TechyJakirul's JumboTweets
- Title: Facebook to integrate Spotify in music push?
Facebook is planning to integrate streaming-music services into its platform, according to a report from GigaOm.
Citing anonymous sources, GigaOm claims that Facebook will soon have a new option called Music in the site's left-hand pane. Upon clicking that, users will be able to access a new page called Music Dashboard, allowing them to see what songs have been recommended to them by friends, which tracks friends have been listening to most often, and the latest songs played across their social network. The Dashboard will reportedly feature a notifications pane to inform users when friends listened to songs they've recommended.
The new feature will also reportedly bring music playback controls to the bottom of the page so users can listen to songs right from Facebook.
According to GigaOm, Facebook is already in talks to integrate Spotify, and is currently trying to woo other streaming-music providers for its service.
This isn't the first time reports have surfaced claiming Spotify and Facebook might be working closely together on a new service. Last month, Forbes reported that the social network and Spotify were in talks to create a new music service for users in countries other than the United States that would let folks access Spotify's - AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands--Not long ago, I asked Scott Summit, a pioneer in using 3D printing in the design of custom prosthetics and an industrial design expert, who he would recommend I look into if I wanted to see the best in the world at using this young technology to make and sell consumer products. His answer, without hesitation? A small company run by Janne Kyttanen in the Dutch capital called Freedom of Creation.
In the late 1990s, Kyttanen had a vision. As a student in design school, he was turned off by traditional product manufacturing, storage, and distribution methods, and he thought there was a better way.
The vision was of a way to use a technology then barely known--3D printing, which was mainly being used to make medical and auto parts--and selling products that people could design themselves and sell them strictly over the Internet. Production would be fast, design would be key, and individual customization would be easy.
3D like you've never seen it before (photos)
"The joke was, 10 years ago, we were 20 years too early," Kyttanen tells me in his company's conference room here. "I had trouble graduating because people didn't believe" the vision.
But Kyttanen didn't give up on what he saw as a new paradigm in product design, and because he had an older brother who worked in 3D animation, it was an easy transition for him to start thinking about products in terms of the 3D models that they would be made from. He started seeing everything as wireframes. And when "The Matrix" came out, complete with a 3D world filled with imagery like he'd been imagining, he thought, "Hey, I'm not by myself."
Seven thousand dollars
When Kyttanen began thinking about designing and selling products using 3D printers, there was no possible way to build a business around the idea. The machines that were around in the late 1990s were so expensive that any product would have cost $7,000 just to make.
But the technology was clearly going somewhere, and he didn't let go of the vision. He thought, if it was so easy for him to design 3D models, many other people could do the same, and the basis for an all-new industry was right there, staring him in the face.
At 5,000 euros a pop, there was no business, but he managed to get sponsorship from a Belgian company called Materialise, and started a department there called .MGX. Materialise wanted him to focus on a brand of lamps, something that didn't quite fulfill his vision. After a couple of years, they parted ways. He gathered what money he had and started Freedom of Creation, sometimes called FOC.
For 11 years, he and a small team have been building the company, slowly expanding a catalog of high-concept designs that are all 3D printed, all customizable, and many of which are strikingly beautiful. In May, Kyttanen sold FOC to 3D Systems, the company that started the entire industry in the late 1980s and a leader in laser-sintering, a process that uses a high-temperature laser to fuse together materials (see video below). The idea behind the sale, he explained, was that by marrying the design side with the production and materials side, and cutting out the middlemen--the products are made on 3D Systems printers using the parent company's materials--it creates the only way to make a business profitable like the one he had long envisioned and, he said, makes it possible to do production on a global scale.
- Title: Netflix outage not caused by hackers
Netflix, the Web's top video rental service but one with a history of suffering outages, saw another multihour blackout last night.
The site seems to have gone down for about three or four hours last night, according to reports from those posting to Twitter. Netflix is traditionally tight-lipped about the causes of its malfunctions and this time is no exception.
"Good morning," wrote Steve Swasey, Netflix's spokesman. "It was a technical issue that we fixed."
