Popular Photography’s Camera Of The Year Is…

Canon EOS 5D Mark III Satoshi

It’s that time of year again–the time of year to take incredibly detailed macro shots of pointsettias. And what better camera to do it with than the Canon EOS 5D Mark III, the winner of Popular Photography’s hotly contested “Camera of the Year” contest? The follow-up to one of the most important cameras in the history of photography, the Mark III bests its predecessor in every way, topping strong competitors on its way to the prize. Read more here.

Carey Lowell other facts

Another Key Apple Patent, Pinch to Zoom, is Rejected by USPTO

  (Source: Orion Pictures)

Rejection is still preliminary, just like past rejections

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) Central Reexamination Office (CRO) has damaged Apple, Inc.’s (AAPL) legal campaign against rival smartphone maker Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930) with its third in a series of major patent rejections in recent months.

On Wednesday, the CRO ruled [PDF] that Apple’s “pinch to zoom” patent – U.S. Patent No. 7,844,915 – was invalid [PDF].  The patent claims the invention of a number of things multi-touch related — including being able to distinguish between single finger scrolling gestures and a plurality of multi-finger gestures, including the aforementioned pinch to zoom.

These multi-touch techniques were largely first demonstrated in the 1980s in the world of academia by groups such as Myron Krueger’s team at the University of Toronto.  Professor Krueger developed and published papers on virtually equivalent pinch-to-zoom multi-touch technology almost 25 years prior to Apple producing its first multi-touch device (the iPhone). 

The ’915 patent joins the “rubber band patent” (U.S. Patent No. 7,469,381, aka the ’381 patent) and the “Steve Jobs [multi-touch] patent” (U.S. Patent No. 7,479,949, aka the ’949 patent) in patents that were rejected in preliminary rulings by USPTO reviewers.

All three patents will next be headed to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) — a court of sorts at the USPTO — for a final ruling.  Assuming the PTAB sticks to its latest decision (which is not guaranteed, but is often the case), the ruling can be appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit if Apple chooses.

How critical would it be if these three Apple patents were invalidated? The invalidation would eliminate two out of the three utility patents that Apple asserted in winning a $1.05B USD verdict against Samsung.  As a result the invalidations could slash hundreds of millions of dollars off the damages verdict.

One advantage Apple does have in both the ’915 and ’381 invalidations is that they are ex parte evaluations; meaning that Apple is the only party the USPTO is discussing the matter with.  Thus it’s possible Apple could rectify the language in the patent to be less ambiguous, but in such a way to try to preserve its trial verdict against Samsung.

Also, it should be noted that while all of the patent’s 21 claims were rejected, only a single claim — Claim 8 — was used in the Samsung case.

Sources: SBNation [The Verge] [PDF] [1], [2]

Ali Landry read other stories

Fitness Trackers Make Terrible Gifts

Unless the person you’re shopping for has obsessive tendencies, fitness trackers won’t help him or her get into shape.

Fitbit Is Sad I’ve been using the more expensive Fitbit One, so this Fitbit Ultra is sad. Dan Nosowitz

Fitness trackers, little pedometer-type things that purport to measure your activity and help you get into shape, are on about a billion gift guides this year. But maybe they shouldn’t be. Here are the two most pressing reasons not to buy someone a fitness tracker like a Fitbit, Nike+ Fuelband, or Jawbone Up as a gift.

1. It implies your giftees are fat. And maybe they are but if you feel like that’s something they should know you should probably not use a pedometer as a messenger. Be nice!

2. 99% of people won’t use it. And this is the more pressing reason–it’s not that they’re bad products, exactly, it’s just that fitness trackers have positioned themselves as gadgets for the masses, a futuristic way to get in shape. And they’re not! They are helpful tools for a very particular type of person, and you know maaaaaybe one of that type of person, and that person probably already has one of these.

I’ve been using both of the new Fitbit products for a few weeks now. I am in awful shape, an overripe chimera of laziness and injury and sedentary job and also laziness, and I thought “hey, I bet this’ll help motivate me to get into shape!” It did not, and that’s only partly due to the execution of the product. The Fitbit One, which just about every reviewing publication ranks as the best or one of the best fitness trackers out there, is fine. It’s tiny and well-designed, it can track your steps, it syncs with an app on your phone, it tracks your sleep patterns. All of that stuff together can be very helpful for monitoring your health, but I suspect very few people will actually see the benefit.

That’s because fitness trackers are dumb. I don’t mean dumb as in “bad,” I mean dumb in the same way that an old flip-phone is dumber than a smartphone. It just can’t do very much on its own. Here’s one (unusually active) day of using the Fitbit.

Fitbit App: I had pho for lunch today. Pho is not listed, although anhyrdrous disodium phosphate is. Weird.  Dan Nosowitz

Last week, before going to bed, I remembered to have the Fitbit track my sleep. I dug the Fitbit out of my pants, put on the big velcro wristband, stuck the Fitbit in the wristband’s pocket, pressed the button to tell the Fitbit I was going to bed, and then went to bed. Woke up the next morning, pressed the button to tell the Fitbit I was awake. Took the Fitbit out of the wristband, put it in my pocket again. Had breakfast. Logged onto the Fitbit app to tell the app I had breakfast. Searched for the specific breakfast I had, guessed how much I had eaten. Logged it. Biked to work–about a 6.5-mile trip–which the Fitbit did not register, because it only registers walking. Logged onto the Fitbit app to tell it precisely how long and how far the bike trip was.

Worked. Had lunch, logged onto the Fitbit app to tell it what I had for lunch. Fitbit directory didn’t list what I had–it mostly includes fast food or chain food–so I guessed at the calorie count. Went to the gym after work. Moved Fitbit from pants to a clip on my workout shorts. Worked out. Fitbit doesn’t pick up on any of that, because I didn’t do anything like walking, which is what the Fitbit measures. Logged onto Fitbit app to tell it what I did. Weighed myself at the gym. Logged onto Fitbit to tell it how much I weigh. Biked home. Logged onto Fitbit app to tell it about that. Ate dinner. Logged onto Fitbit app and took my best guess as to calorie count. Took Fitbit out of pants, synced with iPhone app. Put it into wristband and told it I was going to bed.

From all of that, I saw how many calories I burned, how far I walked, how many flights of stairs I climbed, how many calories I took in. I could see graphs over time, comparing my activity day by day, week by week, month by month. All of that is cool! But I am not an obsessive type, and I lost interest in spending literally hours per day with the Fitbit app after about two days.

This isn’t exclusive to Fitbit; all of the major fitness trackers (Fitbit, Nike+ Fuelband, Jawbone Up) have their own quirks and pros and cons–the Fuelband and Jawbone Up, as wristbands, don’t have the problem of having to remember to bring it with you, though they don’t track your food intake–but they mostly work the same way. They’re glorified pedometers with added fitness tracking software. To really get the most out of these gadgets, you have to be kind of obsessive. Just using them casually gets you very little of value; for a few days, it’s cool to see how many steps you take, and I did take the stairs rather than the escalator to get more “points,” but I very quickly tired of it. They just don’t give enough information because they can’t extract enough data, and they can’t be encouraging because they don’t analyze the data they get.

