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The hostage standoff in Alabama involving a five-year old boy and an unstable man is reportedly over.

Few details are emerging at this time, but early reports say that Jimmy Lee Dykes, the 65-year old veteran who boarded a school bus last week, shot the driver to death, and kidnapped a five-year old boy is dead. The boy, named only in news reports as Ethan because of his age, is reported to be safe.

Dykes took Ethan to an underground bunker at his home, where the two have been for the past week. Police and FBI said they were being cautious about revealing too much to the public, but did say Dykes seemed to want his story to be heard. Ethan’s family have been waiting with bated breath the past week, praying for his safe release and communicating with both captor and captive through a ventilation duct. They also provided special requests for the boy along with his medication; he’s reported to be living with autism and ADHD.

This is a breaking and developing story; we will keep you updated as details emerge.

When newspapers print a special sections about a specific field of business, the features can be catnip for advertisers who jump at the chance to reach a narrow audience segment interested in, say, 401K’s or real estate or retail. The challenge for publishers is how to replicate that high value product online.

The Wall Street Journal is attempting to do this with the launch today of six new digital verticals that match the special sections that appear in the Journal’s print edition every month or so (Wealth Management, Retirement, Energy, Leadership, Health Care, Small Business). According to senior editor Larry Rout, the idea is to ensure this content doesn’t sink as quickly when it goes online.

To keep up the chatter around the special topics, the Journal is asking a stable of thought leaders and public personalities — including Dilbert creator Scott Adams and author Amy Tan — to blog and offer opinions in a live stream. The site is also hosting periodic “Google Hangouts” where business experts will chat and take questions from viewers.

The idea is fine in theory but will anyone actually show up in the online verticals? After all, the web is awash with financial and business chatter, meaning the Journal Reports may have a hard time standing out. On the other hand, Rout says the Reports’ contents have done very well when published as individual stories on the WSJ website; placing that content in dedicated verticals and combining it with marquee personalities and the WSJ brand mean the Reports have a chance to gain online traction. We’ll check back in half a year to see how it pans out.

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President Obama was in Minnesota today, where he met with men and women who are on the front line of the fight to prevent more tragedies like the ones in Newtown and Aurora: local police officers, community leaders, and people who themselves had been victims or whose families had been victims of gun violence. 

The roundtable was part of the Obama Administration's ongoing conversations with Americans on all sides of this debate about how we can work together to keep our kids safe, help prevent mass shootings, and reduce the broader epidemic of gun violence in this country. President Obama was eager to hear from those gathered at the Minneapolis Police Department's Special Operations Center because they know firsthand the awful consequences of this epidemic, and they know what works, what doesn’t work, and how to move forward without regard for politics. Afterwards, the President described the discussion as productive:

One of the things that struck me was that even though those who were sitting around that table represented very different communities, from big cities to small towns, they all believe it’s time to take some basic, common-sense steps to reduce gun violence. We may not be able to prevent every massacre or random shooting.  No law or set of laws can keep our children completely safe. But if there’s even one thing we can do, if there's just one life we can save, we've got an obligation to try.

That’s been the philosophy here in Minneapolis. A few years back, you suffered a spike in violent crime involving young people.  So this city came together. You launched a series of youth initiatives that have reduced the number of young people injured by guns by 40 percent — 40 percent. So when it comes to protecting our children from gun violence, you’ve shown that progress is possible. We've still got to deal with the 60 percent that remains, but that 40 percent means lives saved — parents whose hearts aren't broken, communities that aren't terrorized and afraid.  

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We brought you word last month that two men were working on an open source prosthetic hand that could be created with any 3D printer. The first hand was being tested out on a little boy named Liam who was born without any fingers on his right hand. The team had already made some amazing progress, but the latest iteration is the best yet.

The team behind the robohand recently uploaded a video of Liam getting used to the latest version of the robohand. This particular build is “powered via cables and return bungees.” According to Liam’s mother, his new hand “was a huge hit” among the teachers and fellow students at his school. In response to the hand, the boy’s doctor said that he would not require any operations.

Now that the hand is in the public domain, the two designers are now facing massive demand from others around the world who need help in getting a robohand to a loved one or friend. They’re working around the clock to do so, but the team is in need of more funds to continue work on the project.

