http://news-today.info/ ru Technology News - The modern news portal, all the latest news collected only here, the news of politics, business, technology DataLife Engine http://news-today.info/technology/90-cnn-acquires-zite-maker-of-ipad-magazine-app.html http://news-today.info/technology/90-cnn-acquires-zite-maker-of-ipad-magazine-app.html

San Francisco (CNN) -- CNN announced Tuesday that it is acquiring Zite, a Canadian tablet software developer.

Zite offers an iPad application that can build a personalized magazine based on someone's interests and social media feeds. The app can determine users' favorite topics from which articles they choose to read and how they rate each one, similar to the way the Pandora Internet radio station customizes music playlists to listeners' tastes.

CNN plans to operate Zite as an independent business, said KC Estenson, senior vice president and general manager of CNN.com, on Monday. In addition to financing Zite's ongoing development, CNN intends to promote the software on the news organization's website and television programs, Estenson said.

The Zite app, which is free, will not contain advertisements at first. Zite recently mined app-usage data for a report that showed users' interests by state, information that can be attractive to marketers. The app was downloaded 120,000 times during the week it debuted in March; a spokeswoman declined to provided current user statistics.]]> 1 Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:06:45 +0400 http://news-today.info/technology/89-how-to-write-that-first-online-dating-note.html http://news-today.info/technology/89-how-to-write-that-first-online-dating-note.html

Editor's note: Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz are the sarcastic brains behind humor blog and book "Stuff Hipsters Hate." When they're not trolling Brooklyn for new material, Ehrlich works as a senior writer at MTV, and Bartz is a news editor at Psychology Today. Got a question about etiquette in the digital world? Contact them at netiquette@cnn.com.

(CNN) -- Last week, we penned a public service announcement demonstrating a few of the ways you can guarantee a nonresponse in an initial online dating message, no matter the quality of your profile or personality.

While we received a fair amount of gratitude (mostly from online daters tired of finding such hapless missives in their inboxes), we also received many a request for tips on what to write in a successful first note. (One humanity-loving reader also took the time to inform us he suspects we are "two former high school cheerleaders who now have an inferiority complex," a flattering if inaccurate assumption that we were once capable of killer herkies and immense pep.)

While it's infinitely more fun to tell you what not to do than it is to give you helpful pointers (hey, the Ten Commandments weren't written in the negative for nothin'), this week we're heeding your call.

Before we proceed with the advice-shilling, though, a big disclaimer looms. Even if you write an excellent first letter, there is no guarantee that the recipient will write you back. If there were a magic formula, some genius would have cracked it by now.

Every online dater has had the experience of reading an impossibly sweet, heart-bursting message and thinking, "Oh, sigh, I wish we could use this site to arrange dates for our friends or make new totally platonic acquaintances, because the sender of this message is clearly a lovely person. Alas. [hits delete]."

This is simply part of the numbers game that is dating (online and in real life), and it's the reason online courtship is not for those with rickety self-esteem and hair-trigger rejection sensitivity. Because most of your messages will go unanswered, doesn't mean there's anything wrong about you. (Certainly you're brimming with foibles, but your intended date doesn't necessarily know that yet.)]]> 1 Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:05:50 +0400 http://news-today.info/technology/88-robots-arent-good-at-talking-to-themselves.html http://news-today.info/technology/88-robots-arent-good-at-talking-to-themselves.html
(CNN) -- Have you ever looked at your smartphone or laptop -- or even a robot, if you're lucky enough to come in contact with one -- and wondered, "What the heck are you thinking?"

Well, if so, here's your answer.

Cornell's Creative Machines Lab posted a video this week of a computer's inner monologue, and it's making the rounds on the Internet not because the machine is having profound thoughts about world domination or the future of technology -- but because the discussion it has with itself is totally ridiculous.

Researchers used the "Cleverbot" for this test case, which is regarded as one of researchers' best attempts to mimic human conversation patterns with computer intelligence. Cleverbot actually "learns" from the conversations it has as it has them, which is fairly impressive, as this episode of WNYC's "Radiolab" podcast discusses at great length.

(Side note: You can have a text conversation with this piece of computer software at Cleverbot.com, and the results are sometimes frighteningly spot-on and sometimes hilarious).

But turn the computer on itself and things go totally awry. The researchers set up two screens, one with a computer-graphics picture of a woman, and one with a man. They talk to each other, but they're both controlled by the same program. Here's a snippet of the dialogue, which is posted in full on YouTube:

Man: "I am not a robot. I am a unicorn."

Woman: "But you said earlier that you were a robot."

Man: "I did not."

Woman: "I thought you did."

Man: "You were mistaken, which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you."

I guess that last bit is a nod to the fact that these computers come packed with lots of hardware memory.]]> 1 Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:04:51 +0400 http://news-today.info/technology/87-hp-resurrects-touchpad-tablet-to.html http://news-today.info/technology/87-hp-resurrects-touchpad-tablet-to.html
(WIRED) -- And on the 61st day, the TouchPad rose again.

