Teens Fleeing 'Dead and Buried' Facebook

Facebook is your parents' and grandparents' social media --

Facebook 'dead and buried to teens', research finds | Technology | The Guardian: "Comprehensive European research has found that teens are leaving the service in droves - and the biggest deterrent is their parents...."

Study: UK Teens Fleeing 'Dead and Buried' Facebook
PC Magazine
It's a familiar and worrisome refrain for Facebook—the company's core user base is supposedly getting older and the next generation just isn't interested in joining the social network anymore. Now the preliminary results from a multi-country, European ...

Google, Apple Forge Auto Ties
Wall Street Journal
Next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Google and German auto maker Audi AG plan to announce that they are working together ...

Daily Mail

Former HTC staffers charged with fraud, leaking company secrets
Register
Five former HTC employees, including one former executive, have been charged in a Taiwanese court with leaking corporate secrets, accepting illegal kickbacks, and falsifying expenses. According to the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Chien, formerly VP of ...

Nintendo takes eShop offline to mend problems
CNET
After high volumes of traffic caused connection issues, Nintendo takes its online shop offline for repairs. Nintendo's eShop, where you can download games for your game ...

Internet gods release classic video games for free
TG Daily
The Internet Archive is a non-profit dedicated to giving permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. God bless them because now they are giving us ...

Snapchat Downplays Phone Number Matching Hack, Says It's Added New ...
TechCrunch
Following security researchers publishing a way to match Snapchat usernames to phone numbers, Snapchat has published a skimpy statement making the hack sound impractical and noting “We recently added additional counter-measures and continue to ...

Rdio's would-be Netflix killer, the streaming video service Vdio, calls it quits
GigaOM
Rdio is giving up on Vdio, its streaming video service that at one point was meant to compete with Netflix. Maybe it's just too hard to take on the video subscription market leader? vdio screenshot 1. Rdio is killing its streaming video service Vdio, abandoning ...

Mobile Traffic Accounts for almost Half of Total Online Traffic during Holiday
Morning News USA
Mobile Traffic The recent Christmas shopping season indicated a new trend in online traffic. According to data from the yearly IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, mobile traffic finally reached its record peak during the season. It accounted for 48% of total Internet ...

Nokia blames iOS 7 for yanking Here Maps
Tech Times
At a time when Apple was struggling to get its own native mapping and navigation app - Apple Maps - off the ground, rivals were quick to seize the opportunity and launched their own mapping apps as alternatives for iOS users. Nokia's Here Maps was one of ...

What Is Amazon Prime?
Tom's Guide
With its plethora of services — including video, e-books and the ability to buy almost anything — Amazon has created an annual membership program that offers free or discounted services across the board. Read on to find out whether Amazon Prime is worth ...

Best of 2013: An Autopsy of a Dead Social Network - Technology ...
In February, following the collapse of the social network Friendster, computer scientists carried out a digital autopsy to find out what went wrong.
Emerging Technology From the...

2014 Technology Predictions Series: NetApp on Cloud ...
By Suzanne Kattau
As 2013 winds down, it's only natural for people to make personal New Year's resolutions for 2014. It's also a perfect time for technology industry predictions. This is the ninth installation in our multi-part “Technology Predictions for 2014″ ...
SiliconANGLE

What's the best way to fund technology? Mobile, Baldwin school ...
At the Mobile County school system's recent meeting with business leaders and its legislative delegation, David Akridge, executive director of technology for the school system, advised against purchasing digital devices for students, saying ...
Real-Time News from Mobile

Audi to Invest $30 Billion in New Models, Technology - IndustryWeek
The company said it would invest about $30 billion between 2014 and 2018.
IndustryWeek

2013 – The Technology Year in Review - GFI.com
By Christina Goggi
2013 brought us some new technologies, and brought some existing technologies into the mainstream. As we look back at this past year, let's take another look at some of the hottest technologies that made big splashes during 2013.
Talk Tech To Me - GFI Blog

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Online Shopping, Christmas Shipping Surge

Online shopping surging, while brick-and-mortar slowing dying, like newspapers, in the digital age -- the first 2 articles below tell it all --

The Ample Evidence Behind a Christmas Shipping Surge - Businessweek: "U.S. consumers offered plenty of hints in recent weeks that they were keen to shop from their couches. Store traffic and spending on and around the Thanksgiving holiday was dismal by many measures. But online shopping on “Cyber Monday” surged 21 percent over 2012 levels, according to IBM (IBM).   On a mass scale, that trend should have been evident to any economist or supply-chain consultant willing to zoom out from anecdotal reports and semi-scientific surveys. Here’s a 30,000-foot look that shows store traffic has been on a pretty steady decline over the last seven months. In that time, U.S. consumers on the whole spent more money than they did in 2012...."