Fitbit In Wristband: You stick the Fitbit One in a wristband when you go to bed.  Dan Nosowitz

I still think there’s a place for fitness trackers. The Basis Band, for example, is one step closer to being actually helpful for two main reasons. First: it can measure your heart rate, unlike any of the other trackers I mentioned. Second: it uses that data to recommend new exercises–instead of just giving you a chart, it’ll advise that you walk around the office for ten minutes. That’s much more helpful to the vast majority of people who don’t like looking at charts all day.

Fitness trackers can only really be helpful when they get smart. Data is great, but for most people, it’s not enough to just gather data and present it. You have to analyze it, figure out what it means and how to use it. The dream of a fitness tracker is pretty much like a fitness-centric version of Google Now: it needs to take in your data and then figure out what you actually want to know. That’s the next generation of this data tech–it’s not about the data, it’s about the conclusions. What we want is a fitness tracker that suggests, that figures out your lifestyle and then gives you advice, that actually helps you get into shape rather than just telling you exactly how out of shape you are. Hopefully the next generation of fitness trackers go in that direction. But for now, don’t bother with a pedometer.

Pete Travis Annalise Braakensiek

EU Sets January Deadline for Google’s Antitrust Response

Today in international tech news: The European Union gives Google a deadline to rectify Europe’s antitrust concerns, the creator of a Facebook page that let people rank sexual partners avoids jail time, Samsung backs off its attempted Apple injunction in Europe, and the UK’s Pirate Party is forced to drop its hugely popular proxy service to The Pirate Bay.

Olivia Thirlby Jessica Drake

Researcher: Pesky Microbe May Have Caused the Biggest Extinction in History

Methane-producing bacteria may have leverage nickel from volcanism to flood the atmosphere with methane

It was called “The Great Dying”.

I. A Time of Death and Desolation

If that title sounds dire it is because it was indeed a grim time for life on Earth.  Occurring about 252 and one-third million years ago, the mass extinction came at a time when life on Earth had become fairly advanced.  Terrestrial life consisted of a rich mix of large amphibians (think huge cousins of today’s salamanders) and scaly reptilian dinosaur predecessors.  The seas teemed with life.

Then some sort of cataclysm swept the globe.  Ninety-six out of every one-hundred marine species (96%) went exinct, while seventy out of every one-hundred terrestrial vertebrate species (70%) also bit the metaphorical dust.  The exinction to this day remains the most severe mass extinction in Earth’s history and what is believed to be the only mass extinction to feature a major extinction of insects — traditionally among the Earth’s most hardy species.

So what caused this severe event?

In line with all the hype and fervor surrounding global warming, some past researchers have suggested climate change may have played a role.  Criticism of this hypothesis has traditionally been that it’s improper to assume the markers of climate change — atmospheric and ocean carbon levels — as causing ecological changes, when ecological changes can also cause climate change.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Daniel Rothman has become the latest researcher to throw his hat in the paleontological ring, offering up an interesting alternate hypothesis of how such a catastrophic climate change incident may have been triggered, leading to the Earth losing so much biodiversity.

The Great Dying marked the edge of the Permian.  Its end ushered in a new era — the Triassic — which would become the first of three major historical eras when the land-masses were ruled by large reptiles (dinosaurs).

To look for clues as to what caused The Great Dying, Professor Rothman dug back into sediments from the end of the Permian era.  Examing deposits in China, he found something intriguing.

Carbon levels in the sediment indeed appeared to rise quickly.  But the interesting part is that they rose so quickly that he feels that the sedimentary analysis rules out change by slower-acting forms of carbon release, such as volcanoes.

He also observed that oceanic nickel levels spiked 251 million years ago, as volcanoes in Siberia dumped tons of molten nickely into the sea.

II. What Caused Carbon Levels to Spike? 

Nickel is a ubiquitous catalyst in certain kinds of biochemical reactions.  Microorganisms, such as the ocean-based methane-producing bacterium methanosarcina, often use the metal to speed up reactions that produce carbon waste byproducts.

Thus Professor Rothman suggests that methanosarcina likely exploited the rising nickel levels to transform carbon dioxide and hydrogen into methane.  

In fact, Professor Rothman believes that methanosarcina fortuitously acquired the its triple metal-catalyzed methane-producing metabolic pathways about 251 million years ago, just as the nickel levels spiked.

The loss of atmospheric carbon dioxide would likely have twin adverse impacts — first as plants require carbon dioxide to produce sugars, there likely would be mass loss of foliage globally; second as methane is a more potent warming gas than carbon dioxide, temperatures likely would have spiked globally.

The researcher’s hypothesis was set forth on Dec. 4 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.  The meeting was held in San Francisco, Calif. at the Moscone Convention Center.

If he is correct it suggests that methanosarcina could be the most diabolical murderer in history, by far eclipsing mankind’s worst impact in terms of speciation.

Not all experts are convinced.  Anthony Cohen, a researcher at the Open University in the United Kingdom, comments, ‘”[For the hypothesis to be correct] there are a lot of assumptions you have to make.”

Sources: Live Science, AGU Meeting Schedule

Glenn Close Kristy Hinze

Redesigned Technology blog moves to new address

Ivana Trump Marlee Matlin

Thank You, Apple Maps. Now Go Away Forever

iPhone owners: let’s raise our glasses to Apple Maps, which has, indirectly, given us a better iPhone. And then let’s get rid of it.

The New Google Maps for iPhone Google

The terrifying few months of what will be forever known as Apple Mapgate (no it won’t) are over. Google just released Google Maps for the iPhone, so we can all stick Apple Maps in our “Utilities” folder on our homescreens where it can sit comfortably next to other useless apps like Compass and Stocks. But here’s the weird thing: Google didn’t just package up the old Google Maps for iOS app and re-release it. They spent the past few months actually making a better app, with features the iOS version of Google Maps never had before.

In other words, thank you, Apple Maps, for giving iOS users a better phone.

It’s easy to forget that Google Maps for iOS was never particularly great; it was pretty, but increasingly limited, especially compared to Maps on Android. It never had turn-by-turn navigation, which Android has had since October of 2009 (!), it never had bike directions or offline caching, and it used clumsy bitmaps instead of vectors. That last one is why Google Maps for Android (and, to be fair, Apple Maps) loads faster and never looks blurry while zooming or panning.

The underlying data in Google Maps for iPhone was always great, of course; Google spends lots of time and money and effort getting the best data for its maps. But during all the panic over Apple Maps, we lionized the old Google Maps, and we shouldn’t have, really.

That’s why it’s interesting that the new Google Maps is such a marked improvement. It actually looks modern now–no stupid folded-over corner, a skeumorphic relic from 2008. Instead it looks like Google circa 2012, which is very nice indeed. Clean white bars, clear symbols, a hidden sidebar with more options. It has turn-by-turn navigation now, and vector graphics, and listings from Zagat (which Google acquired a few months back). It works even with older iPhones, which Apple Maps does not.

