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The last Google Chrome Experiment took us on a journey through the stars of our galaxy. Now Google is partnering with Disney to take users through the world of Sam Raimi’s upcoming film – Oz: The Great and Powerful.

The latest Chrome experiment uses a number of Web technologies to bring the world of the film to life. Google says it worked with UNIT9 and Disney to create the visual spectacle using the latest HTML5 technologies like WebGL, CSS3, Web Audio API, and WebRTC. You can see the results for yourself here.

Like the other Chrome Experiments before it, this latest one is another great case study for the continued development of HTML5 and open Web technologies. The tornado segment is an especially awesome example of the kinds of technical marvels developers and designers are now able to achieve with Web technologies that could barely render 2D sprites only a few years ago.

If you’re more interested in the development work that went on behind this latest experiment, hit up the Chromium blog to see all the technologies used. To get even more in depth, you can check out UNIT9′s case study at HTML5 Rocks.

Pingdom has put together some stats and charts today with the goal of proving that Facebook may be able to become the biggest “country” on the planet (in terms of population) by the year 2016.

Noting that Facebook already overtook the U.S. three years ago, Pingdom points out that China and India are still ahead of the social network. Stats they use to set up their case: 2.4 billion Internet users in the world, 41.6% of them were Facebook users by the end of 2012 (compared to 4.4% in 2007), and Facebook penetration was 14% by the end of 2012 (up from 5.3% in 2009).

“As you can see, we made two different projections,” Pingdom says of the above graph. “The first projection is based on a model that assumes Facebook to have a yearly growth rate that declines by 10% per year. For the other projection, we were a bit more cautious and assumed a growth of 6% per year. That may seem high, but Facebook increased its user base by 18% in 2012 alone.”

They go on to say that Facebook has a low penetration rate in large parts of the world, like Africa, India and Russia, and that it is only used by about 5% of the population of those countries.

“As the Internet penetration rate rises in these regions, the Facebook penetration may follow,” says Pingdom. “Also, Facebook is still blocked in China. If this changes in the future, the world’s largest online market opens up to Facebook.”

On a related note, Pew has put out some survey results indicating that about 1 in 4 American Facebook users plan on using Facebook less in 2013.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was unveiled today via an exclusive look in the latest issue of Game Informer. Now, though, CD Projekt RED (CDPR) has released even more details on the upcoming sequel to its acclaimed series.

First, the melancholy news: The Witcher 3 will be the final Witcher game. That may be distressing for fans of the series, but it also means that CDPR will be focusing on bringing new titles to market, rather than allowing their successful series to jump the shark.

“People may ask if this is really going to be the last Witcher game. Yes, it is,” said Adam Badowski, managing director of CDPR. “Why? Because we believe that we should end the series on a high note. Technology has progressed to where we can finally tell the story the way we want, with the visuals we want, in the world we imagined. This will be the ultimate fantasy RPG experience, and while we’re hardly out of stories to tell, we believe it’s time for us to look to new worlds and new horizons to keep pushing the boundaries of what we can create.”

As announced this morning, The Witcher 3 will be an open-world-style RPG, similar to the Elder Scrolls games.

“The captivating and non-linear story of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt takes place in a rich, truly open-world environment,” said Badowski “A world which is thrilling to explore, full of daring adventures, momentous quests, memorable characters, and unique monsters. Players will freely travel through woods, lakes, mountains, cities and villages. Each region is inhabited by distinct populations with their own customs, legends and problems. The world of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is 30 times bigger than The Witcher 2,”

The Witcher 3 will be released sometime in 2014 on “all high-end platforms,” which is code for PC and next-generation consoles. The game will be created using the recently announced REDengine 3, a game engine designed by CDPR specifically for open-world RPGs.

The new teaser trailer for The Witcher 3 isn’t much more than a title reveal. It took around three months after the announcement of Cyberpunk 2077 for that game’s sexy trailer to show up, so a real teaser trailer for The Witcher 3 sometime this spring isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Facebook is now offering advertisers a new feature called Lookalike Audiences, which enables direct marketers to target audience segments with similar customer profiles to those they have uploaded themselves with Facebook’s Custom Audience feature.

