Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts

HP sells webOS operating system to LG Electronics






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co said on Monday it will sell the webOS operating system to South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, unloading the smartphone software it acquired through a $ 1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in 2010.


LG will use the operating software, used in now-defunct Palm smartphones years ago, for its “smart” or Internet-connected TVs. The Asian electronics company had worked with HP on WebOS before offering to buy it outright.






Under the terms of their agreement, LG acquires the operating software’s source code, associated documentation, engineering talent, various associated websites, and licenses under HP’s intellectual property including patents covering fundamental operating system and user interface technology.


HP will retain the patents and all the technology relating to the cloud service of webOS, HP Chief Operating Officer Bill Veghte said in an interview.


“As we looked at it, we saw a very compelling IP that was very unique in the marketplace,” he said, adding that HP has already had a partnership with LG on webOS before the deal was announced.


“As a result of this collaboration, LG offered to acquire the webOS operating system technology,” Veghte said.


Skott Ahn, President and CTO, LG Electronics, said the company will incorporate the operating system in the Smart TV line-up first “and then hopefully all the other devices in the future.”


Both companies declined to reveal the terms of the deal.


LG will keep the WebOS team in Silicon Valley and, for now, will continue to be based out of HP offices, Ahn said.


HP opened its webOS mobile operating system to developers and companies in 2012 after trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry.


The company had tried to build products based on webOS with the now-defunct TouchPad tablet its flagship product.


HP launched and discontinued the TouchPad in 2010, a little over a month after it hit store shelves with costly fanfare after it saw poor demand for a tablet priced on par with Apple’s dominant iPad.


WebOS is widely viewed as a strong mobile platform, but has been assailed for its paucity of applications, an important consideration while choosing a mobile device.


(Additional reporting By Paul Sandle and Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Tim Dobbyn and M.D. Golan)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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HP sells webOS operating system to LG Electronics






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co said on Monday it will sell the webOS operating system to South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, unloading the smartphone software it acquired through a $ 1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in 2010.


LG will use the operating software, used in now-defunct Palm smartphones years ago, for its “smart” or Internet-connected TVs. The Asian electronics company had worked with HP on WebOS before offering to buy it outright.






Under the terms of their agreement, LG acquires the operating software’s source code, associated documentation, engineering talent, various associated websites, and licenses under HP’s intellectual property including patents covering fundamental operating system and user interface technology.


HP will retain the patents and all the technology relating to the cloud service of webOS, HP Chief Operating Officer Bill Veghte said in an interview.


“As we looked at it, we saw a very compelling IP that was very unique in the marketplace,” he said, adding that HP has already had a partnership with LG on webOS before the deal was announced.


“As a result of this collaboration, LG offered to acquire the webOS operating system technology,” Veghte said.


Skott Ahn, President and CTO, LG Electronics, said the company will incorporate the operating system in the Smart TV line-up first “and then hopefully all the other devices in the future.”


Both companies declined to reveal the terms of the deal.


LG will keep the WebOS team in Silicon Valley and, for now, will continue to be based out of HP offices, Ahn said.


HP opened its webOS mobile operating system to developers and companies in 2012 after trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry.


The company had tried to build products based on webOS with the now-defunct TouchPad tablet its flagship product.


HP launched and discontinued the TouchPad in 2010, a little over a month after it hit store shelves with costly fanfare after it saw poor demand for a tablet priced on par with Apple’s dominant iPad.


WebOS is widely viewed as a strong mobile platform, but has been assailed for its paucity of applications, an important consideration while choosing a mobile device.


(Additional reporting By Paul Sandle and Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Tim Dobbyn and M.D. Golan)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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HP sells webOS operating system to LG Electronics






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co said on Monday it will sell the webOS operating system to South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, unloading the smartphone software it acquired through a $ 1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in 2010.


LG will use the operating software, used in now-defunct Palm smartphones years ago, for its “smart” or Internet-connected TVs. The Asian electronics company had worked with HP on WebOS before offering to buy it outright.






Under the terms of their agreement, LG acquires the operating software’s source code, associated documentation, engineering talent, various associated websites, and licenses under HP’s intellectual property including patents covering fundamental operating system and user interface technology.


HP will retain the patents and all the technology relating to the cloud service of webOS, HP Chief Operating Officer Bill Veghte said in an interview.


“As we looked at it, we saw a very compelling IP that was very unique in the marketplace,” he said, adding that HP has already had a partnership with LG on webOS before the deal was announced.


“As a result of this collaboration, LG offered to acquire the webOS operating system technology,” Veghte said.


Skott Ahn, President and CTO, LG Electronics, said the company will incorporate the operating system in the Smart TV line-up first “and then hopefully all the other devices in the future.”


Both companies declined to reveal the terms of the deal.


LG will keep the WebOS team in Silicon Valley and, for now, will continue to be based out of HP offices, Ahn said.


HP opened its webOS mobile operating system to developers and companies in 2012 after trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry.


The company had tried to build products based on webOS with the now-defunct TouchPad tablet its flagship product.


HP launched and discontinued the TouchPad in 2010, a little over a month after it hit store shelves with costly fanfare after it saw poor demand for a tablet priced on par with Apple’s dominant iPad.


WebOS is widely viewed as a strong mobile platform, but has been assailed for its paucity of applications, an important consideration while choosing a mobile device.


(Additional reporting By Paul Sandle and Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Tim Dobbyn and M.D. Golan)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Music service Spotify hooks up with Ford in first vehicle foray






(Reuters) – Streaming music service Spotify has partnered with Ford Motor Co to allow its subscribers to listen to music in more than one million Ford vehicles in North America.


Owners of Ford models with SYNC AppLink can access Spotify’s catalog of more than 20 million songs through voice activation using its smartphone app.






The deal, announced by both companies on Monday, is Spotify’s first collaboration with an automaker.


Spotify is a free on-demand streaming music service that also offers a subscription package that allows listeners to hear music without interruptions from commercials and gain access to play lists and preferences from any device anytime.


Spotify says it has 20 million active users worldwide, with 25 percent of them paying for subscriptions.


Music services like Spotify and Pandora Media Inc


are striking partnerships with automakers to make their music available to drivers, especially as Internet access improves in vehicles.


Pandora is available in 75 vehicle models and has deals with automakers like General Motors Co , Ford, BMW and Chrysler Group LLC , allowing drivers to plug in their Pandora-enabled mobile devices and use car dashboards to control the service.