Google responded to Apple Maps as if Apple Maps was a threat, as if any app named “Google Maps” wouldn’t get about a billion downloads as soon as it was released. Google decided to compete with Apple. And that’s great for us, because Google finally (mostly) stopped handicapping the iOS version of it’s map app. It still doesn’t have everything the Android version has, but the weird thing about this whole mess is that iPhone users have come out on the other side with something they should have been demanding all along: a modern, full-featured maps app.

Jerri Manthey read more

Deep space fly-by: Incredible pictures taken by Chinese probe passing asteroid show giant rock 4.5 million miles from Earth

By Leon Watson

PUBLISHED: 13:23 EST, 15 December 2012 | UPDATED: 09:17 EST, 16 December 2012

A Chinese spacecraft has carried out a deep space fly-by on an asteroid four and a half million miles away from the Earth.

The Chang’e-2 probe successfully conducted the mission to scan the surface of the asteroid Toutatis.

It happened on December 13 at 16.30om Beijing Time, the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense announced today.

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The Chinese space probe flew got around two miles away from the asteroid Toutatis, officials said

At 2.7 miles long and 1.5 miles wide, astronomers say it is considered a potentially hazardous asteroid because it makes repeated passes by the Earth, about every four years.

In comparison, the asteroid that is thought to have destroyed the dinosaurs was approximately 10 km (6 miles) wide.

The flyby was the first time an unmanned spacecraft launched from Earth has taken such a close viewing of the asteroid, named after a Celtic god.

China followed in the footsteps of the U.S., the European Union and Japan by using an spacecraft to examine an asteroid.

Chang’e-2 came as close as miles from Toutatis and took pictures of the asteroid at a relative velocity of 10.73km per second, the SASTIND said in a statement.

Sources with the administration told the Xinhua news agency that Chang’e-2 is continuing its deep space travel and will reach a distance of more than six million miles away from Earth in January next year.

Chang’e-2 was launched on October 1, 2010, from Xichang Satellite Launch Center and later orbited the moon in a more ambitious mission than its predecessor Chang’e-1.

Chang’e-2 left its lunar orbit for an extended mission to the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrangian point on June 9, 2011, after finishing its lunar objectives, which collected data for a complete lunar map.

Here is a graphic showing the moment the spacecraft passed within two miles of the asteroid Toutatis

Chang’e-2 was launched on October 1, 2010, from Xichang Satellite Launch Center. Here is mission control

China claims it was the first to closely observe the asteroid Toutatis, although other space missions have pictured it

The probe departed from L2 this year and began its mission to Toutatis.

Since its blast-off, Chang’e 2 has become the first to capture full coverage map of the moon with a resolution of seven meters.

China claims it was also the first object ever to reach the L2 point directly from lunar orbit; and being the first to closely observe the asteroid Toutatis.

China early this year published a full coverage map of the moon, as well as several high-resolution images of the celestial body, captured by Chang’e-2. The resolution of the images is 17 times greater than those taken by Chang’e-1.

‘The success of the extended missions also embodies that China now possesses spacecraft capable of interplanetary flight,’ said Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar probe program.

Chang’e-2′s extended missions, which were conducted millions of miles away from Earth, have tested China’s spacecraft tracking and control network, including two newly built measuring and control stations in the northwest Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and northeast Heilongjiang province, according to the SASTIND.

However, China still belongs to the second tier in lunar probe internationally, said Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist for China’s lunar orbiter project, adding that the U.S. and Russia are still leading nations in this field.

Wu Weiren stressed the need for international cooperation in lunar probe mission, saying it is a shared responsibility of world scientists to work together in lunar and deep space exploration for the common good of the human race.

 

Nicki Minaj Mia Farrow

Microsoft Stores taking $25 deposit on Nokia Lumia 900

Barbara Bouchet Janice Renney

Most Facebook users get more from it than they put in, study says

The Pew Research Internet Project released a report about Facebook on Friday, providing insights into the company that you won’t find in its IPO filing.

Rather than focusing on the company’s financials, the report “Why Most Facebook Users Get More Than They Give” sheds light on how Facebook’s 845 million users engage with Facebook and what they get out of it.

The findings show that social interactions on Facebook closely mirror social interactions in the real world.

For example, over the course of a one-month period, researchers found that women made an average of 11 updates to their Facebook status, while men averaged only six. Also, women were more likely to comment on other people’s status updates than men.

“There was a general trend in our data that women use Facebook more than men,” said Keith Hampton, a professor at Rutgers and lead author of the report. “This is a phenomenon that is not unique to Facebook. Women are traditionally in charge of social relationships offline, and that seems to be true of the online world as well.”

The report says men are more likely to send friend requests and women are more likely to receive them. That’s something else we see in the real world — especially in bars.

The report also says that most people who use Facebook get more out of it than they put into it, which may explain why they keep coming back.

Researchers found that 40% of Facebook users in a sample group made a friend request, while 63% received at least one friend request. They found that 12% of the sample tagged a friend in a photo, but 35% were themselves tagged in a photo. And each user in the sample clicked the “like” button next to a friend’s content an average of 14 times but had his or her own content ‘liked’ an average of 20 times.

Why the imbalance?

“There is this 20% to 30% who are extremely active who are giving more than they are getting, and they are so active they are making up for feeding everyone extra stuff,” Hampton said. “You might go on Facebook and post something and have time to click ‘like’ on one thing you see in your news feed, but then you get a whole bunch of ‘likes’ on your news feed. That’s because of this very active group.”

He also said extremely active users tend to have a niche: Some are really into friending, others are really into tagging photos, and still others click the ‘like’ button a lot. Rarely is any one user extreme in all those ways.

I asked Hampton what he could tell me about these extremely active people, whom he calls Facebook “power users.” Are they unstoppably social? Unemployed? Lonely?

“It could be people who are always active — whatever they are doing in their life, they are very active. Or it could be that just in the one month we observed them they are active and another month a different group of people would rise up,” he said. “It could be that there is something going on in their life that causes them to be very active, or it could be that some people think of it almost as a job to be active on Facebook.”

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– Deborah Netburn

Photo: A worker at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park. Credit: Paul Sakuma/AP Photo

Betty White George Lucas

Facebook’s IPO filing, by the numbers

Facebook’s IPO filing on Wednesday offers investors, bankers, analysts, journalists and anyone willing to read the massive S-1 document a deeper look at the business and financial side of the world’s largest social network than we’ve ever had before.

Our team of tech and business reporters has been digging into the filing, reporting on the Menlo Park, Calif., company’s $3.7-billion revenue, rivalries with Twitter and Google+, perspective on China, social mission and hacker ethos, Zynga accounting for 12% of Facebook’s revenue, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s pay cut from $600,000 in 2012 to $1 in 2013 and even what the IPO could mean for the Winklevoss twins.

But that wasn’t all the S-1 had to say. Here are some other highlights from Facebook’s IPO filing before the company actually goes public in May:

Users: Facebook has an average of 845 million monthly active users, 483 million of whom log into the social network daily.

