President Barack Obama is expected to issue a cybersecurity executive order in the days after his Feb. 12 State of the Union address. The long-expected executive order will create a voluntary program that will call for companies in critical infrastructure industries to agree to adopt a minimum set of security standards created by the government, said a spokeswoman for Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. The spokeswoman, Emily Spain, said the Carper expects that the order will be issued before the end of February, based on signals he's received from the White House. The imminent issuing of the order was first reported by , a Washington D.C.-based newspaper that focuses on covering Congress.
Wait until January before you cast judgment on Windows 8, they said. That's when the big boost from holiday sales will—or won't—show up, and you'll be able to get a better idea of how the operating system is doing. Well, Net Application's January desktop usage data is in. What do the numbers show? Is Windows 8's usage rate lagging? It depends on how you look at it. at its three-month mark, while Windows Vista was sitting slightly less pretty with a 3.3 percent share three months in. if you're a happy Windows 7 user.
Under the recommendations laid out in a (FTC), consumers would gain a much better understanding of how their data is gathered and used by key players in the mobile universe. The FTC report, which is based on held last year by the commission, recommends "best practices" for mobile platform providers, application developers, and advertising networks. The FTC's recommendations include a number of calls to action for platform developers. In defining the term "platform provider," the report mentions Google, Apple, BlackBerry, Microsoft, and Amazon by name.
There are plenty of apps that can turn your phone into the equivalent of a mobile scanner, using the camera to take snapshots of various documents, then letting you file and/or share those documents. , converting printed documents into text you can edit, search, and more. This isn't the first app to offer such convenience, but it may be the most multi-lingual one: FineReader Touch supports an impressive 42 languages, from Abkhazian to Ukrainian. In fact, it supports up to three different languages in the same document. foreign-language documents; it can simply convert them to text in those native languages.)
was another notable title, with its stylized visual effects and thumping trance soundtracks. Shatter ($10, buy-only) is Sidhe software's take on the Breakout formula, enhanced with 3D visuals, cooperative game play, and a bag full of tricks borrowed from classics old and new. The basics are familiar. Confronted with a pattern of blocks, you use a paddle and a ball to clear the entire field before moving on to the next level. You can destroy bricks several ways: directly with the ball, via power-up attacks, or by ramming with the paddle itself once the bricks are released from their formation. The power-up mechanic is streamlined reduced to just two types of upgrades; a shoot-em up inspired bullet attack and several ball enhancements that improve penetration or maneuverability. You can also increase the game's tempo by releasing multiple balls at will, up to the limit of your remaining lives, if you feel like pressing your luck. When bricks are destroyed, they leave behind shards, which free float through the playing environment. Collecting these fuels the storm bullet attack and the paddle's shield. Players can influence the physics of the ball, block, and fragment motion using the suck and blow functions, which either repel or attract the game elements toward the paddle depending on which button is pressed. With practice, ball motion becomes highly precise as players can apply suction or air at will, and the game provides a small on-screen hash mark to indicate where the ball will impact. Bricks that strike an unshielded paddle will cause a brief loss of control, but the designers chose not to penalize players with power-ups that shrink your paddle size or cause you to explode. Extra life tokens are also fairly common. This player-positive game philosophy is one of Shatter's charms, and a main reason you'll find yourself coming back for more. Music and visual effects take a page from the Ricochet series, featuring lush production and imaginative art. The patterns look striking, but also require a bit of study to understand the puzzle behind the designers' block array. The circular playfield can turn carefully planned bank shots into self-inflicted wounds, and end-of-stage boss monsters require patience and mastery of the physics model to overcome. The challenge is satisfying however.
updated to its Lumia smartphones. during February. Users will soon get notifications for the software update. Unlocked phones are likely to get the update itself first, while network operators must approve it before it reaches your phone. Nokia said: "You can transform your Nokia Lumia with a host of exciting new personalization features, such as the ability to resize your tiles, new lock screen options, and more theme colours." Windows Phone 7.8 brings the new, more customizable Start Screen with resizable live tiles and a new lock screen. Nokia said its handset will also get Internet sharing, Bluetooth sharing and Camera Extras. New apps include Contact Share, Play To, and Nokia City.