More than 1 million people have used Pandora’s dashboard integration, it said.


Separately on Monday, GM said it was switching to AT&T Inc from Verizon Wireless to provide high-speed wireless service for its 2015 vehicle models.


(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Live Twitter surgeries hit with hospitals, public






HOUSTON (AP) — Amy Shireman logged into Twitter early Wednesday to join thousands of people from 60 countries watch live something she had experienced but never seen: a baby boy delivered by cesarean section, in all its graphic imagery.


The live Twitter broadcast brought to viewers by Houston’s Memorial Hermann Health System was the medical institution’s latest foray into a growing trend to gain exposure by showing the world via social media routine procedures that happen daily in operating rooms.






While the Internet and social media have been a part of the medical industry for years, hospitals and doctors are now using it to gain leverage in a competitive market. And what better way to do that than provide people with an authentic online version of the kinds of surgeries they’ve been watching for years on fictional TV shows such as “Grey’s Anatomy,” ”House” and “ER?”


“It’s fascinating to pull back the curtain on the mystery of the OR,” said Natalie Camarata, the social media manager at Houston’s Memorial Hermann Hospital who helped broadcast Wednesday’s C-section as well as two other procedures, including a brain surgery done by Dr. Dong Kim, who gained notoriety when he treated former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords after she was shot in the head in 2011.


Through a variety of matrices that help track online activity, Camarata estimated that 72,000 watched the C-section live on Twitter, while an additional 11,000 viewed it in another format. The viewers were from 60 countries, she said, with the most international followers coming from Germany, Norway and Israel.


During the procedure, viewers tweeted questions, and doctors or staff responded. One viewer from Norway asked about the difference in how the umbilical cord is treated in a C-section. Several tweeted congratulations. In the two hours the hospital was live, it gained more than 600 followers, dozens of them in the first few minutes. Several noted the images were gory, joking they wouldn’t watch it over breakfast.


Shireman, a 35-year-old mother of two from Pittsburgh, was intrigued to see “what was happening beyond the curtain” after having two C-sections herself. While she had hoped the hospital would focus more on the risks, she said she would watch it again, and would consider watching other surgeries.


“The pictures of watching that baby come out of the womb were just amazing” Shireman said. “I know it was delayed a bit … but it did have that live feel like you were right there in the OR.”


Previously, when Memorial Hermann live tweeted a brain surgery, more than 235,000 watched, more than 280,000 viewed photos and video and the hospital gained 7,000 new followers. With each event, the hospital finds more and different people participating, Camarata said.


“When hospitals did it several years back, the online audience wasn’t fully engaged,” she said. “Now people are living Twitter, living Facebook. It’s part of their everyday life.”


Tyler Haney, the vice president of digital marketing at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said his hospital system has not live tweeted a surgery but also has not ruled it out. For now, it is focusing on innovative things at the center, like providing the online audience an opportunity to interact with a brain computer interface, which increased traffic from social media outlets by 120 percent.


This trend — which the medical industry latched on to later than others — will only grow, he said, quoting statistics that found 57 percent of people saying a social media connection would have a “strong impact” on their decision to seek treatment at a given hospital.


The Mayo Clinic has been a leader in the field, said Lee Aase, the clinic’s social media director but has opted not to do live events from the OR, feeling that it is voyeuristic and does not provide additional benefits. The clinic has focused instead on question-and-answer sessions on specific topics.


“People are taking their social network connections with them wherever they go and we certainly are seeing building interest in this,” he said.


Dr. Anne Gonzalez, one of the surgeons who participated in the C-section and is affiliated with the system’s women’s hospital, said social media helps doctors navigate a competitive market.


“There’s a lot of challenges with trying to make patients understand what you think is best for them in a very non-paternalistic way, and I think Twitter helps with that,” she said.


Swedish Health Services, which has five hospitals and more than 100 clinics in the Seattle area, recently live tweeted an ear surgery, said Dana Lewis, manager of digital marketing and internal communications, using only words and photos to reach a hearing-impaired audience.


The hospital also live tweeted a patient going through a sleep clinic and had some 10,000 people follow it in the middle of the night, she said.


“It’s about reaching people where they are, so it doesn’t make sense to have a seminar in the afternoon about not being able to sleep. Why not do it in the middle of the night … when they can’t sleep and they want to find out more about how they can get help?” Lewis said. “That’s the beauty of social media.”


___


Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP


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Mandiant goes viral after China hacking report






(Reuters) – Cybersecurity company Mandiant Corp won plaudits from its peers and made front-page news around the world this week when it published a report that purportedly traced a series of cyberattacks on U.S. companies to a Shanghai-based unit of the Chinese army.


But some hackers have turned the tables on the cyber-expert by creating malicious versions of its 74-page report that were infected with computer viruses. They emailed the tainted reports to their victims this week in a bid to wreak havoc under Mandiant’s name.






Though the episode was embarrassing, the company said its systems were not breached. “Mandiant has not been compromised,” the company said on its corporate blog.


Mandiant was founded in 2004 by Kevin Mandia, a former U.S. Air Force cyber-forensics investigator who co-authored an influential textbook on the subject. The company made its name by automating processes used to investigate computer breaches.


Mandiant was largely unknown outside the computer security industry until Monday, when it fingered the People’s Liberation Army’s Shanghai-based Unit 61398 as the most likely driving force behind a Chinese hacking group known as APT1.


China’s Defense Ministry issued a flat denial of the accusations and called them “unprofessional.” But Mandiant won kudos for the unprecedented level of detail in its report, including the location of a building in Shanghai’s Pudong financial hub from which Mandiant said the unit had stolen “hundreds of terabytes of data from at least 141 organizations across a diverse set of industries beginning as early as 2006.”


Other security companies that have published reports on cyberattacks have shied away from so clearly identifying their perpetrators.


“It was a wonderful report,” said Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA and National Security Agency, who is now with the Chertoff Group. “Everybody is saying ‘it’s about time.’”


The report did not identify the victims of APT1 or Mandiant’s customers, though the company says it has worked for about 40 percent of the Fortune 500.


When asked why he had decided to go public with this report, Mandia, 42, told Reuters, “There is mounting frustration in the private sector. Tolerance is shrinking. We also have a bunch of employees here who are ex-military who sense that frustration and said, ‘Let’s push this out.’”


The report comes ahead of next week’s annual RSA Conference on security in San Francisco, where Mandiant will showcase its products to help companies identify security breaches.


IPO IN THE CARDS?