If you would like to download the robohand for yourself and make your own, it’s available on Thingiverse. If you want to donate to the team behind it, you can do so here. All the money will be used in helping bring this new technology to other people around the world.

[h/t: 3ders]

Google is running a doodle on its home page in Mexico today, celebrating the 111th birthday of photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo.

Bravo is credited (Wikipedia) as Mexico’s first principal artistic photographer and as the most important figure in 20th century Latin American photography. He was born on this day in 1902, and lived to be 100. He died in October of 2002.

This is one of at least four doodles Google is running throughout the world today. In Canada, Google has one honoring the last day of the Canadian penny. In Sri Lanka, Google has one for Sri Lanka Independence Day. In the Czech Republic, Google is honoring Josef Kajetán Tyl, who wrote the country’s national anthem.

More Google Doodles here.

Updated: You can tell the influence of uber designer (and chief creative officer) Yves Behar on the San Francisco-based wearable computing products company Jawbone. The company is buying two startups – Visere and MassiveHealth (behind the Eatery app) for an undisclosed amount of money in order to create a better experience around the UP, its personal health focused wearable computing device.

As I have often said, hardware today needs to be more than hardware; it needs to marry connectivity, data and design to create a compelling user experience that keeps people coming back. The better the user experience, the more people engage with the device. Amazon’s Kindle, Nest’s thermostat and Sonos’ devices are examples of this new hardware equation.

Wearable computing’s building blocks are sensors, which record a lot of data. In order to make sense of that data, companies needs data wranglers. But to translate those data inferences into human-understandable experiences, companies — big and small — need design and user experience expertise. And with these two small app-makers, Jawbone is getting that in spades.

MassiveHealth was started by well-known designer and UX thinker Aza Raskin and it launched with fanfare, though it failed to attain the scale normally associated with winning apps. The Eatery app did win a lot of critical acclaim. MassiveHealth raised $2.25 million from various venture funds including Greylock and A16z, and a source tells us, that it was sold for low single digit millions.

Raskin, who in the past worked for Mozilla and helped come up with cool concepts for Firefox, is joining Jawbone. He had helped build a top-notch mobile design and engineering team. Visere, a digital design firm that has storied pedigree and is chock-full of talent. It has worked with Nike in the past.

Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman said that both these acquisitions bring in about 25 new people who will add to its growing software, data and design teams. The company has not decided what to do with the two apps just yet.

Today nearly 40 percent of Jawbone 300-plus employees work on software. “A year ago we had no one working on using data to enhance our offerings,” said Rahman, “Today we have fifteen and that number is going to keep growing.”

Jawbone started life as a company making headsets for mobile phones and about two years ago it has expanded into wearable computers. It launched UP in 2011 but the initial version came under widespread criticism. The company went back to the drawing board and re-jiggered the UP and released it recently along with a new iPhone application.

While these are early days for wearable computing, the market is chock-a-block with a lot of devices and it has drawn the attention of Nike whose FuelBand is a runaway hit.

Correction 2:23pm: An earlier version of this story misspelled Visere.

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A new paper using data from NASA‘s Cassini probe has described in detail how aerosols begin to form in the highest part of the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan. The research, say scientists, could help predict how “smoggy aerosol layers” behave on Earth.

The study, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, states that the smog on Titan begins to form when solar radiation excites nitrogen and methane molecules in the ionosphere, creating a “soup” of negative and positive ions. Collisions among these molecules allows them to grow into more complex aerosols, which coagulate when they reach a lower part of the atmosphere. Eventually the molecules produce the hydrocarbon rain that famously creates the lakes seen on Titan’s surface.

The researchers, based at the University of Reims, looked at data from three different Cassini instruments during the study. Data from Cassini’s plasma spectrometer, its ion and neutral mass spectrometer, and its radio and plasma wave science experiment were examined and compared to data from the Huygens probe, which descended to the surface of Titan in 2005.

Titan is the only other object in the soar system known to have stable liquid on its surface. In December of 2012 the ESA released a high-definition photo of a river valley that runs for over 400 km (248 miles) on the surface of Titan. The picture above shows a flash of sunlight that is reflected off a lake on Titan. The phenomenon is known as a specular reflection.

