The Obama Administration has released its Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights — an initiative to protect online privacy for Americans.
Working with the Federal Trade Commission, the plan is intended to enforce privacy standards to provide better personal control for consumers, encourage innovation from Internet companies and uphold global standards.
The proposal focuses on seven protections against data aggregation: “Consumers should have control over the kind of data companies collect, companies must be transparent about data usage plans and respect the context in which it is provided and disclosed. Companies would have to ensure secure and responsible handling of the data and be accountable for strong privacy measures. The bill of rights also calls for reasonable limits on the personal data that online companies can try to collect and retain, and the ability for consumers to correct their information,” Reuters reports.
The Department of Commerce and the FTC will collaborate with privacy advocates and Internet companies to come up with enforceable privacy policies. The industry has made attempts to self-regulate but some consumer groups and members of Congress believe the situation requires government involvement.
One main privacy concern addressed in the proposal is Internet tracking for targeted advertising. The top Internet browsers have opt-out “do not track” buttons (Google Chrome is still in the process of updating) and many online advertisers agreed to uphold “do not track” requests.
As smartphones are being used for more applications and consumers demand thinner phones, batteries that fit in the form factor are having a hard time keeping up.
At this week’s Mobile World Congress, Duracell will announce plans to make its Duracell Powermat available in public places. They will begin in New York this summer and roll out to Europe next year.
The Powermat allows one to charge a mobile phone by placing it on the surface. Duracell wants to make its recharging Powermat ubiquitous, providing wireless charging everywhere — cars, homes, offices, even public places like Madison Square Garden.
A Wireless Power Consortium consisting of most of the mobile phone manufacturers (except Apple) is pushing for a wireless charging standard.
The consortium chairman Menno Treffers worries that Apple may create a problem for wireless charging in public places if it continues with its own wireless charging standard.
Another promising Duracell Powermat product: “a back-up battery that can be charged on the Powermat and clicked onto smartphones in an emergency,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “The backup has 1.5 times the energy of a typical iPhone battery… and, importantly, it works with all smartphones including the iPhone.”
Broadcast TV is seeing increased viewership due to high cable TV costs and the proliferation of Web streaming options.
Companies are including broadcast TV complemented with Web video as a cord-cutting alternative to costly cable TV.
“Largely relegated to obscurity decades ago, old-fashioned television broadcasts — over the airwaves and not via cable or satellite — are enjoying an unexpected revival in the digital era,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
On average, viewers can get 30-45 channels over the air. In Los Angeles, they can get 90 stations.
Over the past 18 months, the number of pay TV subscribers has not grown while broadband and broadcast TV households increased 23 percent in Q3 of 2011.
“TV-antenna seller Richard Schneider of St. Louis says sales at his company are soaring,” adds WSJ, regarding the emerging trend. “Schneider’s Antennas Direct sold 70,000 antennas in January, and he expects to double last year’s sales of about 600,000.”
“Every time that Hulu and Netflix enhance their services, our phones light up,” said Schneider.
An iPad version of the the Microsoft Office Suite has reportedly been in development. “In addition to an iPad-ready version, a new edition of Office is expected for OS X Lion sometime next year,” reported The Daily back in November.
According to sources familiar with the project, the app will be submitted to Apple soon.
“The app’s user interface is similar to the current OneNote app, but it has hints of Metro, the new design language that can be seen in Windows Phone and in the as-yet-released Windows 8 desktop operating system,” The Daily reported this week.
“An exact launch date is unknown, but the design team has since wrapped up the project, meaning it could be released in the coming weeks,” the post states.
UPDATE: “Microsoft may well be working on a version of Office for iPad, but it’s not the one detailed in a report today from The Daily,” reports AllThingsD. “Nor will it soon be submitted to Apple for approval.”
“The Daily story is based on inaccurate rumors and speculation,” Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw told AllThingsD. “We have no further comment.”
Editor Peter Ha of The Daily stands by the story. In response to a question regarding the screenshots used for the original post, he tweeted: “We did not fabricate either image. A working version of the app was demoed to us by someone at Microsoft.”
Google Music, a download and streaming service serving 200 million Android users, has had a disappointing start. The service was intended to compete with Apple’s iTunes, but so far has attracted just 10 percent of potential users.
Google’s managers are telling music companies that they expect more interest when the company starts building its own consumer devices. It is rumored to be building a wireless entertainment system.