Mandiant says it begins investigations by installing software it has developed that searches for infections by looking for evidence hackers leave behind. It refers to those digital signatures as Indicators of Compromise, or IOCs.


The proprietary database of those indicators makes up a critical part of the “special sauce” that automates the investigation process and, Mandiant says, enables investigators to root out attackers faster than rivals.


The company has thousands of IOCs in its database, which it is constantly expanding.


“We tend not to take the small jobs. We take the big ones – the ones you would love to read about in the paper, but we keep them out of the paper,” said Mandiant’s chief security officer, Richard Bejtlich.


Some investors have speculated that Mandiant is preparing for an initial public offering in the next year or so. On Friday, it named Mel Wesley to the post of chief financial officer. Wesley was CFO of publicly held OPNET, which was sold to Riverbed Technology in December for about $ 1 billion.


Mandia, who raised $ 70 million by selling stock to Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and One Equity Partners, the private investment arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co, said he is in no rush to go public. “I do not believe we need more capital,” he said.


Ted Schlein, a partner with Kleiner Perkins, declined to say if an IPO was in the works, but told Reuters: “They are certainly of the size and they certainly have the operating metrics to be a public company.”


Mandia said revenue soared 60 percent last year to about $ 100 million, and he expects it to climb at about the same clip this year on rising demand for Web-based services that help businesses identify when they have been attacked.


The New York Times and News Corp‘s Wall Street Journal recently disclosed that they hired Mandiant to investigate cyberattacks. The company has done similar work for Thomson Reuters Corp, parent of Reuters News, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. A spokesman for Thomson Reuters declined to confirm it.


PREMIUM FEES


Mandiant declined to discuss its fees, though analysts say they are among the highest in an industry where rivals include much bigger companies such as Accenture, AT&T Inc, Deloitte, PwC and Verizon Communications Inc, which offer cyber-forensics alongside other services.


Mandiant consultants often bill at rates of $ 450 or more an hour, said a person familiar with the company. Teams of consultants investigate breaches for weeks and sometimes several months, typically ringing up bills of between $ 250,000 and $ 1 million.


John Pescatore, director of emerging security trends for the SANS Institute, says Mandiant can charge a premium partly because it gets strong recommendations from the government and other customers.


There is often a waiting list for its services.


“It’s supply and demand. You call Mandiant and Mandiant tells you when they can show up,” said the person familiar with the company, who was not authorized to publicly discuss its finances.


Mandiant also competes against CrowdStrike and Cylance, which are run by the founders of a company known as Foundstone, a pioneer in cyber-forensics that had hired Mandia away from the military. He left Foundstone in 2004 to start Mandiant.


(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston; Additional reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco and Deborah Charles in Washington; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Prudence Crowther)


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Facebook May Give Older Adults a Mental Boost






Older adults may get a mental boost from using Facebook, early results from a small study suggest.


During the study, 42 adults, ages 68 to 91, who were not familiar with the social networking site were divided into three groups: one group was trained to use Facebook and post once a day; one group was trained to use an online diary site and create short diary entries  visible only to themselves; and one group received no training on either site.






Participants also completed a battery of cognitive  tests before and after their training.


After eight weeks, people in the Facebook group performed 25 percent better than they did at the study’s start on a task that measured their ability to focus on relevant information while a stream of new information is presented — a mental process the researchers refer to as “updating.” People in the other two groups didn’t improve in their updating ability.


However, both the Facebook group and the online diary group showed improvements in how quickly they were able to process information compared to the group that did not learn to use a new site.


“To me this suggests that just learning and using one of these two websites provided a boost for how quickly people process information,” said study researcher Janelle Wohltmann, a graduate student in the University of Arizona department of psychology.


The findings are preliminary, and Wohltmann is still analyzing the results to determine if there are any more differences between the groups. Larger studies will also need to be conducted to confirm the results.


Wohltmann hopes to find out why Facebook, but not the online diary site, improved people’s updating ability.


She speculates that Facebook’s format, which shows updates from both the user and his or her friends, may play a role.


“In these ‘mental updating’ tasks, participants are being asked to continuously focus on only the most relevant information, and to forget other pieces of information as they become irrelevant.  When you view the news feed in Facebook, new information is continuously popping up from your Facebook friends,” while the online diary site only shows new information that you write, Wohltmann said. “I wonder if perhaps the fact that you are constantly filtering through new pieces of information while viewing Facebook may have something to do with it,” she added.


For people who don’t want to join Facebook, other tasks may have similar effects on brain function, Wohltmann said.


Studies suggest that “staying mentally, physically and socially active in older age helps maintain or boost cognitive function,” Wohltmann said. Learning new activities, volunteering or exercising are some ways to stay active, she noted.


The findings were presented this month at the annual meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society in Hawaii.


Pass it on: Older adults who were trained to use Facebook saw improvements in some aspects of their cognitive function, a new study finds.


Follow MyHealthNewsDaily on Twitter @MyHealth_MHND.  Findus on Facebook.


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Twitter begins integrating advertising software






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Twitter Inc said on Wednesday it is opening up its platform to third-party advertising management software, taking another step to establish its ad-based business model ahead of an initial public offering.


The ads application programming interface, or API, would allow advertisers to connect their existing ad management software to their Twitter account to automate ads on the micro-messaging platform.






Twitter said that it would begin by integrating with ad software by Adobe Systems Inc, Salesforce Inc, Hootsuite, SHIFT and TBG Global.


“With the Ads API, marketers now have more tools in their arsenal to help them deliver the right message, to the right audience, on the desktop and on mobile devices — all at scale,” Twitter product manager April Underwood wrote in a blog post.


Under pressure to show growing revenues, Twitter in recent years has ramped up its ad-serving capabilities while building a sales staff to woo corporate marketers. The firm said last year it would allow marketers to target Twitter users based on a profile of their perceived interests and by location.


Twitter makes money every time a user clicks or retweets a “promoted” message paid for by an advertiser. The new API would allow great automation for advertisers, who previously had to manually write every promoted tweet.


In 2013, Twitter’s ad revenues are expected to grow nearly 90 percent to $ 545 million, according to eMarketer which noted that Facebook Inc experienced similarly rapid growth after opening its API to advertisers in 2011.


(Reporting By Gerry Shih; Editing by Bernard Orr)


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6 Things Not to Expect from Sony’s PlayStation Event






Would it be fair to call Sony‘s Manhattan-based Feb. 20 shindig “P-day”? We might as well, what with that PlayStation logo headlining Sony’s “Meeting 2013″ event teaser site — a site that’s now sporting a mini-history of most of the hardware that falls under the renowned moniker’s umbrella.