The good news is that Netflix wasn't taken out by marauding hackers. Sony, Sega, and a number of other business and government sites have been hit by hackers in a high-profile spate of cyberattacks this spring, and some in the blogosphere speculated that Netflix may have succumbed to a similar attack.
But glitches at Netflix, while not frequent, do occur. This is the third time the service has gone offline in the past 10 months.
In the past decade, the service has become a major entertainment hub for more than 23 million users. When Netflix outages occur, they are now major events. People get miffed when they can't access their Netflix films or TV shows.
"Netflix is down," wrote musician Cris Cornell on Twitter. "I wonder if domestic violence will spike." - Title: New technology revs up Pixar's 'Cars 2'
EMERYVILLE, Calif.--We all know what the reflections off cars or the roiling of the ocean are supposed to look like. So if you are tempted to believe that what you'll see in "Cars 2" proves that Pixar has made its first live-action film, think again.
This is the hit-making studio that breaks new technological ground with most of its new films, and "Cars 2," which opens Friday, is no exception. Where its technicians applied real physics to the escape of thousands of balloons in "Up," or true lighting effects to the rolling and pitching of plastic garbage bags in "Toy Story 3," Pixar has once again pushed its computing powers to the limit--and gone well beyond them.
With "Cars 2," as the film's director and Disney chief creative officer John Lasseter pointed out at a recent event in San Francisco, the filmmakers invented several new ways to handle common effects, and though innovating for the sake of innovating isn't the studio's style, it seems to come with the territory of making a new Pixar film.
And creating new effects doesn't come cheap. According to Apurva Shah, the supervising technical director on "Cars 2," Pixar had to triple the size and scale of its legendary render farm in order to achieve the computing power its new effects required for the film. But don't expect the studio to rest on its computing laurels for its next movies. Given its penchant for upping the ante with each new project, it's a good bet that even more new Dell render blades will be making their way to Pixar's headquarters here soon.
Water effects
When the team members behind "Cars 2" began working on the film in 2006, they realized that because one of the biggest sequences in the film takes place on and around an ocean-based oil rig, they wanted to step up their approach to animating open water. Already, Pixar had taken the industry in new directions with its underwater effects for "Finding Nemo." But now, Shah said in an interview in his office, the team hoped to improve on the current industry best for an ocean's choppy surface.
With "Nemo," Shah explained, Pixar had come up with a "softer-looking water," but with "Cars 2," the team felt that audiences would be expecting the oil rig sequence to feature edgier, stormier water. - Title: Apple returns to form with new iPad 2 ad
Dear RIM, here's the thing about love.
You don't just declare it and make everyone believe it's there. You carefully cultivate it by design. You make it part of your business.
Apple's new iPad 2 ad, which debuted yesterday, is an excellent example of how and why the company knows more about people than all of its competitors put together.
Please don't tell anyone, but Apple's last iPad 2 ad was a strange cacophony of boasting, one that seemed to have been written by a harassed, delusional PR executive.
It was a strange follow-up to the sublime "We Believe" spot, which explained to all of its competitors that technology wasn't about, well, technology.
This new ad, called "Now", returns Apple to its senses and that of real human beings who just want to enjoy at least part of their lives.
The copy is well-crafted: "Now, we can watch a newspaper, listen to a magazine, curl up with a movie, and see a phone call. Now, we can take a classroom anywhere, hold an entire bookstore, and touch the stars. Because now, there's this."
This might have some of the technologically obsessed marketing people craning to criticize. Where are the product features? Where are the specs?
Let's hope we don't have to say this again, but people don't buy technology for the specs. They buy it for what it can do and how easily.
Some designers and sellers of technology seem to believe that there is a vast intellectual amusement in making their products "sophisticated", as if these products should have hidden secrets that only the geekily minded can uncover.
But out there in the real world, there are people who just want to have fun, marvel a little, and not have to ask some crass youth how to get an e-mail or a movie on their little gadget.
Yes, they want their gadget to work simply and to work now. Apple understands this, creates something, and simply says: "Here you go. Switch it on."