Hans Rosling has given nine TED Talks, each sharing a carefully measured dataset to change misconceptions about global issues. Now, the Gates Foundation shares a new demonstration from Rosling. Here, using powerful moving charts, Rosling shatters the fallacy of the “developed” world versus the “developing” world. By looking at the facts, we are able to see that child mortality rates in poorer countries have been steadily decreasing over the past 50 years. Now, those so-called “developing” countries are almost equal to the numbers of the wealthier nations. By 2030, there will be no difference.

What will persist, however? The perception. “It is only by measuring,” says Rosling, “that we can cross the river of myths.”

For a good percentage of people, being unfriended on Facebook is a huge slap in the face. So much, in fact, that they would actively avoid running into the unfriender in real life.

Then again, who decided that Facebook interactions don’t count as “real life?”

The study comes from The University of Colorado Dever and Computer Science and Information Systems doctoral student Christopher Sibona. He conducted a survey via Twitter and found that 40% of people would avoid contact in real life (out in the world, not behind the computer) with anyone who happened to unfriend them on Facebook.

50% said that they wouldn’t go out of their way to avoid outside contact, and 10% said that they might.

According to the study, women were more likely to want to avoid IRL contact with people who unfriended them.

The study also looked at motivating factors behind the act of avoidance.

“The number one predictor was whether the person who said the relationship was over talked about it to someone else,” Sibona said. “Talking to someone is a public declaration that the friendship is over.”

This isn’t the first study on “unfriending” authored by Sibona. In 2010, he found that the most common reasons that people get unfriended involve problematic posts. This includes boring life updates (just made a sandwich!), polarizing political posts, and remarks that could be viewed as sexist or racist.

“Since it’s done online there is an air of unreality to it but in fact there are real life consequences,” said Sibona. “We are still trying to come to grips as a society on how to handle elements of social media. The etiquette is different and often quite stark.”

News flash: Facebook is a part of the “real world” and your actions have consequences. Unfriending a person on Facebook gives the impression that you no longer care about what goes on in their life, or at least you don’t care to hear about it. Why should a person who’s received such a blast want to hang out with you in person?

[University of Colorado Denver via CNET]

In case the Walking Dead Time Warner Super Bowl ad wasn’t enough to whet your appetite, AMC has also released a new scene from the upcoming episode of the show, titled, “The Suicide King“.

The episode premieres on Sunday. There’s still time to zombify yourself before Season 3 continues.

On a semi-related note, the release date for The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct got bumped up to March 19th.

More The Walking Dead fun here.

It’s been said that BlackBerry has been making huge strides in treating developers to a simple yet powerful experience on their platform. I’m a BlackBerry 10 developer and I’m going to talk a bit today about what BlackBerry does to make developing a BB10 app not only a worthwhile opportunity but also a sophisticated and rewarding experience.

First, let’s talk about screen sizes. The Z10 is the first device on the market with its 1280×768 screen. This display resolution is bittersweet for developers in a way. Although it’s an amazing display it is not going to be the touch-phone resolution in the future; it will be replaced in market by a phone (or phones) with a 1280×720 display. What a lot of developers will do is design for 1280×720 and provide an extra aesthetic for the extra 24 pixels on either side. This isn’t nearly as bad as what happened with the iPhone 5 launch where nearly every app was (and many still are) black-barred on either side. With this scenario we get to start with the larger screen size and crop down by 24 pixels instead of stretch up by 88. I cannot stress enough the importance of this move; it’s a big deal.

Developers that already have their PlayBook applications running at 1024×600 can keep their layout designed for the same shape (16:9) of screen if they plan for the 1280×720 displays. The Q10 physical keyboard phone has a 720×720 display. Not only is a 1:1 aspect ratio the easiest thing in the world to design for it has the same dimensions as the Z10 width and presumably the same pixel density meaning you can keep all of your layout the same size.

If you find me someone who says that isn’t a big deal I’ll find you someone who has never developed for Android or legacy BlackBerrys before. Those developers moving to this platform will be very happy.