My memories of the first PlayStation’s earliest days are mixed. Maybe that’s because I was playing the thing months in advance. The guy I worked for — the store manager of a Babbages — paid a shedload of cash for a Japanese import model. He liked to drop it in the store display window, then run the Ridge Racer start screen demo to see how many passerby would stop to gawk, or ask what the heck it was. Remember when video games still had that power over us?






(MORE: The Great Hotmail-to-Outlook.com Transition Begins)


Don’t worry, this isn’t my PlayStation retrospective, which, like yours, could probably fill a book three people want to read. Let’s talk instead about Sony’s ballyhooed Wednesday evening event, 6:00pm ET, where we’re expecting to see the company’s next-gen game system. TIME Tech editor Doug Aamoth is kindly attending in my stead and should have all the details straightaway, and you’ll be able to watch things unfold live courtesy the event site.


I’ve already scribbled down a few lessons I hope Sony’s learned since the PS3′s debut in November 2006, so here’s another list — this one of things I’m not expecting from the event. Like…


…something that isn’t the next PlayStation. We don’t know what we don’t know, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, but the way this typically works is, a company announces it’s holding a major media event, the press speculates irresponsibly, and if that speculation morphs into certainty (as it has in this case), the company typically follows up with some sort of off-the-record denial to recalibrate expectations. Sony’s done nothing to quiet the rumor mill here. In fact you could say it’s poured rocket fuel on the rumormongering with its PlayStation retrospective videos, all but guaranteeing that what we’ll see tomorrow night is the next PlayStation. That said, whether Sony dubs it a “PlayStation 4,” something awful like “PlayStation Orbis,” or just goes with something catchall like “PlayStation,” Apple iPad-style, is anyone’s guess.


…a look at the new console and nothing else. Hardware, schmard-ware, we want software that’s interesting, not just pretty. I don’t expect Sony to go into elaborate detail about the next PlayStation’s backend systems, but I’m predicting (okay, really more hoping) that we’ll see event time given to whatever nifty new ecosystem this thing’s going to live in, including some of its hypothetical features, like game streaming (recall that Sony picked up streaming company Gaikai for about $ 380 million last summer and may be planning to tap that technology in lieu of, say, hardware-based backward compatibility). I know, I’m not a huge fan of game streaming either, but I’d rather hear about stuff like that than how many polygons this thing can shove around.


…much about motion-control. Motion-control’s spotlight moment may have passed, but it’s still pretty young technology. Microsoft‘s seemingly cool but too often clumsy Kinect did well enough off the block (driven, I suspect, mostly by hype), but sales slowed to a crawl by mid-2012. Sony’s more precise PlayStation Move — better received overall by critics — started even slower and never quite caught on. (Sony blames this on a lack of compelling software; I concur.) That said, I’m betting Sony’s going to redouble its motion control efforts, angling the experience more toward casual players, but that we won’t see much (or anything) about this at the event. That’d be fine by me, and shouldn’t be interpreted as the company jumping ship.


…much, if any, talk about pricing. The PlayStation 3 was, by all accounts, way too expensive at launch: $ 500 to $ 600, plus $ 60 a pop for games, plus whatever else you had to buy to get started, say an HDMI cable, which back then could go for upwards of $ 50. Whether you blame Sony for not taking a bigger margin hit (by selling for $ 300 to $ 400 at launch) or simply the hardware design team for overbuilding (some estimates put Sony’s PS3 manufacturing costs at $ 800 per system), the sequel to the bestselling game console in history (Sony’s own PS2) launched with negative momentum and, though it eventually made up for some of that lost time with price cuts, still lags behind the Xbox 360 in worldwide sales today. Early reports are that Sony’s next PlayStation could debut for $ 400, but given how much time there is between now and a probable fall launch timeframe — a timeframe during which manufacturing costs could change — don’t expect Sony to throw out specific numbers.


…a quiet, respectable, Apple-style briefing. This is Sony we’re talking about after all. Like Microsoft, the company doesn’t seem to know how to stage a presser that doesn’t feel like a garish Lady Gaga, WWF, Cirque de Soleil mashup. Speaking of, hopefully the company won’t be as pretentious as Microsoft was with its E3 2010 Project Natal (Kinect) launch, forcing everyone to don creepy cult-like ponchos and watch Cirque performers pull off crazy-cool gymnastics that had nothing to do with the actual technology…sort of like suggesting Taylor Swift is going to come play your house if you buy her new album.


…actual hands-on time. I’m thinking this event is meant to be a tease, a chance to highlight a handful of key system features while showing a few graphics-angled sizzle reels and maybe trotting out a few developers to demo stuff. My guess is Sony’s going to keep its powder dry for E3 2013, where, having hyped the merciful you-know-what out of this thing for months, it’ll pull the curtain all the way back and let us scribble to our heart’s content about what it’s like to actually use the thing. Expect to walk away with more questions than answers when the curtain drops, in other words.


What else might we see? In the “wishful thinking” column you could put a Sony designed and branded PlayStation phone (unlikely), a Sony designed and branded PlayStation tablet (surely not), a PlayStation Vita price cut (probable: Sony just dropped the Japan model’s price) as well as news about new Vita games (or updates on previously announced ones) and maybe even a swan song PlayStation 3 price cut. The irony of Sony announcing a reasonably priced next-gen system while dropping the cost of its original wallet-burner would be sweet indeed.


MORE: From Innovation to Marketing: Understanding Technology Cycles


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Google executive promises ‘insanely great cameras’ on next-gen Nexus phones






The cameras on Google’s (GOOG) line of Nexus smartphones have consistently performed worse than the competition. Some have said the default Android image processing software is at fault, while others have suggested low-end sensors are to blame. Google’s smartphones, nevertheless, cannot compete with Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, HTC’s (2498) DROID DNA or Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy S III when it comes to photo quality. Things may be about to change, however.


[More from BGR: Broadband ISPs put to the test: Real data speeds vs. advertised speeds charted by FCC]






Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of engineering, revealed that the company is “committed to making Nexus phones [with] insanely great cameras,” adding “just you wait and see.”


