With the Labor Day holiday marking the unofficial end of summer on the markets, tech stocks got off to a fairly positive start in the new season as several major deals and the mobile phone market came under especially intense scrutiny. Major exchanges and market indexes were mixed Friday in the wake of a tepid government jobs report. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 14,922.50, down by 14.98 points, while the Standard and Poor’s 500 index and the tech-heavy Nasdaq both closed up slightly higher for the day. The Dow, the S&P and the Nasdaq were all in positive territory for the week, however. The Nasdaq Computer Index of more than 100 tech-related stocks closed Friday at 1755.4, up by 3.82 for the day and also in positive territory for the week. Tech stocks were among the most heavily traded shares Friday, with Microsoft and Nokia in the top five volume leaders of the day. This is not surprising, given the announcement Tuesday that Microsoft will buy the Finnish company’s mobile phone business. Microsoft will pay €3.79 billion (US$5 billion) for Nokia’s Devices & Services business and €1.65 billion to license Nokia’s patents.
The U.S. National Security Agency’s efforts to defeat encrypted Internet communications, detailed in news stories this week, are an attack on the security of the Internet and on users’ trust in the network, some security experts say. . The NSA, the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and other spy agencies have used a variety of means to defeat encryption, including supercomputers, court orders, and behind-the-scenes agreements with technology companies, according to the news reports. . “The fundamental fabric of the Internet has been destroyed.”
Startup Aava Mobile will show a Windows 8.1 tablet with an 8.3-inch, high-definition screen and Intel’s upcoming Atom tablet processor code-named Bay Trail at the Intel Developer Forum next week. The tablet’s screen can display images at a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels, and the device will join a handful of Windows tablets with screen sizes under 10 inches. running Windows 8. The Aava Mobile tablet doesn’t have a name yet and won’t be sold directly to consumers, said Piotr Frasunkiewicz, co-founder of the startup, based in Oulu, Finland.
While still afflicted with reticence over providing a native iPad version of Office, Microsoft has updated OneNote for iPad in a way that, according to the company, makes it independent from its desktop counterpart. Specifically, note-takers can now create notebooks and create, delete and rename notebook sections on their OneNote for iPad. The new features come in response to requests from users who wanted to do “everything from within OneNote” in the iPad, Avneesh Kohli, a program manager on the OneNote team at Microsoft, in a blog post Friday.
Yahoo received 12,444 requests from the U.S. government for user data in the first half of this year, resulting in 11,402 instances of data disclosure, it said Friday in its first transparency report. For nearly 7,000 of the U.S. requests between Jan. 1 and June 30, only non-content data was disclosed, such as basic subscriber information including email and IP addresses, billing information, names and locations, Yahoo said. But more than 4,500 U.S. government data requests resulted in the disclosure of actual content like communications from users’ Mail and Messenger accounts, Yahoo Address Book entries, files uploaded, and photos on Flickr, according to the . The total number of accounts specified in Yahoo’s government data requests comprised less than one-hundredth of 1 percent of Yahoo’s worldwide user base, according to the company.
A startup called Oyster wants to become your “Netflix for e-books.”
You're an audiophile and a neat freak. Years of burning CDs onto your computer have left your digital music library a tattered mess of unnamed tracks by unknown artists—and it's driving you nuts. You can go through and name them one by one, but that would be an annoying slog, and it wouldn't solve the blank album cover problem. Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder to the rescue! MP3 Cover Finder works well, there's no doubt about that. It found art for every obscure song I could throw at it, pulling from sources including Amazon, Bing, Google, and iTunes to find the correct cover art and track information. If it couldn't use its fingerprint technology to identify the MP3 via metadata and file names, it still came up with the best match from all the information provided. In my cruelest test, I used an unreleased song for which the artist is presumed but not confirmed and the title is just a rumor. It managed to find some generic cover art of the presumed band photos as well as some fan-made art for the song. The service works great.
To dabble in scriptwriting without the full $250 investment for Final Draft, Celtx provides a pared-down set of features at a much more palatable price. The full-featured Celtx Plus package weighs in at a reasonable $15 (often $10 on sale via the Celtx company website, and with a 15-day free trial). A personal-use free edition centers on screenplays, but Celtx Plus allows for storyboards, catalogs, specialized viewing modes and includes clip art and other extras. Both free and Plus editions are available for Linux, Mac, and PC. Celtx also offers , which uses the Google Docs model to provide script and other collaborative media writing tools via browser window. The download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you must register to download any edition of the software.
