Three major book publishers are paying out $69 million to consumers after allegedly conspiring with Apple to fix the price of e-books.
Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins have reached a settlement with 49 U.S. state governments (all except Minnesota) as well as 5 U.S. territories. If the court accepts the deal, consumers in those areas will be reimbursed $0.25 to $1.32 for every e-book they purchased between April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012.
“The publishers will also put aside $7.6 million to compensate the states for investigation and attorneys’ costs and an additional $750,000 each to pay for the notification process,” which includes Google and Facebook ads, reports paidContent.
Publishers Penguin and Macmillan are still holding out along with Apple, but the states are pursuing another lawsuit against the companies. In the mean time, the other three publishers will compensate all e-book customers.
“Even though only three of the five accused publishers are part of the deal, publishers who bought an e-book from any one of the five will be compensated. The office of Connecticut’s attorney general said by email that this is because any conspirator is responsible for the actions of a co-conspirator,” the article concludes.
U.S. consumers spend around $360 a year on e-books and MP3 files, according to e-commerce company Bango.
Over the years, that investment can add up to thousands of valuable content files. As of today, those files will essentially be lost when a person passes away because intellectual property law doesn’t have a way to transfer licensing rights.
“Part of the problem is that with digital content, one doesn’t have the same rights as with print books and CDs,” explains SmartMoney. “Customers own a license to use the digital files — but they don’t actually own them. Apple and Amazon grant ‘nontransferable’ rights to use content.”
“The law is light years away from catching up with the types of assets we have in the 21st Century,” says Deirdre R. Wheatley-Liss, an estate planning attorney. Lecturer and researcher Dazza Greenwood agrees: “We need to reform and update intellectual property law.”
Now that much of consumers’ assets are digital, losing that content at their death means losing significant value. Relatives can possibly access the content using their loved one’s devices, but passwords can be restrictive and there isn’t always an easy way to divide up assets.
Attorney David Goldman hopes to set up a legal trust for people’s online accounts, which differs from mere online safe-deposit boxes.
“Having access to digital content and having the legal right to use it are two totally different things,” he says. “With traditional estate planning and wills, there’s no way to give the right to someone to access this kind of information after you’re gone.”
A new patent suggests Amazon’s future Kindles could feature both an e-ink and an LCD display — one on either side of the tablet, both touch-enabled.
“The e-commerce giant has been awarded a patent where e-ink and LCD would work together — one display would be static for reading, while the LCD would be optimized for video watching,” reports Mashable. “The patent filing states that it would make use of the device’s front and rear-facing cameras to determine which side to display content.”
“A device might alternatively utilize at least one camera to determine which side of the device is facing the user, and might activate the display on that side of the device to convey content,” notes the patent. “A device might display notifications on an edge of the device, such that a current orientation of the device might be less important.”
According to the filing, the dual-screen concept may actually lengthen battery life by deferring to e-ink when slow- to non-moving content is displayed.
Amazon is planning a press event in Los Angeles for September 6, and is expected to launch its next-gen Kindle e-reader and Kindle Fire.
An April ruling set the precedent that all tweets belong to Twitter and users have no privacy rights in their Twitter accounts. This week, Twitter filed an appeal. GigaOM reports the main arguments of the appeal:
“Twitter users have a property right in the content they post (citing a case in which a photographer posted a Haiti earthquake photo to Twitter).”
“Twitter users should have the same right to challenge subpoenas as Gmail users.”
“Twitter users have a Fourth Amendment privacy right in their accounts.”
“The judge made an error by ruling that all of Harris’ tweets, including the deleted ones, were public.”
The case referenced in the fourth argument above centers on Occupy Wall Street protestor Malcolm Harris who was arrested after his Twitter information was subpoenaed. Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr. rejected efforts to quash the subpoena. He likened Twitter to shouting on the street, saying “the street is an online, information superhighway, and the witnesses can be the third party providers like Twitter, Facebook, Instragram, Pinterest.”
