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Earlier this month, it was rumored that Microsoft was working on a 7-inch Windows 8 tablet. The news came after Microsoft changed up its rules reducing the minimum resolution for a Windows 8 device to 1024×768. Now the company has confirmed that it is indeed working on a smaller tablet.

During its earnings call yesterday, outgoing Microsoft CFO Peter Klein said that smaller Windows 8 devices are on the way. We can assume that he means that Microsoft itself is working on a cheaper, smaller Surface tablet, but don’t be surprised if Microsoft’s partners also announce smaller tablets.

As I’ve said before, smaller tablets may be key to a Windows 8 revival. The touch-friendly OS and Microsoft’s Surface tablets haven’t exactly been flying off store shelves. One of the major reasons is the high cost as the base Surface RT retails for $499. A seven-inch tablet would lower the price barrier for consumers interested in Windows 8 hardware, but were turned off by the high price of entry.

Of course, we have no idea when Microsoft or its partners will release these smaller Windows 8 tablets. A good bet is the latter half of this year as Windows Blue, or Windows 8.1, will be launching around that time. Microsoft is rumored to be completely revamping its marketing with Windows Blue and a cheap seven-inch tablet would fit nicely with marketing that extols an even friendlier Windows 8 experience on desktop and mobile.

Microsoft’s BUILD conference will be held in June of this year, and the company will also have a large presence at E3. While the latter will be mostly focused on the next Xbox, it wouldn’t be an entirely bad idea for Microsoft to show off a smaller Surface that can act as a controller for the company’s next game console.

[h/t: GottaBeMobile]

The first call came at 2:38 a.m., which I missed. Caller ID said “Watertown Emergency.” The second came a few minutes later; it was a robocall from the chief of police warning us of an “active incident” in East Watertown, telling folks to stay at home and not open the door for anyone not in a uniform.

Try to sleep after that. A quick check of Twitter showed there had been a shootout and possible explosions in East Watertown and that the suspects were also involved in the shooting of an MIT campus police officer late Thursday night. The officer died.

I live in Watertown, a town just west of Boston where overnight police have converged in their hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers. The town — and to some degree the metropolitan area including Boston, Cambridge, Newton, and Waltham — is now in full lockdown. My house is barely a mile from what appears to be a paramilitary operation but I can hear and see nothing of it. Nor did I hear the gunfire and explosions that rocked East Watertown in the early morning hours, and which neighbors captured on cell phone video.

In the hours after the robo-call, there was the usual flurry of information and misinformation on Twitter as well as the TV stations — one of the suspects was erroneously identified on Reddit and other sites as missing Brown University student Sunil Tripathi. One of the local TV outlets, after spending a half hour rehashing what had been reported and misreported by others, then dropped the feed of the State Police’s statement during the night. Mind boggling.

Friends and family of missing Brown student Sunil Tripathi are frustrated that he was falsely accused of the bombing: ow.ly/kdZL2—
Ted Nesi (@tednesi) April 19, 2013

Folks quickly turned to police scanner apps to get the lowdown. (Ustream then picked up another app here.) That sparked a debate on just how responsible that is.

Police scanner just went down. It's obvious they are trying to keep their operations more private. #watertown—
Josh Varela (@JVarela13) April 19, 2013

Finding out what happened required triangulation — as one Twitter correspondent put it, cops on the scanners are having conversations, they don’t know what’s going on either.

Reports were all over the map. Both suspects of the Marathon bombing were involved; both were killed; one was captured, one was killed; the reality emerging this morning is that one suspect, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was dead; the other, his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was at large wearing a suicide vest. Or not. The latter appears to be suspect number 2 (white hat guy) in the Boston Marathon bombings.

What this shows is that proximity to an event means nothing in terms of accuracy unless you are an actual eyewitness. The information I had a mile away was available to everyone.

The lockdown continues.

Photos courtesy Getty Images.

