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13,751 articles from Sci-Tech Today
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- Tech News by Sci-Tech Today (http://www.sci-tech-today.com).
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FRIDAY 10. FEBRUARY, 2012
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15:39
Ford's Touch Software To Be Upgraded
Ford will give new software to about 250,000 owners of vehicles with the often-maligned "MyFord Touch" dashboard technology in about two months to make the system easier -- and less distracting -- to use.The company's new 2013 models will come with upgraded MyFord Touch, which replaces most knobs and buttons for climate, navigation and entertainment with a touch-screen. The system has both attracted buyers to Ford's brand and hurt it in some owners' eyes, says the independent market research firm J.D. Power and Associates.
Ford held customer clinics, and employees have been testing the upgraded system so it's a "high-quality experience," Ford spokesman Alan Hall says.
MyFord Touch is now available on 20% of Ford models, including the Explorer and Focus, and will be on 70% of new models by the end of this year.
Ford dropped from fifth to 23rd in J.D. Power's quality survey last summer, in large part because of this technology. The study looks at problems owners report in the first 90 days of ownership.
MyFord Touch "was a significant issue. Most of their declines from the previous year could be attributed to it," says David Sargent, J.D. Power's global vehicle research vice president. "Other than that, their quality was going fairly well."
Many complaints to J.D. Power centered on the system's tendency to freeze, which the company called "a hard defect," and its slowness.
Complicated controls could also be distracting for those "operating the system when trying to drive a vehicle," Sargent says.
The upcoming fix won't come in time to boost Ford's quality rankings in the June Power initial quality report, which only covers vehicles sold through this month. While Ford has made running improvements to the systems, Sargent says those could be offset by the increased number of models sold with MyFord Touch.
It can take up to 45 minutes to...
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15:38Karaoke lovers typically fall into two categories: Those who enjoy it, and those whose arms have to be twisted to get up and sing in public.
Enter Soulo, a software and microphone kit that can turn an iPad or other Apple device into a karaoke machine. It gives you instant karaoke in the privacy of your own home, or wherever you carry your Apple gadgets.
That's the idea, anyway.
In practical terms, the quality of the karaoke experience depends largely on the kind of sound system you pipe Soulo through.
The software app does a great job of emulating the sing-along video animation typically found in a commercial karaoke machine. It also offers a good selection of songs.
But I wasn't thrilled by the sound quality I got from the Soulo microphone. That dampened an otherwise entertaining way to use an iPad.
In particular, I like how the Soulo-iPad combo makes it a snap to record audio and video of a performance and then post clips -- not full songs -- on YouTube, Facebook and elsewhere.
Soulo is available with a digital wireless microphone, which retails for $99, or with a wired microphone, which sells for $69. Songs cost extra after the first handful. I tested the wireless version, which comes with a receiver that plugs into the iPad dock and syncs with the microphone.
The karaoke app and microphones are compatible with iPads, iPhones and the iPod Touch. Audio output options include listening through headphones or other speaker systems via the devices' stereo jack. The wireless receiver also can connect to a TV.
Transforming the iPad into a karaoke machine is easy. You download the free Soulo app from the Apple Store and register the software.
Soulo comes with a few songs and a code to download 10 karaoke tracks for free. You can purchase and download more songs...
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THURSDAY 9. FEBRUARY, 2012
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22:28With concern about tracking and malware on the rise, a Boston-based company that creates privacy tools is offering a free program it says will keep your browsing out of the public domain.
The company, Abine, says its Do Not Track Plus browser tool will not only fend off advertisers who want to monitor your shopping habits and show you which companies and technologies are spying on you on the various sites you visit, but also quadruple your browser speed.
"Online tracking is a very real thing, even though you can't see it," said Abine in a company blog post announcing the tool Thursday.
What's the Catch? Abine is upfront about its intentions in offering the product free.
"We have a 'freemium' model, meaning that we offer a free base service (DNT+) and separate paid upgrades, such as our DeleteMe service that removes our customers' personal information from public Web sites," the company writes. "We are also working on another software offering called PrivacySuite that's currently in beta, but it will have premium upgradeable features like forwarded e-mails and phone numbers."
Once they have built up a base of free users, Abine hopes that at least 1 percent to 2 percent will upgrade to premium services down the road, making the undertaking worthwhile. The basic model of Do Not Track Plus, however, will always remain free, Abine promises.
For $99 a year, the DeleteMe service regularly checks people-search databases to remove customers' names, sending regular reports. Abine also has apps coming soon that allow a single log-in to sites with one click and to protect e-mail and phone numbers by "automatically generating unique forwarding contact info for each site."