[More from BGR: Best Buy makes online price-matching policy permanent]


It is thought that the executive’s comments were related to Google’s upcoming flagship smartphone. The company is rumored to be working on a device with Motorola, codenamed X Phone, that is said to include revolutionary new features. The handset is expected to debut in May at the company’s annual I/O Developer Conference and will reportedly be equipped with a high-end rear camera, long battery life and a flexible display.


This article was originally published on BGR.com


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Leading Cuban dissident departs for world tour






HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba‘s best-known dissident, blogger Yoani Sanchez, checked in without incident at Havana’s international airport on Sunday on her way to Brazil, the first stop on an 80-day-tour of a dozen countries.


She was sent off with hugs by a small group of family members and friends.






Sanchez was granted a passport two weeks ago under Cuba’s sweeping immigration reform that went into effect this year, after being denied permission to travel more than 20 times over the past five years.


“I made it through immigration, now I only need to board the plane and take off,” said Sanchez, who has promised to tweet throughout her saga.


In another tweet to her followers as she waited to board her plane, she added: “To tell the truth, my knees haven’t stopped trembling.”


Sanchez is one of a number of high profile government opponents who have received a passport under the new regulations, but the first to actually take advantage of the measure.


A few lesser-known dissidents have been denied passports.


Sanchez criticized the new law for not simply granting all Cubans the right to travel, but told Reuters at the airport, “I plan to take full advantage of it and push it to the limit.”


The old travel law was put in place in 1961 to slow the flight of Cubans after the island’s 1959 revolution.


The new law scrapped the much-hated requirement of having to obtain an exit visa and loosened other restrictions that had discouraged Cubans from leaving and traveling.


It was one of the wide-ranging reforms President Raul Castro has enacted since he succeeded his older brother, Fidel Castro, in 2008.


There are still travel restrictions, mainly for national security reasons and for those with pending legal cases.


PRIZE MONEY FOR A FREE PRESS


Sanchez, who has won a number of international prizes for her blog but has been denied permission to travel to collect them, said she would now do so and planned to use part of the prize money to “found a free press in Cuba.”


“I plan to visit various media and make contact to learn how a modern press runs,” she said.


Sanchez, a 37-year-old Havana resident, has incurred the wrath of Cuba’s government for constantly criticizing its communist system in her “Generation Y” blog, and using Twitter to denounce repression.


She is one of the world’s best-known bloggers and has tens of thousands of followers abroad, but few in Cuba where the government severely restricts the Internet.


Her blog is named after the penchant of Cuban parents during the Cold War era of Soviet backing for the island of choosing names for their children starting with “Y” because of the many popular Russian names starting with that letter.


Sanchez, considered Cuba’s pioneer in social networking, told Reuters earlier this week that she would visit the headquarters of Google, Twitter and Facebook, and travel to Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, the United States, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic and other countries.


Cuba’s leaders consider dissidents traitorous mercenaries in the employ of the United States and other enemies. Official bloggers regularly charge that Sanchez’s international renown has been stage-managed by Western intelligence services.


But Sanchez is also a critic of U.S. policy toward her homeland. In a recent blog, she said the decades-old trade embargo had failed to stifle the Cuban government and was exploited by Havana as “a big bad wolf to blame for everything.”


“The big news is not now, but in 80 days when she will return,” Bert Hoffmann, a Cuba expert at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg, said.


“Many regime opponents have left Cuba for exile, but this is the first time a prominent dissident sets out on a high-profile world tour to then come back to the island.”


Sanchez’s travels and eventual return to Cuba are being carefully monitored by governments and human rights advocates as a test of Cuban authorities’ commitment to free travel.


“She is gone, now let’s see if the government lets her back in or forces her into exile,” a European diplomat said.


(Reporting By Marc Frank; Editing by Sandra Maler)


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Ahead of hearing, Einhorn reiterates case against Apple






NEW YORK (Reuters) – David Einhorn reiterated his arguments Friday that a judge should block a shareholder vote on Apple Inc‘s proposal to eliminate its ability to issue preferred shares without investor approval, days before a court hearing.


In court filings in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital attempted to rebut Apple’s arguments that the company’s proposal was “pro-shareholder.”






“Apple should not be allowed to substitute its judgment for its shareholders’ judgment, and should be enjoined” from letting the vote proceed, Greenlight said in a motion.


A hearing on Einhorn’s motion for an injunction against the February 27 vote on the proxy proposal is set for Tuesday. A spokesman for Apple declined comment.


Greenlight sued Apple last week as part of Einhorn’s larger effort to have the iPhone maker share more of its $ 137 billion in cash with investors.


As part of that goal, Einhorn has pushed for Apple to issue to its shareholders perpetual preferred stock with a 4 percent dividend.


Among the Apple proxy proposals up for a vote February 27 is Proposal No. 2, which would remove the company’s current system of issuing preferred stock at its discretion without a shareholder vote.


Greenlight’s lawsuit contends Apple violated U.S. Securities and Exchange rules by “bundling” three separate amendments to its charter into Proposal No. 2. While Greenlight supports two of the amendments, it does not back the one related to preferred stock.


Apple in a Wednesday filing argued the proposal was not bundled and that it had not forced shareholders into an unfair choice. It also noted Proposal No. 2 was supported by proxy advisory services Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass, Lewis & Co.


But Einhorn argued on Friday that ISS and Glass Lewis’s support is premised on the belief that eliminating so-called “blank check” preferred stock powers enables a company to defend itself against a takeover.


“In my view, Apple is not a realistic take-over candidate because of, among other things, its enormous market capitalization,” Einhorn wrote.


At Tuesday’s hearing, U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan will also hear a separate challenge by an Apple investor from Pennsylvania to block not just the Proposal No. 2 vote, but also an advisory “say-on-pay” vote on executives compensation.


The investor, Brian Gralnick, contends Apple has not disclose enough details about how it made its decisions in awarding restricted stock units to certain executives.


Apple responded that its disclosures were adequate and appropriate.


The case is Greenlight Capital LP, et al., v. Apple Inc., U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, 13-900.


(Reporting By Nate Raymond; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)


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Lawyers lick their chops as new study links cell phones to lower brain cancer survival rates






For the past 10 years, a diverse group of epidemiologists has tried to nail down an association between mobile phone use and brain cancer. This has not panned out. Several recent, large-scale European studies have indicated there is no correlation. However, every now and then a research paper still tries to approach the topic from a new and unusual angle and manages to keep the issue alive for awhile longer.