I’ve talked before about what goodies we’re given to work with and more specifically what BlackBerry is doing in the open source community. What that means for BlackBerry users is that your favorite apps are going to have the same powerhouse back end that you’ve seen on the other smartphone platforms. What’s going to make it stand out though is the set of UI tools BlackBerry gives us with Cascades.

Cascades is a UI framework that simply leaps ahead of the solutions you find on iOS, Android or WP8. I’m trying not to sound too much like a salesman for BB10 but it’s sincerely a real treat. It’s built on top of familiar technologies that we can use in house and it’s easy enough to use that our creative teams can use it without needing to know the code underneath.

Finally let’s go over briefly what it’s like to code for the platform. BlackBerry 10 is built on top of the same OS as the PlayBook made by a great Canadian company called QNX. QNX has always been widely regarded by its customers for its speed and stability. I could talk for days about the QNX micro-kernel, what that means and why it’s really cool but I’ll leave that talk for the water cooler. Basically QNX is the beating heart of BB10 and it gives developers an old and tried yet modern platform to develop on. Developer or not this is great news for all of us.

There were a lot of commercials during the Super Bowl that got people talking, as usual. For some reason, I haven’t heard much today about this one, when it was easily one of the best.

AMC has uploaded it to its YouTube channel for The Walking Dead fans to enjoy, so here you go:

The show returns this Sunday.

More The Walking Dead fun here.

Back in November, Nook was one of the first major brands to jump on board Windows 8. It only made sense as Microsoft made a strategic investment in the brand back in April of last year. Now Nook and Windows 8 are getting even friendlier in its latest update.

Nook announced that its Windows 8 app now supports Microsoft account sign in. Users can link their Nook account with the Microsoft account to enable a single sign in experience across the app. More importantly, the feature may help Nook attract more customers – the kind that don’t like being forced to create new accounts.

“As part of our strategic partnership with Microsoft, we are thrilled that Nook is the first digital bookstore to support Microsoft account for sign in on Windows 8,” said Jamie Iannone, President of Digital Products at Nook Media LLC. “Nook is already the highest-rated reading and digital bookstore app on Windows 8, offering the best reading and shopping experience on Windows 8 PCs and tablets. And now, by enabling simple convenient sign in with a Microsoft account, the Nook app makes reading and shopping even more fun and easy.”

Making its app easier to use should help Nook bring in more revenue after the holidays showed that its hardware isn’t doing so well. Despite pushing some decent promotions, Nook still faces the threat of the iPad, Nexus and Kindle. Maybe the Barnes & Nobile subsidiary should start building out its software business in the event that its hardware business collapses.

Next Media Animation (NMA) typically provides thoughtful analysis of major moments in popular culture, and the Super Bowl is no different. Here, the Taiwanese animation firm explores the big game, Beyonce’s half time show, and what really happened to the power.

Here’s some more of NMA’s work.

Sharing files across your network sounds like it should be simple, but the reality is often very different. There are lots of factors to consider — the basic LAN setup, protocols, users, permissions, and more — and if you’re trying to connect different platforms as well then life will only get more complex.

If your networking needs are simple, though, Dukto could offer a more appealing approach. It’s a straightforward tool which runs on Windows, OS X, Linux, Symbian and iOS, and helps you transfer files or folders across your LAN without any hassles at all.

Launch the program on a PC and you’re presented with a very simple, Metro-like interface, with an icon representing your user and computer name. And when other network users also launch Dukto, they’ll automatically be discovered, and their names added to your “buddies” list.

Starting a data transfer is then as easy as clicking an icon for one of the other systems, then dragging and dropping whatever folders you need onto Dukto. Conveniently, you can also send text, very handy for passing on long URLs.

And that’s about it. Dukto already knows where to save any incoming data (your desktop by default, though you can change this to wherever you like), so all you have to do is watch as the program transfers your data. Which probably won’t take long, as it’s very fast.

There are a few small extras, if you need them. You can review the IP addresses of everything Dukto has discovered, for instance, and send data directly to an IP address if that’s necessary. But for the most part, it really isn’t. Dukto just works.

That doesn’t mean the program is entirely perfect, of course. If we’re being picky, it’s a little annoying that the interface can’t be reduced to a smaller size (if there’s only one client then you’re left with an unnecessary amount of white space). And more significantly, it really needs an Android version.

