MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd ventured to Tampa and Charlotte for the Republican and Democratic national conventions, conducting meetings with lawmakers and speaking about intellectual property protection.
“Dodd issued a statement Tuesday praising the Democratic party platform, which calls for protections of Internet freedom as well as protection of intellectual property. He also praised the Republican platform language last week,” reports Variety. “But neither platform gets into the specifics that would trigger the kind of outcry that greeted the Stop Online Piracy Act anti-piracy legislation, which stalled in the face of an Internet protest in January.”
Dodd said that SOPA had some issues, but he hopes that the tech businesses and movie industry will be able to work toward a “balance between a free and open Internet, and simultaneously protecting the intellectual property of this creative industry.”
“I think there’s a growing effort in the industries themselves to find some common ground on how we manage to satisfy both industries going forward, and also some thought that if we need some sort of legislation, we are going to do it cooperatively if we can,” he noted.
Dodd has stated his support for President Obama but he doesn’t think a Republican president and Congress would affect how he does his job. During his years as a senator, Dodd made many connections with notable Republicans and worked hard to collaborate with Republicans on bills.
His visits to the conventions were fairly brief, contrasting the tech industry’s strong presence at the events. “Google has a giant pavilion made of shipping containers, and Facebook and Twitter have a heavy presence,” the article notes.
A California judge rejected Hulu’s motion in August to dismiss a lawsuit regarding the sharing of its users’ viewing habits. “The Hulu privacy case is now one step closer to trial, and the question of who can share your video playlist is about to break wide open,” according to ReadWriteWeb.
“The plaintiffs, a handful of Hulu users in what is now a class action suit, argued that by contracting with a tracking company called KISSmetrics to install code that revived deleted cookies and shared viewing records and personal data with the third parties like Google Analytics, DoubleClick, and Scorecard Research, the video streaming service went beyond expected uses of browsing data,” explains the post. “Instead, the plaintiffs argued, Hulu’s actions amounted to a ‘hack’ of their online experience.”
Companies like Hulu and Netflix are currently trying to get the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) changed. “The VPPA, the argument goes, puts video streaming businesses at a serious disadvantage on the social web, especially when you compare them to, say, audio streamers like Pandora and Spotify,” notes ReadWriteWeb.
According to Hulu, even under the current VVPA, providing companies like Google with user data is just “incident to the ordinary course of business,” which is permissible under the law.
However, the judge “decided that whether Hulu’s sharing of user data is an ‘ordinary’ part of its video streaming business is a question of fact, not law — precisely the sort of thing trials are meant to determine,” suggests the post.
The Internet has led to an information revolution. And while the changes make access easier, it also makes hiding personal information more difficult.
A new crop of businesses have launched with one task in mind: helping people hide their mistakes from the Internet. Companies like Reputation Changer specialize in helping to hide negative search results.
Individuals pay Reputation Changer to release a stream of positive content about the individual. As the new stories flood the Internet, they eventually will flush the negative stories further down the search results, and off the first page. Since 89.7 percent of Google’s click-through traffic comes from the first page of search results, this method greatly reduces the risk of people uncovering the undesirable content.
But Reputation.com CEO and founder Michael Fertik explains that his company does more than simply spam the Internet with positive reviews and press releases. His company uses databases of social expectations to determine how to craft the press releases for each individual customer.
Fertik stresses that his company typically helps only people looking to change their image, or those who have unfairly been the victim of a cyber attack. He does not help people cover up criminal activities, he says.
“Like many other things on the Internet, online reputation management is moving towards self-service solutions,” explains ReadWriteWeb. “Last week, Reputation Changer announced dashboard software designed to let its users monitor their own reputations. Other reputation management companies have similar tools in place or in the works.”
“Using an ultrathin wafer of silicon and gold to focus lightwaves, researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have created a revolutionary new kind of camera lens that completely eliminates the image distortion created by traditional glass lenses,” reports Gizmodo.
This could pave the way for lighter cameras as capable as the swappable lens models available today. This could even create an environment in which a camera phone could produce images as impressive as a DSLR.
The new lens measures 60 nanometers thick and is “made by plating a thin wafer of silicon with a layer of gold that’s then etched away to create a series of V-shaped structures across its surface,” explains the post.