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The February issue of Neuroepidemiology has one of those clever exercises that gives American class action lawyers a glimmer of hope. Oncologists Hardell and Carlberg opted to analyze the survival rates of glioma patients after the diagnosis had been made. This is an interesting twist to the usual theme of simply trying to find a higher frequency of gliomas among heavy cell phone users.


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The pool of patients was picked from 1997-2003, the period when mobile handset usage had become so prevalent in Sweden that a large percentage of patients used them regularly. In the highest tertile of cumulative wireless phone use, hazard ratio for glioblastoma was 1.2. This means that patients using wireless phones had 20% higher chance of dying.


Oddly, the study claims that mobile phones and cordless phones had a similar effect on survival rates. This is an interesting note because the radiation profiles of late ’90s GSM phones were not similar to cordless phones.


The study has some of the usual flaws that most papers claiming a link between mobile phones and brain cancer possess. The choice to pick the “highest tertile” of heavy wireless phone users for the key finding seems oddly arbitrary. Why not the highest quartile or highest quintile, both of which are far more commonly used in medical studies? Could it be that the statistical results for those slices are weaker?


Ironically, the study admitted there was a survivor benefit for heavy wireless phone users diagnosed with astrocytoma grade I-II. The scientists speculate that this could be due to “exposure-related tumour symptoms leading to earlier diagnosis,” which seems to mean that phone use saved some patients by causing the cancer to develop in a way that made early detection easier.


This is a fairly impressive feat of mental acrobatics.


Research papers trying to nail down the link between mobile phones and cancer keep popping up, mostly in journals with an impact factor under 0.5. Neuroepidemiology is a serious publication, possessing an impact factor of 2.3. This is still far below the heavy hitters like Science and Nature, which float  serenely at impact factor levels topping 30.


It is likely that unless a major study lands in one of these leading scientific journals, large class action lawsuits against major phone vendors will not be launched. The phone-glioma link remains the Holy Grail of the litigation industry though, because first small studies suggesting an association between mobile phone usage and cancer started popping up in late ’90s. If convincing statistical evidence is ever found, lawyers can claim that the phone industry has been aware of the issue for more than a decade and could have taken stronger measures to inform consumers.


It is possible that even if the link exists, the extra risk may be so small that teasing it out from statistical noise and other factors will always be impossible. What complicates the dark quest of class action wizards is that these days, practically everyone uses mobile phones and cancer incidence levels keep shifting due to other environmental and dietary factors.


For now, the $ 100 billion litigation frenzy remains a vague sketch on a legal notepad.


This article was originally published on BGR.com


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Broadcasters blame zombie hack on easy passwords






(Reuters) – Poor password security paved the way for hackers to broadcast a bogus warning on television networks, saying that the United States was under attack by zombies, broadcasters said.


Cyber security experts said the equipment the hackers broke into remained vulnerable to further breaches, and that hackers could potentially take control of the equipment to prevent the government from sending out public warnings during an emergency.






Following the attacks Monday on a handful of TV stations, the government ordered broadcasters to change the passwords for the equipment that authorities use to instantly transmit emergency broadcasts through what is known as the Emergency Alert System, or EAS.


The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would not comment on the attacks, but in an urgent advisory sent to TV stations on Tuesday, the agency said: “All EAS participants are required to take immediate action.”


It instructed them to change passwords on equipment from all manufacturers used to deliver emergency broadcasts to TV networks, interrupting regular programming. The FCC instructed them to ensure that gear was properly secured behind firewalls and to inspect their systems to ensure that hackers had not queued “unauthorized alerts” for future transmission.


VULNERABLE


The attacks come in the wake of warnings by officials and outside security experts that the United States is at risk of a cyber attack that could cause major physical damage or even cost lives. President Barack Obama has told Congress that some hackers were looking for ways to attack the U.S. power grid, banks and air traffic control systems.


While the zombie hoax appeared to be somewhat innocuous, the relatively easy incursion showed that hackers might be able to wreak havoc with more alarming communications.


“It isn’t what they said. It is the fact that they got into the system. They could have caused some real damage,” said Karole White, president of the Michigan Association of Broadcasters.


White and her counterpart in Montana, Greg MacDonald, said they believed the hackers were able to get in because TV stations had not changed the default passwords they used when the equipment was first shipped from the manufacturer.


But Mike Davis, a hardware security expert with a firm known as IOActive Labs, said hackers could still get past new passwords to remotely access the systems.


Davis said he had submitted a report to the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or US-CERT, about a month ago that detailed the security flaws.


“Changing passwords is insufficient to prevent unauthorized remote login. There are still multiple undisclosed authentication bypasses,” he told Reuters via email. “I would recommend disconnecting them from the network until a fix is available.”


Davis said he was able to use Google Inc’s search engine to identify some 30 systems that he believed were vulnerable to attack as of Wednesday morning.


A spokesman for US-CERT said he could not immediately comment on the matter.


MANY WAYS IN


Stuart McClure, chief executive of cyber security firm Cylance Inc., said he had investigated cases in which hackers accessed EAS systems via a different method: breaking into hidden accounts built into the systems by manufacturers so that service technicians can easily access them for repairs.


“You cannot give a separate pass code to everybody. Nobody is going to remember it. You have to share the secret,” said McClure, who previously ran a unit at Intel Corp’s McAfee security division that investigated cyber attacks.


He declined to discuss the cases he had worked on, saying that would violate client confidentiality.


Broadcasters and security experts warned that attacks on the Emergency Alert System could undermine the government’s ability to communicate with the public in times of crisis.


“While EAS may not control nuclear power or hydroelectric dams or air traffic control, it can be used to cause widespread panic,” McClure said.


Indeed, far worse than broadcasting zombie jokes, hackers who are able to gain control of the equipment could prevent authorities from warning the public about actual emergencies, McClure added.


Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman Dan Watson said that the “zombie” breach did not have any impact on the government’s ability to activate the Emergency Alert System.


‘BODIES ARE RISING’


The “zombie” hackers targeted two stations in Michigan, and several in California, Montana and New Mexico, White said.


A male voice addressed viewers in a video posted on the Internet of the bogus warning broadcast from KRTV, a CBS affiliate based in Great Falls, Montana: “Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from the grave and attacking the living.”


The voice warned not “to approach or apprehend these bodies as they are extremely dangerous.”


Bill Robertson, vice president of privately held electronics manufacturer Monroe Electronics of Lyndonville, New York, told Reuters that equipment from his company had been compromised in at least some of the attacks after hackers gained access to default passwords.


Monroe publishes the default passwords for its equipment in user manuals that can be accessed on its public website.


