Category: News

We know that 3-D printers can spit out products from jewelry to digital devices. Then we started hearing about technology that could print out human organs. The concept is proven but the technology remains too expensive for most mortals. Now, a group of hackers at Biocurious  has built a device that can print out cells. Its cost? About $150, according to this MIT Review report.

That means you too, if you so desire, can churn out a sheet of E.coli bacteria using a machine built of some custom-built parts and recycled  inkjet cartridges and CD-drive components. And, before you panic, remember only a few strains of E.coli are harmful.

The initial model works just in two dimensions, printing out sheets of fluorescent E. coli cells that read “I  heart BioCurious.” But, according to the story, project organizer Patrik D’haeseleer’s longer-term plan is:

“… to print plant cells and build photosynthetic structures, although this is a long-term project that will be much harder than squirting E. Coli on a sheet. He imagines applications could include creating energy-producing surfaces on everyday objects. But really, D’haeseleer, mostly wants to print a leaf to see if he can do it.”

It’s projects like this that could bring the cost of big-time bio-printing down and perhaps give birth to a vibrant industry.  Fostering a sustainable food supply is one huge problem that bio-printing could help address, as GigaOM’s Katie Fehrenbacher reported Thursday. For example, startup Modern Meadow  hopes to use similar technology to print out “synthetic lab-grown meats.”   And there’s still more about the possibility of printing food in space.

Of course, any time you put make technology widely and cheaply available, the opportunity for abuse rises. One thing to think about: How many people really should be able to mass produce harmful strains of E.Coli (or other potential pathogens?)

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Google announced in November that it was rolling out the new Google Shopping experience to the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Brazil, Australia and Switzerland. Today, the company says the transition in these countries just began on February 13.

“If you’re a merchant in one of these countries and you’re currently promoting your products on Google Shopping for free, you’ll need to create a Product Listing Ad campaign to maintain your traffic and presence,” Google notes. “To ensure that your products remain eligible for promotion on Google Shopping, we’ve built an easy way for you to create Product Listing Ads.”

This consists of setting up a basica PLA campaign, customizing it, and providing your billing information. A more detailed guide is available here.

“With the recent launch of AdWords enhanced campaigns, it’s now easier than ever to promote your products across devices,” says Google Shopping VP of Product Management, Sameer Samat. “This is crucial in a world where people are constantly connected and moving from one device to another. We encourage you to upgrade existing product listing ad campaigns to an enhanced campaign with appropriate bid adjustments.”

More on Enhanced Campaigns here.

Google’s PLA-based Google Shopping initiative has been working pretty well, based on a handful of recent reports. In fact, Bing is even going to be launching PLAs of its own this year.

Opening Day for Major League Baseball season is still over a month away, but the team behind the league’s mobile apps have come to Spring Training ready to go: later on Thursday the latest version of At Bat will be available for download from the iOS App Store and Android Google Play store. This season, pro baseball’s app is now offering a cross-platform subscription and a better deal for those who like listening to baseball games online.

To get the 2013 version of the app, iOS users simply have to download the update in the App Store — no need to download a whole new app. Returning Android users will have a choice depending on the app they have installed. If you had the app called At Bat, you just need to look for the update; if you had the At Bat ’12 app, you’ll have to look for a new app to download. (I’ll update this story with the direct link as soon as the app goes live.)

The app is free, but to unlock access to live games for the 2013 season and World Series, it requires a one-time in-app purchase $19.99 subscription fee — or iOS users can pay in month installments of $2.99. However, as with last year’s version, subscribers to the league’s MLB.TV subscription plan for watching games online can get At Bat 13 for free.

Last year’s online and mobile video bundling deal resulted in downloads of the 2012 season app hitting 7 million, which surpassed the downloads during the 2010 and 2011 seasons combined.

This year, At Bat is again offering some cost-saving deals for subscribers that should juice downloads. Previously, fans had to pay separately for access to the mobile app as well as live game audio through the MLB.TV desktop website, but At Bat 13 subscribers will now get GameDay Audio (MLB.TV’s most popular feature) for free. And for subscribers who may own both iOS and Android devices: one subscription works on any platform now; you no longer have to pay for access on each.

