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A year ago, AOL was a laughing stock. The one-time internet king was surviving on dial-up dollars from yokels and its media properties were a mess. After it sold its patent portfolio to Facebook, it seemed only a matter of time until AOL dried up altogether.

Then something happened. The company’s revenues grew, its share price soared and CEO Tim Armstrong revealed a strategy to make AOL a media and advertising powerhouse. The company’s winning streak continued Friday morning as Wall Street greeted AOL’s latest earnings report with glee; the stock shot up another 12 percent when markets opened.

“We’ve walked through the the value of the turnaround and got to growth,” Armstrong said on a morning call with investors.

It’s too soon to say the company’s back on top but, for now, the results look like the real deal. Here’s why: as analysts fussed over AOL’s debacle with hyper-local site Patch and its dwindling dial-up business, the company quietly invested in state-of-the-art ad technology and rejigged AOL to inject new revenue streams. The most important of these are inside the AOL Networks group — a business unit that offers ad tech tools to publishers and advertising agencies that are still learning to navigate the world of automated ad buying. The Networks group grew 37 percent year-over-year and posted revenue of $183.5 million in Q4. (Total revenue for AOL in the quarter was up 4% from a year ago to $599 million; adjusted OIBDA income was down 7% to $123 million).

During this time, AOL has also become number two in online video thanks to products like HuffPo Live; this is significant because video is one of the most lucrative forms of online advertising. AOL now plans to draw on its fancy ad tools to create automated buying for its own video inventory while, at the same time, offering those tools to other companies who are still catching up on the video front.

Meanwhile, AOL’s media properties don’t look as dysfunctional as they did a year ago. Armstrong appears to have figured out how to manage the mercurial Arianna Huffington and, as for his pet project Patch, the hyper-local site is still losing money but he promises it will be profitable by the end of  the year.

The bottom line is that AOL has three major revenue streams, all of which look viable. There are still danger signs, of course: AOL’s display ad business looks shaky and, as Henry Blodget points out, the company’s revenues may come from three streams but nearly all of the profit is still coming from the legacy subscriber businesses.

But, for now, investors are right to like what they see. People looking for 2013′s turnaround story should stop fussing over Yahoo — it’s AOL that is poised to be this year’s comeback kid.

Disclosure: GigaOM distributes some video content through AOL.

(Image by Rob Hainer via Shutterstock)

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Tor many people who want to solve pressing social and environmental problems, founding a social enterprise is the strategy of choice. The lure of establishing an organization that uses market mechanisms to achieve its mission is substantial. Our data show that MBA students are flocking to classes to learn the art of social entrepreneurship. Over the last five years there has been a substantial increase in the number of leading business schools offering courses to meet this demand.

But there is another way to tackle these problems and find meaning in work. Some innovative and determined professionals working in world’s largest and most complex corporations are choosing to stay put and use their corporate platforms to lead change. They are a new breed of business professional — the social intrapreneurs. They are finding creative — and in many cases disruptive — ways to tackle some of society’s toughest problems and create long-term value for their companies as well.

The men and women who choose this path have diverse expertise and job responsibilities: marketing, leadership development, communications, operations, new business development, purchasing. Some have decades of experience in their industry. Some are recent graduates. What all have in common is a vision about possibilities. They see opportunities others do not for their companies to operate in ways that serve multiple constituencies — shareholders, employees, communities, and the planet. And they dare to take action.

In the First Mover Fellowship Program at the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program, we have a chance to work with exceptional social intrapreneurs in businesses around the world and to study the innovations they are piloting in their companies.

Take James Inglesby at Unilever, for example. James is using his expertise as a chemical engineer to develop new business models for base-of-the-pyramid consumers. Suzanne Ackerman-Berman at Pick n’ Pay in South Africa is leading an innovation lab to help small-scale farmers and entrepreneurs become reliable suppliers to the retail industry. Dawn Baker at Dow is revamping leadership development offerings to ensure they mesh with their company’s sustainability objectives. Matt Ellis at CBRE, a global leader in real estate services, is designing financing structures that will provide capital for clients’ energy efficiency initiatives. At the cloud-computing company VMware, Nicola Acutt is running technical service projects to tap into the creative energy of talented employees to solve social problems and uncover business opportunities.