Abine is not alone in offering free privacy tools. Yahoo! offers Anti-Spy, a spyware and malware removal program by Computer Associates, as part of its browser toolbar. Microsoft's...
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22:08Samsung's Galaxy Tab tablet, in its 10.1N version, still can be sold in Germany. That's the ruling on Thursday from a court in that country, the latest result in the epic Apple-Samsung legal battle that is raging across Europe and the world.
Samsung had released the 10.1N model, a slightly revised 10.1, specifically to avoid infringing on Apple's patent rights. The Regional Court in Dusseldorf decided that its modification was sufficient to allow it to continue on sale. In a statement, the court said "Apple's iPad computers and Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1N are rival products of equal value," adding that the 10.1N does not violate Apple's design patent or the country's laws against unfair competition.
Third Recent Loss The same court had imposed a preliminary injunction last fall against the earlier 10.1 model because of infringement issues. This is the third recent legal loss Apple has suffered in Germany. Courts in Munich and Mannheim have also refused Apple's request to ban the 10.1N, as well as Samsung's Nexus smartphone.
In addition, in December a U.S. court in California denied Apple's motion for a temporary ban on the Tab and several Galaxy smartphones. In Australia, the High Court ruled late last year that the 10.1 tablet could be sold in time for the holiday season, denying Apple's request to continue a temporary ban. A trial is scheduled in that country for March.
Last month, an appeals court in The Netherlands denied Apple's request to ban sales in Europe of the Tab 10.1 tablet. The decision upheld a lower court ruling in August, in which Apple had contended that Samsung illegally copied the iPad's design. Apple had previously won a Europe-wide preliminary injunction in The Netherlands against Samsung's Galaxy S, Galaxy S II, and Ace smartphones.
Apple has also sued Motorola in Germany over its Xoom...
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20:16Why should Dropbox and SugarSync have all the cloud storage fun? That's what Google seems to want to know.
Google is getting ready to launch a cloud storage service that would go toe-to-toe with Dropbox, a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs and videos anywhere and share them. Essentially, Dropbox eliminates the need to e-mail yourself a file.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Google's Dropbox-like service is called Drive. The Journal cited "people familiar with the matter" saying the reported Google move is a response to the growth of Internet-connected mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, as well as the rise of cloud computing.
Free or Paid Cloud Storage? Neither Google nor Dropbox could be reached for comment, but Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, said the long-rumored "GDrive" would match Microsoft's SkyDrive. Windows Live SkyDrive offers a free, password-protected hard drive in the cloud.
"This rumor makes sense in the context of Google's online apps and docs and cloud storage strategy," said Sterling. Google has a cadre of cloud services in its cache, from Gmail to Google Docs to Google Apps and beyond.
The Journal reported Drive would come online in the next weeks or months and charge a fee to people who want to store large volumes of files. Last October, Dropbox, which has more than 45 million users, introduced a paid service called Dropbox for Teams. The service lets companies with a distributed workforce, small business with virtual teams, or entrepreneurs serving multiple clients tap into administrative controls, centralized billing, phone support and plenty of storage space for $795 a year for five users.
Targeting Apple? It's not clear how much Google would charge or what the parameters of its service are. Google would also be competing with Apple's iCloud. Apple launched iCloud, a set of free cloud...
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19:20People learned better when a key part of their brains got mild zaps of electricity, a finding that may someday help Alzheimer's patients keep more of their memories.
In a small but tantalizing study, participants played a video game in which they learned the locations of stores in a virtual city. They recalled the locations better if they learned them while receiving a painless boost from tiny electrodes buried deep inside their brains.
In the future, that strategy might help curb memory loss for people in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, suggested Dr. Itzhak Fried, a neurosurgeon at the University of California, Los Angeles. But he cautioned that the results were preliminary.
Using implanted electrodes to treat brain disease is hardly new. Such "deep-brain stimulation" has been used for about a decade for Parkinson's disease and some other disorders. Researchers are also testing it for depression.
Some 80,000 or more people worldwide have had stimulation units implanted, mostly for Parkinson's.
Fried and colleagues reported the new work in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. It was financed by the federal government and the Dana Foundation.
"I think it's a terrific paper," said Dr. Andres Lozano, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of Toronto, who didn't participate in the work but is studying the approach in Alzheimer's patients. The new work shows stimulation can modify the workings of brain circuits that control memory in people, he said.
But like Fried, he cautioned that the research was still in the early stages.
"Whether it will translate into something useful, we do not know," he said, noting that years of additional study would be needed.
"You don't want to do brain surgery on people unless you have a pretty clear idea you're going to make them better," Lozano said. Deep-brain electrodes are implanted through holes drilled in...
