Category: News

Twitter is reportedly testing a new feature that would make it infinitely more useful for people who use the service to find out about things going on around them.

I mean right around them. Like, you know, near them. Geographically.

According to All Things D, who quotes multiple sources, Twitter is currently testing a feature that allows users to discover tweets from other users within a certain radius. For instance, you could see a tweet from someone who’s right down the road, who’s eating a great omelet at a local brunch spot.

On April 1st, Twitter kicked off its second annual hack week, and apparently that is where this idea was engendered. If so, this is a really great idea that could change the way people use Twitter.

As of right now, Twitter’s “discovery” tab surfaces tweet about “what’s happening now, tailored to you,” according to Twitter. Although it’s unclear exactly how Twitter’s algorithms decide what to show you, it definitely has to do with who you follow and who those people follow, and so on. It’s kind of a “people in your general network” sort of deal. And to be honest, it’s not really all that helpful. There’s definitely some consideration given to location, but it’s not much.

And really, Twitter has always felt more global than local. Sure, you can limit which Twitter trends you’re shown by city. But then again, this is only Twitter trends. And it’s only by city.

I say test away, Twitter. And then unveil this feature. I can already imagine how useful it would be to walk outside my door, and see a bunch of tweets about things happening in my area. Can you?

It appears that Samsung’s well-known entrant into the enterprise world is set to encounter a slight delay with its arrival. Expected to arrive as early as this upcoming Saturday alongside the Galaxy S 4′s official release for AT&T, Samsung decided that its Knox software is not quite ready for primetime and needs to undergo further testing to ensure it will operate smoothly for various Sammy devices— regardless of wireless carriers. As a result, there are sources that are now claiming that Samsung plans on pushing Knox’s launch until sometime July.

Regardless of the delay, Samsung will continue its push for a full-fledged assault on the enterprise world with its Knox software. Samsung expects to release its security software alongside some variations of its Galaxy devices this year— all in the hopes of taking some of the ever-growing enterprise market share. Let’s just hope that some of the more traditional rivals are ready for Samsung’s imminent arrival.

source: New York Times

Come comment on this article: Samsung to delay the launch of its security software for Galaxy smartphones

At PAX East, Blizzard announced that it’s working on its first new, original Warcraft game in almost a decade. The game – Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft – is a collectible trading card game that pits players against each other using creatures and spells from the Warcraft universe.

Unfortunately, the first trailer didn’t really give us much of a look at the gameplay in Hearthstone. The latest trailer out of Blizzard remedies that by giving players a look at a match between a Paladin and a Warrior.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft will soon be available in closed beta. The full game will launch as a free to play title supported by microtransactions later this year.

The Tribeca Film Festival is wrapping up this week, and Sony has a bit of a surprise for gamers who also love movies.

The publisher has announced that it will be screening footage from the video game Beyond: Two Souls at Tribeca. The screening will take place on Saturday, April 27 at 6:45 pm EST. Those who aren’t in New York City can catch the screening live on Sony’s PlayStation Blog.

Though Beyond is a video game, developer Quantic Dream has taken great pains to make it cinematic, something the studio has been striving toward with its previous games, such as Heavy Rain and Indigo Prophecy. The game stars Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page as characters embroiled in a supernatural tale. Dafoe, Page, and other actors went through extensive motion capture processes to place their likenesses into the game.

Page will be at the screening to answer questions with the game’s director, David Cage. The screening will debut the “official” trailer for Beyond and show off a 35-minute scene from the game.

As a man who spends most of his time in his attic, it’s nice to hit the open roads, feel a little wind in your hair, and run over crack vials as you motor through downtown Manhattan. That’s exactly what I did yesterday as when I tried to ride an Hero Eco A2B Metro electric bike from Bay Ridge to our offices on Broadway, thereby cementing my love for electric bikes and this electric bike in particular.

The Metro, made by German manufacturer Hero Eco (formerly Ultra Motor), is a brutalist electric bike with a built-in battery and maximum speed of 20 MPH. It has pedals and a 7-gear shifter so it is technically considered a moped and does not require a motorcycle license and a built-in limiter ensures you don’t go roaring down the streets on this 80 pound machine.