All these business professionals are using their institutional savvy, their personal credibility, their determination, and their deeply held sense of purpose to lead the changes they envision. In the fellowship program, we get to observe the passion these individuals bring to the possibilities they see ahead of them. We watch as they work around institutional constraints and build a network of colleagues who are eager to help. We see how they persist when the going gets tough, and we marvel at the humility they bring to the work they undertake. Intrapreneurs know they can’t get to the goal by themselves, but they also know that if they don’t lead the change, others may not have the opportunity or foresight to get on board.

Do they always succeed in these endeavors? Certainly not. Social intrapreneurs know they won’t always get it right the first time. They have to embrace the possibility of failure and be ready and willing to learn from their efforts and try again. Their ideas for products, services and management practices may not survive market tests. Moreover, they encounter plenty of roadblocks which can slow down or completely derail any project: organizational apathy (or worse, antipathy), financial constraints, inevitable corporate restructurings, economic disruptions, organizational cultures that are slow to adapt or are singularly focused on meeting a quarterly financial target.

But certainly the hurdles social intraprenurs face are no greater than those encountered by their social entrepreneur counterparts. And intrapreurial visionaries have a distinct advantage. They know that if they can prove their concepts and get colleagues on board, they will have a chance to tap into the deep and global resources that multinational corporations have to offer. Moreover, they can harness the drive to win that characterizes companies competing on the world stage today. And if these social intrapreneurs are really good, they have a shot at changing the success metrics not only for their company but for their industry as a whole.

In other words, they are able to make a real difference. An increasing number of mission-driven, innovative professionals are finding they can’t resist this opportunity.

Follow the Scaling Social Impact insight center on Twitter @ScalingSocial and register to stay informed and give us feedback.

Justin Timberlake can add Beer Executive to his list of titles, which also include: Singer, Musician, Actor, Investor, and Entrepreneur.

Actually, the real title is Creative Director, as Anheuser-Busch has appointed him as such for its Bud Light Platinum brand. Timberlake will provide “creative, musical and cultural curation” for the brand.

Here’s what Timberlake had to say about it: “Bud Light Platinum brings a refined, discerning aesthetic to beer that plays well with what I’m doing. I’m looking forward to not only being a part of the creative process, but in bringing other talented musicians to the forefront as well.”

Here’s what he’s doing by the way:

“Justin Timberlake is one of the greatest creative minds in the entertainment industry, and his insights will help us further define Bud Light Platinum’s identity in the lifestyle space,” said Paul Chibe, vice president of U.S. marketing, Anheuser-Busch. “Since launching Bud Light Platinum last year, we’ve worked to align the brand closely with music, including leveraging tracks by Kanye West and Avicii in our first ads. Partnering with Justin as he makes his return to music brings a new level of relevance and credibility to the brand.”

The partnership was developed with ad agency, Translation. It begins with the Grammy Awards this Sunday with a sixty-second Bud Light Platinum ad, called “Platinum Night.” The spot will feature the above song.

image: SNL (NBC)

LEGO has proven its versatility time and time again with projects as impressive as a working jet engine to a complex ball delivery machine that still blows my mind to this day. One thing that LEGO has not yet conquered, however, is the 3D printer. One 15-year-old boy is ready to change that.

Marios Papachristou, a high school student from Greece, is working on an open source 3D printer made completely out of LEGO bricks. As expected, the machine is being built with LEGO Mindstorm parts. Here’s some additional details on the project:

This is a project aims to develop a special 3D printer made of LEGO Mindstorms(R) pieces. Inspired by the GNU RepRap Printer (open-source based 3D printer) and Arthur Sacek’s Milling Machine, this project combines both techniques resulting in a machine that, even though resembles the RepRap design, it drills floral foam so as to make three dimensional objects. The chosen programming language is about to be LeJOS NXJ (GNU). Currently in development stage (designing and building)….

Here’s a video of an early digital prototype:

Of course, the video only features a 3D model of the printer. Here’s what the actual LEGO printer looks like in its current, unfinished form:

According to the Google Code page for the printer, Papachristou’s plans for his LEGO 3D printer is to first complete it, and then build software to operate it. After that, he’ll write some documentation so that anybody can build their own.

If you want to follow the project, check out its Google Code and Google+ pages.

[h/t: 3ders]

More hardware startups are looking at everyday tools that have been relatively unchanged for a long time, like the HAPIFork we saw at CES this year. Today, a new startup called Wayki is adding its innovative toothbrush design to the list of gadgets hoping to improve the lifestyle of users by adding a modern tech spin to an age-old tool.