Workforce: At the end of 2011, Facebook had 3,200 full-time employees, up 50% from 2,127 employees 2010. In 2009, the company had 1,218 employees.

Worldwide: Facebook’s plan, unsurprisingly, is to continue to grow by gaining more users in countries around the world. But the company also said in its S-1 that it plans to grow its workforce worldwide as well. “We plan to continue the international expansion of our business operations and the translation of our products,” Facebook said. Currently, Facebook is offered in more than 70 different languages, and the company has data centers in more than 20 different countries.

Popularity: Facebook said that about 60% of the online population in the U.S. and U.K. is registered on the social network. But Facebook is more popular in Chile, Turkey and Venezuela, where the company has “penetration rates of greater than 80% of Internet users.”

There are more than 2 billion Internet users worldwide and Facebook said its goal is to connect all of them through its social network.

“In countries such as Brazil, Germany, and India we estimate that we have penetration rates of approximately 20-30%; in countries such as Japan, Russia, and South Korea we estimate that we have penetration rates of less than 15%; and in China, where Facebook access is restricted, we have near 0% penetration,” the filing said.

Money in the bank: Facebook said that it had $1.5 billion at its disposal in a mix of “cash and cash equivalents” as of Dec. 31, as well as $2.3 billion in “marketable securities.” In 2010, Facebook had $1.7 billion in cash and cash equivalents and no marketable securities. Total assets on hand amounted to $6.6 billion in 2011, while Facebook had a total of $1.4 billion in liabilities.

R&D: Facebook’s research and development efforts have seen massive growth over the last few years. In 2011, the company spent $388 million, or about 10.5% of its revenue, on R&D. In 2010, Facebook spent less than half that amount, with $144 million going toward R&D. In 2009, the company spend $87 million on R&D, up from $47 million in 2008 and $81 million in 2007.

Patents: Faceook said a major factor in whether or not the company will be able to maintain the huge success it’s had thus far will ride on its ability to “protect our core technology and intellectual property.”

To do that, Facebook will “rely on a combination of patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, including know-how, license agreements, confidentiality procedures, non-disclosure agreements with third parties, employee disclosure and invention assignment agreements, and other contractual rights.” The social media giant ended 2011 with 56 patents and 503 patent applications filed in the U.S., along with 33 corresponding patents and 149 patent applications filed in foreign countries.

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– Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Nathan Olivarez-Giles on Google+

Facebook.com/nateog

Twitter.com/nateog

Photo: Visitors pose in front of a sign at the entrance of Facebook’s new headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Wednesday. Credit: Kimihiro Hoshino / AFP/Getty Images

Ivana Trump Marlee Matlin

EU Reportedly in Favor of Amazon in Apple E-Book Investigation

  (Source: businessweek.com)

The European Commission is expected to accept an offer from Apple and four major book publishers in the ongoing e-books investigation

This year (and last) has been littered with Apple-related lawsuits with several tech companies, but it looks like Amazon will come out on top in the EU e-book probe.

According to Reuters, the European Commission is expected to accept an offer from Apple and four major book publishers in the ongoing e-books investigation. The offer was to allow Amazon and other e-tailers to sell e-books at a discount for two years, and to temporarily suspend the “most-favored nation” contract for five years. The latter means that the four book publishers involved cannot allow Apple’s rival retailers sell the same books at a lower price.

Last December, Apple and book publishers Penguin, Harper Collins (News Corp., USA), Simon & Schuster (CBS Corp., USA), Hachette Livre (Lagardère Publishing France) and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holzbrinck (owner of inter alia Macmillan, Germany) were under the microscope when the EU found out about their selling practices. The EU saw this as anti-competitive against the likes of Amazon, and launched an investigation.

Back in August of this year, Apple and four of the publishers (all but Penguin) submitted the proposal to the EU that the publishers will not restrict or limit an e-book sellers’ ability to set, change or reduce e-book prices for two years. They also won’t interfere with an e-book retailer’s choice to offer discounts, and added the five-year suspension of the “most-favored nation” contract.

While the investigation is technically still ongoing, rumor has it that the EU will accept the offer, which will be a nice win for Amazon. This means Amazon will be able to sell books at more competitive prices than Apple once again.

After the EU launched its investigation in December 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Apple and the same five book publishers involved in the EU case over anticompetitive practices concerning e-book sales in April of this year. More specifically, The book publishers were accused of partaking in an agency sales model with Apple, which meant that publishers were allowed to set the price of a book and Apple would take a 30 percent cut. In addition, the publishers could not let rivals sell the same book at a lower price.

Recently, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette Livre decided to settle the case with the U.S. DOJ. However, Apple, Penguin and Macmillan have decided to fight the antitrust case.

The U.S. bench trial in the Apple e-book case will start June 3, 2012.

Source: Reuters

Portia De Rossi Anne Archer

New Google Maps App Lights a Beacon in iOS Darkness

The heavens are rejoicing in the Apple ecosphere — Google Maps has found its way back in the form of a shiny new iOS app. Perhaps this will put an end to the travails of Apple’s sadly confused maps app, allowing motorists to venture back into the Australian outback and other remote points on Earth with confidence. And perhaps Apple can stop apologizing and firing culprits and get back on track.

Jerri Manthey read more

Google Maps for iOS Released

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Blackberry 10: Leaked images show the new phone- and it looks suspiciously like an iPhone

• Images suggest that like Apple’s device the Blackberry will have chunky bezels at top and bottom
• Device set to be Research In Motion’s make or break product, with launch expected at the end of January
• Pictures leaked by a Vietnamese tech site
  

By Damien Gayle

PUBLISHED: 12:26 EST, 12 December 2012 | UPDATED: 13:00 EST, 12 December 2012

These pictures purport to show the phone which BlackBerry maker Research In Motion hopes will halt its seemingly inexorable slide out of the mobile business.

Sourced from a Vietnamese tech news site they show a gadget that’s sleek, shiny and futuristic – and that looks suspiciously like an iPhone.

The images suggest Research In Motion has finally dropped the full keyboard that was their brand’s virtual trademark in favour of a full touchscreen device.

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Leaked: This image purports to show the Blackberry 10 L-Series, the phone which Research In Motion hopes will bring it back into the fore of the smartphone business

Best pictures yet: The images are similar to the handset shown in previous leaks, but are far clearer than those previously seen, many of which were blurry

They purport to show the BlackBerry 10 L-Series, which is expected to be released at the end of January.

The images are similar to the handset shown in previous leaks, but are far clearer than those previously seen, many of which were blurry.

The chunky bezel at the top and bottom of the phone, adding extra length to the device, are the feature that brings up the most similarities to Apple’s no iconic offering.

But unlike the iPhone, the new BlackBerry has no home button adorning its front. It is expected that the software will allow users to switch between apps without having to go via a home screen.

Pictures of the side of the device shows it boasts not only a micro-USB connector, but also a slot for a micro-HDMI cable, which could enable it to connect to high resolution external displays.