in October 2011, designing the tool to give you insights into your college or university's alumni and help you connect with them. It surfaced high-level information about fellow alumni, such as the most popular companies they work for, the fields they're working, where they live and more. This week, LinkedIn launched an update of the tool, releasing a handful of new features renamed it LinkedIn Alumni. "Gathered from the profiles of more than 200 million members, LinkedIn's Alumni tool helps you explore alumni career paths from more than 22,000 colleges and universities worldwide-and build relationships that can help you along the way," says Christina Allen, director of product management at LinkedIn. Here's a look at the new LinkedIn Alumni tool, plus how you can use it to connect on a more personal level and grow your network.
USB drive allows employees to telework from home, consultants and others to work in multiple locations, and field personnel to access their corporate desktops from virtually any PC. computer. The IronKey Workspace drive comes in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB capacities. It offers either 128-bit or 256-bit full disk encryption. Users must purchase the Windows 8 software separately.
Microsoft has released five free apps for the new Office 365 Home Premium suite that make it easier to insert images and information from Bing into documents. Office 365 is the subscription , which costs $100 per year for the Home Premium edition and $150 for the Small Business Premium Edition. Office 365 provides Web-based Office apps paired with cloud storage, and it also comes with a version of Office 2013 software for your PC. The five new Bing-powered apps are free to use with the Office 365 Home Premium, which is available now; the Small Business Premium Edition is scheduled for release at the end of February. The free apps are Bing Finance for Excel, Bing Maps for Excel, Bing Image Search for Word, Bing News Search for Word, and Bing Dictionary for Excel and Word.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has suggested that it isn't necessary to offer app versions of the as people can access Office through the browser. He is referring to (which allows a PC without Word, Excel, or PowerPoint installed to run those programs via Internet streaming). Mac users have to rely on the basic versions of the Microsoft web apps (Word, Excel and PowerPoint), which have available on SkyDrive since 2011. These basic apps allow you to create and edit in Word, Excel and PowerPoint using the web-based versions of those apps, but the web apps aren't as full-featured as the desktop versions. Ballmer Bloomberg Business Week: "We're very happy with the product that we're putting in market. It makes sense on the devices like the Mac and the PC. We have a product that we think makes a lot of sense. We do have a way for people always to get to Office through the browser, which is very important. And we'll see what we see in the future."
Nintendo loses money, Electronic Arts kills off Medal of Honor, Disney kills Junction Point ... when will the bad news stop?
Debuting on Netflix today, political drama
In a deal as frightful for Netflix as using the telephone is to the Dowager Countess, Amazon says it has signed a deal to become the sole subscription video-streaming service to carry
You may have heard of oleophobic coatings (which reduce smudges on your touchscreen) or hydrophobic coatings (which repel water). Working with a team at the University of Michigan, Dr. Anish Tuteja has developed a new coating for material that will repel both Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids of just about any kind.
Studying the links between brain and behavior may have just gotten easier. For the first time, neuroscientists have found a way to watch neurons fire in an independently moving animal. Though the study was done in fish, it may hold clues to how the human brain works.
There were only 9 incidents of terrorism in the U.S. by American Muslims in 2012, involving 14 people, down for the third straight year, according to new research.
What's coming up in space for this century? No one knows for sure but Wired talked to space policy expert John Logsdon about why countries launch rockets, the Asian space race, and what the heck small countries like Turkmenistan do with their space agencies.
A look at the tech of the past that shaped the lives we lead now.
This week on the Gadget Lab show, Mat Honan shows off the Basis, a wearable activity monitor in the form-factor of a watch.
One of the biggest challenges for space colonists is just how expensive (in terms of energy) it is to get supplies off of planet earth. Until we get a space elevator, it's going to stay that way. One solution is to send as little as possible up there. When it comes to building a moon base, couldn't we just make it out of rock? After all, the moon is already made of rocks.