Intel’s dominance of the chip market is starting to wane as PC shipments slump and smartphone and tablet adoption grows, but the manufacturer will try to prove it can make fast and power-efficient processors for mobile devices at its annual developer gathering next week. At the Intel Developer Forum next week, the company will introduce low-power Atom chips code-named Bay Trail, which will go into tablets that are priced from $150. The show will also be a litmus test for new CEO Brian Krzanich, who will deliver the keynote speech on Sept. 10 and highlight Intel’s long-term strategy as the company diversifies into the mobile market. Krzanich replaced the popular Paul Otellini in May this year, and has put mobile chips at the top of his priority list. He has also created a “new devices” group that will focus on emerging areas like wearables. The chip maker is already planning to release a TV service through its own set-top box, and Krzanich may touch upon the wearable devices during his opening keynote on Sept. 10. A distraction will be an Apple product launch event on Sept. 10, which starts just one hour after Krzanich’s keynote begins.
To turn around dropping sales, TV manufacturers are working on a number of technologies to appeal to consumers, including curved screens. LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics and Sony all showed curved TVs at the IFA show here this week, with various sizes and resolutions, and based on different technologies. Despite how hard I tried, however, I couldn’t see that curving the screen added anything to the viewing experience. That doesn’t mean the sets I looked at in Samsung’s and LG’s respective booths didn’t look great—they all did. But that, I’m convinced, wasn’t due to curved screens but the fact the sets were also based on OLED and/or had a 4K resolution, both of which provide real improvements.
Distant Worlds is a massive 4X game that shares many of the strengths and weaknesses of the genre: detailed systems, technology, and options; very long games that form their own histories and stories; minimalist graphics and effects; and a steep, steep learning curve. Distant Worlds is definitely aimed at the hardcore player for this genre. It does not attempt to simplify or strip down gameplay or worry much about "approachability." I have a weakness for games like this (see Aurora and Dwarf Fortress) but they're not to everyone's taste. Code Force/Matrix Games has designed Distant Worlds for a specific niche, and they've produced a game that will satisfy the target audience very well. Distant Worlds is sold as a core game and a series of expansions. This review is based on the latest bundle, which included all of the released material. The expansions don't just add "more stuff." They add in entire new categories of activity, such as planetary facilities, changes to the tech tree structure, and so on. The latest expansion, Shadows, adds something very new: the chance to play as a pirate, rather than an empire, focusing on raiding, constructing hidden bases, smuggling, and generally ruling the galaxy from the, well, shadows. The Shadows expansion also offers a mode of play where you begin at a primitive level, with no FTL capacity, and must first develop your home system and learn to build even the most basic craft. The default start position gives you a certain amount of technology and a small fleet of exploration and construction ships.
If the leaks from this morning are to be believed, the world finally be closer to getting the supersized Windows Phone it didn't even know it wanted. , posted an image of what it claims to be the Nokia Lumia 1520, a large-display'd Windows phone, which will be released before the end of 2013. .
, using a mixture of backdoors baked into software at the government’s behest, a $250 million per year budget to encourage commercial software vendors to make its security “exploitable,” and sheer computer-cracking technological prowess. in some way. minimize the chances that your encrypted communications will be cracked by the government—or anyone else. Read on. Now that we know that corporations—or at least individuals in corporations—have worked with the NSA to build backdoors into encryption technology, privacy buffs should give commercial encryption technology (such as Microsoft’s BitLocker) the hairy eye.
Acer has chosen a different approach to the all-in-one PC, installing Android instead of Windows on its upcoming DA241HL, but the problem is that Google’s operating systems isn’t a desktop OS. Since the arrival of Android, vendors have been experimenting with running the OS on devices other than smartphones and tablets. Now, Acer is set to come out with the DA241HL, an Android-based, all-in-one PC that has a 24-inch full HD touchscreen and is powered by an Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor. There is nothing wrong with the design or overall the performance of Acer’s product, although a slightly higher screen resolution would not have hurt. But the real problem is that Android’s user interface is designed for smartphones and tablets, not for a large display controlled with keyboard and mouse. Maybe Acer has realized that as well, because in its booth at IFA the product was demonstrated without a mouse and keyboard. Instead, the DA241HL was standing on a shallow table, making it easy to reach the screen. But reaching forward across a desk to swipe, start an app or open an email is far from ideal. On a laptop, which is usually situated closer to the user, it’s easier. Purely from a usability point of view, choosing Google’s Chrome OS, which is less touch-centric than Android, would have made more sense.