Behind UPS's Christmas Eve Snafu - WSJ.com: "...UPS handles 50% to 60% of e-commerce orders, according to Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst with Forrester Research. And it is an increasingly crucial part of its business. In its 2012 annual report, UPS said "business to consumer" shipments represented over 40% of its domestic package volume and grew rapidly. Its business-to-business shipping volume, meanwhile, was relatively flat. UPS deployed its spare planes Monday and flew twice as many flights as usual on Christmas Eve. It flew 50% more on Thursday to handle the additional volume...."

Microsoft applies for trademark on 'Mod'

ZDNet
Summary: Could Microsoft be hoping to use 'Mod' as a replacement for ... Or perhaps use apple'smodel and use a smartphone OS instead, forcing8 ... A unique name like Google has only one meaning so if you google Google you ...

As customers fume, Microsoft promises Surface Pro 2 firmware fix ...

Computerworld
Computerworld - Even as Microsoft promised to speed up work on a re-release for a flawed Surface Pro 2 firmware update, customers continued to ...

Maximum PC

Only lawyers profit as tech giants go to war over patents

UPI.com
... entities heated up last week as Google filed a lawsuit in California against an Apple- and Microsoft-backed patent group alleging its "patent dragnet" ...

UPI.com

Google, Facebook collecting some of same information NSA gathers

Chicago Daily Herald
Facebook, Google, Apple and Yahoo were among 15 technology companies... significantly more than users of Facebook, Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc., ... for trustworthy computing at Redmond, Washington-based MicrosoftCorp., ...

The Independent

Google targets big brand advertisers with 'game-changing' technology

The Guardian
Google, which opened a new data centre in Taiwan this month, has high hopes for its new viewability service. Photograph: Pichi Chuang/Reuters.

The Guardian

Google: Government request to remove content worrying

Times of India
NEW DELHI: Search engine giant Google has raised concerns about consistent demands by governments and law enforcement agencies across the ...

Times of India

Apple ios 7.0.4 or 7 jailbreak in iPhone 5S 5C/5 serif imei unlock ...

Agriculture.com
Here, are many news online about the new working iOS 7 or 7.0.4 untethered jailbreak for iPhone 5S or any other device running iOS 7.0.4All Apple ...

Digital Trends

Review: Apple Mac Pro small but super powerful

Alexandria Town Talk
Geared toward pros as an engineering marvel, the new Mac Pro is clearly one of the great ones from the house of Apple. It's the fastest, most powerful ...

Techie News

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Chromebooks capture 20% of commercial notebooks, beat PCs and Macs at Amazon

Add that Microsoft Scroogled ad campaign, along with Windows 8 and Windows phone, to the #FAIL pile in Redmond --

Chromebooks charge into business market, capture 20% of commercial notebooks | PCWorld: "Sales of Chromebooks exploded from basically nothing in 2012 to more than 20 percent of the U.S. commercial PC market, analyst firm NPD reported on Monday, while Windows PCs and Macs remained flat at best...."

Chromebooks top holiday laptop charts at Amazon, beating PCs and Macs - GeekWire: "... Amazon revealed this morning that two Chromebooks – the Samsung Chromebook and the Acer Chromebook – were two of the top-selling laptops for holiday shoppers. The news, delivered as part of Amazon’s press release about its massive holiday season, is a milestone for Google’s web-centric computer operating system. It’s also bad news for Microsoft, which is still trying to push consumers towards Windows 8 PCs as manufacturers look to Google’s platform as a way to diversify their offerings and weather the tablet-fueled storm that is currently pummeling PC market share...."

Google to $2,000 in 2014 - TheStreet: "It has a core source of revenue that more than takes care of its basic needs. In fact, it so owns the digital advertising space it can live like a rockstar on the dollars billions of clicks (and taps) produce. Everything else it does exists to power that turbine and, maybe more importantly, keep risk taking, dreaming and innovation alive in Silicon Valley...."