Slimline: The device boasts not only a micro-USB connector, but also a slot for a micro-HDMI cable, which could enable it to connect to high resolution external displays

Expert Reviews says this suggests that RIM could be planning to bundle the phone with film rental services, which Apple and Google already do with their operating systems.

The rear side shots of the phone reveals it is textured for grip, and further photos show that, unlike some new smartphones like Motorola’s latest Android-based Razr, it has a removable cover.

A peek inside the phone shows slots for a micro-SIM and microSD memory card, along with a removable 1,800mAh battery.

The images only show the device switched off, experts have noted, so it is impossible to see the software that the phone is using.

Back panel: Unlike some new smartphones like Motorola’s latest Razr, the Blackberry has a removable cover

A peek inside the phone shows slots for a micro-SIM and microSD memory card

The images were first leaked by Vietnamese site Tinhte.vn, which says the phone feels ‘very comfortable’ to hold, but refuses to go into details of where they got hold of the device.

The BlackBerry 10 L-Series is likely to be the make or break device for Research In Motion, which has gone from being the executive smartphone of choice to fast becoming an also ran in the mobile market.

Last month one analyst warned investors to ditch their shares in the Canadian firm, predicting that the BlackBerry 10 OS will be ‘dead on arrival’ when it finally launches in 2013.

Bloomberg quoted James Faucette of Pacific Crest Securities as telling investors: ‘We expect the new OS to be met with a lukewarm response at best and ultimately likely to fail.’

The company has said it will release its next generation of smartphones on January 30.

Now watch a video of the new phone

Stephanie Powers Nicki Minaj

A view to a kill: Bond’s violence DOUBLES since the beginning of the film franchise

• First Bond film Dr No featured 109 violent acts, compared to 250 in Quantum Of Solace
• Researchers from New Zealand analysed 22 official Bond films to study the hypothesis that popular movies are getting more violent
• They issue a warning that many youngsters are watching the films, which usually carry no age restriction
  

By Damien Gayle

PUBLISHED: 12:25 EST, 11 December 2012 | UPDATED: 14:50 EST, 11 December 2012

The number of violent acts in James Bond movies have more than doubled in the 50 years of the film franchise, a new study shows.

While the first official Bond film Dr No featured 109 trivial or severely violent acts, there were 250 acts of violence in Quantum Of Solace.

The latter film also featured nearly three times as many acts of severe violence – incidents which would be likely to cause death or injury in real life.

Scroll down for video

Gritty: Daniel Craig as agent 007 in Quantum of Solace. A new study claims that the amount of violence in James Bond movies has more than doubled since the beginning of the film franchise

Violence in Bond films by year of release, showing counts of severe and trivial violence as well as total violence. Total violence is higher than the sum of severe and trivial violence as it adjusts for mass violence

The latest Bond film, Skyfall, was not included as it was unreleased at the time of the study.

The findings chime with comments made by former Bond star Roger Moore following the release of Quantum of Solace when he said the films from the franchise had become too dark.

‘I am happy to have done it, but I’m sad that it has turned so violent,’ said the actor, who who famously played Agent 007 with a tongue-in-cheek humour.

Researchers from New Zealand’s University of Otago analysed 22 official franchise films, spanning 46 years, to test the hypothesis that popular movies are becoming more violent.

In counting and classifying violent imagery in the films the researchers used a scheme modified from a U.S. National Television Violence Study carried out in 1997.

Violent acts were defined as attempts by any individual to harm another and classified as severe (such as punching, kicking, or attacks with weapons) or trivial violence (such as a push or an open-handed slap).

Pierce Brosnan stars alongside Halle Berry in Die Another Day: Previous research has shown Brosnan was the deadliest 007 so far, with a shocking 19 average kills in each Bond film where he played the title role

They found that rates of violence increased significantly over the period studied and there was an even bigger increase in portrayals of severe violence.

Previous research published for the 50th anniversary of the Bond franchise showed that softly spoken Pierce Brosnan was the deadliest 007, with an average 19 kills per film.

Timothy Dalton, who played Bond prior to him, was killed fewest per film, with an average of just 5.5 baddies offed.

Despite the gritty nature of the latest three Bond films starring Daniel Craig, he has only killed a comparatively reasonable 8.3 enemies per film on average – fewer ever than Sean Connery managed, but still more than Moore.

Study co-author Professor Bob Hancox, of the Otago’s Department of Preventive and Social Medicine said the increasing violence is concerning because the films are likely to by watched by many children and adolescents.

‘There is extensive research evidence suggesting that young people’s viewing of media violence can contribute to desensitisation to violence and aggressive behaviour,’ he said.

The increase in violent content of Bond movies likely reflects a general increase in the exposure of young people to media violence through similarly rated popular films, he added.

VIDEO: Pierce Brosnan in “Die Another Day”:

British Marines Cher

Google CEO: We Have no Real “Competitors”, Apple’s Fixation is Self-Destructive

Larry Page says that when you’re obsessed with the present you’re not looking ahead to the future

“We’re still 1 percent to where we should be. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to try to move things along. Not enough people are focused on big change. Part of what I’m trying to do is take Google as a case study and really scale our ambition such that we are able to cause more positive change in the world and more technological change.”

“I have a deep feeling that we are not even close to where we should be.”

I. Google — Doing Its Own Thing

Those sound like the words of a CEO of a company struggling technologically.  But surprisingly the come from Larry Page, the current CEO of Google Inc. (GOOG) — the maker of the world’s most used search engine, most used online advertising service, and most used smartphone operating system platform.

In a new interview with Fortune, Mr. Page emphasizes Google’s philosophy on how it differs from competitors.  He says that most rivals who have issues with Google are more worried about themselves than their end users, where as at Google it’s all about providing the best experience for the end user, which is built on the premise of openness.  By providing Google services on as many platforms as possible (even those of arch-nemesis Apple, Inc. (AAPL)), Mr. Page says customers will have access to the best options on the market.

As for Apple locking out Google Maps and other apps from iOS 6, he simply comments, “We try pretty hard to make our products be available as widely as we can. That’s our philosophy. I think sometimes we’re allowed to do that. Sometimes we’re not.”

The CEO accuses Apple (and its late CEO Steven P. Jobs) as being overly fixated on Google.  Reiterating his comments from a previous interview, he says that Apple’s legal campaign against Google is partly to rally the company against its competitor.

But he says that if you’re fixated on your competitor, you’re not looking forward at your own future.  He remarks, “I don’t like to rally my company in that way because I think that if you’re looking at somebody else, you’re looking at what they do now, and that’s not how again you stay two or three steps ahead.”

To him, Google has no real “competitors”.  He comments, “I feel my job is mostly getting people not to think about our competition. In general I think there’s a tendency for people to think about the things that exist.”

II. Risky Efforts are Important to Software Giant

The interviewer asks about Google’s so-called “70-20-10 model” in which 70 percent of the company’s spending is devoted to search/advertising, 20 percent is devoted to apps (like Google Docs), and 10 percent is devoted to experimental efforts (like self-driving cars and Project Glass).