Camera enthusiasts can duplicate the Google Street View panoramic effect with Ricoh's Theta, a sleek camera that fits in your pocket.
, a nifty Chrome add-on that sucks up all your open tabs into a single, thus reducing tab clutter and, theoretically, improving Chrome's performance. (The more open tabs you have, the slower any browser will be.) . This one is so head-smackingly obvious, I can't believe it's not built into every browser. Once Veritabs is installed, it presents all your open tabs (not bookmarks, mind you) in a vertical list on the left side of the screen. Or, at least, that's what it's supposed to. I assumed it worked like OneTab in that you'd click the Veritabs icon (which gets added to Chrome's extensions toolbar) to reveal the list. Nope. What happens is you move your mouse to the left side of the screen. That produces the Veritabs list; now just click any tab you want to switch to.
The Nexus 5 leaks just keep on coming after the next-gen flagship phone made a surprise appearance in a Google video earlier this week.
NASA's black-hole-hunting spacecraft NuSTAR hit its first major milestone, detecting 10 "supermassive" black holes.
Facebook has closed the notice and comments period on the proposed changes to its privacy policy, and expects to decide by next week whether it needs to further update the policy in the wake of user feedback. to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that the planned changes violate a 2011 settlement between Facebook and the FTC on user privacy. “We are asking the FTC to force FB to reverse its position,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, one of the signatories to the letter. “We are taking the time to ensure that user comments are reviewed and taken into consideration to determine whether further updates are necessary and we expect to finalize the process in the coming week,” Facebook said Thursday. Many users on Facebook have been critical of the proposed changes. “While I don’t object to Facebook mining my data in order to decide which ads to serve to me, I strongly object to my photos or text content being used to create ads others will see on Facebook,” a user commented on the Facebook site governance page. “There should be a setting we can use to prohibit this use, and it should be well publicized so we know how to use it.”
If you couldn’t make it to PAX this past weekend, don’t worry! We've got you covered with a rundown of our favorite games.
The end of summer means school's back in session. These movies all relate to education in some way.
There’s no doubt that TV makers are excited about 4K television. The sets, which offer four times the detail of today’s high-definition sets, are appearing in increasing numbers and consumers too seem convinced by the technology, which must be a relief to the industry after the cool reception that 3D TV got a few years ago. The most obvious barrier to wider 4K adoption is price—the sets cost thousands of dollars more than high-definition TVs—but it’s not the only problem. Among the cables and interfaces on the back of the new TV is an equally important problem: how to get 4K content into the TV sets. At this week’s IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, TV and video equipment makers are showing prototypes of several new technologies that will bring 4K content into the home and transport it between devices. One of the biggest steps was the , a new version of the “high-definition multimedia interface” standard that is the de-facto method of sending HD video between devices.
There's a reason why action movies are so popular, and believe me, it isn't for the story. Explosions fascinate and awe, so I put together a few free games that make them the star. Bombs away!
,” Android cometh. ? Yup. .
GiveGab aims to do for charities what Waze has done for traffic reports.
You can dig down to bedrock and build towering structures sky-high in Minecraft, but why stop there? When all that terrestrial stuff starts to get boring, you have the option to leave it all behind.
Auction giant eBay wants to know how you feel about Bitcoin. An undated post on eBay's Deals blog titled featured a two-minute video encapsulating many of the pros and cons of the virtual currency. Accompanying text next to the video read: "The jury's still out on whether bitcoins will become ubiquitous and stand the test of time, or whether new innovations might eventually take their place. What do you think? Are bitcoins the real deal?"
Facebook has laid out big plans in recent months to simplify the app development process by acquiring Parse. But the social network actually had its eye on the cloud service company for years, and at one point the two considered a different partnership. Talks between Facebook and Parse went as far back as 2011, the year the company launched, Parse CEO Ilya Sukhar told IDG News Service on Thursday. “We started talking to Facebook a long time ago,” Sukhar said, when Parse was a company of just six people. Parse now has a core team of roughly 30 employees. Parse provides a cloud-based app development platform designed to make it easier for developers to build Web and mobile apps by handling the back-end side of the work.
Microsoft is reportedly preparing a “Power Cover,” a keyboard cover for the Microsoft Surface tablet with a built-in battery. claim that the Power Cover will extend the battery life of the Surface Pro by an undisclosed amount, although any additional battery and mimic the existing Type Cover (at top of story), not the less-expensive Touch Cover. Microsoft representatives declined to comment.
The former Formula One president wants Google to create a special algorithm to detect and delete certain content – specifically, of him participating in an S&M party. Google says doing so would create an "unprecedented new Internet censorship tool."