Major League Baseball’s Advanced Media — whose CEO, Bob Bowman, will be speaking at our paidContent Live event in April – runs all of the league’s digital properties. And MLBAM made big strides this year in incorporating more news video and its historical video content into its mobile apps. Game highlight video will now be embedded in news stories in the app. More than 70 classic archived games dating back to the 1952 World Series will also be accessible, and the whole of MLB’s video highlights are finally searchable — it previously went back to just 2008. Stats are also playing a bigger part of the user experience: tablet users will now have access to sortable batting, pitching and fielding statistics.

Though it’s not yet ready, a version of At Bat for Blackberry 10 will arrive by Opening Day, I’m told.

This story was updated at 9:04 a.m. PT with a link to the iOS app.

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As 3D printing and modeling moves into the mainstream, it’s interesting to see the rise of small players in the market and the capital raised. Take, for example, CGTrader. Originally designed as a marketplace for 3D designers and artists, it’s just raised nearly 200,000 euro from Practica Capital, a fund in Lithuania. Founded by Marius Kalytis, the company is based in Vilnius.

Most of the models are highly detailed objects aimed at video game creators and other 3D wonks. However, because a 3D model is a 3D model is a 3D model, CGTrader is able to sell almost any virtual object.

A major problem in the 3D model industry is notoriously low royalty rates for designers and artists – the creator of the model frequently receives only 40-60% of sale proceeds, or, in order to earn more, is often bound by exclusivity requirements. This makes selling 3D models online not a very attractive activity for designers, and therefore limits the potential of industry growth,” said Kalytis. He said the CGTrader is “a fair, author-friendly marketplace”

The company takes 6% of any sale and they can use the platform to support their customers when they have issues or queries.

“The funding will be used for developing the marketplace from the technical perspective, building the community further, and, most importantly, expanding distribution channels for our designers – including 3D printing,” said Kalytis. It’s one small step for 3D models of horses, one giant leap for the monetization of the 3D-printing as a holistic market.

Education is generally thought of as a domestic policy issue. But what can we learn by looking at education on the global scale?

Andreas Schleicher: Use data to build better schools

In today’s talk, given at TEDGlobal 2012, Andreas Schleicher introduces us to a test that measures school systems and student achievement in countries across the globe—PISA (the Programme for International Student Assessment), an initiative of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). PISA not only tests students on their mathematical understanding, reading level and ability to apply learning to new problems, but also looks at what teachers get paid, how long the school day is, what the average class size is and whether quality of education is uniform across schools and social stratifications. It even measures cultural attitudes, like whether people in the country expect all students to achieve or only a small segment of them to. It’s this broad approach to data collection that makes PISA so powerful, says Schleicher.

“The test of life is not whether we can remember what we learn in school, but whether we are prepared for change,” says Schleicher. “Whether we are prepared for jobs that haven’t been created and to use technology that haven’t been invented to solve problems we just can’t anticipate today.”

In the 1960s, the United States led the world in the number of students graduating high school. But by the 1990s, it had become 13th—not because their standards dropped, as Schleicher points out, but because so many other countries raised the level of education they were providing. In the same time period, Korea went from number 27 on this measure to number 1. Similarly, in 2000, Germany ranked low on PISA, their scores revealing wide disparity between schools. The ranking kicked off a national debate that forced policymakers to react and, nine years later, their system showed great improvement. The point: that countries are able to make drastic improvements in education in relatively short periods of time. And now, school systems can learn from each other.

“Of course you can’t copy and paste education systems wholesale,” says Schleicher. “But these comparisons have identified a range of factors that high-performing systems share.”

To hear what these factors are, watch this talk. And here, some surprising initial findings that PISA has uncovered.

1.    Extracurriculars may not be just extras.

For educators and politicians looking to trim education costs, extracurriculars seem like an obvious place to start. But PISA data suggests that extracurriculars may have direct links to performance. In a PISA survey from 2006, principals were asked about the kinds of science extracurricular activities they provided — like field trips, science fairs and science clubs. And students in schools where these things were commonly offered performed better in science — and this held true even after accounting for socio-economic background. Students in these schools also reported having a greater belief in their ability to tackle science-related problems and simply reported enjoying science more. Read more on the OECD Education Today blog.

2.    Big spending does not necessarily make for a better school system.

On this graph, which shows PISA’s latest data from 2009, the size of the dot represents how much a country spends per student on education. This is mapped onto a graph that shows reading performance of students and socio-economic disparity seen across student performance. Interestingly, the biggest dots do not rise to the top here. Many of the school systems charting the best on both performance and equity actually spend moderately per student.

In his talk, Schleicher shows how two countries can make very different decisions on how they spend their education dollars. He takes a look at Korea and Luxembourg, which spend comparably. While Korea spends heavily on teacher compensation and development, as well as on having a longer school day, Luxembourg focuses on keeping small class sizes. The point: it’s not what you spend, but how you spend it.

3.    Performance-based pay may not make for better teachers.

In a recent study, PISA looked at whether basing teachers’ pay on their effectiveness has results when it comes to student performance. They surveyed school systems where performance determines base salary, annual supplemental payments, and incidental supplemental payments. Overall, there appeared to be no relationship between student performance and whether teachers receiving one of these kinds of performance-based pay. However, when the countries were divided into nations where teachers are low paid (recieving less than 15% of the GDP per capita) versus ones where teachers are well paid (getting more than 15% of the GDP per capita), a pattern emerged. In countries where teachers are low-paid but have a performance-based pay system in place, students performed better on PISA measures. However, in countries where teachers are well paid and performance-based pay system was used, students actually performed worse. Read more on the OECD Education Today blog. 

4. Private schools are not across the board better than public schools.

It’s a question many parents want answered: will my child get a better education at a public or private school? The answer is that it depends. Analysis of PISA data shows that students in private schools do tend to perform better than students who attend public schools. However, there are several important caveats. When they controlled for socio-economic context — i.e. looking at public and private school in the same social strata — students performed equally well on PISA measures. And interestingly, in countries with a higher percentage of private schools, students do not perform better overall than those with lower percentages. Read more in PISA On Focus.

Digital Trends has asked a great question: “Why aren’t there more movies based on apps?” I say that if it’s popular and mainstream, people will love it! Making likeable characters relatable is a recipe for success. And with little place else to look for fresh movie ideas, it’s only a matter of time before apps go Hollywood.

Around the office, we’ve all been using our new BlackBerry Z10 smartphones and gaming like crazy in our spare time. This got me thinking about some of the amazing new apps and what they would be like as a feature film. So I decided to ask a few of my colleagues at BlackBerry which BlackBerry smartphone app they’d like to see on the big screen.

Alex K. chose DynaStunts for BlackBerry 10. He’s addicted to the action and said all the customizable characters and vehicles would transition nicely to the silver screen.

For Melanie M. it would be Riptide GP. Bouncing around on waves and racing Jet Skis? Sign me up for that action-packed thrill ride.

For me, it would definitely be World of Goo — and Kerri B. agrees! It has drama, character development, suspense and some good ol’ fashioned humor – just my kind of flick.

Now I’m curious to know which of your favorite apps you think would make great feature-length films. Let me know in the comments below!

*All images via BlackBerry World storefront

Although Microsoft (MSFT) hasn’t been considered “cool” since the heyday of Pogs and “The Macarena,” a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that things may be changing.  As Reuters reports, the poll shows that roughly 50% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 think Microsoft is cooler than it was a year ago, a positive result for the company that mirrors a recent survey of American teenagers showing strong interest in the Surface tablet. Microsoft still has a ways to go before it’s the “coolest” tech company around, however, as the poll also found that 70% of young Americans said that Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system has gotten cooler over the last year, while 60% said that Apple (AAPL) had gotten cooler over the past year.

Continue reading…

A KFC employee has been canned after Facebook photos showed her licking a large heap of the fast food restaurant’s mashed potatoes.

The photos in question were brought to the attention of WJHL in Johnson City, Tennessee. They posted the photos to their own Facebook page and received thousands of shares and hundreds of comments. Eventually, the photos were linked to a particular KFC restaurant.

Shortly after, the tater-licker has been fired. So was the person who took the photos.

KFC Spokesman Rick Maynard said that there photos were taken after-hours and that the licked potatoes weren’t actually served to any customers.

“Nothing is more important to KFC than food safety. As soon as our franchisee became aware of the issue, immediate action was taken. The franchisee’s investigation confirmed the photos were taken after the restaurant was closed and none of the food was served. The employee involved was immediately terminated. Today, KFC Corporation is sending representatives from our Operations and QA teams to the restaurant to reinforce and retrain on KFC’s high operating standards,” said Maynard.

Reminder: No picture you ever take has even an iota of a chance of staying private anymore. Don’t be an idiot.

A shootout on the Vegas Strip turned deadly for a driver and two innocent people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time early Thursday morning.

Vegas police say a suspect in a black Range Rover began shooting at the driver of a Maserati in front of Bally’s Hotel and Casino; the driver was killed, and the Maserati crashed into a taxi, causing an explosion and the death of the taxi driver and a passenger.

“There was a loud bang and I hear two other booms. I looked out my window at Caesars Palace … and could see a fireball,” said witness John Lamb.

One report says that there were five cars involved in the shootout/crash, and that several people were injured. Investigators are still at the scene of the crash and say they are looking for a black Range Rover with dark tinted windows and distinctive black rims. They don’t believe anyone else was shooting.

Sony’s PlayStation 4 unveiling was over two hours long, and if you stayed up for the entire thing you might have forgotten how it began.

The meeting began right on time and opened with a video montage featuring fast-cuts Sony consoles and the games that defined them. It also has short clips from memorable PlayStation ads, including one of those old Crash Bandicoot mascot ads.

The video sure to induce a strong case of nostalgia in anyone who grew up playing a PlayStation or PlayStation 2. It’s also a good reminder to gamers of why they took up the hobby in the first place – games.

The music, in case you’re interested, is a heavily re-mixed version of the song “Monster Hospital” by the band Metric.

Search Engine Roundtable reports that it has confirmed with Google that it has not launched a data refresh for the Penguin update since the last reported refresh in October.

Barry Schwartz writes, “Google has told us that Penguin is rarely refreshed, unlike Panda and we didn’t miss any Penguin refreshes since.”

Apparently some people thought there may have been unreported refreshes, and misconstrued something Google’s John Mueller said in this Hangout:

The Panda is updated regularly, and much more frequently. The last one of those came last month, as Google announced on Twitter.

We’re still waiting for Google to release its (what used to be) monthly lists of algorithm changes (or “Search Quality Highlights”) for the past several months. They haven’t done that since October either.

So far, Google hasn’t really pushed out any earth shattering updates in 2013.

Now that Sony has finally unveiled its PlayStation 4 console, developers can finally reveal their next-generation projects. Many new games, including some new IPs, were revealed at the conference and some impressive claims were made.

However, one developer that wasn’t at the conference last night didn’t wait for Sony or Microsoft to unveil its next-generation game. Earlier this month, CD Projekt RED (CDPR) announced that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be released for all “top-of-the-line consoles,” a thinly veiled reference to next-generation consoles. Now that the PlayStation 4 is public, the developer has followed up by making it official that Wild Hunt will be coming to Sony’s new console.

“We were thrilled when asked, several months ago, to be one of the developers who were granted early access to the PlayStation 4,” said Adam Badowski, managing director of CDPR. “It was an exciting moment to be invited to be in the company of other legendary developers like Bethesda, EA, LucasArts, Ubisoft or Activision as one of the teams working on titles shipping early in the PlayStation 4′s lifecycle. Of course, we couldn’t reveal any specifics about this to our fans, even though many journalists and forum members asked about when and how The Witcher might show up on Sony’s console. After yesterday’s PlayStation Meeting we can finally promise: The Witcher 3 is coming to the PlayStation 4. The new hardware gives us the opportunity to create something great. We are able to work with the new console from its birth and this allows our in-house REDengine 3 to push the graphical limits of what the PlayStation hardware can display. The console is fresh and has some innovative solutions that we’re looking forward to using in our game”

The Witcher 3 has been announced as a “fully open-world game with an intense story.” Gamers will be placed in a world larger than Skyrim and let loose to slay monsters, play politics, and craft gear.

Bill Guttentag, director of the political comedy/drama “Knife Fight” recently participated in an “@Google Talk,” which the company has now uploaded for viewing.

In addition to directing the Rob Lowe film, he has helmed a number of documentaries, including: Soundtrack for a Revolution, Nanking, and Hate.com: Extremists on the Internet.

More recent @Google Talks here.

The headline wasn’t exactly subtle: “Even if It Enrages Your Boss, Social Net Speech Is Protected.” This New York Times article, which ran a few weeks ago, outlined a series of recent National Labor Relations Board rulings that analyzed employee firings in the wake of potentially-damaging Facebook posts. Centered around a case involving the nonprofit organization Hispanics United of Buffalo, the Board ruled that the group was unlawful in terminating five workers after another employee alleged harassment.