Robertson said that he believed attackers had been able to access the devices over the Internet because television stations had not properly secured the equipment behind fire walls, which is what Monroe recommends.


“The devices were not really locked down right. They were exposed,” he said.


He said that the company was working to beef up security on the equipment and might update its software to compel customers to change default passwords.


(Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Patrick Graham and Bernadette Baum)


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Employee Facebook privacy bill advances in Colo.






DENVER (AP) — Facebook profiles and other social-media accounts could be off-limits to employers under a bill approved unanimously in a Colorado House committee Tuesday.


The measure, approved 11-0, would bar most employers from requiring access to their workers’ personal accounts. Several states already have such protections, and dozens more are considering them.






The bill would not prohibit companies from looking at Facebook pages or punishing employees for what they post on their personal sites. But it would ban them from requiring current or potential employees to provide passwords for personal accounts.


The measure’s sponsor said private social media accounts should be considered like physical photographs.


“It’s never been acceptable for en employer to ask to see an employee’s personal photos,” said Rep. Angela Williams, D-Denver.


The bill was amended to exempt law enforcement agencies and corrections workers, since those workers’ personal opinions or off-duty actions can affect their use as witnesses in criminal matters.


“They need to know that the people they have working for them are above reproach and have a higher standard,” said Ann Marie Jensen of the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police.


Lawmakers rejected a proposal to give all businesses permission to require personal social media access for “legitimate business interests.”


Kim Smiley of the Colorado Defense Lawyers Association suggested businesses should be allowed to require access in some cases. She used examples of an employee threatening violence or bragging about drinking alcohol on the clock.


Lawmakers responded that employers dealt with those problems long before social media networking. Rep. Libby Szabo, R-Arvada, pointed out that employers once used their noses to suss out an employee who drank too much at lunch.


“There was life before Facebook,” Szabo said.


The measure awaits one more committee vote before it’s considered by the full House.


___


House Bill 1046: http://bit.ly/UOffsH


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Vertu Releases $10,000 Smartphone with Year-Old Software, No 4G






Luxury smartphone company Vertu has just released the Vertu Ti, the price of which is not listed on its website but was reported by Alex Dobie of Android Central to be $ 10,000. It runs a version of the Android operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich, which is more than a year old, and lacks other typical high-end smartphone features like 4G wireless Internet.


But then, with “Titanium Black Leather” in bold at the top of its feature list — with “size and weight,” “materials,” and “services” right afterwards — it’s pretty clear which “specs” Vertu is hoping its buyers will care about.






Software and specs


Vertu’s website describes “the devices [sic] 1.7 GHz processor” and its “uniquely tailored user interface,” a custom UI layer which superficially resembles Samsung’s Touchwiz and is running on top of Android 4.0. Its processor is dual-core, and its 3.7-inch screen is about as small as the old iPhone’s.


On the other hand, the Vertu Ti does have 64 GB of flash storage, as well as a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera and an 8-megapixel rear-facing shooter which can record 1080p video.


The key to the kingdom


The Vertu Ti’s most unique feature is the “Vertu Key,” a button on the side of the phone which can be used to call 24/7 concierge service from anywhere in the world — or at least, anywhere in the world where it has a signal. There’s also a text-based live chat option, a Windows-style remote assist feature, and an app which appears to do nothing but display personalized ads (the company calls them “independently sourced articles and privileges”).


Putting the “hard” in hardware


The materials used do have some practical benefits. Vertu’s website claims that the Vertu Ti’s chassis is “around five times stronger than other smart phones [sic].” Meanwhile, a BBC News report said that one Vertu handset survived being run over by a truck, or that it was at least “intact and working” afterwards.


The same report quoted Vertu Head of Design Hutch Hutchison as saying the phone’s sapphire screen can only be scratched by diamond. With its price tag and luxury design however, Vertu is not competing in the same space as Panasonic’s military-grade, ruggedized hardware.


Are the phones worth it?


That’s up to the very few people who societies choose to reward with the disposable income to buy them — people like the bankers at the former Lehman Brothers firm, which is believed to have been instrumental in causing the global financial crisis and the closing of which impacted Vertu’s sales, according to the BBC article.


Roughly 326,000 Vertu phones (of all kinds) have been sold worldwide. China is reportedly Vertu’s biggest market.


Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.


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Fashion designers go digital to reach broadest audience






NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hundreds of fashion designers are showing their fall and winter 2013 collections at New York Fashion Week, but not all of them are on the runway.


The semi-annual event, which is followed by fashion weeks in London, Paris and Milan, includes up to 500 fashion shows around New York and attracts about 232,000 people, from buyers to foreign press and wealthy customers.






Top name designers at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, which runs at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center through February 14, have been streaming their runway shows online for the past three or four years.


Now, many lesser-known names, up-and coming-fashion stars and established designers who want to reach a wider, younger audience are going digital.


“This season it is really prevalent,” said Stacy Roman of the New York fashion and publicity firm Factory PR. “There has definitely been an increase in this type of platform.”


In addition to reaching a wider audience, going digital lets designers give fashionistas a behind-the-scenes look at the show and presentations, taking them backstage and through make-up and even fittings.


It is also far less expensive than staging a runway show, which can run upwards of $ 100,000 depending on the venue, models, makeup artists, stylists and disc jockeys for the show.


THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX


Rachel Roy, who launched her first collection in 2005 and has done presentations at Fashion Week, will feature her designs in a digital runway show to stream live on February 14.


“It just really seemed like the right thing to do,” said Roy, whose collection juxtaposes modern and antique looks with deep jewel tones and bright metallics, textured and smooth fabrics and light with dark colors.


“I always want to think outside the box, to do something that is new and fresh, and I think part of my job is to bring newness to fashion,” she said. “Part of doing that is showing to as many people that love fashion, that want it, making it accessible to them.”


Roy is building a full set for her digital show and will include backstage shots to let viewers experience all elements of the production.


Los Angeles-based Kelly Wearstler is also taking the digital route and will feature plenty of denim in a collection that will be displayed in her New York showroom and in a digital show with behind-the-scenes videos shot in her California studio.


“I am in the infancy stage of my fashion world, and I have a ton to learn, so I am baby-stepping it,” said Wearstler, who launched her fashion line 18 months ago but has been in interior design for more than 17 years and has a flagship store in Los Angeles.