The Wayki is a toothbrush that doubles as an alarm clock, but rather than just being a roughshod combination of the two, it uses the alarm function to reinforce toothbrushing action and hopefully ingrain some good health habits for users. The alarm can’t be snoozed, and it can only be deactivated by inserting the Wayki brush head into the base, which in turn triggers the two-minute brush timer (I always thought you were supposed to go for five minutes per session, but that might be overkill, according to Wayki).

Wayki advertises its lack of a snooze function as a feature, designed to address studies that show delaying that morning start can lead to bad sleep cycles and lower productivity throughout the day. Dave Hawkins, Wayki’s lead designer, says that his own personal experience with putting off his morning start is what prompted the inclusion of that particular feature.

“I’ll often find myself tapping the snooze button, regret it later, and in a sudden hurry forget to clean my teeth before staring at my screen for the rest of the day,” he explained in an email interview. “Even when I remember, I’ll be too impatient to wait for the full 2 minutes.”

Hawkins thinks that technology can best help individuals with improving wellness and health by taking away any remaining friction in the process, essentially making things automatic for users, and the Wayki is designed around that principle.

“I think the best products do the thinking for you, and with brushing being a chore I realised that the most efficient approach was going to be removing the decision-making process from the equation. “Mental weight is a bigger challenge than physical weight. It’s far less apparent that the weight is even there.”

They Wayki is seeking £50,000 (around $80,000 US) in funding, using Selfstarter, the open source crowdfunding platform developed by Lockitron to help get its own project off the ground. Pre-orders go for £49 ($77 US), or 50 percent off of the anticipated retail price, and the first devices are expected to ship in the next three to five months. While Wayki is initially only available for shoppers in the U.K., Hawkins says that it should be available worldwide in time for its official launch.

Final Book Now Available

Since 1991, the National Research Council, under the auspices of the Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy, has undertaken a program of activities to improve policymakers’ understandings of the interconnections of science, technology, and economic policy and their importance for the American economy and its international competitive position. The Board’s activities have corresponded with increased policy recognition of the importance of knowledge and technology to economic growth.

One important element of STEP’s analysis concerns the growth and impact of foreign technology programs. U.S. competitors have launched substantial programs to support new technologies, small firm development, and consortia among large and small firms to strengthen national and regional positions in strategic sectors. Some governments overseas have chosen to provide public support to innovation to overcome the market imperfections apparent in their national innovation systems. They believe that the rising costs and risks associated with new potentially high-payoff technologies, and the growing global dispersal of technical expertise, underscore the need for national R&D programs to support new and existing high-technology firms within their borders.

Similarly, many state and local governments and regional entities in the United States are undertaking a variety of initiatives to enhance local economic development and employment through investment programs designed to attract knowledge-based industries and grow innovation clusters. These state and regional programs and associated policy measures are of great interest for their potential contributions to growth and U.S. competitiveness and for the “best practice” lessons that they offer for other state and regional programs. STEP’s project on State and Regional Innovation Initiatives is intended to generate a better understanding of the challenges associated with the transition of research into products, the practices associated with successful state and regional programs, and their interaction with federal programs and private initiatives. The study seeks to achieve this goal through a series of complementary assessments of state, regional, and federal initiatives; analyses of specific industries and technologies from the perspective of crafting supportive public policy at all three levels; and outreach to multiple stakeholders. Building the Ohio Innovation Economy: Summary of a Symposium explains the of the study, which is to improve the operation of state and regional programs and, collectively, enhance their impact.

[Read the full report]

Topics: Industry and Labor

Prepublication Now Available

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is one of several federal agencies responsible for protecting Americans against significant risks to human health and the environment. As part of that mission, EPA estimates the nature, magnitude, and likelihood of risks to human health and the environment; identifies the potential regulatory actions that will mitigate those risks and protect public health1 and the environment; and uses that information to decide on appropriate regulatory action. Uncertainties, both qualitative and quantitative, in the data and analyses on which these decisions are based enter into the process at each step. As a result, the informed identification and use of the uncertainties inherent in the process is an essential feature of environmental decision making.

EPA requested that the Institute of Medicine (IOM) convene a committee to provide guidance to its decision makers and their partners in states and localities on approaches to managing risk in different contexts when uncertainty is present. It also sought guidance on how information on uncertainty should be presented to help risk managers make sound decisions and to increase transparency in its communications with the public about those decisions. Given that its charge is not limited to human health risk assessment and includes broad questions about managing risks and decision making, in this report the committee examines the analysis of uncertainty in those other areas in addition to human health risks. Environmental Decisions in the Face of Uncertainty explains the statement of task and summarizes the findings of the committee.

[Read the full report]

Topics: Environment and Environmental Studies | Policy for Science and Technology

Google is paying homage to Indian Ghazal singer/musician Jagjit Singh with a doodle on its home page in India. Singh died in 2011. Today would have been his 72nd birthday.

Here’s a performance:

The Economic Times reports that Jagit Singh tops the list of popular singers in his genre, according to Google Search Trends data.

Singh has a huge discography and an extensive list of film scores. You can see both here.

Google has run quite a few doodles this week in various parts of the world. In addition to the global Mary Leakey doodle, Google ran one for the Canadian penny in Canada, one for Sri Lanka Independence Day in Sri Lanka, one for Josef Kajetán Tyl in the Czech Republic, and one for Manuel Álvarez Bravo in Mexico.

Last year may have been a good year for health tech funding — but 2013 is shaping up to be even better.

The amount of funding put toward health tech companies in January was up 172 percent over the same time last year, according to StartUp Health Insights, the database run by New York-based StartUp Health Academy, Investors poured nearly $272 million into 47 deals, with the biggest deal topping $45 million.

Here is a graphical snapshot of some of the January highlights:

Key takeaways:

• About a third of the funding went to seed stage and A-round companies, and more incubators and strategic investors are moving in at the early rounds — not just venture capitalists, who traditionally invest early on.
• The hottest sectors were data and analytics, mobile health and telehealth — all areas that are attracting attention as industry players look for ways to reduce costs, engage consumers and show outcomes.
• The most active investor was the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, which made three investments in January.
• On average, Series D rounds are 154 percent larger than they were at the same time last year, which StartUp Health says is consistent with a recent trend of many venture capitalists in the sector taking less risk by investing at later stages.

What new trends will we see in 2013? DNA laser printing and more sophisticated connected sensor technology, for example, are both just beginning to gain traction, saidUnity Stoakes, president and co-founder of StartUp Health. “One interesting thing to watch for will be the sources of funding for these early stage companies as capital shifts from life sciences and biotech to health tech and strategic investors become more active,” he said.

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Love it or hate it, if you want to play Dead Space 3, Crysis 3, or SimCity on a PC or Mac, you are going to have to download EA’s Origin platform.

It’s been only one month since EA released the “Alpha” version of its Origin platform for the Mac, and today EA officially released the client for Macs. We’ll have to assume that means the weeks-long alpha and beta tests went well, or that no one downloaded the alpha and the publisher decided it was good enough for the few people who would actually use it. Either way, Mac gamers can now download EA games such as The Sims 3, Dragon Age II, and, um, The Sims 3 expansion packs. There are other games available, of course, but nothing that isn’t already available through the Mac App Store.

“Our vision with Origin is to connect your gaming universe online, and today we’re taking a major step in expanding our service to reach Mac-based gamers worldwide,” said Michael Blank, VP of production for Origin at EA. “In delivering great game content, connecting the Origin service across PC, Mac and iOS devices, and offering great value to gamers with dual-platform play on select EA titles, Origin is making it easier than ever before for gamers to connect and play anytime, anywhere.”

So, maybe Mac gamers won’t get to download Crysis 3, but they shouldn’t worry too much. SimCity will (probably) be released on Origin for Mac in the near future.

Facebook has just released an update to their Pages Manager for Android app that brings new features to make the app a lot more useful to page owners.

Pages Manager for Android arrived in the U.S. early last month after being available on iOS for quite some time. When it launch, it wasn’t as feature-rich as the iOS version – it really only allowed page owners to post updates and view insights.

But today, v.1.1 brings some much-needed functionality to the app.

With this update, page owners can now promote posts inside the app, as well as schedule posts for a later time and date. Android users have also received the ability to create events from their Pages with the app.

Here’s the full list of additions shipping with v1.1:

What’s in this version:
• Promote your Page posts to get more people to see your them in news feed
• Schedule your post to be published on a future date
• Create events from your Page

You can snag the update today on Google Play. With v1.1, Facebook Pages Manager for Android gets closer to being as robust as Pages Manager for iOS. Still to come, hopefully, are features like being able to post offers from the app, something the iOS version of Pages Manager got back in October 2012.