The company has had these bikes in the US for a few years now but they are working on a complete rebranding – although the bikes will remain the same. You can see the brand new bikes on this absolutely awful webpage they’ve made. This particular model costs about $3,000 online but the build quality is excellent and the equipment – from the fat Kenda tires to the Shimano shifter – is acceptable enough. I noticed some bad reviews on Amazon complaining of damaged motors or tires and, although I didn’t experience these issues over the past week, I cannot speak for extensive use. In my 15 mile ride I saw solid performance and no skidding or fishtailing while accelerating. I did, however, experience a low battery and riding this thing home, even for a mile, on pedal power wasn’t great.

The bike is bit big but it’s still thin enough to ensure you don’t get entangled with other riders in tight paths. I found it worked great in tight quarters and, because it is in actuality just a bicycle with a hub motor, the other cyclists didn’t give me that much of a stink eye.

I’ve avoided looking at electric bikes of late because most of them look like motors strapped to 10-speeds. This is far different and, if I were to describe it in any way, it is the exact opposite of those foldable city bikes folks are riding. My kids, in fact, have taken to calling it Super Bike.

Hero Eco is finding its footing right now and also has sub-$2,000 models available, including their own version of the folding electric called the Kuo which retails for $1,599. The company is also now calling itself HeroEco and was formerly called Ultra Motor, so you may see a bit of confusing until their full rebranding.

What are you paying for? Well, you’re paying for a solid, welded frame, solid components, and excellent acceleration. The range isn’t too shabby and for a bit more you can add on a second battery for 20 miles of range. I could also imagine a user removing the governor – though I’m sure Ultra Motors doesn’t condone this. This isn’t a sport bike. I could really see it more as a bike for folks with a 10-15 mile commute who want to hit the open air a little and don’t want (that much) of a carbon footprint.

Anonymous has a history with child predators. The hacktivist group frequently targets them during its operations, but it’s now launching a massive attack on numerous Web sites as part of a new operation.

Anonymous announced today that it has taken down the North American Man/Boy Love Association’s Web site in protest of Alice Day. The unofficial holiday, originally known as Pedophile Pride Day, is celebrated every April 25. To counter the group’s message and in observation of Child Abuse Awareness Month, Anonymous will be taking down numerous child pornography Web sites around the world today.

For those who can’t watch the video, here’s a transcript:

April is child abuse awareness month, and coincidentally it is also a month in which child rapists, molesters and abusers celebrate a particular holiday. On April 25th, Abusers worldwide celebrate the holiday Alice Day, named after Alice Liddell and, “Alice In Wonderland”, originally Pedophile Pride Day. On this holiday the pedophiles celebrate, rape and molestation of little girls. Many pedophiles believe it is okay for them to celebrate “loving” a female child that day.

We call upon all Anonymous Operatives to come forward and march with us as legion. To deface and cause chaos within the pedophile networks.

To the public; On April 25th we will be conducting various operations involving online methods such as Distributed Denial of Service attacks, doxing, and website defacement. We ask that you please watch your children and be extra vigilant, because April 25th is like Christmas to them.

The Daily Dot reports that Anonymous will be targeting every pedophile hub on the Net. The goal is to take them down and keep them down for as long as possible. The group obviously hopes it can also out as many pedophiles in the hope that those outed will be arrested.

[h/t: Gizmodo]

Amazon reported its Q1 earnings today with sales up 22% to $16.07 billion.

Operating cash flow was up 39% year-over-year to $4.25 billion for the trailing twelve months. Free cash flow was down 85% to $177 million for the trailing twelve months. This includes purchases of corporate office space and property in Seattle. Operating income was down 6% to $181 million in the first quarter, compared with $192 million in first quarter of 2012. Net income decreased 37% to $82 million in the quarter.

Amazon is excited about its original content business moving forward.

CEO Jeff Bezos said, “Amazon Studios is working on a new way to greenlight TV shows. The pilots are out in the open where everyone can have a say. I have my personal picks and so do members of the Amazon Studios team, but the exciting thing about our approach is that our opinions don’t matter. Our customers will determine what goes into full-season production. We hope Amazon Originals can become yet another way for us to create value for Prime members.”