“With Lookalike Audiences, advertisers can expand their reach to specific geographic areas or audiences who are not already fans of the company’s page while still maintaining the desired demographic profile of their existing audience using Facebook’s algorithms,” a Facebook spokesperson tells WebProNews. “When using Custom Audiences, the data is hashed so no information is shared between the advertiser and Facebook.”

Lookalike Audiences is currently in beta in Facebook’s Power Editor tool for advertisers. According to Inside Facebook, advertisers in the beta are seeing lower costs per action than with traditional targeting options. Brittany Darwell reports:

Lookalike Audiences can be created after an advertiser has uploaded a list of first-party data, such as customer email addresses, phone numbers or user IDs to make a Custom Audience. Facebook’s algorithms analyze the Custom Audience and produce another audience segment that is likely to have a similar customer profile. The advertiser can then create any Facebook ad type and target it to the Lookalike Audience. No personally identifiable information is shared back with advertisers and Lookalike Audiences can only be used within Facebook, not exported for email marketing or other ad targeting.

In other Facebook ad-related news, the company has reportedly agreed to implement the AdChoices industry standard icon on its display ads served through the Facebook Exchange, following complaints from advertisers.

A guard who worked for the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, was arrested this morning for having an inappropriate sexual relationship with an inmate while she was on duty. The woman, 29-year old Nancy Gonzalez, admitted to having a relationship with the inmate, a convicted murderer of two undercover police officers, and says she is 8 months pregnant with his child.

Gonzalez’s admission was reportedly recorded during a conversation she had with her boyfriend, who is currently residing in another prison.

“I took a chance because I was so vulnerable and wanted to be loved and now I am carrying his child,” said Gonzalez. “Why not give him a child as far as giving him some kind of hope.”

The inmate, Ronell Wilson, was originally sentenced to the death penalty for his crimes, but the decision was overturned after an appeal and he is awaiting a retrial. At least three other inmates witnessed the inappropriate conduct, one of whom has said that Gonzalez came to him for advice on how to handle things if she got caught, adding that she would get “15 years” if the relationship was found out.

Gonzalez is scheduled to be arraigned later today in a Brooklyn court.

A NASA balloon has broken the record for longest flight. The balloon, which carries the Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (Super-TIGER), spent 55 days, 1 hour, and 34 minutes circling the South Pole at 127,000 feet – over four times the altitude of commercial airplanes. The previous record for a balloon of that size was 46 days.

The record-breaking balloon also broke the record for longest flight of a heavy-lift scientific balloon, beating the previous record (set by NASA’s Super Pressure Balloon in 2009) by five minutes.

“This is an outstanding achievement for NASA’s Astrophysics balloon team,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “Keeping these huge balloons aloft for such long periods lets us do forefront science that would be difficult to do otherwise.”

The balloon was held aloft by wind patterns at the South pole. Anticyclonic winds that circulate from east to west in the stratosphere there enable long-duration balloon flights.

The Super-TIGER instrument aboard the balloon measured rare elements heavier than iron in the cosmic rays that constantly strike the Earth’s atmosphere. The data will be used to research the origins of the particles and how they reach their high energy states. Researchers estimate the device detected 50 million cosmic rays, and that the data will take around two years to fully analyze.

“This has been a very successful flight because of the long duration, which allowed us to detect large numbers of cosmic rays,” said Bob Binns, principal investigator of the Super-TIGER mission. “The instrument functioned very well.”

Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has released some findings from a survey about American Facebook users. The data comes from just over 1,000 adults in the continental U.S. via telephone interviews, so that’s roughly a millionth of Facebook’s user base. Stats are weighted to correct known demographic discrepancies, Pew says.

According to the survey, one in four users say they plan to cut back on Facebook usage this year. 3% of them say they plan to spend more time on the site, 27% say they plan to spend less time on the site, and 69% say they plan to spend around the same amount of time on the site.

“Young adults are the most likely forecasters of decreased engagement,” says Pew. “Some 38% of Facebook users ages 18-29 expect to spend less time using the site in 2013, although a majority of users across age groups anticipate that their Facebook usage will remain largely stable in the year to come.”