He says that Google still mostly follows that model, but that some projects fall on the border of categories.  He comments, “So where would you put Android? It’s probably in the 70 in terms of impact — the monetization is at an early stage.”

As for Google Plus, he says the social network is faring “pretty well” and is “improving”.  He suggests that with Plus and other services users may not have received quite what they initially expected, but that Google’s philosophy is that users must get accustomed to services before making judgements.

As for how long he will remain CEO at Google (Eric Schmidt was chief for 10 years), he says, “I don’t know. It seems impossible to predict.”

Source: Fortune

Anne Archer Hetty Baynes

How To Scrub GPS Data From Your Photos; Or, How To Be Smarter Than Vice

You know, in case you’re trying to conceal your location (or a murder suspect’s).

Samsung Galaxy Camera Dan Nosowitz

John McAfee–anti-virus pioneer, “person of interest” in Belize murder investigation, and launcher of increasingly bizarre media stories–has been captured. It happened after journalists from Vice accidentally published an iPhone photo of McAfee with embedded GPS data.

In case you didn’t know, a lot of newer devices store that kind of information, known as EXIF data, in images. EXIF data is helpful in providing details about a photograph’s provenance. Remember when that now-famous photo of the Situation Room during the Osama Bin Laden raid started making the rounds? EXIF data revealed the camera’s model and settings, plus the editing software used on the image. Cool stuff to know about one of the most iconic photographs of the decade.

But in case you’re traveling with a murder suspect, you might not want to share that information. So here’s a handy guide to getting rid of it.

Switch off location settings.
Since the Vice photo was published from an iPhone, we’ll start there. There’s a camera “location services” setting that can be switched off, and, easy enough, you’ve got a GPS-free photo to share with the world. (The settings changed slightly in iOS 6, so check the details here.) This video tutorial shows how to set the same functions for an Android phone.

Use editing software.
If you want to go through editing software, you have some other options, too. The “Save For Web” function (File, Save for Web & Devices) should scrub the data, but the scrubbing is probably the very last step you want to take before you release your photo, and there’s usually a way to do it within your operating system. Here, for example, is a quick tutorial for Windows. (Alternately, if there’s not an option for GPS scrubbing on the Windows version you’re running, you can download software like Metanull.) On a Mac, it’s a little tougher–you’ll need some software. Here’s a similar software download for Mac, but there are a lot out there. (And Lifehacker has a quick one for Linux users, too.)

Check your social networks.
For those of you who are especially worried about people tracking you down, Facebook and Twitter strip EXIF data and Flickr makes you opt in to using it (although not all third-party clients will do the same). So, be careful when sharing your anti-virus outlaw pics with friends!

Claudia Schiffer Coco Sumner

A view to a kill: Bond’s violence DOUBLES since the beginning of the film franchise

• First Bond film Dr No featured 109 violent acts, compared to 250 in Quantum Of Solace
• Researchers from New Zealand analysed 22 official Bond films to study the hypothesis that popular movies are getting more violent
• They issue a warning that many youngsters are watching the films, which usually carry no age restriction
  

By Damien Gayle

PUBLISHED: 12:25 EST, 11 December 2012 | UPDATED: 14:50 EST, 11 December 2012

The number of violent acts in James Bond movies have more than doubled in the 50 years of the film franchise, a new study shows.

While the first official Bond film Dr No featured 109 trivial or severely violent acts, there were 250 acts of violence in Quantum Of Solace.

The latter film also featured nearly three times as many acts of severe violence – incidents which would be likely to cause death or injury in real life.

Scroll down for video

Gritty: Daniel Craig as agent 007 in Quantum of Solace. A new study claims that the amount of violence in James Bond movies has more than doubled since the beginning of the film franchise

Violence in Bond films by year of release, showing counts of severe and trivial violence as well as total violence. Total violence is higher than the sum of severe and trivial violence as it adjusts for mass violence

The latest Bond film, Skyfall, was not included as it was unreleased at the time of the study.

The findings chime with comments made by former Bond star Roger Moore following the release of Quantum of Solace when he said the films from the franchise had become too dark.

‘I am happy to have done it, but I’m sad that it has turned so violent,’ said the actor, who who famously played Agent 007 with a tongue-in-cheek humour.

Researchers from New Zealand’s University of Otago analysed 22 official franchise films, spanning 46 years, to test the hypothesis that popular movies are becoming more violent.

In counting and classifying violent imagery in the films the researchers used a scheme modified from a U.S. National Television Violence Study carried out in 1997.

Violent acts were defined as attempts by any individual to harm another and classified as severe (such as punching, kicking, or attacks with weapons) or trivial violence (such as a push or an open-handed slap).

Pierce Brosnan stars alongside Halle Berry in Die Another Day: Previous research has shown Brosnan was the deadliest 007 so far, with a shocking 19 average kills in each Bond film where he played the title role

They found that rates of violence increased significantly over the period studied and there was an even bigger increase in portrayals of severe violence.

Previous research published for the 50th anniversary of the Bond franchise showed that softly spoken Pierce Brosnan was the deadliest 007, with an average 19 kills per film.

Timothy Dalton, who played Bond prior to him, was killed fewest per film, with an average of just 5.5 baddies offed.

Despite the gritty nature of the latest three Bond films starring Daniel Craig, he has only killed a comparatively reasonable 8.3 enemies per film on average – fewer ever than Sean Connery managed, but still more than Moore.

Study co-author Professor Bob Hancox, of the Otago’s Department of Preventive and Social Medicine said the increasing violence is concerning because the films are likely to by watched by many children and adolescents.

‘There is extensive research evidence suggesting that young people’s viewing of media violence can contribute to desensitisation to violence and aggressive behaviour,’ he said.

The increase in violent content of Bond movies likely reflects a general increase in the exposure of young people to media violence through similarly rated popular films, he added.

VIDEO: Pierce Brosnan in “Die Another Day”:

Nathalie Oberman Diamond

How To Scrub GPS Data From Your Photos; Or, How To Be Smarter Than Vice

You know, in case you’re trying to conceal your location (or a murder suspect’s).

Samsung Galaxy Camera Dan Nosowitz

John McAfee–anti-virus pioneer, “person of interest” in Belize murder investigation, and launcher of increasingly bizarre media stories–has been captured. It happened after journalists from Vice accidentally published an iPhone photo of McAfee with embedded GPS data.

In case you didn’t know, a lot of newer devices store that kind of information, known as EXIF data, in images. EXIF data is helpful in providing details about a photograph’s provenance. Remember when that now-famous photo of the Situation Room during the Osama Bin Laden raid started making the rounds? EXIF data revealed the camera’s model and settings, plus the editing software used on the image. Cool stuff to know about one of the most iconic photographs of the decade.

But in case you’re traveling with a murder suspect, you might not want to share that information. So here’s a handy guide to getting rid of it.

Switch off location settings.
Since the Vice photo was published from an iPhone, we’ll start there. There’s a camera “location services” setting that can be switched off, and, easy enough, you’ve got a GPS-free photo to share with the world. (The settings changed slightly in iOS 6, so check the details here.) This video tutorial shows how to set the same functions for an Android phone.