There is also talk of a pending Amazon ad network that would take on the likes of Google and Facebook, not to mention set-top boxes.

Stock is up in after hours trading.

Here’s the release in its entirety:

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apr. 25, 2013– Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced financial results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2013.

Source: Amazon.com, Inc.

Those of you counting on receiving Leap Motion’s hot new minute-motion sensor in May will have to wait a few more months. Leap CEO Michael Buckwald said the startup is delaying shipments of the controller — which promises to give any PC a gesture-based interface – until July 22 in order to allow more time for testing.

Buckwald said it became clear to the company it needed to expand its beta trials beyond developers to ensure that the device is ready for commercial release. “There is nothing catastrophically wrong,” Buckwald said. “We are proud of the product.”

The original ship date was set for May 13 for customers who pre-ordered the device for $80. It was also set to appear on Best Buy shelves on May 19. Buckwald said that if Leap Motion’s engineers had pushed they might have made those dates, but they felt that the delay would allow them to improve the product.

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LG is poised to announce next week the availability of the LG Optimus G Pro as part of the AT&T product portfolio, so it is no surprise that an image has shown up purporting to be a render of the device. @evleaks, the frequent tipster of Android device images, posted a pic today showing the device with a small AT&T logo on the back of the device. On the front of the device, the home button appears to have an AT&T blue highlight surrounding the button. In just a few more days we should be able to verify how accurate the rendered image is.

source: @evleaks

Come comment on this article: LG Optimus G Pro for AT&T render surfaces on Twitter

Amazon beat analysts’ forecasts Thursday afternoon with its Q1 earnings report. Earnings were $0.18 per share, or $82 million, on revenue of $16.07 billion, compared to earnings of $0.28 per share, or $130 million, on revenue of $13.18 billion this time last year.

Analysts had expected earnings of $0.07 per share on revenue of $16.1 billion.

Operating income, considered by investors to be a key measure of the company’s financial health, was $181 million, down 6 percent from the previous year. Still, that figure beat the range of -$285 million to $65 million that the company had provided in the previous quarter.

Amazon is reportedly working on a set-top box, and in the release, CEO Jeff Bezos highlighted Amazon’s expansion into original television, focusing on the company’s recent release of 14 original pilots. “Our customers will determine what goes into full-season production,” he said. “We hope Amazon Originals can become yet another way for us to create value for Prime members.”

North American media revenues totaled $2.51 billion for the quarter, up 14.4 percent over last year. International media revenues were $2.54 billion, up just 1.27 percent.

For the second quarter of 2013, Amazon advises investors to inspect revenues between $14.5 billion and $16.2 billion, with broad guidance on operating income ranging from -$340 million to $10 million.

Amazon is holding an investor call at 2:00 PM PT, and we will be on the call.

This post was updated several times on Thursday afternoon.

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Twitter surprised OS X users Thursday by pushing out a small update for their long-neglected official Mac (AAPL) app. But new features found in version 2.2 are few and far between: they include support for Retina displays, 14 new language options — including French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish (to name but a few), and slight updates to various icons along with other minor interface tweaks.

Before Thursday’s upgrade the desktop app — which started life as Tweetie – hadn’t seen an update since back in June 2011. In that time many users, myself included, came to accept that perhaps the standalone app was never to see any future improvements. This concern was further solidified when in September 2012 reports surfaced suggesting that the client had been killed off for good with no further development planned. But this latest small-scale update clarifies Twitter’s current position: that it intends to continue to update the popular app.

If a recent tweet by Twitter’s own Ben Sandofsky (as spotted by TechCrunch’s Darrell Etherington) is anything to go by, we may be seeing improvements for Twitter for Mac more frequently. Sandofsky tweeted that he is taking a break from working on iOS apps to move over to the Mac client full time.

Whereas it’s good to finally see Twitter put more resources back in to their much overlooked Mac app, this latest update won’t blow you away by any means. Version 2.2 is but a minor improvement on what came before.