More than 70,000 people will flood into the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans this Superbowl weekend, while thousands more swarm through the city's French Quarter. From a certain perspective, might those football fans resemble, say, a herd of wildebeest or school of fish? Or maybe a murmuration of starlings? Some scientists think the essential components of flocking behavior, an instinctive tendency to join with others and follow their lead, remain alive inside us.
Stealth iPhoneographers and peeping toms, your iPhone case has arrived. The Mirrorcase lets you snap photo and video in a more natural horizontal position -- which means it's also far more discreet if you're trying to capture that weirdo on the bus without them noticing.
EA Sports' annual simulation of The Big Game puts the Baltimore Ravens on top of the San Francisco 49ers in a 27-24 finish to Super Bowl XLVII.
Using a big kite and an on-board wind turbine, this trike managed to cross a continent with nary a solar panel or charging station.
A suicide bomber attacked the U.S. embassy in Ankara, the capitol of Turkey, killing at least two in the first major attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility since the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Earlier this week, the webcomic xkcd published a "What If" scenario asking how a Cessna 172 Skyhawk would fly on different planets in our solar system. No offense to xkcd's excellent author, Randall Munroe, but our physics blogger Rhett Allain took exception to his inaccurate trajectories of the Cessna's flight path on airless planets and moons. Here's how he corrects things with a nice dose of physics know-how.
Amazon and Netflix are cribbing from the hands-off approach cable giants like HBO and FX take to creating amazing television, a move that will lead to better shows by tempting writers and producers to create original programming.
The Mexican army has captured a drug lord who once had ties to the powerful Sinaloa Cartel. But that's where the good news ends. Already, his competition is going to war for his territory.
Imagine the front doors suddenly locked on every Walmart in the country simultaneously right in the middle of the business day -- and for nearly an hour, no one could find the keys. That's basically what happened to Amazon.
This Sunday hundreds of millions of people worldwide will throw parties and huddle around TVs to celebrate the amazing achievements of teams of people who have striven their entire lives for one shot at greatness. Architects.
It all began with the ?lifestream,? a phenomenon that I predicted in the 1990s and shared in the pages of Wired almost exactly 16 years ago. It arrived in the form of blog posts and RSS feeds, Twitter and other chatstreams, and Facebook walls and timelines. Today, this diary-like structure is supplanting the spatial one as the dominant paradigm of the cybersphere. The web will be history.
This fanciful image shows what could end up being an incredible conjunction on Oct. 5, 2013, with the sun-grazing comet ISON in the night sky of Mars lining up quite close to the blue dot of our home planet.
A new type of film mimics the dreamlike effect produced by a discontinued Kodak infrared film stock. Called LomoChrome Purple, the new film is modeled after Kodak's classic Aerochrome, which transformed images into false-color fantasy worlds.
When Microsoft wants to quickly ramp up a new data center, it can move dirt, pour a foundation, and build one of the most boring buildings you?ve ever seen. Or it can load up a few of its custom-designed data center modules into a truck and drop them on the site.
The latest production video from the set of
The world's first battery electric car ferry is under development in Norway. It's capable of carrying 120 cars and 360 passengers, and it can fully recharge in just ten minutes.
When Paul Larsen decided to sail faster than physics would allow, he had only one choice: reinvent the boat.
The Space Shuttle was conceived as a way of cheaply ferrying crews and cargo to an Earth-orbiting space station. Shuttle and Station were meant to work together to carry out a well-defined mission, much as the Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) and Lunar Module (LM) spacecraft were meant to work together to land astronauts on the moon. Shuttle-Station's mission was to enable astronauts to conduct long-term research in space. Such research would, it was expected, yield practical benefits, abstract scientific knowledge, improved space technology, experience with the physical and psychological effects of long-duration stays in space, and countermeasures for those effects that would make possible piloted voyages beyond the moon.
Channel your inner Katniss Everdeen, Hawkweye, or Robin Hood with an ingenious archery-based iOS accessory called the Bowblade, on display at this year's Macworld conference in San Francisco.
Is the next next-generation console almost here? Wired just received an invitation to "PlayStation Meeting 2013," a press briefing to be held in New York City on Feb. 20, beginning at 6 p.m. Eastern time.