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Google announced that it is updating its terms and conditions for AdSense users. The changes will go into effect April 23rd.

AdSense product manager Matt Goodridge writes in a blog post, “In order to keep pace with changes in our products, we regularly review our Terms and Conditions to make sure they’re up to date and in line with those of other Google products. As a result of our recent review, we’ll be making some updates to our Terms, starting April 23rd. If you’re based in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, or North America, you’ll see a notification in your account when you log in after this date. It will present you with the updated Terms and prompt you to accept them. For publishers based in the Asia-Pacific region, the change to our Terms will happen slightly later as we’re rolling the changes out gradually across all regions.”

Google says the main things that are changing are that the new version of the terms will be easier to navigate, and make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for. Also, the terms will be more mobile-friendly.

“With mobile being one of the big trends in 2013 and beyond, we’re expanding our Terms to cover mobile properties more specifically,” says Goodridge. “We’ve also incorporated guidelines for using the AdMob SDK and other publisher products.”

These aren’t the only changes, however. Google says a number of smaller changes have been made throughout, so you will want to review them.

As you probably know, on Thursday the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, better known as CISPA. The bill, which aims to help the government react to cybersecurity threats by making it easier to share information between itself and private companies, saw bipartisan support. Opponents of CISPA have argued that the bill is a a massive invasion of privacy, and will be used to justify wholesale spying on the American public by making companies who give up private user info immune from suits or prosecution.

Although CISPA as a whole saw bipartisan support, one last-minute amendement that looked to curtail a worrisome practice by employers was shot down on party lines.

Colorado Democrat Ed Perlmutter attempted to tack on a provision to CISPA that would make it illegal for employers to require prospective employees to hand over their social media passwords as a condition of acquiring or keeping a job.

The proposal was voted down 224-189, with Republicans in the majority.

“People have an expectation of privacy when using social media like Facebook and Twitter. They have an expectation that their right to free speech and religion will be respected when they use social media outlets. No American should have to provide their confidential personal passwords as a condition of employment. Both users of social media and those who correspond share the expectation of privacy in their personal communications. Employers essentially can act as imposters and assume the identity of an employee and continually access, monitor and even manipulate an employee’s personal social activities and opinions. That’s simply a step too far,” said Perlmutter.

This isn’t the first time that Perlmutter has introduced this sort of legislation. Last year, the same employee password protection language was rejected in the House.

Last year, the practice of employers demanding the Facebook passwords of prospective employees became a hot topic. Both state legislatures and the U.S. Congress introduced measures to counteract the rising trend. One particular bill, the Password Protection Act of 2012, was introduced in both the House and the Senate, but went nowhere.

On the flip side, some states have had success in passing bans on the practice. First, the state of Maryland enacted a law banning password snooping. And this year, laws in both California and Illinois went into effect.

“It’s not déjà vu — this is the same amendment I introduced twice last year, so people have had plenty of time to study and discuss it. It has bipartisan support. It wouldn’t kill the underlying cyber-security bill; it wouldn’t send it back to committee. It merely safeguards an individuals’ personal privacy as they use their own personal social media accounts,” said Perlmutter.

It’s important to note that Perlmutter did in fact vote yes on CISPA.

But despite those claims, the provision was crushed. If the past year is any indication, password protection legislation must be tackled at the state level, as it’s the only place that its been able to see any sort of success.

Ann Curry’s relationship with the Today show has been speculated about for nearly a year now. Her tearful goodbye in June 2012 left viewers sour, and led to the Today show falling behind Good Morning America in the morning show ratings war.

Though fans have been blaming Matt Lauer for ousting Curry from her anchor chair on Today, a new story has begun emerging, showing that Lauer was just one among many at the show that wanted, or were at least indifferent to, Curry’s ousting.

The New York Times this week published an article about Curry’s departure that was adapted from an upcoming book titled Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV. The article relates that Curry feels the “boys’ club atmosphere” at Today had made her final months on the show “a form of professional torture.”