One curiosity is the lack of support for Mountain Lion’s Notification Center — the app’s preference pane still touts Growl as your de facto notification choice.

Here’s hoping that future updates come thick and fast, bearing more substance and native support for things such as Twitter’s own Vine, and Apple’s Notification Center, for example.

Oh, and Twitter, your old logo is still showing on the app’s Mac App Store listing.

New logo, meet old logo.

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An interview with Mark Tercek, CEO of The Nature Conservancy and author of Nature’s Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature.

Download this podcast

A written transcript will be available by May 3.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced that a clinical trial of an experimental HIV vaccine has been halted, following a report from a safety monitoring board. The independent data and safety monitoring board found during an interim review that the vaccine does not prevent HIV and does not reduce viral loads in people who have HIV.

According to the NIH the study, called HVTN 505, has been running since 2009. 2,504 volunteers in 19 U.S. cities were chosen to undergo a series of immunizations that researchers hoped would prevent HIV infection and reduce viral loads in those infected (or receive a placebo). The volunteers were all either men who have sex with men or transgender people who have sex with men.

After reviewing data from the study this week, the monitoring board found that study participants who received the vaccine were just as likely to contract HIV as those who had not. In fact, more study participants who received the vaccine became infected with HIV than those who received a placebo, though the difference was not statistically significant. The vaccine also failed to reduce viral load among study participants who contracted HIV.

Due to the findings, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has stopped administering the vaccinations. Researchers will continue to follow current study participants, who will be contacted and informed of whether they received the vaccine or the placebo.

It’s no secret that Ubuntu is heading for desktop/ mobile convergence, with a runs-everywhere build expected within a year. But while 13.04 (“Raring Ringtail”) shows some signs of movement in that direction, the new release isn’t exactly packed with new features: in fact, it’s taken one or two away.

Of course there’s no harm in consolidating your code base occasionally, and Canonical appear to have done that to good effect. They claim that it’s the fastest Ubuntu experience to date, with an updated kernel delivering “dramatic graphical performance enhancements”, reduced RAM requirements and more. And while this might be aimed at helping the system run on mobile devices, it’s also very welcome for regular desktop users.

And it’s a similar story with other smaller, more subtle tweaks. Like the new “fuzzy search”, for instance: if you make a typo when entering an application then that may not be an issue, as Raring Ringtail will try to figure out what you mean. This may be targeted at users with tiny on-screen keyboards, but everyone will benefit from it occasionally.

More generally, improved social networking support means you can choose which applications integrate with Facebook, Twitter and more, directly from the Online Accounts pane. You can then search photos across all your enabled accounts via a new Unity Dash Photo lens (if you turn on the “Show online results” feature, anyway).

And new task management options make it easier to switch between multiple windows; just hover over an icon in the dock and use your scroll wheel to select the folder you need.

What you won’t get this time is Gwibber, which has been removed as the developer is working on its successor. Similarly, Wubi — the Window dual-boot tool — has been left out of the release due to “various bugs”, while there’s no longer any option to install the Gnome classic shell.

And some much-anticipated features are also absent. In particular, Smart Scopes, which promised to extend Unity Dash with some very powerful web search capabilities, was reportedly too unstable to make the final cut.

Raring Ringtail is something of a transitional release, then; there are worthwhile improvements here, but nothing revolutionary, and the missing tools and options will annoy some. Still, it’s a step in the right direction, if only a small one, and most Ubuntu users will benefit from the new release.

Leap Motion has just announced that its 3D gesture controller hardware ship date will be delayed, from May 13 for pre-orders and May 19 for general retail availability to July 27. The delay was caused by a need for more testing from the Leap Motion beta testing community, and an expansion of that group with additional members, according to Leap Motion CEO Michael Buckwald, who held a press conference today to discuss the missed dates.

This is not good new for a company that has spent a lot of time promoting its product and securing high-level partnerships (with Asus, HP and Best Buy) up until now. The hype that Leap Motion has been able to build only means that users will be more disappointed by any delays in its launch window, and the effect on public perception is certainly one the hardware startup would like to have avoided. Still, some 12,000 developers have received units and already used them to do impressive things, so Leap Motion is hardly in danger of being branded ‘vaporware’ as of yet.