Use editing software.
If you want to go through editing software, you have some other options, too. The “Save For Web” function (File, Save for Web & Devices) should scrub the data, but the scrubbing is probably the very last step you want to take before you release your photo, and there’s usually a way to do it within your operating system. Here, for example, is a quick tutorial for Windows. (Alternately, if there’s not an option for GPS scrubbing on the Windows version you’re running, you can download software like Metanull.) On a Mac, it’s a little tougher–you’ll need some software. Here’s a similar software download for Mac, but there are a lot out there. (And Lifehacker has a quick one for Linux users, too.)

Check your social networks.
For those of you who are especially worried about people tracking you down, Facebook and Twitter strip EXIF data and Flickr makes you opt in to using it (although not all third-party clients will do the same). So, be careful when sharing your anti-virus outlaw pics with friends!

Diamond Tracey Shaw

Samsung’s Galaxy Camera Is The Camera Of The Future [Review]

The Galaxy Camera runs a full version of Android on its full touchscreen, along with a 4G LTE connection. This is how cameras will work in the future–but how about the present?

Samsung Galaxy Camera Dan Nosowitz

To review the Samsung Galaxy Camera, Popular Photography‘s Dan Bracaglia lends his photographic expertise to talk about the camera from a photog’s perspective, while Popular Science‘s gadget reviewer, Dan Nosowitz, reviews the camera from a gadget-geek’s perspective.

Dan Nosowitz: I wasn’t optimistic about the Samsung Galaxy Camera. The idea of a camera with a big touchscreen and a full version of Android, complete with 4G LTE connection, is enticing, but I do not care much at all for Samsung’s other Galaxy products, which to this point have just been smartphones and tablets. I find their hardware chintzy and their software difficult and confused, as the company insists on mucking up Android (which is really great!) with their slow and bloated skins. Yet to my surprise, the Galaxy Camera is by far my favorite product in the Galaxy line.

The Galaxy Camera is by far my favorite product in the Galaxy line.As an Android device, it’s got pretty much the same guts as a modern Galaxy smartphone. That means a huge 4.8-inch screen, a quad-core processor, a Samsung-ified version of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and 4G LTE connectivity. It even has a microphone, intended to be used while taking video, so theoretically you could ditch your phone, make calls with a VoIP service or Google Voice, and use this as your exclusive camera/phone. And of course it has access to the entire Android app store, which has fairly recently been renamed Google Play. But this is not a Galaxy smartphone with an improved camera; this is a high-end Samsung point-and-shoot with Android.

Using the Galaxy: Performance is pretty good; it’s not as fast getting around as the screamingly-fast Nexus 4, but it’s certainly not laggy. Android 4.1 is very nice; the Galaxy Camera has all the benefits of Google Now and all kinds of other great Android stuff. The screen is not the best screen I’ve ever used (not quite as sharp as the iPhone 5 or Nokia Lumia 920), but it is a very good screen, and it is definitely the best screen I’ve ever used on a camera. I think 4.8 inches is too big for a phone, but man is it awesome on a camera. You can actually share photos with a group on this thing!

Samsung’s software is, as always, annoying. It’s not as in-your-face with a million new gestures and pop-ups and buzzword-y features that plague its Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note smartphones. It’s not wildly different from stock Android but aside from the camera interface, there’s not a single thing I like better about the changes Samsung’s made. Even the soft buttons (Menu, Home, Back) work differently on this phone than on other Android devices. Why? And the keyboard I think is pretty poor (autocorrect is unhelpful, word recognition isn’t good), though it’s very easy to download a new keyboard from Google Play.

Samsung Galaxy Camera’s Camera App:  Dan Nosowitz

It’s only a little awkward to use as an Android device; I’m not sure exactly how to hold it, as it’s thicker than a regular Android phone and also has the lens mount protruding. Dan Bracaglia’s solution left his finger sitting on the little door in from of the lens–not good, since that door is notorious on compact cameras for breaking or locking up, rendering the camera useless. But it’s not that hard, and I found it pretty capable for browsing Twitter or the web, checking email, and doing most other things you’d do on a smartphone. And that’s kind of an achievement in itself; this isn’t a skimped, shitty version of Android–it’s high-end, just like on a top-tier phone.

I think the camera interface is great; the new stock camera app on Android is innovative and excellent in its own right, but it doesn’t offer as many manual controls, so I think Samsung’s camera app is a perfect solution for a more capable camera. For someone who’s not an expert photographer, I really loved how Samsung guides the user through the app. And everything is done on the touchscreen; the only buttons are a shutter, a zoom toggle, and a flash trigger. That’s great for novices who are much more comfortable with navigating menus on a smartphone than navigating the airplane-cockpit-like controls of a DSLR. Everything’s right out in the open: you don’t have to guess at what a switch means, because it’s spelled out on the screen.

The sharing options are easy and intuitive; when you look through photos, the top bar gives you sharing options, and it places your most recently used sharing option in its own little spot up there. For me, that means posting to Instagram is a one-tap affair, right from the camera app. Love it.

Image quality for me is kind of an interesting beast. It will take, without question, the best Instagram photos of any device that actually has Instagram on it. (Yes, I know you can take photos with a DSLR and post them to Instagram. But that’s not really what Instagram is about.) It’s no question that the Galaxy Camera takes better shots than any smartphone I’ve ever used.

Samsung Galaxy Camera’s Share Options:  Dan Nosowitz

Size: But the camera is too big. For me, a camera’s physical size is second only to image quality as the most important element, and then only barely second. The Galaxy Camera is not pocketable. (I do wear skinny-ish jeans, but I can’t imagine what kind of pockets could comfortably hold it.) I actually like the hardware design a lot; it’s all plastic, but, unlike Galaxy smartphones, doesn’t feel cheap at all. It feels really well-constructed, sturdily and simply designed without getting too basic. It’s one of the most attractive gadgets Samsung’s ever made, frankly, but I would much rather it had a slightly smaller screen in return for a smaller footprint. Dan Bracaglia noted that the weight also has the benefit of stabilizing the camera; light cameras can sometimes move around too much, and he thinks Samsung “nailed” the weight.

That size means I have the camera in my bag rather than my pocket. When I’m out and about and see something I want to shoot, it’s just faster and easier to snag my phone out of my pocket than fish around in my bag. And unlike a DSLR, which takes photos that are in a completely different league than my phone, the Galaxy Camera is merely “better” than my phone. I found myself not always bothering; if I can get a B- photo with my phone, who cares about a B+ photo from the Galaxy Camera? It’s not like I’m going for an A-level photo from my DSLR.

Price: And that brings us to the most salient point in this whole review: who is the Galaxy Camera for? Its image quality is not wildly improved from a nice $200 point-and-shoot, though it is certainly a superior product, thanks to its connectivity, interface, and bonus access to all of Android. At $500, the camera is right at the very top of the price pyramid for compacts; in fact, for that price, you could snag any of several very nice mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras from Sony, Olympus, or Panasonic, or even a low-end DSLR like last year’s Nikon D3100. All of those cameras would thoroughly trounce the Galaxy Camera on image quality, but they’re also less capable in a lot of ways.

