If you live in a big city without a car, it's probably easier to just do all your shopping on Amazon. If you drive everywhere and have a Costco membership, it might make sense to do all your shopping there. If you drive sometimes but like getting packages, maybe you combine the best of both worlds? Whatever it is you do for shopping though, how much of it do you do with Amazon?
     |
The Motorola YouTube account has just posted a new video teasing upcoming news. Titled "Windy Day," the video shows several people being handed a Moto X and twirling around — as one would with an augmented reality app or game — with the video description reading:
A mouse, a red hat, a windy day and a smile. This is a new kind of story. Made by Motorola and Jan Pinkava. Brought to life only on the Moto X.
Jan Pinkava is a well-known director, and his work on a short called Windy Day was shown off at the recent Qualcomm Uplinq conference as a demonstration of a new real-time animation process from Pixar called OpenSubdiv. Motorola was listed as a client on the project, so we can connect a few dots and see where this is headed.
A little sneak peek at the very end of the video shows a screen capture of some sort of game running on the Moto X and the caption "Windy Day only on Moto X." Next week it looks like we'll be looking at the launch of a Moto X-exclusive app or game of some sort integrating this technology and design from Pinkava.
| |
Instagram advertising is coming, we can't avoid it, and now we get our first look at what it's going to look like in our streams. The good news; the ads don't appear to jump out and smack you in the face as such. And, initially the rollout will be conducted with a select group of partners. From the Instagram blog:
We want ads to be creative and engaging, so we’re starting with just a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community. If you see an ad that doesn’t interest you, you can tap the “…” below it to hide it and provide feedback about what you didn’t like. This will help us show you more interesting ads in the future.
In essence, an ad will look just like a regular piece of Instagram content, except it will be labelled as sponsored where the timestamp would usually be. So, it's not overly offensive, at least, not yet, and the chance to provide feedback is welcome – though how much of it is actually used will still draw skeptics.
For some sample images, drop by the Instagram blog at the source link below. Are you going to be OK with this kind of ad in your streams, or is it still putting you off Instagram going forward?
Source: Instagram
| |
Seattle is known for it’s gray skies and rainy weather, but experts say the dense fog and temperatures in the 40s or 50s that have blanketed the city over the past several days is out of the ordinary.
Cliff Mass, a University of Washington Meteorologist writes on his blog, “I have forecast here for many decades and I can not remember a situation that is even close.”
The cause, according to Mass, is an odd combination of long-lasting high pressure, drought, and dense low clouds. In short, the high pressure on either side of the city is trapping colder air in the middle, close to the ground. The result? Fog, and lots of it.
The current foggy streak is standing at seven days. According to Seattle’s KomoNews.com that puts the current stretch in a seven-way tie for the fifth longest run in the city. The No. 1 spot goes to a 13-day streak from December of 1985. But according to local reports the current weather pattern could make a run at the record with the sun not in the forecast at least for the next several days.
Ironically the only thing that will wipe out the dreary conditions is a low pressure system; in other words a storm.
Such a system is on the way but is not guaranteed to hit the city. The earliest it will get there, if at all, is sometime next week. Until then Seattle will continue to see the same gray skies and dense low clouds.
Those in and around Seattle are making the best of the extraordinary conditions and sharing on Twitter:
For those who just can't take it anymore the sun isn’t that far away, at least geographically. Mass notes in his blog that while Seattle may be under a gray blanket the sun is shining and the air is warm just an hour outside the city.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/fogmageddon--grips-seattle-194612028.htmlA lone emperor penguin makes his rounds, at the edge of an iceberg drift in the Antarctic's Ross Sea in 2006.
Less than 1 percent of the world's oceans are set aside as protected areas, but diplomats meeting now in Australia could substantially increase that figure.
Delegates from 24 nations and the European Union have convened to consider proposals to create vast new marine protected areas around Antarctica.
This same group met over the summer and didn't reach consensus, so it's now considering a scaled-back proposal.
The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources exists principally to regulate fishing around Antarctica. But some members — including the United States — have been pushing the organization to create vast new marine protected areas. One proposed region would shield swaths of the Ross Sea. A second would apply to the waters off East Antarctica. The potential protected areas are getting a push from conservationists like Bob Zuur at WWF-New Zealand.