Leap Motion says it wants to make sure that the product they deliver is the best they can offer, and says that there is “nothing catastrophically wrong” with the hardware as of yet. The company believes that it could have shipped by the original date if it had really pushed things, but wanted to make sure that things were ready for prime time. The new July 22 ship date is firmly set, according to Buckwald, and this is “the first and only delay there will be.”

When asked if there was a specific cause, Buckwald said it’s more about beta testing everything in general, but that there will definitely be a focus on getting more input on how customers interact with the product. In general, it sounds like there’s some concern about making sure that user experience is pleasant among not only Leap Motion’s more technical users, but also the general public, too. Buckwald says it has addressed most of the technical issues around gesture tracking, and now the emphasis is squarely on usability testing, and those who are already seeded with early hardware will essentially act more as consumer testers.

“If you’d asked me a year ago what was the biggest challenge, I’d have said it would be the hardware side,” Buckwald said, but went on to explain that the software aspect is now what’s holding things up, and the part that needs more refinement. 600,000 units are in inventory in warehouses ready to ship, he said, but those won’t be going out until the software issues are ironed out. When asked about how that affects their funding situation, he explained that the $45 million it has raised so far was designed to help it field unexpected hiccups in the process, and it continues to help with that.

A small number of additional users will be invited to the beta test pool beginning in June, Buckwald explained, but Leap Motion will be reaching out to users specifically to choose those, based on their desire for a more varied beta pool. In other words, you probably can’t petition for early access. The full letter Leap Motion is sending out to pre-order customers follows:

Release Date Update

I wanted to reach out to update you on the status of our ship date. After a lot of consideration, we’ve decided to push back the date and will now be shipping units to pre-order customers on July 22nd.

This is not a decision we take lightly. There are hundreds of thousands of people in over 150 countries who have pre-ordered Leap devices, some as long as a year ago. These people are part of our community and there is nothing more important to us than getting them devices as quickly as possible.

We’ve made a lot of progress. When we first started taking orders back in May we were twelve (very tired) people in a basement. Now we are eighty (although still tired and possibly still in a basement). We’ve manufactured over six hundred thousand devices and delivered twelve thousand Leaps to amazing developers who are building applications that let people do things that just wouldn’t have been possible before. These developers have given us great feedback that we’ve used to make huge improvements to the stability and polish of the product. We’re really proud of Leap as both a company and a product.

The reality is we very likely could have hit the original ship date. But it wouldn’t have left time for comprehensive testing. This will come in the form of a beta test that will start in June. We will give the 12k developers who currently have Leap devices access to the feature complete product including OS interaction (today developers only have access to the SDK). We will also invite some people who are not developers to join the beta test.

Ultimately, the only way we felt 100% confident we could deliver a truly magical product that would do justice to this new form of interaction, was to push the date so we would have more time for a larger, more diverse beta test.

I really appreciate your patience. I know it’s been a long wait. Everyone that works at Leap is working tirelessly to make sure that wait is worth it. Thanks so much for your help and support.

David and I will be participating in an open video Q&A using Google Hangout tomorrow. We’ll send along more specific information on that shortly. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact our support team at[email protected] or my personal email ([email protected]). As always, we will not charge pre-order customer’s credit cards until the devices have actually shipped.

Thanks again. Michael Buckwald

Ubisoft revealed this morning that the highly anticipated Rayman Legends will launch across the Wii U, Xbox 360 and PS3 on September 3 in North America. Until then, Wii U owners can get their hands on a new “demo.”

Nintendo announced that the Rayman Legends Challenges App is now available on the Wii U eShop. The “demo” challenges players to compete in online challenges across randomly generated levels. It’s a free download, and will remain on the Wii U eShop until the game’s full release in September.

The other major release this week is Mega Man 4 on the 3DS eShop virtual console. The fourth entry in the classic Mega Man series is generally considered the point where the series started to go downhill, but it’s still a solid game.

Here are the other releases coming to various Nintendo platforms this week: