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Submission + - Disney pulls a reverse Santa, takes back Christmas shows from Amazon customers

Submitted by Sockatume
Sockatume writes: Since 2011, Amazon Instant Video has sold a series of Christmas shorts from Disney called "Prep and Landing". Unfortunately this holiday season, Disney has had a change of heart and has decided to make the shorts exclusive to its own channels. Showing an abundance of Christmas cheer, the Mickey Mouse company went so far as to retroactively withdrawn the shows from Amazon, so that customers who have already paid for them no longer have access. Apparently this reverse-Santa facility is a feature Amazon provides all publishers, and customers have little recourse but to go cap-in-hand to a Disney outlet and pay for the shows again.
The Internet

Submission + - How a Digital Pioneer Turned Against the Web (smithsonianmag.com)

Submitted by cheezitmike
cheezitmike writes: Jaron Lanier helped to pioneer the field of Virtual Reality in the 1980's and was an influential part of the early days of the digital revolution. But later, he turned against the web culture that he helped to create. Smithsonian Magazine talked to Lanier to explore his thinking on how the Internet is leading our culture the wrong way: 'Lanier was one of the creators of our current digital reality and now he wants to subvert the “hive mind,” as the web world’s been called, before it engulfs us all, destroys political discourse, economic stability, the dignity of personhood and leads to “social catastrophe.”'

Submission + - Beatles song enters public domain in Europe (rollingstone.com)

Submitted by slartibartfastatp
slartibartfastatp writes: A rolling stone article says 'The Beatles first single, "Love Me Do," has entered the pubic domain in Europe, thanks to current copyright law in the European Union, Complete Music Update reports.

As the E.U. law currently stands, copyright for recorded music is set to expire after 50 years. Since "Love Me Do" and its B-side, "P.S. I Love You," were released in 1962, protection for the tracks expired on December 31st, 2012. Although a move is underway to extend recording copyrights to 70 years, the revised law won't come into effect before next November. (In the United States, recordings retain copyright protection for up to 95 years.)'
Businesses

Submission + - Instagram Loses Half Its Daily Users In A Month (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "Instagram scared off a lot of users back in December when it decided to update its original Terms of Service for 2013. But even though the company reneged on its new terms after a week of solid backlash, Instagram users are still fleeing the photo-sharing app in troves. According to new app traffic data, Instagram has lost roughly half of all its active users in the month since proposing to change its original Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. In mid-December, Instagram boasted about 16.3 million daily active users; as of Jan. 14, Instagram only has about 7.6 million daily users."
Education

Submission + - Classroom Clashes over Science Education (aaas.org)

Submitted by cheezitmike
cheezitmike writes: In a two-part series, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) examines two hot-button topics that create clashes in the classroom between science teachers and conservative-leaning students, parents, school boards, and state legislatures. Part 1 looks at the struggle of teachers to cover evolution in the face of religious push-back from students and legislatures. Part 2 deals with teaching climate change, and how teachers increasingly have to deal with political pressure from those who insist that there must be two sides to the discussion.
Businesses

Submission + - Elite Social Network TopCom Isn't Evil: An Interview with Tibco CTO Matt Quinn (vice.com)

Submitted by
pigrabbitbear
pigrabbitbear writes: "Back when the news dropped that the World Economic Forum had commissioned software giant Tibco to produce TopCom, a social network supposedly designed for the 200 most powerful figures in the world, people started to freak out. It was described as the antithesis of the open, social web: A hyper-exclusive Facebook where the world’s elite could communicate instantly and secretly, whether that be coordinating sanctions against Iran or sharing goofy pictures from important galas.

Blame it on the Internet’s raw nerves following the SOPA fiasco and general paranoia, but the news about TopCom ruffled skeptics’ feathers. The Esquire profile of Tibco CEO Vivek Ranadivé, which focused on his vision of dominating the information-aggregation realm, may not have helped allay fears that TopCom wasn’t the tool of some new world order.

According to Tibco CTO Matt Quinn, TopCom is ultimately an über-secure version of tibbr, Tibco’s social platform that builds connections around topics rather than relationships. For world leaders, it’s billed as a quicker way to find expert advice on key issues and disasters."