So the boundaries are a little clearer now, right?

Not exactly. You can enrage your boss via social media and be fired legally. In fact, the Times article contains two examples of people — “lone wolves” — who were fairly terminated for statements they made on Facebook.

“The Board has issued a bunch of the decisions — and in a lot of cases the employer won,” Benjamin Sachs, a Harvard Law professor and faculty co-director of the school’s Labor and Worklife Program, reiterated to me. “It’s not the case that you can just go on social media and scream about whatever you want to.”

So what’s the difference?

Organizing. And we’re not necessarily talking about rallying your colleagues for a walkout, or overthrowing a regime. We’re talking about the much more subtle distinction, per Article 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (1935), which stipulates, in full:

Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 8(a)(3) [section 158(a)(3) of this title].

The key here is the phrase “concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” That, according to the NLRB, is what Mariana Cole-Rivera and her colleagues at Hispanics United of Buffalo were doing when they used Facebook to discuss their coworker’s threat of exposing their alleged poor performance.

Understanding and employing this line, both for workers and for companies, isn’t easy, and is rife with unknowns and hypotheticals.

A January 2012 NLRB memo highlights a year’s worth of their decisions involving social media, 14 in all. The cases run the gamut: There are situations where an employee was wrongly fired based on a broad social media policy, as well as cases where employees were fired legally even though their company’s policy was deemed problematic.

For employees, the message is easier to navigate: You have the right to air concerns based on “concerted activities” and “mutual aid” on social media. But you may still be taking a risk depending on what you say, especially if you’re not engaging with other employees about work conditions. And because your words are launched into the world, or at least into easily mined data clouds, employers can easily find them and try to use them against you.

It may be trickier for companies. When you’re dealing with concerted activities or mutual aid, your social media policy can’t leave open the possibility that group action could be perceived as banned. So, for example, simply stating that employees can’t make “disparaging comments” could imply that they can’t speak out collectively about a work concern. And if they did — and you fired them — they probably have legal recourse. You should be as specific as possible, like banning employees from putting proprietary information on social media.

And while employees are taking a risk when posting criticisms out in the world, Sachs pointed out to me that companies have at least as much, if not more, risk because anything that’s said on social media can turn into a PR scandal (does Applebee’s ring a bell?). And, of course, this is why many businesses have blanket social media policies in the first place — but it’s becoming increasingly clear that they’re legally problematic.

“Workers’ rights to collective action often conflict with owners’ desires to control their corporate image,” argued Josh Eidelson this past July in Slate, prior to the Hispanics United ruling. “But the former is enshrined in law; the latter isn’t. The power of social media to air criticism shouldn’t change that.”

“One thing this flurry of activity shows,” Sachs adds, “is that even though traditional unions or organizing is on decline, employers can’t ignore the National Labor Relations Act.”

While we all try and sort out next steps, Sachs recommends that companies “get the best legal expertise they can in this area of law to craft and carry out these [social media] policies.” In the end, he says, “it’s really difficult to say, with 100% assurance, that this policy is legal and this policy is not.”

Editors Note: This blog was originally posted on letsmove.gov.

First Lady Michelle Obama invited Big Bird to to the White House to learn how easy and delicious it is to eat fruits and vegetables. Check out the latest PSAs from Mrs. Obama and Sesame Workshop celebrating Let's Move!'s third anniversary!

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Snapchat is popular app among young people. As the name suggests, it is a mobile chat app that also allows for communication using a device’s front-facing camera, as well as the sharing of photographs and drawings. The big draw here is setting an expiration — up to ten seconds — on the images, or video, sent. SnapChat’s short-sends gives it a bad reputation — as a “sexting” app. That will not change with today’s announcement.

The company is “thrilled to announce the arrival of video to our Android community”. The update is included in version 2.0 of the app, which just hit the Google Play Store.

While video is the big addition in this update, there’s more. SnapChat has also “revamped our notification system to give you more informative, exciting, and customizable notifications from your friends”. In addition, a claim of more reliable behavior was made, due to bug fixes that are also included in 2.0.

Before you get too excited, the announcement comes with a caveat — “Some users will still experience difficulties”. Hopefully those difficulties will not include images and video not expiring, which could result in evidence a few customers may live to regret. However, the company also promises that “We have a ton of great updates on the way”.