Of course, whether you actually do like the product itself is up to you. - Title: Japanese scientist creates 'poop burger'? Surely not
Are you going to be having a burger today? Bacon? Cheese? Pickle? How about feces?
I am not being facetious. I am not even being fecetious.
For Digital Trends informs me of a trend that might just have your digits twitching involuntarily.
It seems that a researcher from the alleged Okayama Laboratory in Japan has taken it upon himself to take the concept of "waste not, want not" to a new and delirious level.
Mitsuyuki Ikeda is clearly not a man who is faint of heart or of stomach. On allegedly being approached by the Tokyo Sewage company, which was concerned that it was in possession of just so much sewage mud, Ikeda digested the problem very carefully.
He poked and prodded at the sewage, actions which revealed that it was rather full of protein, thanks to all the bacteria that was embedded in its sludge.
"Why," he reportedly said to himself, "there is meat in this mud. And there is no murder involved."
So he supposedly set about sucking out the proteins, mixing them in with a reaction enhancer, and slamming them into an exploder--a process that seems to have, well, exploded a poop burger.
The resultant meat is supposedly 63 percent protein. The rest is, well, rat urine, mouse droppings, discarded newspapers, toilet paper, and other tissues. Oh, of course I'm kidding. It is officially described as 25 percent carbohydrates, 3 percent lipids and 9 percent, um, minerals.
As any reasonable human being would, you will be wondering what this poop burger tastes like. Allegedly, with the addition of a little soy protein, it tastes like real meat. The sort you might get at your local Cow's Jr., or wherever it is you gain your sustenance.
You will notice that I have embedded a video that assists you in the visualization of this new culinary trend. You might wonder why this man is using a dismembered finger--last seen in certain videos obtainable online for a fee--in order to indicate the finer elements of his work.
While you consider that, please consider Ikeda's words too. "I admit that few people would be keen to eat it," he said. This is not merely because it supposedly costs between 10 and 20 times what you might pay at Cow's Jr.
Perhaps I've seen too many staged videos lately, but I am still not convinced this experiment is at all real. (Did you notice how many allegedlys and supposedlys I've already slipped in?)
Does it bother you that the narrator so cheerily describes it as a "turd burger"? Does it strike anyone as just a little odd that, at 1:34 into the video, Ikeda reaches into the fridge, on whose door is emblazoned the fine motif: "S--t Burger"?
Of course this could be a mere scientific joke. Of course, it is tempting to believe Digital Trends and all the other media who are reporting this to be real science. And, of course, very soon we'll all be eating excrement anyway, both metaphorically as well as physically.
But I tried googling this Okayama Laboratory and I got a company that seems to make stents and other medical devices. I did get a result for Okayama University, but there seems to be no trace of a Mitsuyuki Ikeda there. Although I did find a Mitsuyuki Ikeda who works for UNESCO and is very keen on Education for Sustainable Development.
I tried googling just "Mitsuyuki Ikeda" and I got hundreds of results about his alleged poop burger, but only one result for the same UNESCO-employed Mitsuyuki Ikeda.
So, unless the poop-burgering Ikeda or one of his cohorts can contact me now--or, even better, send me a sample--I am of a mind to flush this story out as a load of old artificial meat. - Title:Cable operators to Netflix: Bring it on
CHICAGO--Cable operators say they are happy to compete with Netflix. But they think the high cost of sports and live programming will ultimately keep Netflix out of the game.
During a panel discussion here today at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association's Cable Show, Robert Marcus, COO of Time Warner Cable, and Michael Wilner, CEO of Insight Communications, a cable operator based in Kentucky, said that without live programming and sports Netflix and other over-the-top video providers will never be able to compete head to head with them. (The term "over the top" is used to refer to providers that deliver video over the Internet, i.e. Netflix and Hulu.)
"We are more than happy to take all competition," he said. "But if they want to pay the price for the rights to sports and other live programming, they will have to charge more to make up for what they spend on those rights."
For years, cable operators have blamed the rising cost of their TV service on programming costs. It's been estimated that cable operators pay just under $4 of every $10 they take in selling video for channels like MTV, CNN, and ESPN. And those costs keep increasing, especially for live sports broadcasts.
