Before the test, Google had written: “It will be hard to anticipate if the proposed demonstration will encounter several important environmental conditions: rain, snow/ice, fog, and heavy crosswinds. Additionally, the vehicles currently do not operate in snow, ice, or dense fog.”Snow not a hazard in Las Vegas in May. It was 31C.]]>
In other words, Erdogan’s strategy is to demonize social media.
It is a strategy of placing social media outside the sacred sphere, as a disruption of family, as a threat to unity, as an outside blade tearing at the fabric of society. Excellent contextual piece. Erdogan is not a fool.]]>
So Edd decided to take his revenge by sending him the entire works of the Bard - by text.
Edd discovered he could copy the words from the internet and paste them into a text message - without costing him a penny on his unlimited mobile phone package.
He sends it as one text but his victim can only receive them in 160 character chunks - meaning the 37 works of Shakespeare will buzz through in 29,305 individual texts.]]>
This is unprecedented. Microsoft didn't even give the OS free to Nokia, which agreed to exclusively make Windows Phone in 2011. It reportedly charged Nokia between $20 to $30 for each Lumia device the Finnish company sold. Making the OS free also shows signs of growing frustration within the company at the lack of traction for Windows Phone in the market. A tectonic shift.]]>
There has been a good effort to pull together existing open datasets that might be useful to #floodhack developers. However most of the EA’s flood-related datasets remain subject to restrictive licensing.]]>
No credit card data of any kind was accessed by hackers. There is no evidence of unauthorized activity of any kind on all but two Kickstarter user accounts.
While no credit card data was accessed, some information about our customers was. Accessed information included usernames, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords. Actual passwords were not revealed, however it is possible for a malicious person with enough computing power to guess and crack an encrypted password, particularly a weak or obvious one. Change your Kickstarter password if you have one. Facebook logins not compromised.]]>
The region outside Sochi where the Olympic ski and snowboard events will be held is virtually a pale green blank on Google maps, for example. The maps here come from the fun and fabulously time-sucking Map Compare tool on the website of Geofabrik, a German company developing commercial uses for OSM data. The Olympic park along the coast, and even downtown Sochi are also covered in more detail in OSM (although with some features that appear on one map but not the other, it’s not clear which is more accurate — at least not without being there). OpenStreetMap is a modern wonder. (Apple's map of the area is pretty much bereft of detail; Nokia HERE's is OK. Puzzling why Apple doesn't just take OSM's content outright.)]]>
To test this, I gathered mean journey times to London from Traintimes for every railway station in the UK, and mean asking prices for 3-bed houses near each station from Nestoria. Here’s the graph of all stations, with a moving-average line added. You can find your station (if you commute to London by rail). Powell-Smith has just joined the Government Digital Service - a sort of tiger team which gets government departments to think digital. A good hire.]]>
The problem here is clear: these baseband processors and the proprietary, closed software they run are poorly understood, as there's no proper peer review. This is actually kind of weird, considering just how important these little bits of software are to the functioning of a modern communication device. You may think these baseband RTOS' [real time operating systems] are safe and secure, but that's not exactly the case. You may have the most secure mobile operating system in the world, but you're still running a second operating system that is poorly understood, poorly documented, proprietary, and all you have to go on are Qualcomm's Infineon's, and others' blue eyes. What's the betting that the NSA and GCHQ are very, very familiar with these RTOSs - and their bugs?]]>
An early estimate shows we may have lost about $600,000 worth of high end digitization equipment, and we will need to repair or rebuild the scanning building. It is in difficult times like these that we turn to our community. Please give generously. It might be your site or work, or someone else's which is essential to yours, which you recover via the Internet Archive.]]>
And as my lungs, eyes and nose burned with the pain of the lachrymatory agent released from multiple capsules that had fallen around me, I started cursing.
I cursed the gendered nature of tech design that has written out women from the group of legitimate users of phones as portable devices to be used on-the-go.
I cursed that what was taken for granted by the male designers and male users of modern phones was simply not available to me. As she says, she doesn't want a pink phone, or one with kittens; "I merely want a design that acknowledges that women exist, and women often have smaller hands than men."]]>
That comment, perhaps alluding to privacy fears that Apple might be assembling a database of users’ fingerprints, may strike readers as a little odd. And not just because Apple has carefully emphasized in its marketing that all fingerprint data from Touch ID will be stored locally on the phone and never uploaded to a remote server; Also because Motorola’s own flagship phone of 2011, the Atrix, offered a fingerprint reader long before Apple. The Atrix, which is still being sold by Motorola today, integrates its fingerprint reader into the wake button on the back of the handset. The Atrix is still on sale? Anyhow, Greenberg has asked Motorola where and how it stores the fingerprint. And one commenter says the reader element died "after a few months". Best forgotten, perhaps.]]>
He’s a guy who, when he saw how successful software-hardware integration was on mobile devices, built a close partnership with Nokia to deliver the same level of integration, and even experimented with building his own devices, going against 20 years of Microsoft tradition and potentially alienating dozens of partners.