Google in 2014: The World Is (Almost) Its Oyster: " . . . I've heard rumors that the company is working on an Oculus Rift-type virtual reality headset. (It did just poach Microsoft's top augmented reality engineer, Blaise Agüera y Arcas.) Releasing such a headset, at low Oculus Rift-like prices, would make a nice compliment to Google Glass. Despite the disruptive effects of being billionaires, of having to deal with national politics and NSA intrusion, Page and Brin have successfully retained the spirits of those 27-year-old geeks with audacious ambition and a strong desire to show us the next shiny thing. However good a year the company has in 2014, there seems little doubt it will surpass itself in 2015."

Google Vs Apple, Media Mentions: Google Tops Apple in 2013 | BGR: "Google had a pretty good year in 2013. The company’s share price exploded to all-time highs, Android now eclipses all other mobile platforms in global market share at more than 80%, and Google’s share of search traffic is still nearly 70% despite increased competition from Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing. Now, there’s a new feather Google can put in its cap: According to Dow Jones, Google dethroned Apple in 2013 and because the most talked-about company in terms of global media attention..."

2014 is the year smartphones hit $20 - Quartz: "This is how technology works: In 2007, the iPhone debuted at a carrier-subsidized price of $500. Seven years later, mobile rewards company Jana predicts that in 2014, Chinese-made, Android-powered smartphones of comparable functionality will be available for consumers to buy for $20 unsubsidized in China."

CTIA website shows mobile app data usage | PCWorld: "The website also includes information about how mobile device owners can conserve data. KnowMyApp.org currently includes test results for the top 50 paid and free apps from the Apple and Google stores, and CTIA plans to add more apps each month. The trade group invites developers to submit apps to be tested."
http://www.knowmyapp.org/ 

Amazon Prime tops 20 million members as company touts its best holiday season ever - GeekWire: "Overall, Amazon says the 2013 holiday season was its “best ever,” with more than 36.8 million items ordered on Cyber Monday alone. It isn’t a surprise that the holiday season set a new record, given the steady growth in e-commerce sales worldwide."

Apple CEO's compensation rises slightly to $4.3M

USA TODAY
CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) — Apple CEO Timothy Cook received a compensation package valued at nearly $4.3 million this year, up slightly from 2012.

Indian Express

Apple iOS Christmas online shopping sales 5 times higher than ...

Los Angeles Times
Every quarter Google has a larger mobile market share than Apple, but when it comes to ... Amazon says it sold 426 items a second on Cyber Monday.

University Herald

Apple leads record return of cash to shareholders

USA TODAY
When it comes to Wall Street and shareholders, cash is still king. With corporate profits at record highs and interest rates near historic lows, companies ...

Microsoft's 2014 makeover: It's all up ...

CNET
The world waits for Microsoft to reveal the successor to CEO Steve Ballmer. That's when the hard decisions start....

Venture Capital Post

Is Apple's 13-in. iPad a desktop for kids?

Computerworld
(Apple's current biggest iPad models have 9.7-in. screens.) ... The major operating system companies -- Google, Microsoft and Apple -- know that we're ...

ValueWalk

Google Loses Bid for Wiretap Suit Appeals Court Rehearing

Bloomberg
Google Inc. (GOOG) lost a bid for a rehearing before a federal appeals court that said the operator of the world's most-used search engine must face ...

Livemint

Apple Urges Vote Against Icahn Proposal

Bloomberg
Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) –- Wedge Partners Principal Brian Blair discusses Apple's statement to its shareholders urging them to vote against billionaire ...

Google Gives Away 'Best' Albums Of 2013 As Free Downloads: Play ...

International Business Times
Google is giving away "The Ghost of What You Believe" from Chvrches and "Yeezus" from Kanye West as part of its staff-chosen "Play Picks 2013.

The Verge

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T-Mobile, the Uncarrier, Reinventing Wireless

In the US, right now, T-Mobile is The Carrier --

The best and worst of smartphones in 2013: Gearing up for the next big thing | VentureBeat | Mobile | by Devindra Hardawar: " . . . T-Mobile is a singular entity among U.S. carriers, one that has broken free from tired industry standards. And in the process, it’s forced the entire American wireless industry to wake up ... new CEO John Legere. With his “Uncarrier” initiatives, he did away with complicated carrier contracts, difficult upgrading processes, and the terrifying threat of international roaming fees. And out of nowhere, he also pushed T-Mobile to offer free mobile internet access for all tablets. T-Mobile’s (much larger) carrier competition ended up responding with revamped plans of their own, and in doing so made T-Mobile’s point clear: It can innovate where the giants can’t. Using the precious wireless spectrum and breakup fee from AT&T (following its failed bid to acquire the carrier in 2011), Legere was also able to aggressively roll out T-Mobile’s LTE network in 2013. Now T-Mobile is actually adding new customers every quarter ...."