The article describes Lauer as “indifferent” to Curry, and states that there was “a general meanness on set.” As an example, Today show executive producer Jim Bell is said to have asked for a blooper reel of Curry’s on-air gaffes, though he denies the accusation. In another example, staff made fun of a yellow dress Curry wore one morning, comparing her to the Sesame Street character Big Bird.

Colonialism is a touchy matter, especially when it comes to video games, but the development team at Paradox Interactive has chosen to make it one of the core elements of the second big expansion for Victoria II, suggestively called Heart of Darkness.

Fortunately, the studio understands how to sanitize its grand-strategy experience and makes co… (read more)

Have you ever used the “sandwich approach” to give negative feedback to your direct reports? You sandwich the negative feedback between two pieces of positive feedback. It’s a common method, but the sandwich approach may be undermining both your feedback and your relationships with your direct reports.

First, let’s look at why leaders use the sandwich approach and why it doesn’t work. In my work with leadership teams, the majority of leaders say they have used the sandwich approach to give negative feedback. They offer several reasons:

They think it’s easier for people to hear and accept negative feedback when it comes with positive feedback. When I ask these leaders how they know this, almost all of them acknowledge that they simply assume it. When I ask — or have them ask — their direct reports how they would prefer to receive negative feedback, almost all of the direct reports say they want just the meat — no sandwich. If you give a feedback sandwich, you risk alienating your direct reports. In addition, they are likely to discount your positive feedback, believing it is not genuine.

They assume the sandwich approach provides balanced feedback. These leaders want direct reports to understand that the negative feedback is only part of their performance evaluation. But this balance claim disintegrates when I ask, “Do you also feel the need to balance your positive feedback with negative feedback?” It is important to give positive feedback, but saving it to offset negative feedback delays the value of the positive feedback. The research shows that feedback — positive or negative — is best shared as soon as possible.

They believe that giving positive feedback with negative feedback reduces discomfort and anxiety. Less often, leaders admit that they use the sandwich approach because they’re uncomfortable giving negative feedback. It’s easier to ease into the conversation with some positive feedback, these leaders say. In fact, though, “easing in” creates the very anxiety they are trying to avoid. The longer you talk without giving the negative feedback, the more uncomfortable you’re likely to become as you anticipate giving the negative news; your direct reports will sense your discomfort and become more anxious.

Effective leaders are transparent about the strategies they use when working with others. The sandwich approach is designed to influence others without telling them what you’re doing — it is a unilaterally controlling strategy — in other words, a strategy that revolves around you influencing others, but not being influenced by them in return.

Imagine that you plan to use the sandwich approach with Alex and Stacey, two direct reports who just gave a presentation to your senior leadership team. To understand why you’re reluctant to share your strategy, take the transparency test — a thought experiment with three simple steps:

1. Identify your strategy for the conversation. Your strategy is to start with some positive feedback to relax Alex and Stacey, then give them the negative feedback — the purpose of the meeting — and then end with more positive feedback so they won’t be so disappointed or angry.
2. Imagine telling the people your strategy. You would say something like, “Alex and Stacey, I have some negative feedback to give you. I’ll start with some positive feedback to relax you, and then give you the negative feedback, which is the real purpose of our meeting. I’ll end with more positive feedback so you won’t be so disappointed or angry at me when you leave my office. How does that work for you?”
3. Observe your reaction. Do you find yourself laughing at the absurdity of making your strategy transparent? If you think “I could never say that,” it’s because the strategy is unilaterally controlling: it is an attempt to control the situation without letting Alex and Stacey in on the plan. Unilateral control strategies only work when the other people don’t know your strategy or are willing to play along. And they are less effective than transparent strategies.

You can use this three-question transparency test in any situation to determine whether your strategy is unilaterally controlling.

Avoid the Sandwich: Use an Effective, Transparent Strategy

Here’s an approach to giving negative feedback that is transparent and increases you and your direct reports’ ability to learn from the feedback:

“Alex and Stacey, I want to talk with you because I have some concerns. The presentation you gave to the senior leadership team this morning may have created confusion about our strategy. Let me tell you how I’d like to approach this meeting and see if it works for you. I want to start by describing what I saw that raised my concerns and see if you saw the same things. After we agree on what happened, I want to say more about my concerns and see if you share them. Then we can decide what, if anything, we need to do going forward. I’m open to the possibility that I may be missing things or that I contributed the concerns I’m raising. How does that work for you?”

This transparent approach is more effective than the sandwich approach for several reasons. First, by sharing your strategy and asking them if it will work, you, Alex, and Stacey jointly design the meeting process, increasing the chance that you will all learn from it. Second, because everyone knows the planned sequence of the meeting, everyone can work jointly to keep the meeting on track. Finally, by expressing that you may not have all the information and that you may even have contributed to the problem, you shift the meeting from one in which you’re simply telling Alex and Stacey what you think to a meeting in which all of you are exploring together what happened and planning how to move forward.

This transparent, mutual learning approach doesn’t work better than the unilaterally controlling sandwich approach simply because you are saying different words. It works because you’ve shifted your mindset. That shift means thinking of negative feedback as a way to help your direct reports improve as you learn what you may be missing. It means thinking of feedback as a way for you and others to make informed choices together. Giving negative feedback transparently means respecting your direct reports, not controlling or alienating them; makes both your negative and positive feedback feel more genuine to your direct reports; and lowers your discomfort and their anxiety.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder that’s still hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London after the UK approved his extradition to Sweden. During that time, he has entertained a number of guests, including Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

WikiLeaks shared a verbatim transcript of a five-hour conversation between Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Julian Assange, Jared Cohen, former Secretary of State advisor to Hillary Clinton, and Lisa Shields, a member of the Council for Foreign Relations. The meeting was arranged so Schmidt and Cohen could speak with Assange about their new book – The New Digital Age.

A lot of the conversation comes from Assange as he discusses his motivations for starting WikiLeaks. Many people may already know his motivation – to make information free – but his conversation with Schmidt provided a few more details. Assange thinks that the current system of sharing information is broken because it has to go through three or four different channels before it reaches the average citizen. He said that WikiLeaks is “an attempt… at a total system” that collects, curates and disseminates primary sources without any of the self or government mandated censorship that crops up in traditional news publishing.

Much of the conversation after that is Assange continuing to discuss state and economic censorship, which the latter he claims is the more prevalent of the two. After a bit of that, however, Assange starts to discuss Bitcoin. He voices full support for the digital currency and advises people to jump in early because he assume that its value is going to skyrocket:

The Bitcoin actually has the balance and incentives right, and that is why it is starting to take off. The different combination of these things. No central nodes. It is all point to point. One does not need to trust any central mint. … The problems with traditional digital currencies on the internet is that you have to trust the mint not to print too much of it. And the incentives for the mint to keep printing are pretty high actually, because you can print free money. That means you need some kind of regulation. … Bitcoin instead has an algorithm where the anyone can create, anyone can be their own mint. They’re basically just searching for collisions with hashes.. A simple way is… they are searching for a sequence of zero bits on the beginning of the thing. And you have to randomly search for, in order to do this. So there is a lot of computational work in order to do this. And each Bitcoin software that is distributed.. That work algorithmically increases as time goes by. So the difficulty in producing Bitcoins becomes harder and harder and harder as time goes by and it is built into the system.

It should be noted that this conversation took place before recent Bitcoin boom and the subsequent crash.

Assange also touched upon how the Internet is inspiring revolution today, particularly in countries with oppressive governments:

The radicalization of internet educated youth. People who are receiving their values from the internet… and then as they find them to be compatible echoing them back. The echo back is now so strong that it drowns the original statements. Completely. The people I’ve dealt with from the 1960s radicals who helped liberate Greece and.. Salazar. They are saying that this moment in time is the most similar to what happened in this period of liberation movements in the 1960s, that they have seen.

He also says that the Internet is turning the youth of the Western world, who are typically a-political, into political activists thanks to the information they are able to receive on events that they would have otherwise not been exposed to in traditional media.

You can check out the rest of the transcript here. It’s incredibly fascinating and definitely worth your time.

Google’s first-quarter earnings beat Wall Street expectations, aided by a lower tax rate and a research credit. Even though the stock moved on the numbers, it was what was said on the call that was most important. CEO Larry Page said on the conference call that it is his job to make sure that Google and its engineers are working on big, bold bets to not only advance the company and its earnings, but society as well. “A big part of my job is to get people to focus on things that are not just incremental,” Page said during the earnings call. Google is working on ambitious projects, such as Google Fiber, self-driving cars and other projects like Google Glass “because no one else is crazy enough to try.”

Continue reading…

Hyun Lee, a 37-year-old from New Jersey, is suing CVS for $1 million after allegedly receiving a receipt replacing her name with a racial slur when she wen to pick up her photos.

Instead of the receipt saying “Hyun Lee,” it said “Ching Chong Lee. The Smoking Gun has an image of the alleged receipt:

Wikipedia describes the term in question:

Ching chong is a pejorative term sometimes employed by speakers of English to mock people of Chinese ancestry, or other Asians who may be mistaken for Chinese. Several public commentators have characterized the term as derogatory while noting that assaults or physical intimidation of Asians are often accompanied by racial slurs or imitation Chinese.

NBA star Shaquille O’Neal once famously used the slur, when he said, “Tell Yao Ming, ‘Ching chong yang, wah, ah soh”.

ABC News has an interview with Lee talking about the distress she feels from the incident:

According to Lee’s lawyer, the company did not fire the employee responsible, nor offer an apology.

It appears that Brad Paisley and LL Cool J have yet to eliminate racism.

Storm Thorgerson, the artist behind many classic album covers, has died at the age of 69.

According to an Associated Press report, Thorgerson died “surrounded by family and friends” and his death was peaceful. He had reportedly been suffering from an unnamed illness for “some time.” The artist had suffered a stroke in 2003.

Thorgerson grew up in Cambridge, England, where he attended the same high school as Pink Floyd members Syd Barret and Roger Waters. He was also a friend of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour.

After attending college, Thorgerson joined the art group Hipgnosis. There he designed many famous album covers, starting with Pink Floyd albums such as A Saucerful of Secrets, Ummagumma, The Dark Side of the Moon, and Wish You Were Here. Throughout the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s Thorgerson designed album covers for bands such as Black Sabbath, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, The Offspring, Phish, Ween, The Mars Volta, The Cranberries, and Muse.

Gilmour this week released a statement on behalf of Pink Floyd:

“We first met in our early teens. We would gather at Sheep’s Green, a spot by the river in Cambridge and Storm would always be there holding forth, making the most noise, bursting with ideas and enthusiasm. Nothing has ever really changed.

“He has been a constant force in my life, both at work and in private, a shoulder to cry on and a great friend.

“The artworks that he created for Pink Floyd from 1968 to the present day have been an inseparable part of our work.

“I will miss him.”

– David Gilmour

Wikimedia sites, which include Wikipedia, Wikionary, Wikibooks, Wikimedia Commons, Wikiquote, and nearly a dozen more, now see over 500 million unique visitors a month.

The previous high was set in May of 2012, when Wikimedia Foundation sites saw 492 million uniques. In March, the family of sites saw an astounding 517 million unique vistors. The data comes courtesy of the latest comScore Media Matrix.

“In the Wikimedia movement, we have a vision statement that inspires many contributions to our endeavor: Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment,” says Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner.

“The idea of enabling every single human being to freely share in the sum of all knowledge is still as audacious as ever – but it’s also starting to look like an achievable goal, if we come together to make it happen.”

The increase in uniques has also had an impact on how long readers stay and how much content they consume. Gardner says that people are staying longer and reading more.

“Over the past 12 months, Wikipedia monthly page requests increased from 17.1 billion to 21.3 billion, with the mobile share increasing to roughly 15 percent of the total, or more than 3 billion monthly views. We’re also gratified to see growth in significant target areas: in India, traffic as a percentage of our worldwide total increased from 4.0 percent to 4.8 percent; in Brazil it increased from 3.6 percent to 5.9 percent.”

Speaking of Sue Gardner – she’s not long for the position of Wikimedia director. A couple of weeks ago, she announced that she would be stepping down from the job – not right away, as she expects to take 6 months or so to find a replacement.

In a cinematic world that’s filled with CGI, overpaid actors and rehashed story lines, it’s great to know that we can always fall back on those cheesy automotive flicks from the 1970s. Movies like the original Cannonball, The Seven-ups and Convoy are just a few that come to mind. However there is one that if you haven’t seen it, you really should treat yourself. It’s called Hi-Riders, and it’s got all the elements that made those B-movies from the 1970s so awesome. Check out a clip of the film after the jump.

Source: Youtube.com

So much for HTC marketing “one” phone this year as the Desire L was just made official. This one is destined for Taiwan and the specs scream economical, or shall I say low-end. It will come with a 4.3-inch WVGA (800 x 480) LCD 2 display, a 1GHz dual-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, 4GB of storage, microSD slot for expansion, 5MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture, 1,800 mAh battery, and Beats audio. It’s fairly thin for a cheaper phone with it’s 8.9mm profile. They didn’t specify the version of Android, but we presume Jelly Bean. Finally, you will have your choice of pink or black.

source: HTC

Come comment on this article: HTC unveils the economical Desire L for Taiwan

It’s all very well talking about the evolution of wearable computing and the internet of things, but something has to power these thin and/or tiny devices. For that reason, it’s a good thing that so many ideas are popping up in the field of energy harvesting and storage.

Some of these ideas were on display this week at the Printed Electronics Europe 2013 event in Berlin, which took in a variety of sub-events including the Energy Harvesting & Storage Europe show. The concepts ranged from the practical to the experimental, so let’s start with the practical.

Here’s Perpetuum‘s Vibration Energy Harvester (VEH), being carried around (appropriately) on a model train.

The VEH is a wireless sensor that gets attached to rotating components, such as wheel bearings, on trains. Cleverly, the device both measures and is powered by mechanical vibration. It also measures temperature, and it wirelessly transmits the results to the train’s operator so they can immediately spot a failure in its early stages.

It’s a simple, low-maintenance idea (there’s no battery that needs replacing) that promises big savings, as Perpetuum CEO Roy Freeland told me, referring to an unnamed operator:

“The user has achieved a very fast payback because the system has enabled him to delay maintenance on the bearings until the fleet was due for a major train overhaul.”

Perpetuum is part of an EU-funded consortium called Wibrate, which aims to introduce this kind of self-powered vibration monitoring technology into a variety of industrial systems.

Meanwhile, a similar principle was at play in Cherry’s energy-harvesting switch.

The light you see in that picture can be wirelessly turned on and off by a switch that does not itself require any external powering: the act of pressing the switch creates enough mechanical energy to briefly power its wireless transmission capabilities. This is somewhat preferable to wiring up switches, in terms of both effort and flexibility, and who knows? Perhaps the principle could be employed in certain internet-of-things scenarios, too.

Then there’s good old photovoltaic technology, which may soon find itself woven into a new generation of smart fabrics. Another EU-funded project called Powerweave aims to create two kinds of fiber – one for harvesting solar energy and the other for storing it – that can be woven together into one self-contained system. This could theoretically be used to power soft sensors in clothing, but there are far more large-scale applications in store.

According to Christian Dalsgaard, founder of consortium member Ohmatex, the goal is to create a fabric that can generate 10W per square meter. Once that is achieved, he noted, there are “no limits how big such a fabric can be made”, and a 100m2 piece of fabric would in theory be able to generate a kilowatt of power. Commercial applications could range from flexible roofing, tents and sun awnings to a new generation of autonomous airship (balloon manufacturer Lindstrand is also in the consortium). The fabric could even be a valuable part of aid packages, Dalsgaard noted:

“The end fabric should be foldable, so you can fold a large fabric – 100m2 – into a package. It’s not enough to roll it up… The requirement is to fold it, put it in a package and drop it from an airplane.”

Powerweave isn’t quite there yet, though. While a lot of progress has been made on the solar cell and storage fibers, “the challenge is to ensure the solar fibers are on top of the fabric and battery fibers are beneath, and that there is a supporting layer to provide strength,” Dalsgaard added.

But what about fabrics that can harvest energy from movement, rather than light? Yep, people are working on that idea too, although problems remain. As Steve Beeby of the University of Southhampton said at the conference: “Textiles offer a good opportunity for energy harvesting… but clothes are designed for [comfort], not to resist your movement.” And don’t forget, any flexible electronics built into the fabric of clothes need to be machine-washable, too, connectors and all.

And finally, a less technically interesting but nonetheless worthwhile little gadget that was on show: the Clicc.

These dinky little solar panels can be clipped into tiny units that store the captured energy for charging mobile devices — I wouldn’t expect vast amounts of charge, but it’s handy in a pinch — or they can be chained as the picture shows, to increase the total amount of energy captured. Unfortunately the firm behind them, Sonnenrepublik, hasn’t yet come up with a unit to store and output that aggregated power, but it’s a nice thought nonetheless.

In the end, all ideas that take us closer to sustainable energy use are welcome.

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Those of you looking for a more compact and economical version of the Samsung Galaxy S 4 will have to wait a couple of months longer. The Galaxy S 4 Mini was originally going to release in May, but has been pushed back to July. The little brother of the Galaxy S 4 will come with a 4.3-inch qHD (960 x 540) display, and 8MP camera. We expect to see two versions, a one SIM option and a dual-SIM option. The single-SIM option will sport a quad-core CPU, while the dual-SIM will sport a dual-core CPU. No word on why there is a delay, but I would imagine with the Galaxy S 4 launching shortly, Samsung would like to see that phone in the spotlight for a little while.

source: SamMobile

Come comment on this article: Samsung Galaxy S 4 Mini now pushed back to July

We recently told you about a particularly odd lawsuit in which an eBay seller was suing a buyer for feedback left on their page. The seller, Med Express, was suing the buyer, Amy Nicholls, over her complaint on the eBay feedback page that her product had arrived with an extra $1.44 postage due.

Med Express offered to correct the mistake, reimbursing Nicholls for the undue charges. But Nicholls had already posted the “negative” feedback on eBay. Med Express claimed that that feedback (which knocked their favorability rating down to 99.3%) caused them irreparable harm. They sued for an injunction to get the feedback removed and for damages from the resulting loss of business.

Nicholls, with the help of Public Citizen’s Paul Levy, lawyered up and fought back – saying that her feedback was accurate and that expressing it is not a tort, and especially no reason to seek damages. To Levy, the lawsuit was the epitome of a frivolous mess. The case saw widespread coverage across tech sites. You can read our longer breakdown of the initial lawsuit here.

Now, we have a couple of new wrinkles in the case. Med Express President Richard Radey took to Public Citizen’s site to issue an “apology” for the lawsuit in the comments.

“I hope all of you will accept this as an open letter of apology from Med Express,” he said.

He went on to explain that the lawsuit was never meant to be targeted at Nicholls, and that he had instructed his lawyer to seek $1 in damages.