The light hits the structures and is slightly slowed, changing its direction. Then, “by carefully tuning the angle, size, and spacing of these V-shaped structures across the surface of the lens, it can capture wide-angle or telephoto images without the distortion that’s seen from something like a traditional fish-eye lens,” notes Gizmodo.
The invention has the power to serve as “a death blow” to the heavy cameras currently used by professional photographers, according to the post.
The U.S. Patent Office has published a new Apple patent that suggests the company is developing an advanced graphics application that could take on Adobe’s popular Photoshop and Illustrator programs.
“The new app will also be aimed at Macs and the iPad,” reports Patently Apple. “The system is being designed to work with both the mouse and touchscreen gestures.”
The detailed report includes sections describing an overview of the virtual drawing space application, the proposed graphical display system, the display system related to object layer management and more.
According to the report, the “invention relates to systems, methods, and computer-readable media for changing graphical object input tools.”
“Apple is patenting a way in which someone using an illustrator of digital image editing program can adjust the settings of the current tool they are using — such as a brush’s size or opacity — by using gestures at or near that tool, which would then visually change the tool to represent the changes,” notes Cult of Mac. “You would also be able to change tools with gestures. And these gestures would work using a mouse, a trackpad or a touchscreen.”
Following Nokia’s launch of two new Lumia models, the 820 and 920, Engadget interviewed the company’s CEO Stephen Elop about the Windows phones and his expectations for consumer adoption.
“I think Windows Phone 8 allows us to deliver the most personalized smartphone experience,” Elop said, adding, “more and more personalized information can be brought to the home screen.”
The compatibility with the upcoming Windows 8 OS will also provide users with a better overall experience, he said. “It shares that same design language in terms of user experience… which leads us to an environment where we can have greater sharing between a PC, a tablet, a phone, the Xbox gaming platform… rounding out that digital experience for consumers.”
As Engadget notes, the Nokia-Windows Phone partnership has yet to have strong commercial success, begging the question why Nokia didn’t opt to pair up with Google’s Android OS.
“The fundamental reason that we went to the Windows Phone… was for one word: differentiation,” Elop said. “And I think this is an example in the industry where people realize that differentiation really does matter.”
He expects the user experience created on the Lumia devices to convert consumers. In addition to the Windows Phone 8 personalization, the devices have wireless charging and a great PureView camera for low-light pictures and shake-proof videos. The phones also offer an augmented reality program called Nokia City Lens that shows users what the camera sees with added information about their surroundings — restaurants, transportation, etc.
Elop added that Nokia remains committed to their older devices, even as technology progresses. The current Lumia models will be able to upgrade their home screen and add City Lens.
Motorola announced three new, practically identical handsets Wednesday, which strongly resemble the Droid Razr in both name and looks.
The Droid Razr HD and Razr Maxx HD are expected to sell over the holidays for $199 and $299 respectively. The slightly smaller Razr M is a mid-range device that will retail next week for $99.
“But while largely unexciting on their own, the three phones mark a new direction for Motorola, which was scooped up by Google earlier this year,” VentureBeat writes. “Recently appointed CEO Dennis Woodside called the devices the beginning of a ‘new’ Motorola, which is one that’s betting heavily on three key areas: 4G LTE, battery life, and, most predictably, Android.”
Motorola has determined that these three elements as well as durable hardware are most important to consumers. Its consistent design means the company, like Apple, is “focusing on hero devices with a design language that can only belong to one company,” the article states.
“That, ultimately, is good for consumers, because it ensures that the devices that Motorola releases will be of higher quality and will be more likely to get updated to future iterations of Android,” the post continues. “It also means that Motorola (and Google, of course) will be able to focus less on redesigning hardware and more on improving the user interface (again, like Apple).”
At a Santa Monica event Thursday, Amazon revealed a new Kindle Fire HD, an updated version of the original Kindle Fire and a self-lighting Kindle e-reader, much like the rival Nook e-reader from Barnes & Noble.
The new 7-inch Kindle Fire HD with Wi-Fi, stereo speakers, dual antennas and a front facing camera will sell for $199. The updated version of the original Fire will sell for $159 — down from $199 — and is set to ship on September 14.