Google expands Chromebook school programme in India

Economic Times
Google is running this programme in some 3,000 schools in the US, Singapore and Malaysia, a Google executive with direct knowledge of the plan ...

Economic Times

Apple Renews Request for Sales Ban on Older Samsung Products

Businessweek
A Samsung Electronics Co. Galaxy S III smartphone, top, and a Galaxy Nexus smartphone, bottom, are arranged for a photograph next to theApple ...

Business Standard

Microsoft's Nokia Deal Said to Face China Limits on Patent Fees

Bloomberg
Microsoft and Nokia face an EU antitrust complaint filed by Google last year that ... While Samsung and Apple dominate global smartphone shipments, ...

Women Citizen

Apple Watch: Boys of Tech - part 2

New Zealand Herald
In the one of my previous Apple Watch blogs I talked about how podcasts work, ... "Marko Calasan was the youngest ever Microsoft Certified Systems ... he had set up; Cameron Collie, the guy whoGoogle threatened to sue over the ...

Amazon's Impressively Successful Holiday?

Wall Street Journal (blog)
Amazon shipped its annual press release Thursday with impressive-sounding facts touting the performance of its $79 membership-based service, ...

EcommerceBytes

Microsoft In 2013: 7 Lessons Learned

InformationWeek (blog)
Will it beat Amazon in the cloud? Will it be able to build an ecosystem that competes with Apple or Google? Will Office remain the dominant ...

Capital Technologies

Apple wants Siri to be able to search your iPhone photos

Apple Insider
Starting with iOS 7, Apple began automatically sorting users' iPhone photos based on time taken and location. But a new patent application reveals ...

Apple Insider

Microsoft launches safety app for Windows Phone users in India

ZDNet
Summary: The app called Guardian leverages Microsoft Windows Azure cloud services and Bing Maps APIs to enable a "track me" feature. It also has ...

ZDNet

Google (GOOG) Chromebooks Were Amazon (AMZN) Holiday Best ...

TheStreet.com
The second-place spot went to the Asus Transformerbook which runsMicrosoft's (MSFT) Windows 8 operating system. There were no Apple(AAPL) ...

ValueWalk

Apple Reveals Top App Downloads of 2013

CIO Today
Mobile gaming was an addiction in 2013, as seen by the number-one app download of the year: Candy Crush Saga, according to Apple. Other key ...

CIO Today

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Microsoft Windows 8 Mess; Windows Phone Disappoints

Microsoft 2013 -- Windows 8 #FAIL; Windows Phone the "biggest disappointment" (see next two articles) --

Microsoft’s Windows 8 Is Such a Mess Hewlett-Packard Is Now Teaching People How to Use It (GOOG, HPQ, MSFT): "Confused by Microsoft's Windows 8? You're not alone. Microsoft's hardware partner, Hewlett-Packard, is going to great lengths to explain the operating system to potential customers, launching a website for such a purpose. The decision to essentially do Microsoft's work for it highlights HP's dependency on Microsoft, although the company has been working to reduce it by strengthening its partnership with Google. Windows 8 adoption has been poor . . ."

The best and worst of smartphones in 2013: Gearing up for the next big thing | VentureBeat | Mobile | by Devindra Hardawar: "Biggest disappointment: Windows Phone Windows Phone finally managed to snag the No. 3 spot in the smartphone market this year, jumping up 150 percent to take 3.6 percent of the global market (according to IDC). But that rise mostly stemmed from a slew of great handsets from Nokia’s and BlackBerry’s implosion, not through any major improvements in Windows Phone itself."

Verizon, AT&T monthly data use could force end of caps | BGR: "If more mobile subscribers get hit with monthly overage fees then it could benefit both T-Mobile and Sprint, neither of which implements data caps on their smartphone plans. Sprint has already taken shots at the two major incumbent carriers for their capped family data plans and T-Mobile has shown that it will gleefully bash its rivals for just about everything, so we can expect to see a renewed focus on data caps next year if they increasingly become a pain point for more consumers."