Steve Ballmer is the guy who before retiring published a public strategic memo defining Microsoft as a “devices and services” company – for a company that has always rejected those two types of businesses. A memo where the word “software”, which has defined Microsoft for 30 years, doesn’t appear even once. Steve Ballmer “doesn’t get it”? Puh-leeze. Microsoft's product manager for IE, Jonathan Wong (@armchairdude on Twitter) calls this the "best article on Ballmer's retirement that I have read so far".]]>
The proposals aim to incentivise take up, encourage greater use of PAF, and enable it to better meet the current and future needs of users and solutions developers in today’s marketplace. The consultation runs until 20 September. The Free Our Data campaign says: push for it to be available for free and licensed under a UK government OpenData licence.]]>
When I purchased my Glass I knew I had 30 days to decide if I wanted to keep or return it. The device has many charms, but in the end I didn't like peering at a small screen while looking up. And I simply wasn't dazzled. For that kind of money, I wanted to be blown away and I wasn't. I just wasn't.
At its core, Google Glass is a beta device being tested by an enthusiastic group of early adopters who are paying for the privilege. I know Robert Scoble loves his. Tim O'Reilly reported showing Glass to people who put it on, grinned, and immediately saw the potential. I didn't have that reaction. Miller sets out his reasons, which are straightforward, and come from actual use:
"Glass didn't call out to me each day. I found the computing style tiresome."]]>
You should have, because recent authoritative reports have reached a remarkable conclusion about a supposedly "deadly" disaster. No one died, nor is likely to die, according to the most comprehensive assessments since the Fukushima nuclear plant was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. That's from two independent international reports: radioactive material released from Fukushima's four damaged reactors, three of which melted down, has had negligible health impacts.]]>
The 33-year-old co-founder and lead engineer at Oculus VR in Irvine, Calif., was hit in Santa Ana, where he was a resident, by a speeding car being pursued by police, KABC TV Los Angeles said. "Andrew was a brilliant computer graphics engineer, an avid photographer and hiker who loved nature, a true loyal friend, and a founding member of our close-knit Oculus family," the company said in a statement.
According to police, a Dodge Charger being driven by 21-year-old Victor Sanchez and two other suspects in an unnamed alleged criminal activity slammed into two vehicles during the pursuit before hitting Reisse at Flower Street and MacArthur Boulevard.]]>
"It was my world, but it was a very limited world. You can see and hear it, but you can't touch the internet. It's a world devoid of empathy - and that shows on Twitter, and the mob mentality against politicians and public figures. There is no empathy.
"So it was my world, and it was a very cynical world and I became a very cynical person." Davis was, and is, witty and insightful. He has to serve 12 months in a youth offenders' facility; let's hope it passes quickly.]]>
For a time, running an ISP was a trendy thing. Some 150 companies presently have a license, and about 20 are operational. But many of them are finding it hard to stay afloat. Even cyber cafés, many of which are run by ISPs, are beginning to shut down. Ghana’s biggest, which had 100 connections and its own satellite connection, closed in February. One would guess that mobile broadband is a lot higher than 23% by 2013. Another unexpected consequence of the rise of the smartphone: in effect, it drives arbitrage between pricing of mobile and fixed broadband.]]>
The extent of the year-on-year contraction marked the worst quarter since IDC began tracking the PC market quarterly in 1994. The results also marked the fourth consecutive quarter of year-on-year shipment declines.