"Last year I sailed through the Ross Sea," Zuur said at a news conference Wednesday in Hobart, Australia. "I saw dozens of whales, hundreds of seals and albatrosses and thousands of penguins. And that was just the wildlife on top of the water. The wildlife on the seafloor rivals that of the tropics. This area is really the Serengeti of the southern seas."
That advocacy is backed by the scientists who report to CCAMLR (participants call it "camalar"). Marine biologist and fisheries scientist Christopher Jones is chairman of the group's scientific committee. And at the news conference in Australia Wednesday he said members of that committee agree that human activity in the area should be limited, to ensure the long-term health of the ecosystem.
"Whether or not the science is adequate is not the issue here," Jones said. The real issue, he suggested, "is the political will."
CCAMLR already met in July but failed to reach the required consensus to set aside these areas. In particular, conservationists say, Russia and Ukraine balked at creating huge zones where fishing would be off limits forever. Toothfish, sold in the U.S. as Chilean sea bass, is harvested in some of these areas. The marine preserve would still leave some fishing grounds open but would close others, including sensitive spawning grounds of toothfish and other species.
After the July meeting, the United States and New Zealand scaled back the size of the regions of Ross Sea they proposed to protect by 40 percent. That would still make it the largest marine preserve in the world.
"I think all of us were disappointed that the Ross Sea proposal was reduced in size," said Andrea Kavanagh at the Hobart news conference. "We are hopeful this is the last time it will be watered down, and if it's passed as it is, we'd all be quite supportive of it."
Negotiators now plan to spend more than a week seeing whether they can come to a consensus. If they can, that could also open the door to discussions about creating additional marine protected areas around Antarctica. CCAMLR's scientific committee has identified nine areas in seas around the continent as candidates for preservation.
These waters have had less human disturbance than any other oceans on Earth.
"To get a consensus on having this network in place is going to be quite a long process," says Jones, the committee's chairman. "We've already made a lot of progress, though."
One small preserve off the South Orkney Islands is already on the books. And creating one or two vast preserves at this meeting could be a huge step forward.
Lisbon (AFP) - Portuguese authorities said Thursday they are reopening their probe into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann from an Algarve beach resort in 2007, news hailed by the British girl's parents.
"The attorney general's office has decided to reopen the inquiry into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann following a request by police due to new elements," it said in a statement.
The announcement was greeted with relief by Kate and Gerry McCann, who have never given up their campaign to find their daughter.
"We are very pleased that the investigation to find our missing daughter Madeleine has been officially reopened in Portugal," the McCanns said in a statement.
"We hope that this will finally lead to her being found and to the discovery of whoever is responsible for this crime."
Maddie vanished from the holiday apartment where her parents were staying in the southern Algarve resort of Praia da Luz just days before her fourth birthday in May 2007, while they were dining at a nearby tapas bar.
Portuguese authorities closed their investigation into her disappearance in 2008, but Scotland Yard spent two years reviewing it at the British government's request and opened their own probe in July this year.
Portugal's Correio da Manha newspaper reported that a police team was sent to review the high-profile case last year with a focus on the possibility of a kidnapping by an organised paedophile network.
"Today's development is good news," said Scotland Yard assistant commissioner Mark Rowley.
"Combined with the formal reopening of the Portuguese investigation today, and our ever closer working relationship, I believe that we have the best opportunity yet to finally understand what happened to Madeleine."
British police would travel regularly to Portugal to coordinate their investigations with local police, Rowley said, warning that there was still "a way to go" in solving the case.
The McCanns have led a six-year campaign to find Madeleine, who they believe was kidnapped and is still alive.
The discovery last week of a young blonde girl in a Roma camp in Greece has resurrected the issue of child kidnapping in Europe, and had "given hope" to Madeleine's parents, their spokesman said.
British detectives investigating the Maddie case last week published two new electronic images of a man they want to contact in a major new appeal also shown in Germany and the Netherlands.
The man was described as white, aged between 20 and 40, with short brown hair, of medium build, medium height and clean shaven.
Police also want to identify two other men, probably with short blond hair and possibly speaking German or Dutch, who had also been seen repeatedly near the apartment.