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, the next game in the StarCraft II trilogy, is quickly approaching. Some players may be content to keep playing Wings of Liberty, but others will want to jump on board the latest title to see where the story goes or check out the newest additions to competitive multiplayer. Those who fit into the latter category will want to check out all the new features coming to matchmaking as detailed in a new trailer.

In a new “Ways to Play” trailer, Blizzard walks players through all the new features coming to matchmaking in StarCraft II. This is what players will be spending most of their time in. As such, Blizzard wants to make it super accessible for new players, while keeping the same highly competitive environment that made Wings of Liberty so popular.

Competitive players will definitely want to check out next week’s video as Blizzard will be going through all the enhancements its making to the multiplayer portion of the game, as well as what it’s doing to support the eSports community.

Macmillan, the last remaining publisher holdout in the Department of Justice’s ebook pricing antitrust lawsuit against five publishers and Apple, has decided to settle about ten months after the lawsuit was originally filed. Following Penguin’s settlement in December, Macmillan CEO John Sargent had said  Macmillan wouldn’t follow suit, but he acknowledged Friday in a letter to authors and agents that “the potential penalties became too high to risk even the possibility of an unfavorable outcome.” The settlement means that Apple is the only remaining party fighting the DOJ lawsuit, with a trial set to begin this summer.

How this settlement is different

According to documents filed with the court Friday (PDF, and see links below), Macmillan agreed to many of the same settlement terms that HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette and Penguin already agreed to — but there are also significant differences. Retailers will immediately be allowed to discount Macmillan’s ebooks, in order to “provide for more prompt relief to consumers.” In the cases of the three original settling publishers (HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette) and Penguin (which settled in December), “several months passed before consumers saw the benefits of the settlements through lower retail prices on many of the settling publishers’ ebooks.” In Macmillan’s case, however, according to the competitive impact statement:

That “two-year cooling-off period” means that, for two years, settling publishers can’t restrict retailers like Amazon from setting, changing, or lowering ebook prices. The settlement means Macmillan gets a back-dated head start on this period, so it will again be able to restrict discounting in December 2014. Most-favored nations clauses are prohibited for five years, but Macmillan had already removed those from its contracts.

Unlike the other big-six publishers, Macmillan also publishes digital textbooks. Those are exempt from the settlement because the DOJ antitrust case focused only on trade books.

Finally, there are provisions to make it clear that Macmillan’s parent company, Holtzbrinck, would be in trouble if it “worked in concert with Macmillan to evade Macmillan’s obligations under the settlement.”

“Our company is not large enough to risk a worst case judgment”

In his letter, Sargent describes massive legal bills that Macmillan — the smallest of the big-six publishers, and the only one that is entirely privately owned — would have had to pay in “a worst case judgment”:

As each publisher settled, the remaining defendants became responsible not only for their own treble damages, but also possibly for the treble damages of the settling publishers (minus what they settled for).  A few weeks ago I got an estimate of the maximum possible damage figure. I cannot share the breathtaking amount with you, but it was much more than the entire equity of our company.

Court docs

Macmillan’s proposed final judgment (PDF)

Competitive impact statement (PDF)

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SeaWorld Entertainment Inc., operator of theme parks including SeaWorld and Busch Gardens, recently filed for an initial public offering (IPO). Best known for its aquatic shows featuring Shamu the killer whale, SeaWorld’s IPO filing specifies that a key future growth strategy will be to “expand in-park per capita spending through new and enhanced offerings…by providing our guests additional and enhanced offerings at various price points.”

So the next time you visit SeaWorld, be prepared to choose amongst an array of admission options ranging from Shamu (good = lower price), Shamu-Plus (better = higher price), and Shamu-Premium (best = highest price).

When most managers think about pricing, they harken back to their days of Economics 101: a rote downward sloping demand curve and an asterisked point labeled “perfect price.” At this optimal price, elasticity is such that it does not make sense to raise price (because the extra per unit profit is overshadowed by lost sales) nor discount (because increased sales don’t compensate for lower profit margin). If you rely on the approach suggested by this graph, pricing has traditionally been thought of as a simple search for one perfect price.