…Fading mini-notebook shipments have taken a big chunk out of the low-end market while tablets and smartphones continue to divert consumer spending. PC industry efforts to offer touch capabilities and ultraslim systems have been hampered by traditional barriers of price and component supply, as well as a weak reception for Windows 8. Sayonara, netbooks. Sayonara indeed.]]>
“I don’t use a ring of any kind on my phone. This is so that I am always on offense and never defense.” And that's before we get on to the custom walnut-back case.]]>
With this data, the search giant has uncovered the most important factors that determine whether or not a smartphone will launch into the arms of millions of adoring fans, or to an audience that either doesn’t know the phone exists or simply doesn’t care.]]>
This antipattern seems to be going away more and more as companies are beginning to figure out the following simple UX equation:
Long sign-up form before you can use the app = Delete app
However, a fair number of apps still force customers to sign up, sign in, or perform some other useless action before they can use the app. The case study he then cites is priceless.]]>
Paranoia swept through the room [of elite Anonymous hackers]. There were discussions of who the mole might be. A hacker named Switch was a popular guess. Some people thought it was me. (I later said I gave the documents to NewsHour.) Several other incidents took place that added to the paranoia. The website of New York’s Green Party, which InternetFeds planned to attack in an “epic owning,” was defaced without the approval of the room’s members. An article on the Los Angeles Times’ website was defaced by a hacker, again without collective approval. What's significant about this is that Keys, who seems to have had access to the chatroom, is accused of being the person who gave login details to the hacker who defaced the LA Times.]]>
Reader has been fighting for approval/survival at Google since long before I was a PM for the product. I'm pretty sure Reader was threatened with de-staffing at least three times before it actually happened. It was often for some reason related to social:
2008 - let's pull the team off to build OpenSocial
2009 - let's pull the team off to build Buzz
2010 - let's pull the team off to build Google+
It turns out they decided to kill it anyway in 2010, even though most of the engineers opted against joining G+. Google+ is the giant sucking sound at the heart of Google.]]>
It arrived, but I forgot about it for a couple of months until he had a problem whereupon I popped round to fix it. I asked him how he found Windows 8. His reply was: "I hate it." This in and of itself was not entirely unexpected. But what happened next left me feeling profoundly guilty. I watched him try and do simple tasks and saw him again and again just floored by Windows 8's odd usability modes. It's not just parents; people who have been used to Windows XP and Windows Vista and Windows 7 - hundreds of millions of people who just want a computer they can use - are discovering whether they're in the 10%, or 90%. Don't miss the followup article, which examines his mailbag. There are plenty of 90%ers in there. (And in the comments, of which there are more than 600.)]]>
Ubuntu TV is one element of Canonical's 'four screen' strategy, under which the company wants to see its open source operating system also appearing on smartphones, tablets and PCs.
First announced at CES 2012 in Las Vegas, Canonical hoped that Ubuntu TVs would appear by the end of the year.
However, a Canonical spokeswoman confirmed to ZDNet that no hardware partners have been confirmed so far for the Ubuntu TV project. Uh-huh.]]>
Like the platypus, Android is a complicated beast, a bizarre combination of two very different animals. But unlike the platypus, Android is slowly taking over the world.
Here's what we've found at GroupMe: there are two Android markets.
As a developer you need to build for both, and they're not at all like each other. That's the paradox. Read the very telling differences between these two groups - from their expectations of what the back button will do onwards. Another key trend he points to: Android phones being sold without data plans, and/or outside the US. In Q4 2012, the US was only 10% of global Android sales. That's a challenge for developers.]]>
Disappointing holiday sales, an underwhelming reception to Windows 8, and continuing economic malaise that further crimped IT budgets marked the face of the market during the second half of 2012, leading to a year-on-year decline of 8.3% in fourth quarter shipments, the most substantial decline recorded for a holiday quarter.
Furthermore, emerging market growth potential is declining and coming closer to that of mature regions. 2012 marked the first year that emerging markets have seen a volume decline, and while 2013 will return to growth, it is projected at less than 1% and with modest, single-digit growth through 2017. For mature regions, 2013 will mark the third consecutive year of volume declines. IDC continues to expect limited growth in 2014 and 2015 with contracting volume in later years. Wow. The emerging markets stagnation seems unlikely to be economically driven.]]>
In our security investigation, we have found no evidence that any of the content you store in Evernote was accessed, changed or lost. We also have no evidence that any payment information for Evernote Premium or Evernote Business customers was accessed.
The investigation has shown, however, that the individual(s) responsible were able to gain access to Evernote user information, which includes usernames, email addresses associated with Evernote accounts and encrypted passwords. Even though this information was accessed, the passwords stored by Evernote are protected by one-way encryption. (In technical terms, they are hashed and salted.)