The 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD will be available November 20 starting at $299, while the 4G version starts at $499. Specs on all models can be found in the Amazon press release.
“We’re taking on the most popular price point for a tablet, $499, but doubling the storage and incredibly, adding ultra-fast 4G LTE wireless,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “Kindle Fire HD is not only the most-advanced hardware, it’s also a service. When combined with our enormous content ecosystem, unmatched cross-platform interoperability and standard-setting customer service, we hope people will agree that Kindle Fire HD is the best high-end tablet anywhere, at any price.”
“The company showed off some new software, such as one measuring tablet usage for children and a voice-recognition technology for book reading,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “It will also release eight new serialized novels for $1.99 each under a new unit called Kindle Serials.”
“Like last year’s cheapest Kindle e-reader, all three new models — that’s the Fire, the HD 7, and the HD 8.9 — will display Amazon’s ‘Special Offers’ promotions and advertisements on their lock screens,” notes The Verge. “Unlike the low-end Kindle, however, Amazon isn’t offering the devices in more expensive, ad-free models, nor is it making mention of any way to opt out for a fee.”
“Google has extended its Patent Search facility to include European patents and has added a Prior Art facility,” reports I Programmer. “With the patent war over Android going on, one has to wonder whether this was to meet an in-house need.”
Google’s Patent Search has been available for U.S. patents since 2006. Its traffic has recently doubled.
“Jon Orwant, the leader of Google’s Patent Search team, says, ‘People are thinking about patents a whole lot more’ and thinks this trend is ‘correlated’ to interest in the various high-stakes mobile patent lawsuits,” notes the post.
Google’s partnership with the European Patent Office “enables Google to improve its machine learning technology for technical language and in return Google provides its improved translation service free of charge to the EPO.”
The Prior Art facility will be of value to inventors and the legal profession. “In order to be granted a patent the inventor has to establish that it is a novel idea — and in the current litigious environment companies and their lawyers might want to show that patents should not have been granted,” suggests the post.
Analyst and journalist Rakesh Agrawal predicted a year ago that the Groupon business model would not be successful. Dismal second quarter numbers suggest he may have been right.
As Agrawal wrote then and Slate now summarizes: “Groupon was riding high because its most important constituency — the small businesses who slashed their prices to entice Groupon’s customers — was getting ripped off.”
“Groupon is not an Internet marketing business so much as it is the equivalent of a loan sharking business,” wrote Agrawal in an editorial from June 2011.
The small business has to agree to a reduced price on its product or service, along with agreeing to provide Groupon with an often 50 percent chunk of the proceeds.
“For instance, if my fast-food shack normally sells a burger-and-shake combo for $10, Groupon will want me to offer it for $5, and then take half of the $5 sale — so I’ve just sold $10 of merchandise for $2.50,” explains Slate.
Businesses were attracted to the pitch because of the promise of being paid their cut immediately, along with the proposed exposure that would have customers returning again in the future, at full price. But many owners never considered that these deal-hungry consumers would never come in again.
For some businesses, it can work, like new companies, or those offering long-term deals or ones that have had previous success with Groupon.
“Agrawal sees this as evidence that Groupon’s merchant base is narrowing down to just the businesses that can do well with such promotions,” notes the article. “That’s certainly good for the small business community, but it isn’t good for Groupon, which sold itself as a company with limitless growth potential.”
Four years ago, researchers at IBM created Watson, the computer that went on to beat two “Jeopardy!” champions at their own game.
“Now they’re trying to figure out how to get those capabilities into the phone in your pocket,” the San Francisco Chronicle writes.
Bernie Meyerson, the vice president of innovation at IBM, “envisions a voice-activated Watson that answers questions, like a supercharged version of Apple’s Siri personal assistant,” according to the article.
Beyond its winning performance on “Jeopardy!”, Watson’s system has worked on crunching financial data for Citigroup Inc. and cancer data for WellPoint Inc.
The next version is to be called Watson 2.0 and is aiming for the mobile market. “IBM expects to generate billions in sales by putting Watson to work in finance, health care, telecommunications and other areas,” notes the article.