HP has plans to produce another round of its TouchPad tablets before the year is out, despite its earlier decision to discontinue its mobile hardware products.

"Despite announcing an end to manufacturing webOS hardware, we have decided to produce one last run of TouchPads to meet unfulfilled demand," HP spokesman Mark Budgell wrote in a company blog post. "As we know more about how, when and where TouchPads will be available, we will communicate that here and through e-mail to those who requested notification."

Budgell says it will be a few weeks before devices from the additional run will be available for purchase.

The blog post signals further confusion from a company in upheaval. Two weeks ago, HP announced suddenly it would end production on all of its mobile hardware, including the soon-to-be-released Pre 3 and Veer smartphones.

The decision also included the company's iPad competitor, the TouchPad, killed off a mere 49 days after its debut in July. Circulating rumors suggested third-party retailers were sitting on hundreds of thousands of unsold units.]]> 1 Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:03:52 +0400 http://news-today.info/technology/86-when-social-media-hinders-revolution.html http://news-today.info/technology/86-when-social-media-hinders-revolution.html

(CNN) -- This has been the year of social media crackdowns.

First there was Egypt, where the government shut down the Internet in January amid protests that toppled the 30-year rule of president Hosni Mubarak.

Then it was Libya, where something similar happened.

And, most recently, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said he was considering shutting down digital-communication channels during riots that had gripped the country. As CNN's Mark Milian reports, the UK has since backed down from that claim, but the discussion caused much controversy online.

Behind all of these happenings is a theory: That new-ish communications technologies -- from Facebook and Twitter to BlackBerry Messenger -- help people mobilize and revolt against governments. Tech insiders tend to see the Internet and social media as democratizing forces -- digital tools that can be used to topple dictators and spark change.

Perhaps Wael Ghonim, the Google employee who helped organize Egypt's revolution 2.0 over Facebook, put words to this theory best:

"If you want to liberate a society, just give them the Internet."

But what if that's not true?

That's essentially the argument of Navid Hassanpour, a political science graduate student at Yale, who writes in a recent and widely-talked-about paper that social media actually hurts a particular group's chance of organizing a meaningful and successful revolution.

"Social media can act against grass roots mobilization," he writes. "They discourage face-to-face communication and mass presence in the streets. Similar to more traditional and highly visible media, they create greater awareness of risks involved in protests, which in turn can discourage people from taking part in demonstrations."

He uses mathematical models to map out why this was the case in Egypt.]]> 1 Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:02:49 +0400 http://news-today.info/technology/85-again-apple-reportedly-loses.html http://news-today.info/technology/85-again-apple-reportedly-loses.html
We're looking at you, Apple employees of America.

Exhibit A: Last year, an Apple employee reportedly left a pre-release version of the iPhone 4 in a German beer hall in Silicon Valley. The gadget blog Gizmodo proceeded to buy the phone for $5,000 and splashed the details all over the Internet.

And exhibit B: Another Apple employee this summer appears to have left a prototype iPhone in a Mexican bar and restaurant in San Francisco's Mission District, according to a report on Wednesday from the tech site CNET.

CNN has not confirmed this report, and CNET says there are very few details available about what actually happened.

Apple declined to comment on the story.

"This year's lost phone seems to have taken a more mundane path: it was taken from a Mexican restaurant and bar and may have been sold on Craigslist for $200," Greg Sandoval and Declan McCullagh write on that site, citing an unnamed source who is said to be familiar with Apple's investigation of the matter. "Still unclear are details about the device, what version of the iOS operating system it was running, and what it looks like."]]> 1 Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:01:53 +0400 http://news-today.info/technology/84-facebook-to-launch-music-platform-with.html http://news-today.info/technology/84-facebook-to-launch-music-platform-with.html
(Mashable) -- Facebook intends to launch its long-rumored music service next month with Spotify, MOG and Rdio as three of the company's launch partners, Mashable has learned.

The music and media platform will be announced at Facebook's f8 developer conference on September 22. It will allow users to listen to music from within Facebook.com. Evidence of Facebook's music platform first surfaced in the code of Facebook's video chat service.

According to two sources familiar with the matter, Facebook will not directly host or stream any music or media. Instead, it will rely on partners to provide the content. This is in contrast to Apple, Google and Amazon's strategy of hosting music content on their servers. Facebook's plan is to become a platform for media content in the same way it is a platform for applications and games.

One of our sources specifically mentioned three music services as launch partners: Spotify, Rdio and MOG. It's unclear whether Facebook has lined up other launch partners for its music platform or whether Facebook will open up its platform to other developers. One of our sources noted, however, that Facebook doesn't like playing favorites, so our bet is that Facebook will open up its music platform to other third-party developers.]]> 1 Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:00:47 +0400 http://news-today.info/technology/31-hp-tablet-comes-back-to-life-with.html http://news-today.info/technology/31-hp-tablet-comes-back-to-life-with.html

(CNN) -- For a "dead" gadget, the HP TouchPad keeps showing remarkable signs of life.

Nearly two weeks after Hewlett-Packard announced that it was discontinuing mobile devices and dramatically slashed the price of the TouchPad, customers are hunting them with renewed zeal.

The tablet has sold out, according to the company. Meanwhile, HP is considering making more of the devices -- and continuing to support them, despite the fact that independent developers are working to hack the tablets to run on Google's Android operating system, instead of the now-killed webOS.

"We have been surprised by the enthusiastic response to the TouchPad price drop, and we understand that many customers were disappointed that HP and our retail partners ran out of supply so fast," HP spokesman Mark Budgell wrote in a blog post Monday.

Like virtually every other device in its class, the HP TouchPad failed to make much of a dent in the iPad-dominated tablet market when it was released early last month.

But after HP announced August 18 that it was discontinuing mobile devices, remaining TouchPad inventory was slashed to fire-sale prices: $99 for a 16-gigabyte model and $149 for a model with 32 gigabytes of storage.

The device, which had originally sold for about $400 more, all of a sudden became one of the most sought-after item in the gadget world.

Via Twitter, Budgell let potential customers know Monday that there's no official word when, or if, HP will be making more TouchPads.

"Don't rush...no availability today," Budgell wrote.

He said there would be more information "in the next few days" on whether more of the tablets will become available.

But in an e-mail Monday, a spokeswoman described TouchPads as "temporarily out of stock."

For gadget lovers, the discounted TouchPad is a tradeoff. The assumption has been that the discontinued device won't get software updates, there will be no new apps created for it, and webOS, the operating system created by Palm and purchased by HP, will essentially become a dead platform.

But for many, a device that got largely positive reviews and was selling for $400 less than the iPad was a powerful temptation to jump into the still-emerging world of tablet computing.

"The bottom line is that the TouchPad, right now, is worth $99. Even if it never sees another ounce of code added to it, a gadget whose software soul is forever frozen in August 2011," wrote Matt Buchanan, a gadget reviewer at tech site Gizmodo. "The TouchPad is the second best tablet you can buy, at any pricepoint. It nailed all the big ideas about what a tablet should feel like".

And things could get even better.]]> 1 Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:22:30 +0400 http://news-today.info/technology/30-why-google-will-never-back-down-on-real-names.html http://news-today.info/technology/30-why-google-will-never-back-down-on-real-names.html
(CNN) -- Google's new social network, Google+, is shaping up to be a hit for the search engine giant.

And yet Google continues to court controversy with its real names policy, which asks users to represent themselves with their real names or risk having their accounts suspended.

Critics say the move is harmful to political activists, victims of harassment and numerous other groups for whom using a real name online might pose a safety risk.

So why is Google being so stubborn about this issue and risking bad PR for the sake of a minor technical change? Why not just allow usernames, as Twitter already does?

'Identity service'

The answer may lie in comments made over the weekend by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. During an interview in Edinburgh, Scotland, NPR's Andy Carvin asked Schmidt to justify Google's real-names policy.

"He replied by saying that G+ was build (sic) primarily as an identity service, so fundamentally, it depends on people using their real names if they're going to build future products that leverage that information," Carvin explained in a posting to Google+.

"Regarding people who are concerned about their safety, he said G+ is completely optional. No one is forcing you to use it. It's obvious for people at risk if they use their real names, they shouldn't use G+. Regarding countries like Iran and Syria, people there have no expectation of privacy anyway due to their government's own policies, which implies (to me, at least) that Schmidt thinks there's no point of even trying to have a service that allows pseudonyms."

In short: It's all about identity. More to the point: It's all about Facebook.]]> 1 Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:20:34 +0400 http://news-today.info/technology/29-traffic-app-by-mit-and-princeton.html http://news-today.info/technology/29-traffic-app-by-mit-and-princeton.html
Using the resulting data, the app can relay to a particular driver how quickly he or she will need to drive in order to make the next light. If the next light is already red, the driver can coast up to it slowly instead.

(MORE: IBM Wants to Improve Your Commute With Traffic Prediction)

The researchers tested the app in Singapore, which uses dynamic traffic lights that change based on traffic levels and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which uses dumb, old timed traffic lights spawned from the loins of none other than Satan himself (I live near Cambridge, believe it or not).

The results, according to MIT:

"By reducing the need to idle and accelerate from a standstill, the system saves gas: In tests conducted in Cambridge, Mass., it helped drivers cut fuel consumption by 20 percent."

That's pretty incredible, considering it requires no additional modifications to the car itself.]]> 1 Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:19:08 +0400