If your company views pricing in this manner, it’s not making the most of this powerful bottom-line enhancing strategy. First, a key challenge is few of us have actually seen a demand curve for our product — let alone an asterisked price point. But more importantly, even if you can determine your product’s perfect price, you end up in what I call a “Pricing Catch-22”: no matter what price you set, you’ll inevitably create missed profit opportunities. Some people would have paid more, while others would have purchased if only the price had been lower.

The way to break out of this Pricing Catch-22 is to offer good-better-best prices. Instead of creating missed pricing opportunities with a single price, this multi-price versioning strategy empowers you to capitalize on a downward sloping demand curve. Having an array of price points — low to high — allows customers to choose which price works best for them. At a gourmet restaurant, for instance, dining high rollers (those at the top of the demand curve) opt to dine at the chef’s-table (best) while those on a budget (a newly married young couple celebrating an anniversary, for example) arrive before 6:30 PM for the early-bird menu (good). By allowing customers to select the experience that works best for them, companies benefit by reaping higher margins from some customers relative to others. Just as important, they also grow their business by serving budget minded customers (with good versions); early-bird diners would probably not come if this discounted option is not available.

Another benefit of good-better-best is customers are more comfortable with this pricing strategy. Few of us take well to ultimatums, which is exactly what offering a single price is: “Here’s the price, take it or leave it.” In contrast, good-better-best is accommodating: “If the price is too high, consider our good version” or “You may appreciate the features of our best option.”

When this strategy is implemented, it’s often surprising how many customers choose the best version and its bottom line effect. In 2007, for instance, Southwest rolled out its Business Select ticket version. For $10 to $30 above the normal ticket price, customers received additional amenities — chief of which is priority boarding. In its first year, I estimate this best version increased Southwest’s revenue by $100 million and operating profit by 10%. In addition to reaping higher margins from high-end flyers, Business Select also generated growth by targeting new customers. I, for instance, rarely flew Southwest due to its no-assigned-seat policy. But since Business Select reduces this seating free-for-all, I now fly Southwest more.

If your company believes that pricing strategy is simply the search for a perfect price, it’s missing out on significant profit opportunities. Customers are better served and profits are enhanced by serving new customers as well as reaping higher margins.

Microsoft wants to make it easier for workgroups to collaborate using its SkyDrive cloud-based storage service. Starting now, users with an invite link to a shared document can work on that document without providing a Microsoft account number.

That should grease the skids for folks who find logging into yet another online account annoying and enable invited workgroup members to edit a document simultaneously if necessary.

According the SkyDrive blog:

“One piece of feedback we’ve consistently heard, especially from students, is that our current SkyDrive edit links can be frustrating for recipients when they find that they need to sign in or sign up for a Microsoft account just to make a quick edit to the document.”

Microsoft is putting a lot of weight behind Skydrive, integrating it with Windows 8 and Office (and Office 365.) Skydrive competes directly — and ferociously — with Google Drive — which also allows its users to edit documents without logging  in. Both of these entries also have to face off against Dropbox, the hugely popular consumer-based file storage and share service, as well as  Box and dozens of other smaller players.

Group leaders wanting to keep tighter control over who can collaborate can invite people into the document via email and check a “require the user to sign-in” box.

In a market this competitive, lowering barriers to entry is really important. Let’s face it, signing up for yet another online account can be a pain and many folks will just skip it if they can. So, this is a smart move for Microsoft. Oh, Microsoft also said that Skydrive is now home to 1 billion Office documents.

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Steven Tyler is one of several celebrities who are trying to make Hawaii a safer place for stars.

The Aerosmith frontman is expected to testify today at a Honolulu hearing for a bill Tyler himself initiated which would crack down on the intrusive behavior of paparazzi when celebrities visit the island on their downtime.

“The paradise of Hawaii is a magnet for celebrities who just want a peaceful vacation,” Tyler said in a statement. “As a person in the public eye, I know the paparazzi are there and we have to accept that,” he added. “But when they intrude into our private space, disregard our safety and the safety of others, that crosses a serious line that shouldn’t be ignored.”

Over the years, as the media becomes increasingly more fervent in its desire to break a big photo or story–largely due to the influence of social media and the fact that almost everyone has immediate access to news sources via smartphones and tablets–the paparazzi have become more aggressive. Several stars have spoken out against the photographers, saying they endanger their lives and the lives of others when they chase celebs on the road just to get a picture. In fact, a photographer was killed recently when he crossed a busy highway to try and snap a shot of Justin Bieber.