Two thirds of online American adults are Facebook users, according to Pew, and 61% of current Facebook users say that at one time or another in the past they have voluntarily taken a break from the social network for a period of several weeks or more. 20% of the online adults who don’t currently use Facebook say they used to. 8% of those who don’t use it say they’re interested in doing so in the future.

These are the most popular reason researchers were given for why people took breaks from Facebook:

Perhaps more telling are the verbatim reasons Pew shares:

“I was tired of stupid comments.”

“[I had] crazy friends. I did not want to be contacted.”

“I took a break when it got boring.”

“It was not getting me anywhere.”

“Too much drama.”

“You get burned out on it after a while.”

“I gave it up for Lent.”

“I was fasting.”

“People were [posting] what they had for dinner.

“I didn’t like being monitored.”

“I got harassed by someone from my past who looked me up.”

“I don’t like their privacy policy.”

“It caused problems in my [romantic] relationship.”

To its credit, the Obama administration has been far more tech savvy than any before it. One of its defining moments in this area was the building of the We The People Web site and making the software behind it open source. Now the White House is ready to move on to the next step, but wants input from developers along the way.

The White House announced today that Petitions 1.0, the code that the We the People site runs on, is finished. Now the team will be working on Petitions 2.0. Here’s the details from the White House blog:

In software development, when you go from one version number to another it means that something big is going on. We’re taking a new approach to how the application works, one that starts with the assumption that it should be as open, transparent, and flexible as possible.

As a result, Petitions 2.0 is based on an application programming interface, or API, that we will release to the public in the coming months. The first set of methods, Read API, will be released in March, 2013 and will allow anyone to retrieve data on petitions, signatures, and responses. Later, we’ll release a second set of methods, Write API, that will allow other websites and apps to collect and submit signatures without directly sending users to WhiteHouse.gov. With this API in place we’ll be able to decouple the presentation and data layers of the application and build a new, streamlined signature process. This also means that developers who reuse our code will be able to choose which database the application relies on. Between that and our continued work on a white label theme, Petitions 2.0 will be easier for others to contribute to and reuse.

Before any of this is made public, however, the White House staff will be inviting a small number of developers to the White House Open Data Day Hackathon. Those invited will receive access to the new API methods before the event so they can mess around with it for a bit. At the event itself, developers will show off what they have done, and submit examples to be included with the public SDK.

Are you interested in building the next open platform of citizen/government relations? If so, you can apply to join the hackathon here. If you are selected, you’ll be notified no later than February 8.

An out-of-control teen has recently learned that life is not like an episode of “Maury”; when you act out, you don’t just get sent to an angry ex-Marine for tough love. You get fines, jail time, and internet immortality.

Penelope Soto learned the hard way that when you talk back to a judge, things go quickly downhill. After being arrested for drug possession in Miami, Soto appeared before Judge Jorge Rodriguez-Chomat only to giggle, play with her hair, and roll her eyes at him. It may have been an attempt to disarm the judge with girly cuteness, but it failed miserably. After an initial bond set at $5,000, Soto gave a catty, “Adios” and walked away…only to be called back and have her bond upped to $10,000 for her contempt. Astounded, Soto asked if he was serious, and when he replied he was, she gave him an angry bird and told him to f*ck himself.

The punishment for her attitude? 30 days in jail.

If you’re an iPhone 5 user, there’s a few things about BlackBerry 10 that you’ll find interesting. Granted, there’s definitely some things that you would miss if you switched, such as the obvious app gap with Netflix, Instagram and more missing from the app list. But there are also some really great features about BlackBerry 10 such as the unparalleled typing experience that you’ll really appreciate. We’ve put together 5 cool BlackBerry Z10 features that may get you to switch.

1. Typing Experience – The iOS keyboard still sucks. Autocorrect is still an issue and my friends with iPhones are consistently sending me emails with typos. Personally, I’ve always hated BlackBerry’s virtual keyboards but this one is completely different. The spelling correction is great and it only gets better with time.

2. Standard Connections – Aren’t you tired of how Apple constantly changes its connections and renders all accessories useless? If you’re an iPhone 5 user, how often have you asked someone “do you have a spare charger?” only for them to pull out the non-Lightning charger. With the BlackBerry Z10, you’ve got a standard Micro-USB charger that’s compatible with even Android devices.