The ACLU has vowed support for Twitter’s appeal: “Under the First and Fourth Amendments, we have the right to speak freely on the Internet, safe in the knowledge that the government can’t get information about our speech without a warrant and without satisfying First Amendment scrutiny.”
Musician Jack Kennedy recently explored parts of Europe, Thailand and Israel. Toward the end of his trip, he spent a month in Morocco recording music by Berber tribesmen.
“Now he is taking the same nomadic approach to capture bits of American culture for his Web show, NightBus Radio,” reports Wired. “It’s like what they did in Jack Kerouac’s novel ‘Dharma Bums,’ except nobody hitchhikes anymore,” says Kennedy. “This is kind of the next step up.”
Kennedy has no real plan of where he will go, who he will interview or what will come of the show. He uses fan suggestions from Twitter and Facebook to direct him across the nation. The article describes him as a modern-day Alan Lomax.
“Yesterday, this girl from Alabama named Rachel Saul came in to the hostel I’m staying at. She had a guitar and started singing,” explains Kennedy. “She had this amazing voice and an interesting story, so I just quickly got out my microphone and started recording her.”
This type of story epitomizes Kennedy’s journey, as he hopes his travels will spontaenously bring him to talented and interesting individuals. SoundCloud, the Berlin-based audio-sharing platform, is funding part of the project with one of its 15 Community Fellowships.
Kennedy has placed faith in his loyal followers, as his trip relies on his use of “mainly Facebook and Twitter where people can send me messages like, ‘I know this supertalented guy, you should meet up with him.'” He elaborates that after “you meet a core group of musicians in a town, you can get to the heart of the music scene.”
“MakerBot Industries was already arguably the best known name in the emerging home 3D printer market with its Cupcake and Thing-O-Matic printers,” reports GigaOM. “But the launch of the Replicator printer in January at CES exceeded MakerBot’s best projections and it’s prompting CEO Bre Pettis to imagine even more possibilities with 3D printing.”
Before the Replicator, MakerBot had sold 7,500 units overall. Now the company is at 13,000 units.
The Replicator comes fully assembled and ready to use. It costs $1,749 or $1,999 for a model that produces two colors. Its price and ease of use are propelling its success.
Pettis is beginning to imagine the future of 3D printing. “I want to find ways for people to make money and turn their cutting edge ideas into cash,” he says. “When you take Americans, who are so innovative and will fail until something works, and put a machine in their hands that [makes] anything, it’s volatile. We will have an explosion.”
According to Pettis, the economics make sense for entrepreneurs. The article details more of his ideas, writing that a “kilogram of plastic starts at $42 dollars and can create almost 400 chess pieces. Now with Replicator, the typical buyer profile is changing.”
“While it used to be hackers and programmers that were interested in previous printers, Replicator now attracts all kinds of customers, from industrial engineers and designers to parents, teachers and hobbyists,” he concludes.
Powered by IBM’s technology and analytics, the U.S. Open has new enhanced apps that go beyond merely tracking who beat whom.
The mobile apps for iPhones, iPads and Android devices offer live streams, player analysis along with statistics, highlights and Twitter conversations.
For the tennis fans at the New York City stadium, IBM has an interactive touchscreen wall that allows users to see what’s happening around the complex. There’s also a fan center for playing tennis-related video games.
In what Mashable calls “perhaps the most innovative” feature on the apps, predictive technology suggests which tennis star is likely to win. IBM’s on-site tech hub manages real-time match data and previous statistics, using analytic algorithms to formulate predictions.
“The data is invaluable to coaches, athletes and others working the grounds, including referees who hold a small device in their hands that analyzes each serve volley and point,” notes Mashable. “The same technology that delivers this insight is also being used to monitor babies in prenatal wards, help police departments prevent crime and enable financial services firms to improve customer service.”
Eye-opening research from 2007 revealed that Internet users maintain an average of 25 Internet accounts but only use an average of 6.5 passwords to protect those accounts.
