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Wednesday, June 8, 2011

More ads hit online TV as Web audiences grow (AP) : Technet

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More ads hit online TV as Web audiences grow (AP) : Technet

More ads hit online TV as Web audiences grow (AP)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 03:26 PM PDT

By RYAN NAKASHIMA, AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima, Ap Business Writer – Wed Jun 8, 6:26 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – One of the rewards of watching TV online is not having to sit through as many commercials. Now the networks are chipping away at that little luxury.

CBS shows twice as many ads per show on its website as it did last year. The CW network shows four times as many. Dozens of shows from major cable networks now carry as many ads online as they do on TV. More shows will follow soon.

The online audience is still small compared with television, but it's growing. Networks hope that by showing more ads, they can make about as much money per viewer online as they do on the tube.

It's a change from the early days of online video. When ABC started putting full episodes of its shows online in 2006, fans could zip through the hour-long dramas "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" in about 45 minutes. One short ad played a few times per show.

Limiting commercials kept people from going to unauthorized websites to watch pirated copies of shows. It also helped networks reach new audiences in college dorms and teenage bedrooms.

Now, as online audiences grow, networks see an opportunity to make more money. A recent episode of "Hawaii Five-O" carried six and a half minutes of ads online. That's less than the 16 minutes on TV but double what an hour-long show carried on CBS.com a year ago.

Online video has improved in recent years with faster Internet connections and better technology. The advances have led some people to give up on regular TV — and hefty cable bills that come with it — and watch only online.

The websites of ABC and NBC and some cable channels offer a range of recent episodes online, as does Hulu, a site owned by the parent companies of ABC, NBC and Fox.

Other networks offer live sports online. ESPN puts events on ESPN3.com for viewers who get Internet service through certain providers. And NBC put hundreds of hours of live competition online during the 2008 and 2010 Olympics. NBC agreed Tuesday to pay $4.4 billion for the rights to televise the Olympics through 2020.

Watching your shows on a computer, of course, means being forced to watch the ads. On the tube, digital video recorders allow you to fast-forward through them. For many people, the convenience of watching whenever, wherever makes going online worth it.

Kate Hooper, a 24-year-old nanny from Los Angeles, often travels for work. On a recent trip to Hawaii, booting up her laptop was the only way to catch her favorite CW show, "Gossip Girl."

"I usually just put up with it and I'll take a break or go get food or something while the commercials are playing," Hooper said.

CBS now shows about two or three ads per break online, up from one a year ago. CBS can charge higher rates than TV partly because online ads can do more — allow viewers to click to a website for more information, for instance.

"We've got a model today where we're comfortable whether that viewership happens on the Web or TV," said Zander Lurie, CBS' senior vice president of strategic development. The company doesn't give a breakdown of how much revenue it makes from each format.

The CW, a broadcast network owned by CBS and Time Warner, now shows four commercials in a typical break instead of one — as many as there are on regular TV.

For both networks, viewership online grew anyway, a sign that viewers don't seem to mind.

The CBS and CW examples show that for big-budget TV productions, at least, it's possible to make enough money from the Internet to pay for shows if audiences suddenly shift entirely online. Newspapers and music companies have struggled with similar dilemmas as their audiences have moved online.

Networks still make far more money from TV than from the Internet, largely because online audiences are still comparatively small. Networks also get a piece of the monthly bills that viewers pay to satellite or cable companies for TV subscriptions.

Americans on average spent about 160 hours a month in front of the tube in early 2010 and only seven watching video on a computer or phone, according to the latest data available from Nielsen Co.

But online video is growing fast. According to online ad firm FreeWheel Media Inc., people watched 9 billion online videos from clients such as Fox, CBS and Turner in the last three months of 2010, an increase of about 50 percent from the previous quarter.

ZenithOptimedia expects online video ad revenue in the U.S. to grow 22 percent this year to $3.3 billion, compared with just 5 percent growth for all TV ads to $59.4 billion.

For the networks, there's a side benefit to the growth of online ads. If Internet viewers watch shows with exactly the same ads as their TV counterparts, they will be counted in Nielsen's regular TV audience ratings.

That means that when networks approach advertisers every spring to sell commercial time for their upcoming fall lineups, they can add online audiences to their total count and bring in more money.

Until April, the online audience didn't count at all in the advance sales season.

"It's recapturing those eyeballs," said Jeremy Legg, a senior vice president at Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting System. "From a monetization standpoint, it's the most effective for us."

Review: HTC Flyer tablet mates with slippery pen (AP)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 12:47 PM PDT

By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson, Ap Technology Writer – Wed Jun 8, 3:47 pm ET

NEW YORK – Is it better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all? That's the question posed by a new tablet computer that takes aim at one of the deficiencies of the iPad: that it's difficult to write on it with a stylus or pen.

The HTC Flyer is a $500 tablet with a 7-inch screen. At a glance, it's not much different from the other tablets that are scrambling to compete with Apple Inc.'s iPad.

The iPad and all its copycats are designed to sense the touch of a finger. The screen layer that does this looks for big, blunt, electrically conductive objects such as fingers. It doesn't sense small, sharp ones like pens.

That's why third-party styluses for the iPad are blunt rubbery sticks. They're essentially imitation fingers. They're not very good for drawing, but some people find them better than nothing.