Tyler contends that when the stars migrate to Hawaii on vacations, they are often subjected to invasions of privacy. The bill he wants to pass–which is named after him–would impose stricter penalties on photographers, enable stars to seek damages from those who intrude, and expand the laws surrounding invasion of privacy to include the use of zoom lenses on cameras and sophisticated sound equipment.

The White House will be forced to respond to its first online petition since upping the signature threshold to 100,000. Created on January 24th, the petition has crossed the 100,000 signature mark in just two weeks.

So, what does it concern? Marijuana? Secession? Drones? Gay Rights?

Nope, a Russian-born political activist. The petition, “We ask American Congress to make The Act of Alexander Dolmatov to punish all Dutch officials responsible for his death,” asks this of the White House:

On the 17th of january, russian political activist Alexander Dolmatov has died in the Dutch prison. He came to Netherlands to get the freedom but found his death. We ask American Congress to make The Act of Alexander Dolmatov which will include «Dolmatov list» to punish all Dutch officials responsible for the death of Dolmatov.

The petition references the death of a 36-year-old Russian-born rocket engineer in a Dutch deportation center. The somewhat clouded circumstances of his death (a reported suicide) have led to plenty of theories.

The White House recently increased the signature threshold required to elicit an official response from 25,000 to 100,000. As we reported, the 25,000 signature threshold was simply too easy to meet and was resulting in dozens upon dozens of unanswered petitions. It was also allowing many less-than-serious (but admittedly fun) petitions to qualify for responses.

“When we first raised the threshold — from 5,000 to 25,000 — we called it ‘a good problem to have.’ Turns out that ‘good problem’ is only getting better, so we’re making another adjustment to ensure we’re able to continue to give the most popular ideas the time they deserve,” said the White House.

In all, the White House’s We The People online petition initiative has seen over 9 million signatures on over 140,000 petitions since its creation.

The announcement yesterday that Rayman Legends will be delayed to September and will no longer be a Wii U exclusive was a huge blow to early adopters of the Wii U. The title was one of the most anticipated games that fell within Nintendo‘s Wii U “launch window.” Now Wii U owners will have to wait while Ubisoft retools the game (which was, by developer accounts, complete) for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

So, the dearth of new, exclusive Wii U titles continues. Wii U owners will now have to look toward March 18, when LEGO City Undercover hits stores in the U.S. Luckily, that game is shaping up to be one of the best in Telltale Games’ long line of well-received LEGO video games. The game’s Grand Theft Auto-style open-world gameplay and satirical cops-and-robbers movie humor should provide some basic comfort to gamers angry about the Rayman situation.

Today’s new LEGO City Undercover trailer shows that player will, indeed, be taking Chase McCain undercover.

Java and Internet Explorer have both been rocked with some pretty nasty zero day exploits earlier in the year, but they’re not the only software that gets hit with exploits. Adobe’s Flash is frequently targeted by hackers as well, and said hackers have been having their way with it recently thanks to two zero day exploits.

Computer World reports that Adobe has issued a patch ahead of schedule that fixes the two zero-day exploits that hackers were using to hijack Windows PCs and Macs. Here’s the report from Adobe:

Adobe is aware of reports that CVE-2013-0633 is being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks designed to trick the user into opening a Microsoft Word document delivered as an email attachment which contains malicious Flash (SWF) content. The exploit for CVE-2013-0633 targets the ActiveX version of Flash Player on Windows.

Adobe is also aware of reports that CVE-2013-0634 is being exploited in the wild in attacks delivered via malicious Flash (SWF) content hosted on websites that target Flash Player in Firefox or Safari on the Macintosh platform, as well as attacks designed to trick Windows users into opening a Microsoft Word document delivered as an email attachment which contains malicious Flash (SWF) content.

If you don’t want to be hit by something that nasty, you might want to update to the latest version of Flash now. Most Flash users probably have automatic updating turned on, however, and won’t need to worry as the update will take care of itself. For those who do not, you’ll want to download the latest version from Adobe’s Web site.

There might be other zero-day vulnerabilities floating around in Flash for hackers to find and exploit users with. Always stay on guard and only use Flash on trusted Web sites. You can do this by installing a plugin that disables any Flash content from automatically playing unless you authorize it. This technology is built into Firefox. Chrome users can grab the popular FlashControl extension here. If you’re using Internet Explorer, especially IE8, you should probably just stop.