Taiwan Fines Apple for iPhone Price-Plan Meddling - Jenny W. Hsu ...

Jenny W. Hsu

Apple Inc. AAPL -0.51%  has been fined 20 million New Taiwan dollars (US$670,000) and ordered to stop interfering with mobile service providers and handset distributors' pricing, Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission said on Wednesday. Apple can appeal but may face a fine up to NT$50 million if it doesn't comply, the commission said....

Google sues to protect Android device makers from Apple-backed patent hell — Tech News and Analysis: "... Despite its cocky name, Rockstar is simply a corporate patent troll hatched by Google rivals — including Apple, Microsoft and BlackBerry — after the rivals spent $4.5 billion ($2.5 billion from Apple) in 2012 for a trove of patents from Nortel, a long defunct Canadian telco company. Today, Rockstar employs once-proud Canadian engineers to help with the trolling operation. The filing says: Rockstar produces no products and practices no patents. Instead, Rockstar employs a staff of engineers in Ontario, Canada, who examine other companies’ successful products to find anything that Rockstar might use to demand and extract licenses to its patents under threat of litigation...."

BlackBerry Co-Founder Cuts Stake - NYTimes.com: "Mike Lazaridis, a founder and former executive at BlackBerry, took advantage of a rare rise in its share price to cut his stake in the company. Mr. Lazaridis reported in a regulatory filing that a holding company he controls sold 3.5 million shares for about $27.4 million on Monday and Tuesday. Before the sale, Mr. Lazaridis owned about 5.7 percent of the company. Mr. Lazaridis offered no explanation for the sale in the filing, and a spokesman said Mr. Lazaridis had no comment."

Amazon offers shipping refunds as UPS misses some Christmas ...
Dallas Morning News
Packages ready to ship move along a conveyor belt at Amazon.com's Phoenix fulfillment center. Millions of online shoppers were expected to click on ...

Dallas Morning News

Amazon: 5 bold predictions for 2014

CNET
Amazon spent 2013 attempting to wow us and, for the most part, succeeded. ... The strategy has worked for Google and its Nexus 5 phone, which it is ...

Google and Apple gear up for next mobile battle

Telegraph.co.uk
Google has predicted its dominant web search engine will mean it will beatApple in the race to ... It uses Microsoft Bing for web searches, for instance.

Telegraph.co.uk

Google Nexus 5 review

Hindu Business Line
Apple might be the queen bee of design, but that doesn't mean the others don't know how to do 'minimalism' right. Look at the Nexus 5 and you'll ...

Hindu Business Line

Microsoft Wants To Get Rid of Passwords, Joins Group

Tom's Hardware Guide
Microsoft joins Google, BlackBerry, Lenovo, MasterCard, LG Electronics and many other industry leaders in making FIDO specifications the global ...

Apple's 2nd generation Mac Pro: The first hands-on reviews

Fortune
Apple's 2nd generation Mac Pro: The first hands-on reviews ... "Not since our first "eyes on" experience with Google Glass earlier this year has the ...

Merck, Apple, BMW, Google: Intellectual Property

Bloomberg
A consortium created by Apple Inc. (AAPL), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and other technology companies to acquire $4.5 billion of patents from Nortel ...

Google Gains Another Ally in Its War With Microsoft

DailyFinance
Meanwhile, Microsoft, in its attempt to compete with Google and Apple on the tablet front, has alienated many of its longtime allies. Hewlett-Packard's ...

The Hindu

Top science and space stories of 2013

CNN
(CNN) -- It has been a thrilling year of discovery in many areas of science, but also a sobering time -- federal funding cuts threaten the future of innovation, and rising carbon dioxide levels foreshadow environmental and health challenges linked to climate ...

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Best tech product of 2013, Google Glass

The next 2 articles explain why Google Glass is our best tech product of 2013 --

Best mobile product of 2013: Google Glass | Digital Trends

Jeffrey Van Camp
Our favorite mobile product of 2013 is Google Glass. The epic eyewear ... Apple announces iPhone deal with China Mobile, world's largest wireless carrier · ZX Spectrum ... Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2013) review....
Digital Trends