However, competition may continue coming from a variety of areas. Microsoft, for example, “has held talks with some of the record companies about creating a new digital music store that would serve owners of the Xbox gaming console as well as buyers of an upcoming Windows-based phone. The parties have discussed the possibility of streaming music as well as selling downloads,” reports CNET.
Additionally, download services may be out of step today as subscription services such as Spotify, Rhapsody and Rdio gain more attention.
Apple has a new “Mastered for iTunes” section on the iTunes Store that includes recommendations for audio engineers when preparing master files for submission.
Original recordings are captured at 24-bit 96kHz. The CD format, which encodes at 16-bit 44.1kHz, captures only 15 percent of the original. The iTunes Plus format captures as little as 3 percent of the original. There is an effort underway to set a higher quality uncompressed audio standard of 24-bit across the industry in the future.
Mastering for iTunes requires an awareness of the devices used to play back the music. Moreover, Apple is also aware that high-resolution audio files will become more important especially as the focus changes to the cloud for post-PC devices.
Apple is providing some basic tools to help in the conversion, but the process is not automatic and engineers remain an important part in determining how best to make the tradeoffs.
Facebook will expand its movie business interests today when it continues experimentation with streaming feature films.
The latest feature offering will be “Tomorrow, When the War Began” — a two-year-old Australian action adventure about teenagers fighting against a military attack. Facebook will get 30 percent of the revenue.
“Milyoni Inc. (pronounced ‘Million Eye’), which calls itself an ‘f-commerce’ (as in ‘Facebook commerce’) social media provider, is handling the Facebook release,” reports Multichannel News. “The movie will also be distributed via iTunes, Vudu, Amazon, YouTube and In-Demand.”
Are we on the cusp of a new era of social cinema?
“Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie” debuted on Facebook last week, two weeks prior to its theatrical release. “For $10, fans will be able watch the movie and chat with its stars in real time,” reports ReadWriteWeb. “The model represents a new sort of social cinema that, while not widespread, appears poised to become a potentially major trend.”
“Like Google, Facebook has let it be known that it intends to play a big role in the development and distribution of feature films — competing with cable and other legacy providers,” explains Multichannel News. “The added value of such delivery, as Milyoni emphasizes, is that viewing via a social media platform lets fans watch and chat simultaneously, creating ‘a massive social frenzy that would be impossible to duplicate anywhere else.'”
Consumers are using their smartphones more than ever before as a useful tool for retail shopping. Compared to the previous year, retail app downloads have doubled.
“A new study from Nielsen’s upcoming United States Digital Consumer Report states that 29 percent of all smartphone users utilize their mobile devices to aid in shopping-related activities, whether online or in stores,” reports Digital Trends.
Nielsen found that consumers use their smartphones the most for price comparisons, with 38 percent checking prices online while browsing in stores.
When they get closer to a purchase, “32 percent of smartphone owners prefer to read consumer reviews online before making the final decision.”
“The least popular option of using smartphones to shop is actually paying for products with the phone,” indicates the article. “The study cites that only 18 percent of iOS and 13 percent of Android users are interested in using their phones as credit cards.”
Last year U.S. consumers spent more than $170 million on products that assist use of portable media devices in their vehicles, according to the NPD Group.
The report found that 84 percent of owners possess a portable media device and 79 percent use them in their cars.
“Traditional radio and CD audio remain firmly entrenched in the vehicle from both a device and entertainment standpoint,” says Ben Arnold, NPD’s director of industry analysis. “But as ownership of mobile devices, digital content, and apps expands, consumers will be looking for ways to customize the in-vehicle environment with content and services.”
“The key is for auto makers and traditional audio manufacturers to facilitate consumer use of connected devices in the vehicle, allowing content from the smartphone, tablet, or digital media player to easily stream or be controlled through the deck mounted in the dashboard,” according to Arnold. “We’re only going to see greater consumer attachment to social media, streaming audio and video, and other services as content options grow.”
Research in Motion released a software update for its PlayBook tablet that includes new features, “some of which frankly should have been built into the device from day one,” reports TG Daily.
“Building on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet’s proven Web browsing, multimedia and multitasking strengths, the new BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 introduces a range of new communications and productivity enhancements as well as expanded app and content support,” indicates RIM in a statement.
The update enables messaging and a calendar, previously only available to users with BlackBerry phones. Also included is a digital streaming Video Store and professional tools for email and Microsoft Office.