Considering what you’re getting, though — and all for free (although there is a commercial Dukto Pro iOS version) — Dukto is a triumph, and an exceptionally convenient way to transfer files across your network. Go grab a copy immediately.

Photo Credit: Joe Wilcox

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance may be a cross-platform title, but Sony has gotten Konami to support it as if it were a PlayStation 3 exclusive.

Konami today announced that PlayStation 3 owners will get exclusive content for Revengeance. Specifically, 30 VR missions will be available as a bonus for Sony gamers. The look of the levels has, according to Konami, been inspired by the original Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions.

Sony has been making a nice habit lately of providing PlayStation 3 owners with exclusive content for big titles. Over the holiday season PlayStation 3 owners who purchased a new copy of Assassin’s Creed III were treated to an exclusive four-mission story arc to spoil Benedict Arnold’s betrayal of West Point.

The exclusive Revengeance content features no story to speak of, though that might be considered a blessing to anyone who has seen the story dialogue in the game demo released a few weeks ago. Instead, the missions feature “uncut gameplay that pushes Raiden’s Cyborg [sic] body to its limits.” Players will be tested with combat, “tactical maneuvering,” and “stealth-based approaches.” In addition, a “Dwarf Gekko” (the scarab multi-armed sphere thing) can be used as a playable character in some of the missions.

The latest trailer for Revengeance features three of the unlock-able and upgrade-able boss weapons that Raiden can utilize in the main game.

Editor's note: This post was originally published on the official blog of the U.S. Department of Education.

In only two years, the 12 states with Race to the Top grants continue to show improvements in teaching and learning in their schools. Last week, the U.S. Department of Education released state-specific reports for the 12 Race to the Top states, providing detailed, transparent summaries of each state’s accomplishments and challenges in year two, which covered the 2011-12 school year.

The 12 states—Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Tennessee—reached a number of benchmarks in year two, as they implemented unique plans built around Race to the Top’s four assurance areas:

• Implementing college- and career-ready standards and assessments,
• Building robust data systems to improve instruction,
• Supporting great teachers and school leaders, and
• Turning around persistently low-performing schools.

read more

I am always impressed by the work that our incredible military support organizations do to make the lives of our force and families better. Like many other great organizations, the Military Officers Association of America (MOAA) is taking action to improve the lives of military families because they understand the difficulties and hardships that our families willingly face in the shared service to our nation. MOAA knows that one key source of psychological and material wellbeing for any family is gainful, purposeful employment. This is particularly true of our military spouses.

This week more than 200 military spouses in the Pacific Northwest are preparing for the Military Officers Association of America’s (MOAA) 7th annual Military Spouse Symposium, “Keeping a Career on the Move” on February 8, 2013 at the University of Washington Tacoma, Phillip Hall. The event is free and open to all military spouses – all ranks, active duty, retired, Reserve and National Guard. Service members and veterans are also welcome. And there’s still time to register.

read more

The man who boarded an Alabama school bus last week, fatally shot the driver and took off with a five-year old boy doesn’t seem any closer to relinquishing his hostage even as the situation enters a seventh day.

65-year old Jimmy Lee Dykes took the boy, Ethan, to an underground bunker at his home and has kept him inside ever since as tensions mount outside. Dykes, who is described by neighbors as a menace who has threatened them with guns and once beat a dog to death with a pipe, has allowed police and the boy’s parents to deliver the child food and medication through a ventilation duct, but he’s not giving negotiators much to go on as far as what his demands are. Police have said that he seems to have a story he wants to tell, and have indicated they might let him talk to a reporter.

As of right now, the main concern is that Ethan, who is autistic and suffers from ADHD, will have what his parents call an “uncontrollable episode” during his stay in the 8′x6′ bunker that will set his captor off. They are hoping his medication will curb any such episode.

Despite Dykes’ violent tendencies, he has indicated to police that he is taking care of Ethan and has supplied him with food and electric blankets to stay warm. The local sheriff thanked Dykes for his concern.

The slain bus driver, Charles Poland, was laid to rest on Sunday and is being hailed as a hero for standing up to Dykes when he boarded the bus and demanded a child.

Image: Alabama Dept. of Public Safety