Topsy has indexed billions of tweets – 425 billion of them to be exact – and now made them all available for searching. While some of the features are only available in their Pro tool, Topsy has made available some search data from tweets for free.
Two of Bing's search products got makeovers this week. Bing Video has streamlined its look with a redesign from the ground up. And Bing News also got an updated look, with a more natural feel for reading headlines and trending stories.
ShopIgniter released findings of research that showed Facebook posts with photos received the highest click-throughs in organic and the most engagement on the paid side compared to other updates like offers, questions, and more.
If you're creating web pages of automatically generated text and snippets, you should be aware that Google can and will penalize you. And if, as a user, you find these types of pages in Google's search results, you can send in a spam report.
A pastel Google Doodle today celebrates pioneering social worker Jane Addams, the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The Doodle features Hull House, which provided social, educational, artistic, medical, and day care services.
Check out this huge collection of insights from leading brands and thought leaders in the earned media and digital marketing space on the rise of earned media, the future of search and SEO, mobile, content marketing, social, and metrics that matter.
Clients with small budgets often are expecting a lot more than their budget will actually pay for. Here's how you can best manage client expectations from the outset in terms of time, tasks, budget, and establishing key performance indicators.
Confused about how Google Places is different from Google+ Local? You aren't alone. Do you need one, both, or neither? Google hasn't made it easy for small, local businesses to understand, and it's left many frustrated. Let's clear up the confusion.
Nine Bay Area Meetup Groups plan to converge on the SES San Francisco conference next week. Here, organizers of several of these groups share insights on good, bad, and ugly industry developments; budget priorities; and top tips for holiday success.
Yahoo has finally unveiled the logo that it spent 30 days counting down to releasing. Its new logo, designed over on weekend this summer, isn't dissimilar to previous Yahoo logos. It has a slightly slimmer font and retains the exclamation mark.
Excel is amazing. Many easy-to-use tricks are built-in just waiting to be utilized to make your data easier to manage. These shortcuts aren't revolutionary, but incrementally will add up and help you reclaim some valuable time every day.
When getting started in international SEO, one of the most important items of an optimal strategy includes how to properly structure your domain name and URL to signify the country the website is targeting and/or language the website is in.
A new report looks at some key battles in video games, smartphones, tablets, and web browsers in the run-up to the holiday season, identifying which brands' commercials are attracting the most attention online and which desperately need an upgrade.
The Android 4.4 operating system will be called KitKat. A deal with Nestlé, which owns the Kit Kat name, came about after a decision by Google to take a break from the norm and name its latest OS after a candy bar. No money changed hands.
Ever since Facebook hashtags launched, marketers have been trying to determine ROI. So far, reports have shown that hashtags may not be performing up to par. In fact, a new analysis shows engagement and viral reach is down on posts with hashtags.
When it comes to geo-targeting, there are many creative ways to be more precise and relevant without limiting reach. Here are five geo-targeting techniques that can greatly improve performance and ROI in Google AdWords campaigns.
Would you buy a used car without checking it out first? Or a house, a surgeon's services, or a babysitter? Your livelihood deserves at least as much consideration. When trying to hire a reputable SEO, do your homework and protect your investment!
If you've received this warning, it's because Google has determined your site isn't serving the best possible quality of content for your visitors, primarily because it's either nearly non-existent, or the content isn't unique or original.
At SES San Francisco, Andrew Edwards will be talking about all things convergence analytics – trends, technologies, and challenges. Here, Edwards offers an introduction to convergence analytics and why it's changing business analytics forever.
Following a class action settlement surrounding its advertising content, Facebook has given itself permission to use your "name, profile picture, content and information in connection with commercial, sponsored or related content."
Google Trends is one of the best and most versatile tools available for developing a marketing campaign. Having all of this data available is great, but knowing what to do with it is even better. Here's a guide on using this information for SEO.
Harnessing the upswing in seasonal trends and building more links for your site takes planning and a lot of upfront work, so be prepared to get ultra-organized early on. Here's how to capitalize on everything from annual events to major holidays.
Have trouble keeping up with everything when managing multiple SEO campaigns? Cyfe is an all-in-one business analytics tool that let you create dashboards with multiple widgets organizing SEO data, competitor stats, brand mentions, email, and more.
After Google' Penguin 2.0 update, many websites have seen rankings drop for keywords that they used to be steady on for a long time. Where can and should people with a small content, link, and SEO budget in general be looking for links now?