Google has disabled a computer code that it was previously using to bypass privacy settings on Apple’s Safari browser in order to track “the Web-browsing habits of people who intended for that kind of monitoring to be blocked,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Google placed the code within ads displayed on popular sites and once activated, the code enables Google tracking across most websites. The sites, however, had no knowledge of the code.
“We were not aware of this behavior,” said Michael Balmoris, AT&T spokesman. “We would never condone it.”
In response, Google said in a statement: “The Journal mischaracterizes what happened and why. We used known Safari functionality to provide features that signed-in Google users had enabled. It’s important to stress that these advertising cookies do not collect personal information.”
Google faces criticism on a number of fronts, especially in response to the recent changes to its privacy policy across all its services. Its search results that promote Google+ have also been highly controversial.
Although there was no admission of wrongdoing, Netflix is paying $9 million to settle a class action lawsuit that claimed the streaming service violated the Video Privacy Protection Act by retaining information about viewers’ habits.
The lawsuit was filed in March 2011 by individuals claiming that the company maintained viewing information “long after they had canceled the service.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix will continue to “push for changes in legislation that would allow it to make more uses of customer data,” like enabling users to share their viewing habits on social media sites.
“The House has approved a bill to do so, but the proposed legislation has encountered resistance in the Senate after it heard from some critics who say the VPPA is one of the few strong consumer privacy protections out there,” explains the article. “There’s also concern that eliminating the VPPA would allow sites like Netflix to share personal information with advertisers.”
Hasbro and Zynga, two rivals in the online videogame world, have announced a new partnership in the physical world of toys and board games.
The companies are teaming up to create games and toys based on Zynga’s online games such as “FarmVille” and “Mafia Wars.”
“Though both companies could use a boost, toy and gaming experts aren’t sure the tie up will help either all that much,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “That is because for the time being, at least, the partnership doesn’t extend to Zynga making new videogame versions of Hasbro’s board-game classics. Electronic Arts Inc. currently holds the digital rights to Hasbro board games. Still, a person familiar with the matter didn’t rule out the possibility of an expanded relationship in the future.”
Hasbro’s game and puzzle sales have been declining, due to “an inability to fully capitalize on the rise of the casual smartphone and social-media games that have made Zynga a burgeoning power,” indicates WSJ.
According to researcher Appdata.com, Zynga’s Scrabble knockoff “Words with Friends” currently has 13 million active monthly users on Facebook, as compared to Scrabble’s 1 million.
Google has requested permission from the FCC to test a new “entertainment device” in the homes of some of its employees in four cities over the next six months.
According to an FCC application Google submitted in December, the device would be Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-enabled.
Google asked to test 252 devices between mid-January and July in Mountain View, CA; Cambridge, MA; New York and Los Angeles.
“While details of what the actual device is aren’t included in the application, it almost certainly has something to do with Google TV,” reports VentureBeat. “Using the data transfer process described in the application, the device could be a way for people to grab video content from the Internet and distribute it to all the other mobile devices.”
The posts includes the full description from the FCC application.
The popular Square credit card readers are coming to select retail outlets, enabling mobile transactions at stores equipped with T-Mobile smartphones.
In an effort to help small businesses, the company hopes the readers will especially help cash-only businesses.
“This easy-to-use solution, paired with T-Mobile’s affordable small business plans, aggregated business applications, equipment financing and trade-in services, and in-store support, allows small businesses to maximize their wireless investment and transform their business,” the press release states.
The announcement makes T-Mobile the first wireless carrier to offer Square credit card readers in stores.
Google sent a 13-page letter to several members of Congress, standing firm behind its changes to Google privacy policies.
The company said the changes are intended to “make [the privacy policies] simpler and more understandable, and to improve the user experience across Google.”
According to the letter, Google is not collecting any additional data about individuals and users’ existing settings will not be affected.
“If a user is signed in, she can still edit or turn off her search history, switch Gmail chat to ‘off the record,’ control the way Google tailors ads to her interests using our Ads Preferences Manager, use Incognito mode on Chrome, or use any of the other privacy tools we offer,” explains the letter.
Google’s letter comes in response to representatives’ concerns about consumers inability to opt out of data collection.
A source from Microsoft revealed to The Daily some facts about the Kinect motion-sensing technology for Windows 8-equipped devices.
According to the inside source, Microsoft will license the technology to other manufacturers with the requirement that it is the only motion-control tech on the devices.
Asus will likely be a launch partner, but the company is not directly involved in testing the product.
Microsoft techs have been using prototypes “in the wild” at crowded locales to fine-tune the sensor.
Devices with the technology should be plugged in as much as possible because it quickly drains batteries.
Fragmentation, like that of Android when manufacturers created dissimilar versions, may happen because Microsoft enables makers to customize the look of Windows 8 on Kinect-enabled devices.
Perhaps most notable, the “log me in” feature enables the Kinect sensors to analyze the user’s voice and face to grant access.
A consortium of Vancouver-based production, tech and media companies recently launched a service called RenderCloud.
“Vancouver is revving up its computing horsepower to allow Hollywood studios to more speedily render data-intensive animation and special effects in the cloud,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Vancouver is also hoping its ultrafast RenderCloud server will allow the west-coast city, already enjoying the advantages of close proximity to Los Angeles, [to] compete with emerging global production centers in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.”