So if hackers discover one password, they can likely break into several accounts — especially since many users use e-mail addresses as usernames.
Leaked password scandals, like the one involving LinkedIn earlier this year, help hackers to analyze password patterns. They then use the information to develop algorithms more speedy and precise than ever.
This happened on a grand scale in 2009, when 32 million passwords were leaked from the gaming service RockYou.com. With that data, hackers compiled the largest collection of plaintext passwords in history, helping them to crack them in increasing numbers.
“It’s been an exciting year for password crackers because of the amount of data,” explains Rick Redman, who does penetration testing for the security firm KoreLogic. “Cracking 16-character passwords is something I could not do four or five years ago, and it’s not because I have more computers now.”
A technique known as “rainbow tables” helps hackers to crack passwords of 7-8 characters. This length is typically too long for GPU, brute force password cracking.
Using rainbow tables, rather “than asking a computer to enumerate each possible password in real-time and compare it against a targeted hash, precalculated data was stored in memory or on disk in a highly compressed form to speed up the process and lower the computing requirements needed to brute force huge numbers of hashes,” explains Ars Technica.
In just two years, Flipboard has captured 20 million users who now flip a total of three billion pages a month using its Web-based retro magazine aesthetic.
The company is now expanding into video, adding “TV” channels to its Content Guide sidebar.
“The app start-up has made waves by aggregating text Web articles as though they were magazine pages,” reports paidContent. “Now it wants to do the same for video.”
“In one way, this is nothing new — articles read through Flipboard can already contain videos,” explains the article. “What is notable is that Flipboard is making a specific play for audiovisual content inside its magazine-like applications.”
“With its ‘TV’ channels, Flipboard may get to do for video publishers like Chow.com, TED Talks and Pitchfork TV what it is doing for Web text publishers.”
However, the app may have problems with its new channels. As the article points out, Flipboard’s in-app videos are slightly slower and the orientation rotation takes more time.
Even so, the move is a good indication that the service is becoming more diverse as it matures, concludes paidContent.
Twitter has created an “interest graph” that determines users’ interests from their followers, their Web browsing, and what they click on. Now, the microblogging platform is giving this data to advertisers in order to create more targeted ads.
“We’ve always taken a thoughtful approach to monetization, and early results show interest targeting creates a better experience for marketers and users,” writes Twitter’s Kevin Weil.
Twitter hopes the benefits from relevant ads will outweigh concerns about tracking. The company is aiming to please advertisers who have said Twitter “doesn’t offer enough options for isolating the right audience,” reports The Verge.
“Advertisers can now target users on Twitter by their topical interests, a total of 350 categories ranging from ‘Bollywood’ to ‘personal finance’ to ‘dogs,'” the article explains. “That’s not all: advertisers can also select particularly influential users and cater campaigns to their interests, and by extrapolation, target other users who share those interests.”
The interest graph data is available for Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts, which Twitter awards based on advertisers’ price bid and engagement rate.
Google+ is now being used by companies for private, internal communications. “It’s the latest part of Google’s strategy to push Google+ into everything that it offers to Web users,” reports Technology Review.
This new offering goes hand in hand with Google’s online email, calendars and document editing services, all of which are used by companies for internal use already.
“Google+ will now be offered alongside those, allowing employees at companies that sign up to have internal discussions using the network, share documents, and schedule video chats,” according to the article.
This move puts Google+ into direct competition with existing social networks like the Microsoft-owned Yammer. Only time will tell if such a move into the workplace will help Google+ to compete with social media giants like Facebook and Twitter.
Google+ for businesses is currently free, but businesses should expect a pay model by 2014.
According to inside sources, Apple and Google have been in talks concerning “a range of intellectual property matters, including the ongoing mobile patent disputes between the companies,” reports Reuters.
From lower-level officials to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Larry Page, the discussions between the two companies have been kept under wraps.