The British detectives said they had received 2,400 calls and emails since the television appeal, while several hundred calls were also received by the German and Dutch shows.
Detective chief inspector Andy Redwood, who is leading the British investigation, said witnesses had spotted a man carrying a young child fitting Madeleine's description towards Praia da Luz.
Another man seen carrying a child near to the apartments where the family were staying -- who was for years considered the chief suspect -- has been excluded from the investigation.
Earlier this month, British police said analysis of mobile phone data from thousands of people who were in Praia da Luz when Madeleine disappeared could provide a new lead.
The detectives have interviewed 442 people over the last couple of years and have identified 41 potential suspects -- 15 of them British nationals -- although no arrests have been made.
The McCanns are suing a Portuguese detective who wrote a book about the case in which he argues that Madeleine was accidentally killed and implicates the couple.
They are seeking the equivalent of £1 milion (1.2 million euros, $1.6 million) and have tried unsuccessfully to ban the book.
Today in international tech news: German Chancellor Angela Merkel dials up President Obama after reports that the U.S. was monitoring her phone. Also: Samsung makes like Apple and apologizes to its Chinese consumers; Beijing ups its investment in paid online propagandists; Apple's former CEO is reportedly considering a BlackBerry bid; and Canon is still slumping.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called President Obama to protest after she received information that U.S. intelligence was perhaps spying on her mobile phone.
Obama assured Merkel that the U.S. "is not monitoring and will not monitor" her communications, but the White House reportedly stopped short of denying that it had done so in the past.
Earlier this week, France was making noise about reports that the U.S. spied on French communications, so it might not be long before all of Western Europe is irked with the States.
Merkel and Co. were tipped off about the spying by Der Spiegel, Germany's top magazine and news website, which told the government that it had unearthed info about potential surveillance. Der Spiegel was going off of documents from Edward Snowden.
Samsung apologized to Chinese consumers after a 30-minute television spot on Chinese state-run media accused the company of peddling shoddy phones and bunk repair policies.
Samsung announced that it would offer free repairs for all seven of the models mentioned in the report. About 14 percent of Samsung revenue comes from China, so it is important for the South Korean tech giant to appease its western neighbor.
Samsung added that it welcomed media scrutiny.
This sequence hearkens -- to an eerie degree -- to Apple's saga earlier this year. Like Samsung, Apple was lambasted by Chinese media, which accused the company of having bad products and even worse customer service. Apparently deciding there was no good reason to take on Beijing (or its puppet media), Apple issued an apology to Chinese consumers.
[Source: BBC]
China is fortifying its so-called "50 Cent Party," a cohort of hired commenters who post rosy-colored nuggets -- or red-colored, as it were -- about China and the powers that be.
Named after the average pay per comment, the 50 Cent Party is getting a makeover, becoming "more professional" as the government adds more "Internet opinion analyst" jobs to the budget. Some Chinese netizens have expressed anger that their tax yuan are funding this sort of 21st century propaganda, but chances are their dissent is being met with resistance.
China reportedly has about 2 million people collecting, managing and analyzing online public opinion.
[Source: Global Voices via Slate]
Rumor has it that John Sculley, the former CEO of Apple, is exploring a bid for BlackBerry.
Sculley is not commenting on the story, but he told Canadian press that he has been "a longtime BlackBerry fan and user," if that means anything.
A handful of suitors are reportedly scoping BlackBerry. Fairfax Financial Holdings extended a $9-per-share offer, while BlackBerry's co-founders have also been linked to a purchase.
[Source: The Globe and Mail via The Next Web]
For the second straight quarter, Japanese camera and optical products manufacturer Canon cut its operating profit outlook.
Canon lowered its full-year operating profit forecast to about US$3.7 billion, slightly lower than previously projected.
The company also said it expects to sell 8 million interchangeable-lens cameras in the year ending in December. That is down from last quarter's estimate of 9 million and less than last year's total of 8.2 million.
[Source: Reuters] 
This song is supposed to be a hardcore rock song. And though it has the punching anger throat sounds of any respectable hardcore rock song, it so obviously doesn't have anything else that quite resemble the music of core hards. Instead, the song is mixed with an EDM dance track. That's because the band didn't pay its engineer.
| |