Comment mHealth (Score 3, Insightful) 111

by cheezitmike (#39140669) Attached to: Are Smartphones Starting a Boom In DIY Medicine?
Using mobile technologies for healthcare is not just for self-diagnosis or as an alternative to expensive medical care. Many doctors and hospitals are adopting the technology and encouraging their patients to adopt it. There are lots of things you can do smaller and cheaper where telehealth systems or healthcare websites are currently being used. Preventive medicine mobile applications have been successful for improving health outcomes for patients with chronic conditions, in particular. Read the article before casually dismissing the field as a bunch of hypochondriacs trying to self-medicate.

If you're a developer interested in the mobile health field, the mHealth Summit is currently the best annual conference.focused specifically on mobile health out there: http://www.mhealthsummit.org/ Eric Topol, the subject of the NY Times article in the summary above, was one of the keynote speakers at the 2011 conference, along with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.
Google

Submission + - Will Google+ Break Search? (readwriteweb.com)

Submitted by nonprofiteer
nonprofiteer writes: A journalist at RWW wrote an angry screed about what social signals from Google+ are doing to Google search results, as it starts to privilege social content over straight informational content. His main example is that a recent story he wrote is outranked by two Google+ posts commenting on the story. Alexis Madrigal at the Atlantic asks whether the missions of a social network and a search engine are antithetical.http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/atop-the-litany-of-google-plus-complaints-its-breaking-search/250863/
Google

Submission + - Will Google+ Break Search? (readwriteweb.com)

Submitted by nonprofiteer
nonprofiteer writes: A journalist at RWW writes an angry screed about the way that Google is starting to privilege Google+ posts over content from other websites. His example is that one of his own RWW stories is outranked by two + posts about the story. He is worried that as Google tries to compete in social, it will ruin its dependable search interface. Madrigal at The Atlantic asks if "the missions of a social network and a search engine are antithetical." http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/atop-the-litany-of-google-plus-complaints-its-breaking-search/250863/

Comment Getting sued by Hasbro (Score 1) 168

by cheezitmike (#38587434) Attached to: Transformer Prime To Get ICS On January 12, Boot Unlocker Coming
ASUS is also facing a lawsuit from Hasbro, who feels that the name "Transformer Prime" might just be infringing on one of its trademarks... http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/21/it-had-to-happen-eventually-hasbro-sues-asus-over-transformer-name/ Hasbro's asking for an injunction to halt sales until the case is resolved...
Cellphones

Submission + - Smartphones Take on Silent Killers (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: New technology can turn your cellphone into a portable “silent killer” detector. And in the near future, this technology has the potential to convert the average cellphone into a handheld detector capable of warning you of chemical warfare attacks and automatically calling for help.

On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology division demonstrated at the California Fire Department’s training center exactly how this new Cell-All technology — which we learned about back in April of last year — can save lives. As of this week, Synkera Technologies has a Bluetooth version developed with DHS available to the public for trial and evaluation. An external sleeve that would go over the phone — and was developed by NASA's Center for Nanotechnology with a major smartphone manufacturer — may soon be available as well.
Space

Submission + - Mercury Turns Out to be a Weird Little World (jhuapl.edu) 1

Submitted by
sighted
sighted writes: "The robotic spacecraft MESSENGER, now orbiting the first planet, has found odd features on its surface, including unexplained, blueish 'hollows' that may be actively forming today. The new findings will be published this week in Science. One scientist said, 'The conventional wisdom was that Mercury is just like the Moon. But from its vantage point in orbit, MESSENGER is showing us that Mercury is radically different from the Moon in just about every way we can measure.'"
Chrome

Submission + - Chrome Set To Take No. 2 Spot From Firefox (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "Google's Chrome is on the brink of replacing Firefox as the second-most-popular browser, says the Web statistics firm StatCounter, which shows that Chrome will pass Firefox to take the No. 2 spot behind Microsoft's IE no later than December. As of Wednesday, Chrome's global average user share for September was 23.6%, while Firefox's stood at 26.8%. IE, meanwhile, was at 41.7%. The climb of Chrome during 2011 has been astonishing: It has gained eight percentage point since January 2011, representing a 50% increase. During that same period, Firefox has dropped almost four percentage points, a decline of about 13%, while IE has also fallen four points, a 9% dip. That means Chrome is essentially reaping all the defections from Firefox and IE."

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