"All sides of the equation are going up," said Insight's Wilner. "Programmers are paying more for the rights. And we as distributors pay more." He added that Netflix and other over-the-top alternatives would have to pass those costs on to consumers.
Still, Wilner said that Netflix, Hulu, and other over-the-top streaming video apps offer consumers more choice.
"People can do whatever they want with their broadband pipe," he said. "We will continue to package video service in a traditional manner as they have become used to...But consumers will have alternatives available. They can make the choice: 'Do I want to pay $60 a month for this video package or pay less and wait for a later release on Hulu.'"
And both cable executives said that Netflix actually is good for business, because it helps attract more high-speed broadband customers.
"Netflix is an app that requires a fat pipe," Time Warner Cable's Marcus said. "So we are in favor of any app that increases the utility of our broadband service." - Title: Google killing 'I'm feeling lucky' button?
Are there things you used to do in the 1990s but just don't do any more? I'm thinking admiring Britney Spears. I'm thinking investing in tech stocks. I'm thinking clicking on Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.
This is an important question today, as a stunning and, frankly, revolutionary development in search has been spotted in Finland.
The remarkable sleuths at Google Operating System espied a Google home page without the "I'm Feeling Lucky" exhortation.
Naturally, Google, being a company that loves to examine every shade of blue that exists to the naked eye, is prone to releasing many different ideas for its rigorous (some would say insane) testing procedures.
But the mere fact that the company might cease to ride its luck is surely a difficult day for those with feelings and memory.
Steven Levy's book, "In The Plex," describes how the button was first created as an expression of Google's supreme confidence that its search results--just one search result--would be superior to that of any other engine.
It might well be that no one actually uses the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button any more, perhaps because so few people in the world actually feel lucky these days.
Still, through the years, the button has served as not merely an example of Google's confidence, but of its essential quirkiness, one that is sometimes sadly buried beneath the company's excessively engineering bent.
Indeed, Google's Marissa Mayer was once heard by Marketplace as explaining: "You know Larry and Sergey had the view, and I certainly share it, that it's possible just to become too dry, too corporate, too much about making money. And you know what I think is really delightful about Google and about the 'I'm Feeling Lucky', is that they remind you that the people here have personality and that they have interests and that there is real people."
So surely Google wouldn't want everyone to suddenly think that no one at Google has personality any more?
New CEO Larry Page wouldn't want you to think that? Would he? - Title: Google gives dads a necktie for Father's Day
Google has a Father's Day present for all the dads out there, and as you probably guessed before looking--it's a necktie.
Unlike the traditional gift, Google's new doodle today honoring Dad does a little more than just sit in a box. Sure, it's a thoughtful gift that links to information on the holiday's history, greeting card images, and an IMDb profile of a bad Robin Williams' movie of the same name from 1997.
But most importantly, it reminds you to give the old man a call and suggests using Google's e-mail program to do it: "Dad. Father. Pops. No matter what you call him, call your dad from Gmail." Google says the call is free in the U.S. and Canada and "super cheap" to other countries.
For those dads hoping for something more jazzy to keep you from those regular Sunday household chores, this gift isn't going to do it. But that doesn't mean you can't still lay down some tracks with Google's Les Paul doodle instead of cleaning out the gutters. - Title: After Sega gets hacked, LulzSec offers to seek revenge
The hacking free-for-all continued this week as Sega apparently became the latest victim of a network breach and none other than hacking group LulzSec offered to help the game company by taking down the responsible parties.
The blog PlayStation LifeStyle posted yesterday what it said was a letter sent by Sega to users of its Sega Pass service, informing them that "unauthorized entry was gained" to the Sega Pass database and that the company is investigating.
"We have identified that a subset of Sega Pass members' e-mail addresses, dates of birth, and encrypted passwords were obtained," the letter reads. "To stress, none of the passwords obtained were stored in plain text. Please note that no personal payment information was stored by Sega, as we use external payment providers, meaning your payment details were not at risk from this intrusion."