Google Glass Does Solar Panel Installs in the California Sun | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com: "....the director of IT at Sullivan Solar Power...is slipping Google Glass onto the heads of the field technicians who install its solar panels atop homes and businesses across Southern California...these field techs need ready access to all sorts of specs and plans describing the job at hand. In the past, they’ve carried three-ring binders onto the roof, but those are so hard to handle — particularly when the wind is blowing pages...So Chagala and company are switching to Glass, allowing their techs to browse documents simply by looking through the eyewear...“When you have someone on a roof, safety is your primary concern,” Chagala says. “Having both hands free is significant.”..." (read more at link above)

The 100 essential websites | Technology | The Guardian: "Here we go again … our latest list of the 100 best websites sees short attention spans, the rise of Twitter, more browser wars and celebrity gossip sites setting the news agenda..." (read more at link above)

Best of 2013: Government Lab Reveals It Has Operated Quantum Internet for Over Two Years | MIT Technology Review: "In May, the blog revealed that for more than two years, Los Alamos National Labs has been running a quantum internet capable of sending perfectly secure messages."

Microsoft to face computer makers' rebellion at CES

Computerworld
Computerworld - Microsoft will face a rebellion of long-time partners at next month's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) when OEMs introduce Windows personal computers also able to run Android mobile apps....

Apple, InterDigital, China Trade, IFixit : Intellectual Property

Businessweek
Apple Inc. (AAPL:US) and Oracle Corp. (ORCL:US) won a judge's order separating and putting on hold a dispute between them about indemnification ...

Apple faces competition with iPad challengers

NewsOK.com
Apple faces its strongest slate of challengers this holiday season, with ... You can get Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 for $120 less than the iPad ...you can get a 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX or a 7-inch Google Nexus 7 for $229, ...

Zee News

Apple has 'big plans' for 2014, says CEO

Business Today
Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook holds up the new iPad Air during an Apple event in San Francisco, California. Reuters. Apple enthusiasts across the globe ...

Business Today

Microsoft's Xbox One video-game console sales hit 2 million

Economic Times
Microsoft and Sony are trying to attract gamers against a backdrop of declining console sales. From 2008 to 2012, the market shrank 32%.

Economic Times

Apple Inks Deal with China Mobile, Will Sell iPhones Jan. 17

PC Magazine
Here we go. Apple has officially signed a deal with China Mobile, the world's largest mobile phone carrier at 763 million or so total subscribers, ...

Apple's iPhones are Finally Coming to China Mobile - The Next Web

Martin Bryant
It's been talked about for long enough, and finally a deal has been signed. Apple and China Mobile are bringing the iPhone 5s and 5c to the world's ...
The Next Web

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Reform Government Surveillance, The 5 Principles

Merry Christmas and Season's Greetings!

Tech industry chieftains unloaded on Obama about the NSA for 2 and 1/2 hours this past week --

Yahoo’s Mayer Said to Warn of Web Balkanization in Spying - Bloomberg: "Yahoo! Inc. Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer warned President Barack Obama the backlash over U.S. spying threatens to Balkanize the Internet, as countries adopt different standards to thwart surveillance, according to an industry official. Mayer was among 15 technology company executives including Apple Inc. (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt who met at the White House...Schmidt began by going over five principles supported by the companies to changing government surveillance programs, including limiting collection of user information and transparency about government demands, according to the industry official..." (see below)

Reform Government Surveillance: The Principles:

1 Limiting Governments’ Authority to Collect Users’ Information
Governments should codify sensible limitations on their ability to compel service providers to disclose user data that balance their need for the data in limited circumstances, users’ reasonable privacy interests, and the impact on trust in the Internet. In addition, governments should limit surveillance to specific, known users for lawful purposes, and should not undertake bulk data collection of Internet communications.

 2 Oversight and Accountability
Intelligence agencies seeking to collect or compel the production of information should do so under a clear legal framework in which executive powers are subject to strong checks and balances. Reviewing courts should be independent and include an adversarial process, and governments should allow important rulings of law to be made public in a timely manner so that the courts are accountable to an informed citizenry.

3 Transparency About Government Demands
Transparency is essential to a debate over governments’ surveillance powers and the scope of programs that are administered under those powers. Governments should allow companies to publish the number and nature of government demands for user information. In addition, governments should also promptly disclose this data publicly.

4 Respecting the Free Flow of Information
The ability of data to flow or be accessed across borders is essential to a robust 21st century global economy. Governments should permit the transfer of data and should not inhibit access by companies or individuals to lawfully available information that is stored outside of the country. Governments should not require service providers to locate infrastructure within a country’s borders or operate locally.