3. Multiple Screens – As mentioned above, one of the great things about BB10 is standard connections, including HDMI. You can not only share your screen with the standard HDMI, but you can even share your mobile screen over BBM. This is going to have some really interesting implications for business and consumers.

4. Maps – The new BlackBerry 10 maps are powered by Tom Tom and they’re impressive. The map app comes with the ability to view traffic as well as set favorites for easy and quick navigation. If you’re tired of your crApple Maps and easy navigation is important to you, consider switching to BlackBerry 10.

5. Bigger Screen – If you’re an iPhone 5 user, you’ll definitely appreciate the bigger screen as it was probably one of the reasons you upgraded. The BlackBerry Z10 has an even bigger screen, but not ridiculously big like the Samsung Note. It’s still manageable but gives you more space to do the things you love.

UniWar HD by Easy Software Solutions is a turn-based multiplayer strategy game originally developed on Android. Having been launched on the Z10 and PlayBook makes UniWar compatible with iOS, Android and BlackBerry.

Featuring thousands of different maps, UniWar HD uses hexagons to mark territory and spaces. There are several different types of land that give a variety of stat bonuses (or penalties) to each of the 3 races’ 8 different units.

The multiplayer component has room for 20 different “chess by mail” sessions complete with email notifications and inter-player chat. The other custom game modes include playing against the computer, or Hot Seat mode allowing 2 players to face off on a single device.

The campaign features 21 missions, perfect for testing your mettle before graduating to real online competition. If you climb the ranks enough, you may find yourself on the global online leaderboards.

Click here to download UniWar HD for BlackBerry 10 and PlayBook for free.

Onstage here at BlackBerry Jam Europe, Vivek demoed what he’s calling Touch and Go on the BlackBerry Q10. Basically, it is a shortcut designed specifically for the physical keyboard device, where you just start typing an action, then a name, and you can quickly take action.

Touch and Go is a productivity feature in line with the other BlackBerry 10 features – like peek and BlackBerry Flow – that are designed to keep you moving quickly through your information, taking action along the way as needed.

Have a look at this quick video to see the Touch and Go feature in action:

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

The example Vivek gave was for an email. He just started typing “email” then the contact info, but you could do this for Facebook, Twitter or even BBM. Take this for example: “BBM – Alex K. – What’s the best thing you’ve seen at BlackBerry Jam Europe so far?”

Let us know what you think about this feature and the other demos of the BlackBerry Q10 from last week at the global BlackBerry 10 launch.

Metacritic, the popular video game review aggregator, has released its third yearly breakdown of the best gaming publishers. The rankings come as an aggregate of the critic Metacritic scores of each publisher’s titles released in 2012. Sales and user reviews are not taken into account.

Somewhat surprisingly, Electronic Arts (EA) has topped review charts this year. This is despite being voted “Worst Company in America” by gamers fed-up with day-one DLC and micro-transactions that are popping up in every one of the publisher’s releases.

Though it may be hard to remember due to the scandals over its ending and day-one DLC, Mass Effect 3 was well-reviewed upon release and tops EA’s list of 2012 games with a Metacritic score of 93. The publisher’s average score was 75.2, and none of its games scored a 49 or lower.

The next three publishers on the list are all first-party publishers: Microsoft with a 73, Sony with a 72.3, and Nintendo with a 71.2. Microsoft was led by Mark of the Ninja‘s 91, but was balanced out by poorly rated Kinect and Xbox LIVE Arcade games. Nintendo was similarly balanced by casual-gamer targeted titles, though Xenoblade Chronicles‘ 92 saved it from falling lower on the list. Similar to EA, Sony also did not have any scores fall below 50, though a majority of its titles fell into the “average” range from 50 to 75.

Capcom (70.4), Warner Bros (70.6), Ubisoft (68.2), Konami (69), Sega (69.9), and Activision Blizzard (64.4) rounded out the top ten. Activision’s highest-rated title was Diablo III (88), but the publisher was brought low by movie tie-in games such as 007 Legends, which managed a 25 Metacritic score.

As for the “mid-size” publisher (those that released between 7 and 14 titles) rankings, Take-Two Interactive (83.1), Telltale Games (83.9), and Square Enix (75.2) led the list. Telltale Games was buoyed by each episode of its The Walking Dead adventure game, which managed to win quite a few game of the year awards.