Samsung Galaxy Camera From Side:  Dan Nosowitz

The other problem is that to get the full benefit of the Galaxy Camera, you really need to spring for the 4G LTE plan–yeah, yet another monthly bill. So it’s not even just $500–it’ll be several times that over the course of its life.

That puts us in the weird position of having a gadget that’s really cool that we can’t really recommend to anyone. It’s much better than a phone’s camera, but the device as a whole is very similar, so do you really need both, especially at this price?

In Conclusion: What’s most interesting about the Galaxy Camera is how obvious it now is that this is what consumer cameras will look like in the future. A mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses but with this kind of connectivity and interface? That would be amazing. It’s so much easier and faster to use for non-professionals than the more traditional camera control schemes, and the sharing options are the wave of the present and future. Of course you should be able to instantly upload photos to the cloud, to Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, to email them to your friends and family, to edit them in a mobile version of Photoshop. The Galaxy Camera isn’t quite right for most people, but it’s so close. Someone’s going to do this right, and soon, so let’s just consider the Galaxy Camera a sneak preview.

On page two, read Dan Bracaglia’s take on how the Galaxy Camera is as a camera.

single page

John Goodman Rebecca Demorney

How To Scrub GPS Data From Your Photos; Or, How To Be Smarter Than Vice

You know, in case you’re trying to conceal your location (or a murder suspect’s).

Samsung Galaxy Camera Dan Nosowitz

John McAfee–anti-virus pioneer, “person of interest” in Belize murder investigation, and launcher of increasingly bizarre media stories–has been captured. It happened after journalists from Vice accidentally published an iPhone photo of McAfee with embedded GPS data.

In case you didn’t know, a lot of newer devices store that kind of information, known as EXIF data, in images. EXIF data is helpful in providing details about a photograph’s provenance. Remember when that now-famous photo of the Situation Room during the Osama Bin Laden raid started making the rounds? EXIF data revealed the camera’s model and settings, plus the editing software used on the image. Cool stuff to know about one of the most iconic photographs of the decade.

But in case you’re traveling with a murder suspect, you might not want to share that information. So here’s a handy guide to getting rid of it.

Switch off location settings.
Since the Vice photo was published from an iPhone, we’ll start there. There’s a camera “location services” setting that can be switched off, and, easy enough, you’ve got a GPS-free photo to share with the world. (The settings changed slightly in iOS 6, so check the details here.) This video tutorial shows how to set the same functions for an Android phone.

Use editing software.
If you want to go through editing software, you have some other options, too. The “Save For Web” function (File, Save for Web & Devices) should scrub the data, but the scrubbing is probably the very last step you want to take before you release your photo, and there’s usually a way to do it within your operating system. Here, for example, is a quick tutorial for Windows. (Alternately, if there’s not an option for GPS scrubbing on the Windows version you’re running, you can download software like Metanull.) On a Mac, it’s a little tougher–you’ll need some software. Here’s a similar software download for Mac, but there are a lot out there. (And Lifehacker has a quick one for Linux users, too.)

Check your social networks.
For those of you who are especially worried about people tracking you down, Facebook and Twitter strip EXIF data and Flickr makes you opt in to using it (although not all third-party clients will do the same). So, be careful when sharing your anti-virus outlaw pics with friends!

Rachel Ward Carrie Fisher

Your very own eye phone! The contact lens that can receive your text messages

• Text messages and images can be projected directly on to the lens using wireless technology
• Researchers at Ghent University believe the lens could be available to the public in just a few year

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 16:06 EST, 8 December 2012 | UPDATED: 19:32 EST, 8 December 2012

It may sound like something out of a sci-fi film, but reading text messages off contact lens in the eyes could soon be a reality – bringing a whole new meaning to the term ‘instant messaging’.

Scientists have developed a new technology that allows electronic messages sent from mobile phones to be directly projected on to contact lens placed in the recipient’s eyes.

The spherical curved LCD display, created by Belgium researchers at Ghent University, handle projected images using wireless technology. 

Groundbreaking: Researchers have created contact lens, pictured above displaying a dollar sign, that can receive text messages and images

Instant messaging: Researchers at Ghent University demonstrate a dollar sign being projected on to a contact lens while moving their hand up and down behind it to prove it is being transmitted electronically

The lens’ capability were demonstrated by scientists who showed a dollar sign being projected on to the lens.

It is a step towards ‘fully pixelated contact lens displays’ with the same detail as a TV screen which could completely transform the way we communicate.

Professor Herbert De Smet told the Daily Telegraph: ‘Now that we have established the basic technology, we can start working towards real applications, possibly available in only a few years.’

The new technology means the entire surface of the contact lens can be used to project images and messages.

Researchers are also looking at the possibility of also using the lens as sunglasses which adapt to the level of sunlight.

Jelle De Smet, the chief researcher on the project, added: ‘This is not science fiction. This will never replace the cinema screen for films.

‘But for specific applications it may be interesting to show images such as road directions or projecting text messages from our smart phones straight to our eye.’

source Sarah Miles

LinkedIn Launches An Incubator To Turn Employees Into Entrepreneurs

LinkedIn has launched [in]cubator, a program that allows any company employee with an idea to organize a team and pitch their project to executive staff once a quarter. Those whose ideas are greenlit by cofounder Reid Hoffman and CEO Jeff Weinr, among others, then get up to three months to spend developing that project.

[in]cubator is a more evolved version of the company’s “hackdays,” in which employees work on various creative projects one Friday a month. So far, LinkedIn says it’s approved five [in]cubator projects, including a tool called go/book, a meeting booking system the company is currently using internally.

Our only question: How did they not name this thing the LinkedIncubator?

[Image: Flickr user Matthew Knott]

Rebekah Emily Symons

$100 Android/Linux tablet hits funding goal, ships in January

A $100 tablet that can run both Android and Linux is on the verge of becoming a reality. We wrote about the “PengPod” last month when its creators were seeking $49,000 on a Kickstarter-like site called Indiegogo. The project’s deadline expired last night, with the PengPod getting a healthy $72,707 from more than 500 contributors.

PengPod tablets are made by a company called Peacock Imports, and will be able to dual-boot Android 4.0 and a version of Linux with the touch-friendly KDE Plasma Active interface. The dual-booting scenario involves running Android from internal memory and Linux from a bootable SD card. People who pledged $99 or more are promised a tablet, with an estimated delivery date of January 2013.

These tablets aren’t going to be as slick as a Nexus 7, but if you want both Android and a full desktop operating system on a touchscreen device it doesn’t get any more affordable than the PengPod. At the moment, the PengPod website doesn’t provide a way to order the tablet, as the company was relying on the Indiegogo campaign. But with any luck, more will be available after the Indiegogo contributors receive theirs.

Update: The PengPod website is now taking pre-orders.

Nicole Richie Tyler Faith