5 Avoiding Conflicts Among Governments
In order to avoid conflicting laws, there should be a robust, principled, and transparent framework to govern lawful requests for data across jurisdictions, such as improved mutual legal assistance treaty — or “MLAT” — processes. Where the laws of one jurisdiction conflict with the laws of another, it is incumbent upon governments to work together to resolve the conflict.

/s/ AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, Yahoo

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Best Laptops: Google Chromebooks and Apple MacBooks

Editor's personal recommendation*: Shopping for a notebook computer? Whatever you do, avoid a Windows 8.0 or Windows 8.1 faux notebook (these are really touchscreen tablets posing as notebook computers). If you cannot find a Windows 7 notebook, better go with either a Chromebook or MacBook. (*unpaid, unsponsored recommendation)

Google Chromebooks do the simple things well

Sydney Morning Herald

Google's Chromebooks are no-frills laptops. They're light, simple, fast and cheap... 

They're meant for people who use laptops for simple things, such as email, surfing the net, watching videos, listening to music and working on the odd word document. 

If the kids need a computer to do their homework, or if the grandparents need a computer for email and simple web browsing, for example, they're perfect.

... (read more at link above)

Google Remembers Where You Were

Forbes
With Google's Location History enabled, you can access a visual log of your daily whereabouts. A recent story on TechCrunch highlighted a ...

Bitbag

Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 Review: An Unmatched Hardware ...

Forbes
Amazon has spent the last few years building up their hardware line, ... It's 100g lighter than Apple's iPad Air, and 120g lighter than Sony's Xperia ...

Associated News

Google Transparency Report Says Censorship Way Up

Top Tech News
Search giant Google has issued its latest transparency report, tabulating government requests to remove content from its services. The latest numbers ...

Apple Store in Back Bay briefly evacuated after bomb threat

Boston.com
A bomb threat that turned out to be a hoax was called into the Apple Store in Back Bay Saturday night, prompting an evacuation as authorities swept ...

Google Glass no game-changer but has potential, says Franklin ...

Indianapolis Star
Google Glass was supposed to be a “game-changer” for Franklin Community High School teacher Don Wettrick and his students. But after he shelled ...

Google Glass Now Adding Eye Winks for Picture Taking

eWeek
Google Glass just got another cool collection of new capabilities, including the ability to take a photograph with only a wink of a user's eye.

eWeek

Amazon Air Prime : Giving Up Our Privacy One Flight at a Time

New Pittsburgh Courier
How else can you explain the impending explosion of Amazon Air Prime. Forget your ... Google scans your email to send you ads. In other words, most ...

News & Observer

Google search results declare Daily Jang as No 1

The News International
KARACHI: Google has announced its annual Year End Zeitgeist, a look at 2013 through the collective eyes of the world on the web, offering a unique ...

The News International

Bus stoppage: Why Google and Apple were targeted - Apple 2.0 ...

Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Activists fighting Bay Area landlords found a way to get the national media's attention. FORTUNE -- It's not every day that the New York Times cares ...

Report on NSA 'secret' payments to RSA fuels encryption controversy
PCWorld
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) paid US$10 million to vendor RSA in a “secret” deal to incorporate a deliberately flawed encryption algorithm into widely used security software, according to a Reuters report that is reigniting controversy about the ...

Japanese Team Dominates Competition to Create Rescue Robots
New York Times
HOMESTEAD, Fla. — An international competition to pave the way for a new generation of rescue robots was dominated by a team of Japanese roboticists who were students in the laboratory of a pioneer in the design of intelligent humanoid machines....

Scientific expedition discovers vast water store beneath Greenland's ice
GMA News
PARIS - A vast store of water equivalent in area to Ireland lies beneath Greenland's icesheet, and it may provide answers to one of the big riddles of climate change, scientists reported on Sunday. In 2011, US scientists crossed the southern Greenland ...

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Motorola Has Best Smartphones and Prompt Android Updates!

Shopping for a new smartphone? Let me make this easy for you -- Go to http://www.motorola.com and design (and buy) your new Moto X or Moto G. Looking for a US carrier with the best deals? T-Mobile (off contract) is the way to go! Order your Motorola phone with the T-Mobile sim card already installed, and when you receive it, one phone call to T-Mobile will open your account, transfer your number and activate the phone (and you can save $$$). (Editor's note: these are unpaid recommendations, and are based on the expri.com editor's personal experience and other reviews and experiences).