It seems like only last week that rumors were going around about a possible 128GB iPad. Actually, it was only last week. Apple quickly put the rumors to bed and made the announcement. Now, here we are a week later, and they’re already available to buy.

The device is a 128GB version of the fourth-generation iPad with Retina Display. It comes in both the Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + Cellular models. Previous versions came with 64GB of storage.

“With more than 120 million iPads sold, it’s clear that customers around the world love their iPads, and everyday they are finding more great reasons to work, learn and play on their iPads rather than their old PCs,” said Apple SVP of Worldwide Marketing, Philip Schiller, when the product was announced. “With twice the storage capacity and an unparalleled selection of over 300,000 native iPad apps, enterprises, educators and artists have even more reasons to use iPad for all their business and personal needs.”

The devices are available in black and white, and they cost $799 and $929 for the Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + Cellular models, respectively. They’re available here.

Watch this video on YouTube

In a statement from the briefing room today, President Obama explained that while our economy is headed in the right direction, looming automatic budget cuts will cost jobs and slow down our recovery. 

But, those deep, indiscriminate cuts to job-creating investments and defense spending, also known as the sequester, don't have to happen, the President said. He's already worked with Democrats and Republicans in Congress to cut the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion through a balanced mix of spending cuts and higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, but there's more to be done to meet the $4 trillion in deficit reduction needed to stabilize our debt.

"I think this balanced mix of spending cuts and tax reform is the best way to finish the job of deficit reduction," the President said.

The reforms to Medicare and other entitlements the President proposed during the fiscal cliff negotiations are still on the table, he said. "These reforms would reduce our government’s bills by reducing the cost of health care, not shifting all those costs on to middle-class seniors, or the working poor, or children with disabilities, but nevertheless, achieving the kinds of savings that we're looking for"  

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Microsoft has just announced that Redbox Instant, the company’s streaming video venture with Verizon, will be coming to the Xbox 360 as as console exclusive.

“Today we’re happy to reveal that Redbox Instant by Verizon will be coming to Xbox 360 in the very near future,” says the Major Nelson blog. No other details were provided on the exact launch date of the new app, simply the “very near future.”

Also adding to a vagueness is the phrase “coming days,” which is the time frame in which current Redbox Instant beta participants will receive an email with a special access code. Redbox Instant is currently in a beta testing phase, but is likely to open up to everyone by March.

As is the case with Netflix, HBO Go, Hulu, and most other Xbox apps, an Xbox LIVE Gold membership will be required to use the new Redbox Instant app. Redbox Instant itself costs $8 a month ($9 for Blu-ray), and that includes full streaming access as well as four additional physical rentals.

Score one for Microsoft as they’ve just landed another streaming video option to tempt users into paying for Xbox LIVE Gold – even if Redbox Instant’s current offerings leave a lot to be desired.

The Death Star is undoubtedly a worthwhile undertaking. Sure, in the Star Wars films it’s generally depicted as an offensive weapon but it could have terrific value as a defensive platform, too. The government recently responded to requests from the general public that it look into constructing the massive, moon-sized space station, shutting down the idea because of a short-sighted “we don’t blow up planets” political stance and an unwillingness to dip into the treasury.

Now, a new Kickstarter project wants to pick up those plans, using an open source design effort and crowdfunding to help make it happen.

The project has a £20,000,000 (over $30,000,000 U.S.) funding goal, which would be used to create “more detailed plans” than the initial design the team currently has (pictured below) and improve on the original from the Star Wars movies with some unique defensive measures to keep out pesky X-Wings. If the project reaches its stretch goal of £543,000,000,000,000,00 (or $850,000,000,000,000,000), then the plans will actually be put to use building a full-scale production Death Star.

The project’s founders don’t share much about their backgrounds, so it’s difficult to say if they have the chops needed to deliver on their stated December 2015 delivery timeline. And of course there’s always the possibility of Rebel saboteurs to consider, too. For what it’s worth, we’ve learned from a source that Darth Vader himself is confident things are progressing as planned. “The Death Star will be completed on schedule,” he was overheard to say in conversation with a high-placed Imperial executive.