“Her feedback was also never an issue. We fully support her right and all of our customers right to leave any feedback they desire – true or otherwise!” he said.

Apparently, the issue involved eBay’s “Detailed Seller Ratings.” He said the low rating caused Med Express to love their coveted “Top Rated Seller Plus” standings. He then linked this to a possible loss of tens of thousands of dollars in the future.

Also, he claims to have not read the suit:

The only way DSR’s are removed is by court order, and I was told that such court orders were not uncommon. I do deeply regret the wording of the lawsuit. I had not read it and only learned of the wording on the blogs. I too would have been outraged and for that I also sincerely apologize. It is the addendum attached ordering Ebay to remove the DSR’s that was our only goal.

The only person to blame here is me. You have spoken and I have listened. A terrible wrong needs to be righted. I am instructing our attorneys to drop the lawsuit. I want to assure everyone that you may feel free to leave any feedback on our company without fear of reprisal. I have learned my lesson.

Public Citizen’s Levy has now published a response, basically saying “I don’t believe you.”

“When I criticize somebody on this blog, I generally send a courtesy notice with an invitation to respond omnt he blog. When the target of criticism owns up to a mistake, it is also my practice to be gracious. Ordinarily, then, a profuse apology like Radey’s would be cause for admiration. Problem is, I don’t believe a word of what he says…” Levy writes.

Expect that he does believe Radey is sorry about the criticism Med Express has received through all the media coverage of the suit. But the rest, he says, is a smoke screen.

In fact, he claims that the lawsuit against Nicholls is simply one of many, and it’s not even the most ridiculous. He points to a long list of past and pending claims against eBay and eBay buyers.

“From my review of many of the cases, Med Express typically files a complaint based on extremely vague assertions of falsity, against defendants who may be too far from Medina too respond effectively, seeks a temporary restraining order without giving any notice, and hopes to get relief before the defendant knows what hit him, her or it,” says Levy.

Levy also claims that Radey’s assertion that it’s the lawyer’s fault, and that he hadn’t seen the lawsuits before they were filed is nonsense. Levy says that Radey signed a verification for the suit and signed an affidavit complaining about the negative feedback.

“Even if I were inclined to believe Radey’s assertion that all he really wanted was an injunction taking down the criticism, I would not be assuaged; in some ways, such injunctions, and the procedures for getting them, are even more of an affront to the public interest,” says Levy.

“[T]he public at large is injured by these fixes, because consumers have an interest in learning what the criticism was, and what the response. Not all rating systems are perfect; maybe there are reasons to doubt the accuracy of the “DSRs.” But they are one data point that eBay consumers can use to decide where to buy goods online. We should not forgive Radey and Med Express even if it were true that distorting his own DSR’s was the only objective of this frivolous litigation.”

Nicholls’ lawyers have filed a counterclaim, one that seeks sanctions and punitive damages from Radey and his attorneys. This will move forward, according to Levy.

The strange tale of Amanda Knox was thrown another twist last month when an Italian court over turned Knox’ 2011 acquittal. Knox, who was a foreign exchange student in Italy, was convicted in 2009 of the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher. The court case has brought international scrutiny of the Italian justice system.

Despite the latest court ruling, Knox is now back in the U.S. and is moving on with her life. She has penned a memoir that will be published on April 30.

As part of her media tour to promote the book, Knox spoke with People magazine this week, telling the publication that she is still affected by the murder, her conviction, and the four years she spent in an Italian prison.

When Meredith was murdered and I was arrested, it was so shocking,” Knox told People. It was paralyzing. Everything toppled.”

Knox related that, while in prison, she contemplated suicide. She now lives in Seattle and attends the University of Washington.

“Things creep up on me and all of a sudden I’m overwhelmed by the feeling of helplessness and that desperation and fear to even hope,” she told People. “Just that can make my heart race and makes me paralyzed until I can breathe it away.”