The local server farm will allow studios to render in the cloud and enable work-sharing on projects. Clients will pay on an as-needed cost-per-day basis with an option of subleasing their resources to other studios.
The project is led by Vancouver Studio Group, Great Northern Way Campus, Scalar Decisions and BC Film and Media. RenderCloud includes more than 600 servers, with plans to grow to 1,500 by this summer.
The service is designed for large-scale production of 3D, animation and special effects for film, TV and games.
Wireless Direct from Hewlett Packard enables people to print from iOS devices with AirPrint, even without the name or password of the local wireless network.
Apple’s AirPrint standard lets iPhones and iPads print from any networked printer without setup, configuration or driver installation.
All of HP printers include AirPrint-supported ePrint, which enables wireless printing, printing documents from anywhere in the world using email, accessing documents in the cloud, and other features.
With Wireless Direct, printing is becoming entirely seamless: “Wireless Direct-enabled printers broadcast their own SSID, allowing iOS devices (or any Wi-Fi enabled computer) to connect directly without knowing any details of the local network. Users can choose ‘HP-Print-4f-LaserJet’ as their network, for instance, and as far as your iPhone is concerned, it is connected to a Wi-Fi network with an AirPrint-compatible printer,” explains ArsTechnica.
Wireless Direct should prove useful in situations where network passwords aren’t commonly shared.
For anyone who goes by the California Science Center just south of USC, you may have seen this curious-looking CHIP Solar House, a prototype of a highly efficient, futuristic living space.
The “Compact, Hyper-Insulated Prototype” was created by students from CalTech and the Southern California Institute of Architecture.
“CHIP’s flexible, stepped interior adopts the ethic of ‘doing-more-with-less,’ allowing a single, continuous volume to perform in a variety of different ways to serve the occupants’ daily needs. The program is divided into a series of platforms which are terraced upward and inwards, from the most public to most private. The distribution of program from north-to-south, and high-to-low, facilitates the occupants’ daily rhythms: a progression downhill in the morning in the form of sleep/groom/dress/eat/live – and vice versa in the evening,” the team explained.
CHIP produces all the energy it requires and can even save and sell back power to the grid in some parts of the country.
An Xbox Kinect command station enables occupants to use hand gestures to operate home systems. Also, a 3D camera tracks movement and turns off lights when an area becomes empty.
The Mashable post includes pictures. The house is on display until May 31.
In response to the latest piracy debate, GigaOM blames the studios for forcing consumers to download illegally by not making it easier for them to find and pay for content.
“Hollywood’s windowing system is essentially keeping consumers from being able to access the content that they want to watch. Without a reasonable option to pay, many are left to pirate a film that they wouldn’t go to the theater for anyway,” the article states.
Most of the time, people pirate content that they can’t find in a legitimate way. That doesn’t mean, however, that they won’t pay if the content were available.
Hollywood is concerned about losing theater sales but, as the article points out, “there are plenty of consumers who won’t go to the local megaplex to see a romantic comedy or drama, but are happy to pay for the convenience of watching it on the TV at home or on another device.”
Hollywood continues to preserve the current distribution and windowing scheme despite the rapid evolution of content consumption. Although it has made some concessions with UltraViolet, “until those movies are available in a timely fashion — i.e., not months after they’ve already left theaters — there will remain a huge audience that the studios will never capture, whether it’s because they’ve pirated the film or because they’ve chosen to watch something else,” GigaOM concludes.
“Congressional leaders on Friday indefinitely shelved two antipiracy bills that had rallied the Internet and rocked Capitol Hill, dealing a major defeat to the traditional media industry while emboldening a new breed of online political activists,” reports The New York Times.
The Wednesday online blackout had a profound effect on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate.
However, Senator Harry Reid tweeted that he is optimistic the delay will enable issues to be resolved and a compromise should come within a week. He added that the longer it takes to pass anti-piracy legislation, the more jobs will be lost and economies hurt “by foreign criminals who are stealing American intellectual property and selling it back to American consumers.”
In the House, Republican representatives have almost completely backed away from SOPA. It will be redrafted but “the Committee remains committed to finding a solution to the problem of online piracy that protects American intellectual property and innovation,” says Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
In a related article, Los Angeles Times looked into what censored Chinese bloggers were saying about the U.S. Web companies’ uproar regarding censorship. Some more or less laughed while others used the opportunity to promote their own case, suggesting “Americans should try a minute in our shoes before invoking online Armageddon.” China’s Internet companies have “no choice but to submit to government pressure.”
At CES, Intel promised that “2012 will be the year of the Ultrabook,” reports Mashable.
“Future Ultrabooks will have touchscreens and voice recognition, Intel vice president of PC Client Group Mooley Eden demonstrated at CES. Intel showed off several concept Ultrabooks doing things like swiping through a Windows 8 Metro interface via the screen.”
“Intel didn’t demo voice recognition, but Nuance’s chief marketing officer, Peter Mahoney, made an appearance to announce a partnership with Intel to put his company’s voice-recognition tech into Ultrabooks,” explains the post.
The company also teased gesture control and suggested that real-time language translation is “in the works.”
Intel’s concept laptop shows rear touch enabled display for alerts and calendar browsing (see 2-minute video demo).