Sources tell Reuters that Cook and Page are expected to talk again in the coming weeks, following Apple’s noteworthy legal victory over Samsung, which uses Google’s Android OS.
“One possible scenario under consideration could be a truce involving disputes over basic features and functions in Google’s Android mobile software, one source said. But it’s unclear whether Page and Cook are discussing a broad settlement of the various disputes between the two companies — most of which involve the burgeoning mobile computing area — or are focused on a more limited set of issues,” notes the article.
As mobile wars rage on, Apple has made moves to distance itself from Google; it has replaced Google’s mobile mapping software with its own and has axed Google’s preloaded YouTube app on the lastest iOS update.
The talks could suggest that Cook is more conciliatory than his predecessor Steve Jobs who called Android a “stolen product” and threatened “thermonuclear war” against the platform.
Canon has announced a release date for its flagship C500 and unveiled a new addition to its EOS digital cinema camera collection.
The new EOS C100 features 1,920 x 1,080 AVCHD, a Super 35mm 16:9 CMOS sensor, an ISO range of 320 to 20,000 and an EF mount system. The C100 is expected to ship in November for $7,999.
“Other features of interest include a push auto iris function, one-shot auto focus, a multi-angle 3.5-inch LCD and a locking HDMI output,” reports Engadget.
The previously reported C500 — Canon’s $30,000 4K camera — is slated for an October debut. The two cameras join the Cinema EOS lineup, which includes the EOS C300 (intended for mainstream HD production) and the EOS-1D C 4K Digital SLR.
“Canon also took the opportunity to offer up two new cinema lenses: the CN-E15.5-47mm T2.8 L S/SP wide-angle and the CN-E30-105mm T2.8 L S/SP telephoto,” notes the post.
“We developed the Cinema EOS C500 digital cinema camera to deliver the benefits of full 4K motion capture to Hollywood’s premier filmmakers, while the C100 is designed for economical productions that need sophisticated HD capabilities and optical lens diversity,” explained Yuichi Ishizuka, executive vice president and general manager, Imaging Technologies and Communications Group.
Steve Jobs famously told his biographer Walter Isaacson that Android was “a stolen product,” adding, “I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.” But so far, the company has yet to target Google directly.
However, Apple’s $1.05 billion victory over Samsung regarding patent violations could potentially lead to similar legal action against Google, since Samsung’s devices used the Android operating system.
Google is more involved with making its own hardware today and new products are expected to result from the company’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility.
“And the jury in the Samsung trial found that features built into Android, and not just features added by Samsung, violated Apple patents — potentially forcing Google to adjust its software,” reports The New York Times.
“What it means for the Android folks is a very careful review, back to the drawing board, including a close examination of Apple’s stable of patents to weed out anything that looks risky in terms of violating the Apple portfolio,” says Charles S. Golvin, a Forrester mobile analyst.
“Google declined to comment on whether it would make changes to Android,” reports NYT. “But when it comes to features like tapping to zoom, it may have to ‘design around’ Apple’s patents and safeguard itself and its hardware partners, said Robert Barr, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and former patent counsel for Cisco Systems.”
“The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and digital media asset management company MediaMine have partnered to develop a new Walk of Fame app for travelers that is ‘part tour guide, part scavenger hunt, part game and part local services provider,'” explains The Hollywood Reporter.
According to MediaMine, the app — expected to launch by next summer — will feature a star map that includes photos and videos, local points of interest that highlight entertainment and shopping, a trivia game and a scavenger hunt.
“Travelers will also be able to post photos to the app and share their experiences on various social networking sites,” adds THR.
“The idea is to transform a tourist’s trip from a passive experience into one with engaging information in the form of news, videos, photos, letters and other information about the fascinating events occurring in Hollywood throughout the 20th century as well as present day,” notes Leron Gubler, president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce.
ETCentric staffer Phil Lelyveld notes that the ETC has met with MediaMine and their activities align with some of ETC’s current projects.