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19:20Cisco beat the street with its second-quarter earnings. The company's net income rose 44 percent in the quarter ended Jan. 28 as Cisco CEO John Chambers continued leading the company out of its 2011 funk.
After a round of layoffs and a renewed focus on its core business, Cisco tallied $2.2 billion in net income during the quarter. That compares with $1.5 billion in the year-ago period. At the end of the quarter, Cisco posted 47 cents per share earnings. Analysts predicted 43 cents per share.
"We are executing well on our three-year plan to drive earnings faster than revenue. Our operational focus continues to yield positive results -- we hit our billion dollar expense reduction a quarter early -- and our ongoing innovation enables our customers to solve their critical business needs," Chambers said. "You will continue to see a focused and aggressive Cisco that is helping our customers use intelligent networks to transform their businesses."
Cisco's Switch Business Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research, pointed out investor concern for Cisco's switching business in past quarters. It's a valid concern, considering switches are the largest part of Cisco's revenue.
"Much of the industry has been calling for a decline in margins. For a while the margins did decline. Part of that was due to the competitive landscape and some of the products from low-cost providers. I think Cisco was caught off-guard by that because of their lack of focus on networking," Kerravala said.
"Cisco was focused on flip cameras and consumer devices. Chambers made the promise that networking was going to be a focus for them last year and it has been. Now margins for switches are returning to what they were three years ago. For investors, that's a great sign."
Kerravala noted rumblings in the blogosphere about quality. As he sees it, there's...
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19:20The ruins aren't particularly impressive, just some stone and clay footings for houses that probably supported walls of wood or clay wattle. And it's that very ordinariness that has experts excited.
The remnants being uncovered in the hills east of Mexico City at a spot known as Amecameca are from an ancient neighborhood -- a home to regular folks.
"What makes this important is that it is a residential area, not a ceremonial or religious site," said Felipe Echenique, a historian for the National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, which is in charge of reviewing the site.
"In Mexico, we really have very little evidence of how the cities really were, or how people lived," said Echenique, who was not involved in the dig but is familiar with preliminary findings.
Towering pyramids in Mexico like Chichen Itza or temple complexes like Uxmal are well known, but the vast urban centers that supported those ceremonial centers largely disappeared.
The housing compounds at Amecameca were apparently built by one of the still-unnamed cultures that populated the Valley of Mexico long before the Aztecs appeared in the area in 1325 and founded Tenochtitlan, the precursor to Mexico City.
Rebeca Lopez Reyes, an activist with the preservationist group Guardians of the Volcanos that helped stop roadwork that was damaging the site, said researchers for INAH have found ceramic pots and bones. And, she said, there is a stone serpent's head, suggesting that the god Quetzacoatl, "the Feathered Serpent," may have been worshipped there centuries before the Aztecs paid him homage.
The institute has not released a formal report on what was found, saying researchers need more time.
The few excavations of residential areas carried out so far in Mexico have yielded fascinating details.
In Teotihuacan, one of the biggest pre-Hispanic cities located northeast of Mexico City, some houses appear to have...
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19:19If scientists find microbes in a frigid lake two miles beneath the thick ice of Antarctica, it will illustrate once again that somehow life finds a way to survive in the strangest and harshest places.
And it will offer hope that life exists beyond Earth.
Russian researchers reported Wednesday that they had reached Lake Vostok, a pristine body of water untouched by light or wind for about 20 million years. They want to know what type of microbial life -- bacteria too small to see -- might exist there.
Finding microbes may not sound like much. But they were the first form of Earth life eons before plants and animals existed.
If scientists find these tiny germs in Lake Vostok, it bolsters already strong hope that elsewhere in our solar system, life also might exist where once it didn't seem possible.
There are plenty of examples of life forms existing in the most improbable of places:
-A tiny shrimp was captured on a NASA video floating under thick ice sheets in a different part of Antarctica.
-Tubeworms somehow get needed energy from violent hydrothermal vents in the deepest Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
-A germ called "the world's toughest bacterium" by the Guinness Book of World Records and also termed "Conan the Bacterium" was found 55 years ago in a can of meat. It survives and even repairs itself in radiation that would be deadly to cockroaches.
-In the highly acidic Rio Tinto in Spain, where you dare not stick a hand, life thrives.
-In Chile's Atacama desert, so dry that scientists use it as an analog for Mars, life has been found blowing in the arid wind.
- A microbe was found in a South African gold mine that essentially lives on radioactivity in the mine.
"Everything I've learned shows just how phenomenally amazing life is, certainly its ability to adapt," said...
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18:19Trust your doctor? A survey finds that some doctors aren't always completely honest with their patients.
More than half admitted describing someone's prognosis in a way they knew was too rosy. Nearly 20 percent said they hadn't fully disclosed a medical mistake for fear of being sued. And 1 in 10 of those surveyed said they'd told a patient something that wasn't true in the past year.
The survey, by Massachusetts researchers and published in this month's Health Affairs, doesn't explain why, or what wasn't true.
"I don't think that physicians set out to be dishonest," said lead researcher Dr. Lisa Iezzoni, a Harvard Medical School professor and director of Massachusetts General Hospital's Mongan Institute for Health Policy. She said the untruths could have been to give people hope.
But it takes open communication for patients to make fully informed decisions about their health care, as opposed to the "doctor-knows-best" paternalism of medicine's past, Iezzoni added.
The survey offers "a reason for patients to be vigilant and to be very clear with their physician about how much they do want to know," she said.
The findings come from a 2009 survey of more than 1,800 physicians nationwide to see if they agree with and follow certain standards medical professionalism issued in 2002. Among the voluntary standards are that doctors should be open and honest about all aspects of patient care, and promptly disclose any mistakes.
A third of those surveyed didn't completely agree that doctors should `fess up about mistakes. That's even though a growing number of medical centers are adopting policies that tell doctors to say "I'm sorry" up front, in part because studies have found patients less likely to sue when that happens.
Not revealing a mistake is "just inexcusable," said Dr. Arthur Caplan, a prominent medical ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. Beyond decency, "your...
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18:19Roger Boisjoly, a NASA contractor who repeatedly voiced concerns about the space shuttle Challenger before it exploded, has died. He was 73.
Boisjoly died of cancer on Jan. 6 in Nephi, about 40 miles south of Provo, his wife Roberta Boisjoly said.
The 1986 Challenger tragedy shocked the nation. Seven astronauts, including a schoolteacher, were killed when the shuttle disintegrated 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Boisjoly, an engineer at rocket-builder Morton Thiokol Inc., warned in 1985 that seals on the booster rocket joints could fail in freezing temperatures.
"The result would be a catastrophe of the highest order -- loss of human life," he wrote in a memo.
On the eve of the ill-fated flight, Boisjoly and several colleagues reiterated their concerns and argued against launching because of predicted cold weather at the Kennedy Space Center. They were overruled by Morton Thiokol managers, who gave NASA the green light.
Slow-motion video of the launch showed a tongue of flame sprouting from one of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters, licking the main fuel tank.
After the accident, Boisjoly testified to a presidential commission investigating the Challenger accident. The group determined that hot gases leaked through a joint in one of the booster rockets shortly after blastoff that ended with the explosion of the shuttle's hydrogen fuel.
Boisjoly said he was shunned by colleagues and neighbors after emerging as a whistleblower. He took an extended leave of absence while Morton Thiokol worked on a redesign of the rocket joint.
"When I realized what was happening, it absolutely destroyed me," Boisjoly told The Associated Press in a 1988 telephone interview. "It destroyed my career, my life, everything else. I'm just now getting back to the point where I think I'll be able to work as an engineer again."
Boisjoly toured the country and spoke about his experience. He received awards...
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18:16Google rolled out a stable release of Chrome 17 to browser users around the world Wednesday. Among other things, the upgrade begins to pre-render Web site pages based on what the user is typing in the browser's address bar, which Google has renamed the "omnibox."
"When you start typing in the omnibox and the URL auto-completes to a site you're very likely to visit, Chrome will pre-render the page, so it will appear faster -- sometimes, even instantly -- as soon as you hit Enter," wrote Chrome Software Engineer Noé Lutz in a company blog Wednesday.
Chrome 17 also features a number of security enhancements, including greater protection from malicious downloads, some of which even masquerade as free anti-virus products.
Google hopes the speed and security improvements to Chrome 17 -- together with this week's launch of Chrome as a browser for mobile devices running Android 4 -- will help the browser resume its former growth trajectory in the global browser market.
According to Net Applications, Google's browser market growth stalled in January when Chrome lost 0.17 percent share on the desktop -- even as Microsoft's Internet Explorer gained 1.1 percent and Mozilla's Firefox dropped 1 percent.
Security Enhancements Chrome 17 analyzes the properties of each Web site that users visit to determine the likelihood of it containing phishing pages. Moreover, this analysis is conducted in the background on the user's own PC and without any information about the Web sites that users visit being shared with Google.
"Only if the page looks sufficiently suspicious will Chrome send the URL of that page back to Google for further analysis, and show a warning as appropriate," noted Chrome software engineer Niels Provos and product manager Ian Fette.
The safe browsing functionality built into Chrome 17 downloads a continuously-updated list of known phishing and malware...
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17:37Apple will reportedly hold a media event in early March to announce the iPad 3. As usually happens before a major announcement from Apple, rumors about the debut date and features of the new product version are flying around the Web.
The iPad 2 was first shown in March of last year, so the reported date for the event would be at an appropriate time. The event is expected to be held in San Francisco, although the company has not yet confirmed the reports.
Retina Display A photo is circulating on the Web that purports to be a leaked image of the iPad 3, and it is driving some of the speculation.
Most reports suggest that version 3 of the popular tablet will have a very high-resolution Retina Display 9.7-inch screen, with resolution on the order of 2,048x1536 pixels. Currently, the iPad 2 has a 1024x768 display, and, if the Retina Display does make its tablet appearance, Apple may choose to call the new model the iPad HD.
There's also expectation of a faster processor, although what kind is a subject of much dispute. Some contend that Apple could include a quad-core processor, but that appears to be a minority view. Most expect a faster A6 to replace the current A5, but a quad-core may be a bridge too far. The most frequently voiced expectation is that there will be faster graphics processing, and perhaps a dual-core central processor.
As is often the case with a next generation mobile device, a longer-lasting and perhaps larger battery is expected, as is a better-quality camera and a thinner device.
Ross Rubin, executive director for connected intelligence at the NPD Group, said some competing tablets have emerged that are thinner than the category-dominating iPad, which "suggests that Apple will make theirs thinner" to catch up.
AirDrop, Wi-Fi Direct, Thunderbolt While...
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15:41U.S. researchers say a new technique in computer chip design can increase overall computer processor performance by an average of more than 20 percent.
In the new design, graphics processing units and central processing units on a single chip, normally involved in separate processing activities, can collaborate, researchers at North Carolina State University said.
GPUs were initially designed for the single function of executing graphics programs and are capable of executing many individual functions very quickly while CPUs, or the "brains" of a computer, have less computational power but are better able to perform more complex tasks.
"Chip manufacturers are now creating processors that have a 'fused architecture,' meaning that they include CPUs and GPUs on a single chip," researcher Huiyang Zhou said in a university release Tuesday.
"This approach decreases manufacturing costs and makes computers more energy efficient. However, the CPU cores and GPU cores still work almost exclusively on separate functions. They rarely collaborate to execute any given program, so they aren't as efficient as they could be."
"Our approach is to allow the GPU cores to execute computational functions, and have CPU cores pre-fetch the data the GPUs will need from off-chip main memory," Zhou said.
"This is more efficient because it allows CPUs and GPUs to do what they are good at. GPUs are good at performing computations. CPUs are good at making decisions and flexible data retrieval."
The researchers said the new approach can improve fused processor performance by an average of 21.4 percent.
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15:37A new way of magnetic recording using heat will allow data processing hundreds of times faster than by current hard drive technology, British researchers say.
International research led by the physics department at the University of York found heat could be used to record information onto magnetic media at a much faster rate than current technologies, a York release said Tuesday.
"Instead of using a magnetic field to record information on a magnetic medium, we harnessed much stronger internal forces and recorded information using only heat," York physicist Thomas Ostler said.
"This revolutionary method allows the recording of Terabytes (thousands of Gigabytes) of information per second, hundreds of times faster than present hard drive technology. As there is no need for a magnetic field, there is also less energy consumption."
Until now it has been believed that in order to record one bit of information -- by inverting the poles in a magnetic medium -- there was a need to apply an external magnetic field.
The researchers demonstrated the positions of the poles of a magnet can be inverted by an ultrashort heat pulse, harnessing the power of much stronger internal forces.
"For centuries it has been believed that heat can only destroy the magnetic order," said Alexey Kimel of the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. "Now we have successfully demonstrated that it can, in fact, be a sufficient stimulus for recording information on a magnetic medium."
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15:34A month after naming a new CEO, Yahoo shook up its board Tuesday in a move to reinvigorate its business and possibly accelerate attempts to find a buyer.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said longtime Chairman Roy Bostock and three other board members -- Vyomesh Joshi, Gary Wilson and Arthur Kern -- will step aside after the company's shareholder meeting.
Replacing them on the board: Alfred Amoroso, former CEO of Rovi, a digital entertainment company; and Maynard Webb, chairman (and former CEO) of LiveOps, a customer call center company that uses cloud computing. Webb also worked previously as eBay's COO.
The shake-up is part of Yahoo's ongoing housecleaning of its management. Analysts had expected Bostock's departure since co-founder Jerry Yang exited in mid-January. Scott Thompson, who ran eBay's PayPal business, was tapped as Yahoo CEO in early January, replacing Carol Bartz, who was booted last September.