However, there’s a lot of work to be done before Watson could be ready for public consumption, including voice and image recognition.
Apple has filed a patent titled “Life Streaming,” intended to give consumers the ability to use a “life recorder” to easily record and publish every day experiences using both video and audio components.
“A life recorder is a recording device that continuously captures life experiences, including unanticipated life experiences, in video and/or audio recordings,” details a post on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website.
Without having to even hit record, users could capture video, audio and/or photos.
Since most smartphones are equipped with audio, video and photography features, the life recorder could help better utilize these devices by recording, publishing and sharing as a live feed.
“By indexing and storing life recordings, a life recorder may search for and acquire life recordings generated by itself or another life recorder, thereby allowing life experiences to be shared minutes or even years later,” notes the abstract.
“In some embodiments, recordings generated by a life recorder may be analyzed in real-time and automatically pushed to one or more target devices. The ability to automatically and instantaneously push life recordings as live feeds to one or more target devices allows friends and family to experience one’s life experience in real-time.”
Sources suggest Barnes & Noble will unveil a new Nook tablet at a press conference later this month. The device could be running on Windows 8.
“The Nook Color was Barnes & Noble’s answer to the 7-inch tablet, but the device never quite left its roots as an e-reader,” reports Digital Trends. “According to our source, who had discussed the to-be-announced Nook with a Microsoft employee close to the matter, that may change.”
“The existing Nook tablet’s selling point has been the ease of its use as an e-reader, but the new Nook may have a renewed focus on tablet features,” notes the post. “If that’s the case, Barnes & Noble clearly has its sights set on competing more aggressively with the Amazon Fire, Google’s Galaxy Nexus 7 and the to-be-released iPad mini.”
If the history of earlier Barnes & Noble tablet releases is any indication, we should expect to see the new Nook on shelves somewhere in the two months prior to the holiday season.
“With Microsoft’s $605 million investment in Barnes & Noble in exchange for a 17.6 percent stake in a subsidiary, the question that looms is whether the new tablet would scrap the Android OS and run Windows 8,” concludes Digital Trends. “From what we’ve heard, we’re more inclined to believe that the unannounced Nook will run on Windows 8, as many have already speculated.”
At a press event in New York yesterday, Nokia unveiled its new Windows Phone 8 device, the Lumia 920.
“With a dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 CPU (the same one that drives the current U.S. supremos, the HTC One X and Galaxy S III), a ‘better than HD’ 1,280 x 768 LCD display, PureView imaging (albeit with only eight megapixels), NFC capabilities, 2,000mAh battery with wireless charging and a next-gen Redmond-baked OS, this handset’s a big-break proposition for the flailing Finnish company; an attempt to up the ante and compete on even ground,” reports Engadget.
Pricing and release details are expected by Q4. The post includes a full hands-on review, slideshow of images and 5-minute video report.
In a related story from CNET, Nokia is bringing all kinds of music — from the New York Philharmonic to Lady Gaga — to U.S. Lumia owners for free through its new Nokia Music app.
Music experts created over 150 different playlists for the app. “Users can also scour a collection of millions of songs to generate their own playlists based on their favorite music and artists. And though the service is designed for streaming, Lumia owners can listen to music offline via their special playlists,” CNET reports.
Lumia users can use the free app to download and play tracks from Nokia’s MP3 store, which offers over 15 million songs. The app’s Gig Finder notes the user’s location to find local concerts and shows; users can even buy tickets and get directions to events.
Amazon has announced a multiyear licensing deal with Epix that will provide popular films from Paramount and Lionsgate through Amazon’s streaming service.
“Epix is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment, Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., so a deal with Epix amounts to a basket of entertainment from all the studios,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
The move is expected to help Amazon compete with the likes of Netflix, which recently ended its exclusive deal with Epix.
“We are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to expand the Prime Instant Video library for our customers. We have now more than doubled this selection of movies and TV episodes to over 25,000 titles in just under a year,” said Bill Carr, VP of video and music at Amazon.
“That is still a far cry from the roughly 50,000 shows and movies Netflix is estimated to have, and the more than 58,400 videos Hulu offers its subscribers,” notes the article.