The hack would be the latest in a recent explosion of such activity, which has skewered the likes of entertainment giant Sony, defense contractor Lockheed Martin, the U.S. Senate, and the FBI, among others.
The letter doesn't say who might be behind the intrusion; it simply continues with news on how Sega is responding to the hack, along with a couple of cautions:
If you use the same login information for other websites and/or services as you do for Sega Pass, you should change that information immediately.
We have also reset your password and all access to Sega Pass has been temporarily suspended.
Additionally we recommend you please take extra caution if you should receive suspicious e-mails that ask for personal or sensitive information.
As of this writing the Sega Pass service is in fact offline, but a notice says only that the service "is going through some improvements so is currently unavailable for new members to join or existing members to modify their details including resetting passwords." It also says Sega hopes to have Sega Pass "back up and running very soon."
Also yesterday, LulzSec, which has hacked Sony, Nintendo, and FBI affiliate Infragard Atlanta, among others, sent out a public tweet addressed to Sega: "@Sega - contact us," the tweet reads. "We want to help you destroy the hackers that attacked you. We love the Dreamcast, these people are going down."
Underscoring the current out-of-control atmosphere surrounding cybersecurity, LulzSec followed that tweet not long after with a note updating the phone numbers of the request-a-hack hotlines the group had set up earlier in the week. - Title: Brian Tong: All-New Mac Pros and Mac Minis Launching This August
In an exclusive via Twitter today, CNET’s Brian Tong outed that his sources have confirmed Apple will be launching “ALL NEW” Mac Pros and Mac Minis, either the end of July or first week of August.
His tweet read:
EXCLUSIVE: My sources tell me ALL NEW Next-Gen Mac Pros and Mac Minis will launch either end of July first week of August.
Tong has a pretty good track record of being right on these kinds of things, correctly predicting the release of Apple’s recently refreshed iMacs just weeks before their launch.
As with all previous rumors surrounding the release of these two products, the new machines are expected to support Intel’s I/O standard, Thunderbolt, as well as carry Sandy Bridge CPUs
- Will the next iPad offer a Retina Display?
Images found in the software development kit for iOS 5 have kicked the rumor mill back into gear.
Tech site TechUnwrapped reported yesterday that a tipster found images in the framework for integrating Twitter into Apple's next mobile OS that were double the 1,024x768 resolution used in the current iPad. Based on those images, TechUnwrapped said this could mean the next-gen iPad will offer a 2,048x1,536 Retina Display.
However, since the high-resolution images were initially found only in the Twitter framework, TechUnwrapped seemed dubious that an iPad 3 would hit the market this September at the same time that iOS 5 is released--a rumor that was floating around several months ago. But a later update to the TechUnwrapped story also revealed high-resolution images found in Apple's new Newsstand app, offering another potential piece of evidence for a Retina Display.
Apple's Retina Display launched last summer with the iPhone 4. Its high density of 326 pixels per inch makes text and images look smoother and crisper than on previous displays.
The discovery of these Twitter and Newsstand images has created some debate among tech commentators.
9to5Mac sees the images as a "strong indication" that the next iPad will include a 2,048x1,536 Retina Display. However, TechRadar asserts the new images "prove nothing" because similar high-resolution images were found in some iPad icons earlier this year, but then the iPad 2 failed to include a Retina Display.
With the iPad 2 already several months old, more rumors about the iPad 3 have been popping up lately.
A DigiTimes article says that Apple is already drumming up and certifying parts for the next iPad, with component makers eyeing a 2012 launch date. A peek into the iOS 5 code by sources cited by TUAW discovered that Apple may release two different iPad models--a traditional Wi-Fi-only version and a world-mode edition capable of running under either CDMA or GSM. - Title: Apple, Google music clouds can't snub publishers
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20071823-261/apple-google-music-clouds-cant-snub-publishers/#ixzz1PZ1R589W
NEW YORK--Those in digital music should take notice of the olive branches being extended by David Israelite, the president and CEO of the National Music Publishers Association.