Yang, Bostock and other departing board members angered major shareholders in 2008 when they turned down an unsolicited $45 billion offer from Microsoft shortly before the economic downturn, a decision which was widely criticized. Yahoo's current market value is about $19.6 billion.
Yahoo's outgoing management has also been blamed for its sluggish response to competitive threats from Google and Facebook in more- promising business categories, such as social network display ads.
"These guys had overstayed their welcome," says Jonathan Yarmis, an independent analyst.
Some analysts saw the latest board shuffle as a pre-emptive move to avoid a proxy fight from other still-angry shareholders. But Yarmis says the move, while it may placate some shareholders, stems more likely from Thompson wanting new board members.
Meanwhile, Yahoo says it continues to look for an equity buyer, and the revamped management team could give that effort new life, says Karsten Weide, an analyst at IDC. "The old board was just in place for too long and...
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15:32Imagine browsing knife sets in an airport and then ordering one before you board your plane, or going to a department store to look at makeup without having to bounce from counter to counter to check out each brand's selection.
Companies including Macy's, HSN and Adidas are building large, TV-like interactive screens to give consumers experiences like these in an ever-increasing effort to bring the convenience of online shopping to the offline world.
"We are on the frontier of a really neat future of retailing," says Michelle Tinsley, general manager of retail at Intel, whose core processor is behind new shopping technology and digital signs from Macy's, HSN, Adidas, Kraft, Coca-Cola and others.
To enhance the in-store shopping experience, where the majority of retail sales are still rung up, retailers are looking for ways to bring the convenience, selection and ability for product comparison of the online world. For example, HSN's digital shopping wall could be set up in an airport and would allow someone to virtually browse knife sets while waiting for a flight, complete the purchase through their phone and have the item shipped home.
"It is a way to refresh the shopping experience without having to rebuild a new store," says Joe Skorupa, editor of retail publication RIS News.
Shop Digitally in Physical Stores While online shopping accounts for less than 10% of retail sales, consumers continue to demonstrate their preference for browsing, researching, sharing and buying in a digital environment. Online holiday sales were up 15% over 2010, aided by record Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, according to data from ComScore. In-store sales rose 3.4% from the previous year during the same time period, data from Retail Metrics show.
Macy's Beauty Spot kiosk, a rounded, roughly 7-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide structure inlaid with interactive touch-screens on both sides, allows a customer to browse the...
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15:31Score one for the bodacious baby. The Super Bowl was lost when quarterback Tom Brady flung a football halfway across the field -- that went uncaught. But the competition for the Super Bowl's best commercial was won by an ad about a crafty grandma who slung a sling-wearing baby across the yard -- to snatch a bag of Doritos.
This marks the first time that consumers -- not preselected panelists rating the ads during the game -- picked the winner in the USA TODAY/Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter. Online voting, which began after each ad aired in Sunday night's broadcast, ended at 6 p.m. ET Tuesday. Consumers picked from 55 commercials on which advertisers spent up to a record $3.5 million for each 30-second slot.
But for the Super Bowl's 38 national advertisers, this was also the Social Bowl. Never mind that they spent upwards of $230 million on just the TV advertising time. The purpose of most of the spots was to drive consumers to share the spots with friends, buzz about them and the brand and then try to find out more about the product.
Placing a close second in Ad Meter was Anheuser-Busch's beer-fetching dog, Weego. Two carmakers tied for third: Kia, whose ad featured a guy with ultraracy dreams that include supermodel Adriana Lima; and Chrysler, which turned actor Clint Eastwood into almost as big a Super Bowl presence as New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning.
The gutsy carmaker featured Eastwood in a two-minute "Halftime in America" spot that likened the nation's current plight to a football team revising its game plans at halftime. The spot was initially not included in Ad Meter because it aired at halftime, when fewer viewers are typically watching. But it was later added because of strong social-media sentiment.
Despite jeers from some Republican politicians that...
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WEDNESDAY 8. FEBRUARY, 2012
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20:16Here comes Windows 8. On Feb. 29, Microsoft will offer a "consumer preview" of its next operating system, centered on an invitation-only event in Barcelona, Spain.
The two-hour special event, for which e-mail invitations have been sent out, will occur during the same week and in the same city as the Mobile World Congress.
Windows 'Reimagined' Some observers have noted that a conference for mobile devices is an unusual venue to stage this major release of Microsoft's new platform for desktops, laptops and tablets, but the company has apparently decided to use this context as a way of emphasizing the mobile orientation of Windows 8.
In fact, mobile appears to be driving key elements of 8, such as its touch- and tablet-optimized Metro interface mode. Additionally, recent information has indicated that Windows 8 will share a number of the same components as Microsoft's next phone platform, Windows Phone 8, code-named Apollo.