Motorola’s Prompt Android Updates Are Making Everyone Else Look Bad | TIME.com: By updating its phones to Android 4.4 already, Motorola is embarrassing its rival phone makers. It’s now clearer than ever that other companies either aren’t dedicating enough resources to updating their phones, or need more time because their modifications to Android require more work. Most major phone makers tweak the Android source code on their handsets, changing the visual aesthetic and modifying core apps ... Motorola proved that a there’s a better way. Aesthetically, its phones are similar to stock Android, but Motorola has added a few useful features on top, such as always-on voice commands and notifications that appear as you’re taking the phone out of your pocket...(read more at link above)

Why regulators are likely to reject a Sprint/T-Mobile deal | Mobile - CNET News: "Reports have surfaced that Sprint is interested in acquiring T-Mobile, but T-Mobile's recent success with its "Uncarrier" strategy is likely to sway regulators to block any deal that takes T-Mobile out of the game..."

BlackBerry Staggers to a Deeper, $4.4 Billion Loss - NYTimes.com: "BlackBerry, the hobbled smartphone maker, reported more dire financial news on Friday, posting a $4.4 billion loss and a 56 percent drop in revenue in its latest quarter. The company also outlined a sharp retreat from its once-core handset business by entering a partnership with the Asian contract manufacturer Foxconn."

BlackBerry CEO details survival strategy | Mobile - CNET News: "For now, BlackBerry will not be building high-end smartphones for the North American consumer smartphone market. Instead, Chen said that the company will focus device development in this market on enterprise customers..."

Google seeks to commercialize humanoid robots
Computerworld
Computerworld - HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- The first sign that Google now owns robotics heavyweight Boston Dynamics was when the Google bus rolled ...

Computerworld

Apple, Samsung Dominate Tablet Market
InformationWeek
A majority of consumers stick with gear made by Apple or Samsung. ... made up of smaller entry-level devices from the likes of Asus, HP, and Amazon.

Android Community

Amazon workers in Germany to continue strikes in 2014
Reuters
Hundreds of workers at Amazon's logistic centers in Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig... Amazon said that, on average, only 900 staff joined the strike and that ...

NDTV

Google celebrates 100 years of crossword puzzles with doodle
Los Angeles Times
Google is celebrating the centennial of crossword puzzles Friday with an interactive doodle on its home page. Users can head to Google.com to play ...

Slate Magazine (blog)

Protesters vandalize Google bus, block Apple shuttle
USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO -- As tech-driven housing costs and evictions soar, anti-gentrification protesters in San Francisco and Oakland on Friday again ...

Bay Area Indymedia

Google announces ban on "multi-purpose" Chrome extensions
ZDNet
Summary: Developers who write extensions for Chrome are on notice. Keep it simple, or risk getting kicked out of the Chrome Web Store. But what's ...

ZDNet

Microsoft: Bing is not a bottomless money pit (any more)
ZDNet (blog)
Summary: Microsoft's Chief Financial Officer for its Applications and Services group tells investors now is the time for Microsoft to put its foot on the gas ...

Google's Top Trending Video Games Of 2013 List Is Full Of Surprises
Forbes
Google has released its annual Zeitgeist, which includes a bunch of top-10 lists of popular and trending searches, including the most talked about and ...

The Vine

Apple's Top Apps of 2013: 10 Insights from the Most Popular ...
eWeek
Apple recently announced its most popular apps of 2013. ... bundled with iOS, but after Apple's falling out with Google, the company nixed that. ... But the popularity of the Amazon Kindle app on the iPad indicates folks are also ...

The Verge

Google gives thumbs-up to first Cyanogen phone
CNET
In a first for the custom Android ROM community, Google signals its approval... Google has approved of Cyanogen's plan to ship CyanogenMod on an ...

SlashGear

5 Things to Know About the Winter Solstice | TIME.com: "Behold! A year has passed since the great Mayan apocalypse of 2012 — newsflash: we’re all still here — and the winter solstice is again upon us. The solstice marks the shortest day of the year for dwellers in the Northern Hemisphere, and the longest day of the year for those south of the equator...The winter solstice occurs at a specific time, not just day. This year, at 12:11 p.m. EST on Saturday, Dec. 21, the sun shone directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, the farthest south the sun reaches, leading to less light and colder temperatures in the north. In the Southern Hemisphere, it was the longest day of the year...."

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