has taken charge of the search in the southern Indian Ocean.
"The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has received information based on satellite information of objects possibly related to the search," Abbott said, adding that he had informed Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.
"Following specialist analysis of this satellite imagery, two possible objects related to the search have been identified."
But he warned against drawing any premature conclusions.
"We must keep in mind the task of locating these objects will be extremely difficult and it may turn out that they are not related to the search for flight MH370," he said.
AMSA was due to hold a news conference with more details at 0430 GMT.
Authorities in Kuala Lumpur on Monday asked Canberra to take responsibility for the "southern vector" of the operation to locate the Boeing 777, which disappeared on March 8 en route to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.
The Malaysian government believes the jet was deliberately diverted and flew for several hours after leaving its scheduled flight path -- either north towards Central Asia, or towards the southern Indian Ocean.
Australian, US and New Zealand long-range surveillance planes have been scouring a vast tract of the southern Indian Ocean since Tuesday with the search focused on an area of 305,000 square kilometres (122,000 square miles), some 2,600 kilometres southeast of Perth.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Robots, hands-free wizardry wow at high-tech fair
A "toddler" robot that sees red, a digital master chef and a suitcase that never gets lost -- new technology at the world's biggest high-tech fair has the potential to change lives.
The gadgetry ranged from time-saving to life-saving in the buzzing CeBIT halls in the northern German city of Hanover.
Robots never fail to pull in the crowds, and they set the scene at the official opening of the five-day showcase of what's new and ueber-hot in the IT and high-tech world.
RoboThespian, a life-sized humanoid robot, delivered an articulate welcome address to guests, among them Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Both leaders went on to shake the bionic i-limb hand that has 24 different grips, produced by prosthetics company Touch Bionics, on a joint tour of the stands from CeBIT's 2014 partner country, Britain.
While pole-dancing robots "Lexy" and "Tess" were on hand for pure entertainment, two others, including one-year-old "Roboy", which has bones and muscles, pave the way for possible future developments in medicine or even Moon exploration.
"I can be happy," says Roboy, pulling the appropriate facial expression. "I can be angry," it says, its face turning red.
Resembling a small child, Roboy can move its limbs thanks to its 48 muscles, which are being further developed by the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence of the University of Zurich and the EU research project Myorobotics.
"It was built in nine months like a human baby," project manager Rafael Hostettler said.
The goal is to simply better understand how we work and use the lesson to improve industrial production, he said.
"There might be applications in prosthetics," Hostettler said, saying simulating illnesses could help to bring down the cost of teaching doctors.
- 'Back in 10' -
Meanwhile "Charlie", an ape-like robot with an flexible spine and feet that "feel", can crawl and balance on a tilting surface.
Developed by the German Center for Artificial Intelligence with Bremen University, it raises hopes that Charlie's descendants will one day explore craters on the Moon.
Back down to earth and "Kochbot" (German for "cook-bot") not only selects a recipe from among its library of 30,000 to suit whatever ingredients the cook has at home, but also reads it aloud and monitors the cooking time.
The Kochbot app means that sticky fingerprints on the pages of recipe books are a thing of the past and it will even repeat quantities or detailed prepping notes.
Further hands-free gadgetry at CeBIT gave new hope for frequent travellers.
At a mock-up of an Airbus cabin, there was a close-up look at "Bag2Go", a suitcase that is equipped with a SIM card, transmission module and display, to ensure it never gets lost.
"You always know where the bag is because you have an app, you can control it by GPS," said Torsten Chudobba, account executive for Airbus group, which together with T-Systems and luggage company Rimowa, is behind "Bag2Go".
Good news perhaps for skiers comes in the form of "Airwriting", developed by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, which will mean not having to take off your gloves to write a short message via a mobile phone.
"Home in 10 minutes" for example can simply be spelled out on the palm of the user's hand and a sensor attached to the wrist records the hand movements for a computer to write out the message.
And with the soccer World Cup on the horizon, software giant SAP has the ultimate in analysing the beautiful game.
It has teamed up with the German national football squad to produce a touchscreen tool with a panoramic view of past matches that digitally analyses team and individual performances, such as distances between players, passing frequency or possession of the ball.
"Here you can see the tactic, whether it works, how the opponent reacts," explained project manager Christoph Jungkind.
"So this is the basis for a good performance evaluation."
The gadgetry ranged from time-saving to life-saving in the buzzing CeBIT halls in the northern German city of Hanover.
Robots never fail to pull in the crowds, and they set the scene at the official opening of the five-day showcase of what's new and ueber-hot in the IT and high-tech world.
RoboThespian, a life-sized humanoid robot, delivered an articulate welcome address to guests, among them Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Both leaders went on to shake the bionic i-limb hand that has 24 different grips, produced by prosthetics company Touch Bionics, on a joint tour of the stands from CeBIT's 2014 partner country, Britain.
While pole-dancing robots "Lexy" and "Tess" were on hand for pure entertainment, two others, including one-year-old "Roboy", which has bones and muscles, pave the way for possible future developments in medicine or even Moon exploration.
"I can be happy," says Roboy, pulling the appropriate facial expression. "I can be angry," it says, its face turning red.
Resembling a small child, Roboy can move its limbs thanks to its 48 muscles, which are being further developed by the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence of the University of Zurich and the EU research project Myorobotics.
"It was built in nine months like a human baby," project manager Rafael Hostettler said.
The goal is to simply better understand how we work and use the lesson to improve industrial production, he said.
"There might be applications in prosthetics," Hostettler said, saying simulating illnesses could help to bring down the cost of teaching doctors.
- 'Back in 10' -
Meanwhile "Charlie", an ape-like robot with an flexible spine and feet that "feel", can crawl and balance on a tilting surface.
Developed by the German Center for Artificial Intelligence with Bremen University, it raises hopes that Charlie's descendants will one day explore craters on the Moon.
Back down to earth and "Kochbot" (German for "cook-bot") not only selects a recipe from among its library of 30,000 to suit whatever ingredients the cook has at home, but also reads it aloud and monitors the cooking time.
The Kochbot app means that sticky fingerprints on the pages of recipe books are a thing of the past and it will even repeat quantities or detailed prepping notes.
Further hands-free gadgetry at CeBIT gave new hope for frequent travellers.
At a mock-up of an Airbus cabin, there was a close-up look at "Bag2Go", a suitcase that is equipped with a SIM card, transmission module and display, to ensure it never gets lost.
"You always know where the bag is because you have an app, you can control it by GPS," said Torsten Chudobba, account executive for Airbus group, which together with T-Systems and luggage company Rimowa, is behind "Bag2Go".
Good news perhaps for skiers comes in the form of "Airwriting", developed by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, which will mean not having to take off your gloves to write a short message via a mobile phone.
"Home in 10 minutes" for example can simply be spelled out on the palm of the user's hand and a sensor attached to the wrist records the hand movements for a computer to write out the message.
And with the soccer World Cup on the horizon, software giant SAP has the ultimate in analysing the beautiful game.
It has teamed up with the German national football squad to produce a touchscreen tool with a panoramic view of past matches that digitally analyses team and individual performances, such as distances between players, passing frequency or possession of the ball.
"Here you can see the tactic, whether it works, how the opponent reacts," explained project manager Christoph Jungkind.
"So this is the basis for a good performance evaluation."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)