The user interfaces for Windows 8 and Apollo are expected to be similar, as least in the Metro mode, and Phone 8 is expected to reuse the kernel, network stacks, security and multimedia coding of Windows 8. As a result, applications developed for Windows 8 could potentially run, with relatively little modification, on Apollo phones.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, CEO Steve Ballmer announced that a public beta of the "reimagined" Windows OS would be available sometime in February. The version released on the 29th will be the first widely available preliminary version.
'Consumer Preview,' not Beta It is apparently being called a "consumer preview" rather than a beta because of an overuse of the term by various companies -- including Microsoft -- and to convey that this version is intended for consumers as an early incarnation, not as a test version.
Some information on Windows 8 has already...
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20:11After more than two decades of drilling in Antarctica, Russian scientists have reached the surface of a gigantic freshwater lake hidden under miles of ice for some 20 million years -- a lake that may hold life from the distant past and clues to the search for life on other planets.
Reaching Lake Vostok is a major discovery avidly anticipated by scientists around the world hoping that it may allow a glimpse into microbial life forms, not visible to the naked eye, that existed before the Ice Age. It may also provide precious material that would help look for life on the ice-crusted moons of Jupiter and Saturn or under Mars' polar ice caps where conditions could be similar.
"It's like exploring another planet, except this one is ours," Columbia University glaciologist Robin Bell told The Associated Press by email.
Valery Lukin, the head of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI), which is in charge of the mission, said in Wednesday's statement that his team reached the lake's surface on Sunday.
Lukin has previously compared the Lake Vostok effort to the moon race that the Soviet Union lost to the United States, telling the Russian media he was proud that Russia will be the first this time. Although far from being the world's deepest lake, the severe weather of Antarctica and the location's remoteness made the project challenging.
"There is no other place on Earth that has been in isolation for more than 20 million years," said Lev Savatyugin, a researcher with the AARI. "It's a meeting with the unknown."
Savatyugin said scientists hope to find primeval bacteria that could expand the human knowledge of the origins of life.
"We need to see what we have here before we send missions to ice-crusted moons, like Jupiter's moon Europa," he said.
Lake Vostok is 160 miles (250 kilometers)...
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20:11Bread and rolls are the No. 1 source of salt in the American diet, accounting for more than twice as much sodium as salty junk food like potato chips.
That surprising finding comes in a government report released Tuesday that includes a list of the top 10 sources of sodium. Salty snacks actually came in at the bottom of the list compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Potato chips, pretzels, and popcorn -- which we think of as the saltiest foods in our diet -- are only No. 10," said CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden.
Breads and rolls aren't really saltier than many of the other foods, but people tend to eat a lot of them, said Mary Cogswell, a CDC senior scientist who co-authored the report.
Salt is the main source of sodium for most people, and sodium increases the risk of high blood pressure, a major cause of heart disease and stroke. Health officials say most Americans get too much salt, mostly from processed and restaurant foods -- not added from the salt shaker.
Experts have known that the sodium in breads and certain other foods can add up, but even CDC officials were amazed that just 10 foods are responsible for 44 percent of the sodium consumed.
"It's possible to eat a whole bunch of sodium without it seeming salty," noted John Hayes, an assistant professor of food science at Penn State, who was not involved in the report.
According to the CDC, breads and rolls account for about 7 percent of the salt that the average American eats in a day. Next on the list: cold cuts and cured meats; pizza; fresh and processed poultry; soups; fast-food hamburgers and sandwiches and cheese.
Rounding out the list -- and accounting for about 3 percent each -- are spaghetti and other pasta dishes;...
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20:11NASA says it received more than 6,300 applications for a position in the space agency's next class of astronauts, twice as many as it typically receives.
It was the second highest number of applications ever received for astronaut training, a NASA release said.
"The Flight Crew Operations Directorate is very happy with the large number of applicants for the astronaut program," said Janet Kavandi, director of Flight Crew Operations. "NASA feels strongly that an appropriate mix of skills, education and background provide the office with a greater ability to successfully work a wide array of operational situations."
Successful candidates will live and work aboard the International Space Station and help build the Orion spacecraft for exploration beyond low earth orbit.
"Historically, we've received between 2,500 and 3,500 applications for each class," Duane Ross, who heads NASA's Astronaut Selection Office, said. "We were a bit surprised, but very pleased by the overwhelming response to our recent Astronaut Candidate vacancy announcement."
"To me, this demonstrates the fact that the public remains genuinely interested in continuing the exploration of space."
The Astronaut Selection Board is expected to make its final decision in the spring of 2013 with the new astronaut candidates reporting for two years of training that summer.