The article says the OS update could have an interesting effect on the new BlackBerry phones to be released by the end of the year.
“But now, with at least six or seven months to wait until this becomes a reality, it may very well be too little too late. By then, Nokia’s partnership with Windows Phone will be in its maturity and the dominance of Android and iOS will only continue to grow on a global scale,” the post states.
South Korean firm Samsung, the world’s biggest supplier of LCDs by sales, “plans to spin off its liquid-crystal display operations into a separate company in an effort to revive its unprofitable flat-panel business, and said it is considering merging the new entity with affiliates within the Samsung group,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
The new company, expected to be launched April 1st with capital of $668 million, will be called Samsung Display Co. and Samsung Electronics will hold all its shares.
The split is part of Samsung’s plan to focus on OLED and gain competitiveness in LCD. The LCD business might be merged with affiliates like Samsung Mobile Display (which holds a 95 percent share of the global OLED market) or S-LCD, an unsuccessful collaboration with Sony.
“(Shifting to OLED) is an inevitable trend now. There’s no reason for Samsung to pour in more investment into its LCD business, and it would rather focus on raising its OLED technology,” said HI Investment & Securities analyst Song Myung-sub, adding that “with the industry’s LCD supply shrinking overall, some Korean players will see a turnaround from the businesses from the third quarter of this year.”
CNET has posted a fascinating 2-minute video from SmartPlanet on how to convert personal photographs into 3D objects using new free software.
Autodesk recently released 123D Catch and 123D Make, both of which create “a 3D model of your images, which can then be sent to a 3D printer or can be constructed out of cardboard as a template,” indicates the post.
The video demo illustrates how multiple photographs of a garden buddha captured with a point-and-shoot camera are used to create a 3D model reference file in the cloud.
The recorded textures of the object become a wire frame model that can then be sent to a 3D printer or users can print their own cardboard model via 123D Make that slices the model into layers.
The company sees initial applications for hobbyists and educators.
Google is developing Android-based glasses that will stream online information to users and make it visible via a small screen near the eyes.
The glasses will identify an individual’s location and examine what that person is looking at to provide related information about location, objects and friends who might be nearby.
The glasses will have 3G or 4G connectivity along with motion sensors and GPS capability. Navigation will be motion-based; tilting of the head will allow for actions such as scrolling and clicking.
The Oakley Thumps-like glasses will be available later this year for a cost between $250 and $600.
Google is looking at the glasses as an experiment in real-time information. They are not yet looking at ways to monetize the technology.
The computing-for-hire division of Amazon called Amazon Web Services (AWS) is offering new products to make it easier to run workflow-based applications on Amazon computers or using its giant computing cloud.
The move is expected to help the division expand its reach to engineers and business people.
“This is a cheap (and probably easy) way for in-house engineers to build and deploy software that does tasks like analytics and billing, or internal financial operations and decision-making. It can even aid in the design logic of multiplayer games,” suggests The New York Times.
“This is a big deal, because it shows AWS moving more decisively into the kind of broad-based computing and software services that will put it in competition with the likes of Oracle and Hewlett-Packard,” adds the article.
“AWS is going from basic but arcane core computing tasks, like setting up storage systems, to well-defined business software. Over the past few weeks, AWS has also started offering practical database software for large-scale corporate operations, and data storage that easily backs up what was on a corporate system.”
Connecting to a Wi-Fi hotspot is hopefully about to get easier by eliminating the need for pop-up log-in screens.
“The Wi-Fi Alliance will begin to certify wireless devices for its industry-wide Passpoint initiative this July,” reports GigaOM. “With devices using the Passpoint standard, users will be able to connect to Wi-Fi hotspots without having to enter logon credentials with each connection instance and will be able to seamlessly roam from one Passpoint-enabled Wi-Fi network to another.”
“WPA-2 Enterprise security for Passpoint-certified hotspots is important, but the seamless roaming to other Passpoint networks and simple connections will surely appeal to consumers and corporate types alike; especially as we all start to carry more wireless devices,” comments the post.
In a statement, the Wi-Fi Alliance explained how it will use SIM cards for authentication: “Devices can be automatically granted access to the network based on multiple credential types. Passpoint supports Subscriber Identity Module (SIM)-based authentication, widely used in cellular networks today, as well as username/password combinations and certificate credentials. No end-user intervention is required in order to establish a connection to a trusted network.”