Israelite advised NMPA members Tuesday in Manhattan during the trade group's annual conference that it was in their best interest to help legal music sites thrive, Billboard reported. To do this, Israelite wants to streamline the process of licensing rights, a time-consuming task for Internet services that has frustrated managers from SpiralFrog to Apple to Google. Still, Israelite's comments about bridge building with the tech community could surprise some there.
For much of his six years as chief of the NMPA, the group that represents publishers and songwriters, Israelite has generated more notoriety in Silicon Valley for his condemnation of those he accused of distributing music first and asking permission second. He engaged in a war of words with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the technology advocacy group. A former deputy chief of staff for U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, Israelite has filed suit against illegal file-sharing networks on behalf of publishers and lobbied Congress for more copyright protections.
Certainly, Israelite's statements reflect how important Internet distribution has become to the overall music industry. But the comments also come from a man who is quickly becoming one of the most influential in digital music. Over the next couple of years, Israelite could have much to say about the kinds of features cloud music services offer as well as how much they cost consumers.
For decades publishing was a less lucrative business than recorded music and often had to follow the lead of that sector when cutting deals. Only now, in a post-Napster world, has publishing closed the revenue gap and has earned more respect within the industry.
So, now Israelite prepares his group to vie for a larger piece of the digital pie. To help achieve that goal, he has displayed a greater willingness to exercise some of his newly acquired and hard-won clout.
CNET reported last September that Apple planned to announce that it would extend song samples from 30 seconds to 90 seconds. After reading the CNET piece, Israelite and his lawyers informed Apple managers that they couldn't legally offer longer samples without the NMPA's permission, according to an NMPA attorney.
Apple backed down and only released the longer samples months later after negotiating with the publishers.
This spring, the Recording Industry Association of America was trying to force Lime Wire founder Mark Gorton to pay big damages after defeating Gorton in a copyright case, it was Israelite who swooped in at the last minute and negotiated a settlement with Gorton first. And more recently, Israelite was working behind the scenes during the publishers' iCloud negotiations with Apple. He wasn't actively participating in the talks, but multiple music industry sources said Israelite made his presence felt by advising publishers to play hardball--something that displeased the major labels.
In the end, it was the top four record companies that appeared to take a little less to get a deal done. Music industry sources told CNET that revenue from iCloud, a service announced on June 6 that enables users to store and access music libraries from Apple's servers, will be split like this: top four record companies (58 percent), Apple (30 percent), publishers (12 percent).
It is these kinds of tactics that have not endeared Israelite to some in tech circles or in corners of his own industry but has won him a loyal following among NMPA members. Fans of the NMPA chief, these Israelites, hope that their leader can lead them to greener pastures. - Facebook readying launch of iPad app?
Facebook may finally be ready to give iPad users their own app--more than a year after the device went on sale.
The social-networking giant plans to introduce a free app in the coming weeks that is designed and tailored especially for the tablet computer's touch-screen interface, according to a New York Times report that cited people who have been briefed on Facebook's plans. The app, which has been in development for more than a year, is in the final stages of testing, these sources told the Times.
The Facebook Chat and Groups features have been overhauled, and the app will allow people to upload photos and videos shot by the iPad, according to the report.
Facebook representatives did not immediately respond to CNET's request for comment.
iPad users have been begging Facebook for an iPad-native app since Apple began selling the device in April 2010, and it's likely that both Facebook and Apple would benefit from such an app.
The availability of an app optimized for iPads might help sway tablet shoppers on the fence about whether to purchase an Android-based tablet or Apple's device. For Facebook, about half of its 500 million active users access the social network through a mobile device, and those users are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
Facebook has apparently been focusing a lot of attention lately at winning over Apple users. Facebook's iPad app would likely benefit from a new platform that Facebook is reportedly developing to work only on mobile Safari. Dubbed Project Spartan, the new platform will be HTML5-based and aimed at iOS devices like the iPad and iPhone, according to a TechCrunch report.
Facebook is also reportedly working on a photo-sharing app for the iPhone that won't be integrated into Facebook's existing iPhone program. Instead, the service will be a standalone option that leverages Facebook's social graph, according to another TechCrunch report.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20071831-93/facebook-readying-launch-of-ipad-app/#ixzz1PYyrx7a9
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