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20:11Move over, coffee and Red Bull. A Harvard professor thinks the next big thing will be people inhaling their caffeine from a lipstick-sized tube. Critics say the novel product is not without its risks.
The product, called AeroShot, went on the market late last month in Massachusetts and New York, and is also available in France. A single unit costs $2.99 at convenience, mom-and-pop, liquor and online stores.
Biomedical engineering professor David Edwards said AeroShot is safe and does not contain common additives, like taurine, used to amplify the caffeine effect in common energy drinks. Each grey-and-yellow plastic canister contains 100 milligrams of caffeine powder, about the amount in a large cup of coffee, plus B vitamins.
But Democratic U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York wants the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to review AeroShot, saying he fears it will be used as a club drug so that young people can drink until they drop. Schumer's national press secretary did not immediately respond to calls for comment.
FDA spokeswoman Siobhan DeLancey declined to comment, saying the agency will respond directly to Schumer on the matter.
Edwards said Schumer's comments are understandable in the context of developments over the last few years, when students looking for a quick and cheap buzz began consuming caffeine-packed alcoholic drinks they dubbed "blackout in a can" because of their potency. But he said AeroShot is not targeting anyone under 18 and it safely delivers caffeine into the mouth, just like coffee.
"Even with coffee -- if you look at the reaction in Europe to coffee when it first appeared -- there was quite a bit of hysteria," he said. "So anything new, there's always some knee-jerk reaction that makes us believe `Well, maybe it's not safe.'"
Once a user shoots a puff of calorie-free AeroShot into his or her mouth, the...
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19:56Moving further beyond its origin as a mail-order online retailer, Amazon.com has taken another leap into full media services, agreeing to a licensing deal with Viacom to add dozens of shows to its streaming lineup.
Viacom's TV channels include MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Spike, VH1, BET, CMT and Logo, and it doesn't give up its content easily. The company is embroiled in a legal battle with Time Warner Cable over streaming-content rights which prevents subscribers from accessing those channels via Time Warner's recently released apps for Android and Apple's iOS.
Prime Content The content is available to Amazon Prime members, who pay $79 a year for free shipping on many items available for purchase, access to the Kindle Owners Lending Library for digital reading and commercial-free, instant access to movies and TV shows. Streaming movies and TV shows are also available a la carte via Amazon Instant Video.
News of the agreement greets customers on the site's landing page in the form of a letter from founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. "We've just wrapped up another deal," he says.
Access to Viacom shows like The Hills, iCarly and Jersey Shore brings the total number of Prime Instant videos to 15,000, Amazon said. Prime content is available on 300 different devices.
"Over the last year we have received fantastic customer feedback about Prime Instant Video. We are constantly working to improve the service by adding the shows that our customers enjoy the most," said Brad Beale, director of video content acquisition for Amazon.
"This deal with Viacom brings Prime customers and Kindle Fire users thousands of comedies, kids' shows, reality TV and much more from some of the best cable networks available."
The Kindle Fire is a 7-inch touchscreen tablet that runs a customized version of Google's Android operating system.
Amazon previously struck deals with CBS, Fox, PBS,...
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18:33Nokia said Wednesday that the company plans to shift its mobile-handset assembly operations to Asia, with more than 4,000 jobs at Nokia's factories in Finland, Hungary and Mexico gradually being eliminated this year.
Following the lead of Apple and other smartphone makers, Nokia expects the movement of its handset assembly activities to Asia will help increase the company's competitiveness.
"Shifting device assembly to Asia is targeted at improving our time to market," said Nokia Executive Vice President Niklas Savander. "By working more closely with our suppliers, we believe that we will be able to introduce innovations into the market more quickly and ultimately be more competitive."
Nokia's factories in Komarom, Hungary; Reynosa, Mexico; and Salo, Finland, will continue to play an important role serving the company's smartphone customers, Savander said. "They give us a unique ability to both provide customization and be more responsive to customer needs," Savander said.
Nokia's Asian Focus Nokia's relocation of handset assembly activities to Asia are part of Nokia's goal to reduce the company's longer-term operating expenses by more than $1.32 billion by 2013. At the same time, however, Nokia is "investing in smart-devices marketing to support Lumia, and we are also investing in mobile-phones R&D to support the Internet for the next billion strategy," said Nokia CFO Timo Ihamuotila.
The job reductions announced Wednesday are in addition to the 14,500 job cuts made by Steven Elop since becoming Nokia's CEO last year. The changes come at a time when the European Union as a whole is struggling to deal with debt issues that threaten the region's economic viability.
"We recognize the planned changes are difficult for our employees and we are committed to supporting our personnel and their local communities during the transition," Savander said.
Greater China and the Asia-Pacific collectively accounted for 43.5 percent of Nokia's handset...
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