While our password encryption measures are robust, we are taking additional steps to ensure that your personal data remains secure. Evernote? Why?]]>
The lock screen bug does in fact exist, and it works as advertised, bypassing the lock and bringing you to a blank black screen with just the status bar. But it allows you no access to anything, not pictures, not contacts and certainly not the file system. Two ways to bypass the lock screen? ]]>
So the Todds, along with two of Shane’s younger brothers, John and Dylan, were unnerved by what they didn’t see as they crossed the threshold. The front door was unlocked and there was no sign of an investigation – no crime-scene tape, no smudges from fingerprint searches. “The first thing I did was make a beeline for the bathroom,” Mrs Todd recalled. She wanted to see exactly how Shane had died – and she saw nothing that fitted the police description. The marble bathroom walls had no holes in them. Nor were there any bolts or screws. The toilet was not where the police had said. A missing laptop, a backup hard drive, a potentially "dual-use" (civilian and military) project using gallium arsenide being worked on by China's Huawei, instructions to employees at Todd's former company IME not to talk to anyone - and staff there thinking his death was not suicide. (May require subscription.)]]>
Why is this important? Africa and Latin America are particularly feature phone-heavy markets. They tell us how Nokia’s feature phone strategy is working.]]>
You are advised to change any passwords which are the same as the PublicWhip one.
You will no longer be able to log in to PublicWhip as the accounts have been wiped from the server.
No financial information was exposed.
We are sorry for this inconvenience and any problems caused. Cause: poor escaping of user input, allowing SQL injection.]]>
The reservoir of this disease of erroneous infographics is internet marketers who don't care whether the information in their graphics is right ... just so long as you link it. As a Christmas present to, well, everyone, I'm issuing a plea to bloggers to help stop this plague in its track. You'd hope, right? McArdle points out the errors in a few infographics. However this post is from 23 December... 2011.]]>
Hackers have figured out how to exploit Java to install malicious software enabling them to commit crimes ranging from identity theft to making an infected computer part of an ad-hoc network of computers that can be used to attack websites. Remind us again how much Oracle paid for Sun?]]>
Consensus expectation is iPhone sales up 38% year-on-year, and iPad sales up 62% year-on-year. ]]>
And this isn’t my opinion, it’s a fact. Despite being created as a “touch-first” OS, only 4.5% of Windows 8 PC sales including multi-touch capabilities. When you couple this with the fact that statistically zero percent of PCs that were upgraded to Windows 8 included touch capabilities, you can see that even in the tiny current market of Windows 8 users, virtually no one is using multi-touch. And that is a problem, because Windows 8 is really all about the multi-touch potential.]]>
At least 20% of the comments left on the Guardian website each month come from only 2,600 user accounts, who together make up just 0.0037% of the Guardian’s declared monthly audience. The other 80% come from a maximum (mathematically calculated) of 498,600 accounts, or 0.7% of the total monthly audience, broadly reaffirming the 90:9:1 rule.]]>
Daniel Danker [head of iPlayer at the BBC]: "It's not just fragmentation of the operating system - it is the sheer variety of devices. Before Ice Cream Sandwich (an early variant of the Android operating system) most Android devices lacked the ability to play high quality video. If you used the same technology as we've always used for iPhone, you'd get stuttering or poor image quality. So we're having to develop a variety of approaches for Android."
RCJ: Why don't you just forget the older devices and concentrate on new ones?
DD: "People write to us saying just that, why bother supporting older devices, why don't you just start with - and then they insert whichever model of phone they have. But more than a quarter of our requests to iPlayer come from devices running Gingerbread. And the number one [Android] device contacting us is still the Samsung Galaxy S2, which can't handle advanced video." And to answer what some ask:
"YouTube has lower expectations of quality, and they have no issues with content protection. Netflix has good quality but it builds the entire video player on phones - they have to reengineer for every device. That is costing a lot of money and as a public service broadcaster we don't have the resources to do that. People also say everybody else is doing it, but that's not true. Neither the ITV Player nor 4OD offers a full Android service."It's screen size, screen resolution, graphics performance, CPU performance, APIs available by OS version - all those things interleaved, not just a single one. (Thanks @alanaudio for the link.)]]>
HTC has suspended development of a number of new models for 2013, reducing the visibility of its orders for handset components, the sources revealed. These are very difficult times for HTC with Android: it's caught between the jaws of Samsung on the top end and cheap Chinese "white box" handsets at the lower end.]]>
One of the things this demonstrates is how short-sighted it is to create these mini-sites with their own top-level domain. It illustrates how fractured Microsoft is, with individual teams doing their own thing regardless. Microsoft has dozens of these sites, such as windowsazure.com, windowsphone.com, asp.net, and so on; there is little consistency of style, and when someone decides to fold one of these back to the main site, all the links die.]]>