The content will go out on several digital platforms including her blog , Twitter, the content sharing service Pinterest, the photo sharing and social networking services Instagram and Facebook, as well as fashion-focused websites such as Refinery29.com, racked.com, Style.com and Vine, Twitter’s new video sharing app for recording and sharing six-second clips.


“Right now I am happy where I am, learning and growing,” she added.


For 32-year-old Radhika Perera-Hernandez, who designs for her New York based-Lois London label, there was no question that online is the place to be.


“It is the smartest way for a start-up line to get their name out there. A lot of designers that are at the same level as myself are doing the same kind of thing,” she said.


Perera-Hernandez, who was born and raised in London, features kaftans, jumpsuits and swimwear in her collection.


“Anything that I am doing for the brand I will be pushing through my website and (the microblogging website) Tumblr and any of the other viral things that I have going on.”


(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Nick Zieminski)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Tech wizards honored by Oscars organizers






BEVERLY HILLS, California (Reuters) – Some of the most ingenious behind-the-scenes innovators, whose breakthroughs in computer technology and other fields were key to the making of movies such as “Shrek” and “Avatar,” were awarded at an early Oscar organizers’ ceremony in Los Angeles on Saturday night.


From the team who developed a system to bring to life computerized digital stunt doubles for fantastic creatures in movies such as “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” to the man who simply developed one of the most versatile lighting delivery systems in film production, the Scientific and Technical Achievement Awards showcased emotional speeches and lifetimes of work for those whose lives are spent behind the camera.






The Beverly Hills ceremony honored 25 individuals with nine awards. Unlike the main Oscars ceremony, which will be held on Sunday, February 24 and will only recognize movie achievements from 2012, the Scientific and Technical Awards honored those with a proven record of achievement in the process of making feature films.


The ceremony was hosted by actors Chris Pine and Zoe Saldana, who respectively played Captain James T. Kirk and Uhura in “Star Trek” in 2009 and who will reprise those roles in this May’s sequel. Saldana payed tribute to the night’s honorees, saying they made it possible for life in front of the camera.


Richard Mall received perhaps the greatest applause of the night, for his invention of the Matthews Max Menace Arm, a portable device which allows studio lights to be moved and positioned all over a set, often where normal lighting cannot be used because of on-site restrictions of other difficult conditions.


“I am a little humbled to be up here with all this technology, because basically I built something in my garage,” Mall said to applause and cheers. He thanked his wife for all the strange noises that had come out of that garage. His invention has been sold to over 40 countries and used in more than 300 films.


The evening was also devoted to people who had invented systems such as “Tissue: A Physically-Based Character Simulation Framework,” which has made huge advances in bringing to life computer-generated characters such as Gollum in “The Hobbit“. An Academy Plaque for Scientific and Engineering went to Simon Clutterbuck, James Jacobs and Dr. Richard Dorling for this technique.


The team of Daniel Wexler, Lawrence Kesteloot and Drew Olbrich that created the Light system for computer graphics at PDI/DreamWorks was awarded for technical achievement. Their work, which combines light, color and rendering in one, was used in “Shrek,” “Madagascar” and other animated DreamWorks pictures.


(Editing by Sandra Maler)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Video game composer taking ‘Journey’ to Grammys






LOS ANGELES (AP) — Austin Wintory still can’t wrap his head around the fact that he’s up against “Star Wars” composer John Williams for a Grammy Award.


“Thank God I’ve been so busy in the last few weeks since the nominations came out because I don’t think my brain could ever possibly comprehend that,” said the 28-year-old composer. “He’s a lifelong idol of mine. I don’t think it’s something I could have ever even dreamed.”






Wintory is facing 80-year-old Williams and his score for “The Adventures Of Tintin” at the Feb. 10 ceremony, as well as the scores to “The Artist” by Ludovic Bource, “Hugo” by Howard Shore, “The Dark Knight Rises” by Hans Zimmer and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.


The biggest difference between Wintory and his competitors? His score is from a video game.


Wintory’s nomination for the artsy PlayStation 3 game “Journey” marks the first time a game score has been nominated for a Grammy. Music from games have been eligible since 2000 when “other visual media” were added to Grammy categories previously reserved for music from film and TV. When the Grammys were overhauled in 2011, the category was renamed to “best score soundtrack album for visual media” to fairly encompass all mediums.


Wintory, a first-time nominee who also creates film scores, sees his nod as an opportunity to showcase the creativity of games.


“I don’t have any interest in being that one game soundtrack for someone who doesn’t own any game soundtracks,” said Wintory. “I can think of no higher purpose than if ‘Journey’ were to be someone’s gateway drug, so to speak, to discovering much more when it comes to interactivity.”


The score for “Journey,” which casts players as a mysterious scarf-draped figure who wanders a desert landscape, is an exotic mix of mystical and introspective ditties led by powerful cello solos. Wintory said he tweaked and re-tweaked the score for three years with the “Journey” developers from thatgamecompany.


If Wintory wins at the Grammys, he wouldn’t be the first game composer to take home a gramophone.


Christopher Tin won the trophy for best instrumental arrangement accompanying vocalists in 2011 for “Baba Yetu,” the Swahili-language song originally featured in the 2005 strategy game “Civilization IV.” That tune served as the opening track on Tin’s debut album, “Calling All Dawns,” which was also honored that year as best classical crossover album.


Unlike other awards that honor music from games, the Grammys solely judge game scores on their soundtracks, just like they do for scores from film and TV. Bill Freimuth, the recording academy’s vice president of awards, said entries of game scores doubled since the category was renamed to encompass all visual media.


“For some reason, that worked some magic with the video game community,” said Freimuth. “They didn’t feel like they were outsiders. They were part of the main batch.”


Tommy Tallarico, a video game composer and organizer of the “Video Games Live” concert series, was among the artists who originally petitioned the recording academy to add game scores to awards consideration. He believes Wintory’s nomination is a landmark — not only for composers who craft music for games but also the gaming industry as a whole.


“It really shows that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences is starting to consider our work art now,” said Tallarico. “It’s on the same level as film and TV in their eyes, and that’s an important first step because a lot of people, when they think of music from video games, they still think of beeps and bloops. That’s not the reality anymore.”


Freimuth of the recording academy said that while video game composers have lobbied for their own category in the past, it’s an unlikely proposition given the current amount of submissions the academy receives from game composers. Besides, this year’s awards have proven that a score from a game has no problem earning a nomination alongside a score from a film.


___


Online:


http://www.grammy.com


http://thatgamecompany.com/games/journey/


___


Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang.


Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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