The Flyer has the same finger-sensing screen layer. But it backs this up with a second one, which looks for the movement of a specially designed, battery-powered pen.

The pen moves fluidly over the screen, with a relatively sharp (but non-scratchy) point. The pen even senses how hard it's being pressed on the screen. The tablet responds by making the line thicker or thinner.

The pen makes the Flyer a great notepad and a decent sketchpad — at least one that's better than the iPad. The Flyer includes a note-taking application that's compatible with the Evernote online storage service.

You can jot off a note and send it by email. The recipient will see your handwriting in an image attachment. You can also snap a picture with one of the Flyer's two cameras and color over the image with the pen. In the e-book reading application, you can scribble notes in the margins and underline with the pen.

Unfortunately, the Flyer lacks the broad range of sketching and doodling apps that exist for the iPad. You can't dispense with finger-typing on the on-screen keyboard because the tablet doesn't understand what you're writing. Because no other tablets work with this type of pen, only apps from manufacturer HTC Corp. are compatible.

The other sad thing about the Flyer is that HTC has chosen to treat the pen as an optional accessory. For the $500 you plunk down at Best Buy — the same price as the larger, more capable entry-level iPad — you don't get the pen. It's $80 extra. Yet it's a mystery why anyone would buy a Flyer without it.

Worse, HTC makes zero effort at keeping pen and owner united. There is no slot on the tablet to hold the pen when not in use. There's no case for the Flyer that will hold the pen. The pen doesn't even have a little loop that would let you tie it to the tablet or something else that won't get lost.

In two weeks of use, I dropped the pen a dozen times. I'm proud that I managed not to lose it, but I doubt I could go another two weeks. I would then have the privilege of buying a replacement for $80, a price for which I could get about 300 Bic pens.

In that context, "never to have loved at all" looks like the cheaper option. Paper pads and ballpoint pens, too.

Sprint Nextel Corp. will sell a version of the Flyer it will call EVO View 4G, starting June 24. It will have 32 gigabytes of memory, double the storage in Best Buy's version, and it will have access to Sprint's data network. In a smart move, Sprint is including the pen, but only "for a limited time." However, buyers will need to sign up for two years of wireless data service from Sprint, so the final price will be considerably higher.

Some other things to consider: The Flyer runs Google Inc.'s Android 2.3 software, which in plain English means that it uses the same software as a lot of smartphones, but not other recent iPad rivals. They use a more recent package, "Honeycomb," that's designed for tablets. HTC promises to upgrade the Flyer's software to Honeycomb soon, helping it stay compatible with tablet-specific apps.

In my video-playing test, I got 7.5 hours of play time out of the Flyer, which isn't very good for a tablet. The iPad 2 gets ten hours; the Asus Eee Pad Transformer gets nine.

The Transformer is a better example of a tablet that tries to compete with the iPad by doing something new — in that case, by doubling as a small, elegant laptop thanks to a clever accessory keyboard.

The pen-sensing layer of the Flyer could be a great addition to the world of tablets, but someone really needs to figure out how to make the pen cheaper or easier to keep track of. To end on another corny quote, "If you love something, set it free; if it comes back it's yours, if it doesn't, it never was" is not a phrase to live by when it comes to $80 pens.

Nintendo stock plunges amid doubts about new Wii (AP)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 05:31 AM PDT

– Wed Jun 8, 8:31 am ET

TOKYO – Nintendo stock plunged Wednesday in Tokyo amid doubts about the consumer appeal of the Wii U, the much ballyhooed successor to its hit Wii video game console.

The demonstration of a prototype at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the gaming industry's annual convention, in Los Angeles on Tuesday, appeared to leave investors disappointed and skeptical.

Nintendo Co. shares closed at 16,970 yen ($212.44), down more than 5 percent. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index ended flat.

Shuji Hosoi, analyst at Daiwa Securities Co., said it was unclear how successfully the machine would compete against smartphones and tablet PCs, when device-based gaming was already having to vie against social networks.

It is hard to see how it was different enough to woo users of smartphones and tablet PCs back to gaming, he said.

"People are puzzled whether this will really sell."

Hosoi acknowledged the stock price may recover if Kyoto-based Nintendo could convince investors that the new machine was as fun as smartphones and other new devices.

"But it would be extremely difficult because the competition is so intense," he said, referring to products such as the iPad from Apple Inc. and other rivals. "People have already changed."

The Japanese gaming giant behind Pokemon and Super Mario games said the Wii U will broadcast high-definition video and feature a touchscreen controller that can detect motion. Its price was not disclosed.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told E3 the new controller for Wii U, with its 6.2 inch built-in screen, means players don't necessarily have to watch the TV set.

Nintendo said the Wii U will be released between April and December next year and will be compatible with older Wii games and controllers.

Sales of the Wii have slumped for two years. But the Wii remains the overall top-selling home video game console against Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3.

E3 2011: This enormous wrap-around screen setup makes us extremely jealous (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 07:05 PM PDT

By Barb Dybwad, Tecca barb Dybwad, Tecca – 1 hr 53 mins ago


They're not showing off any games of their own of course, but chip-maker AMD did nevertheless manage an impressive presence on the E3 show floor with this insane, almost 180-degree wraparound screen setup. The PC hardware and software part of the equation is relatively reasonable at about $1000, but it's the three powerful projectors involved that would set you back about $30 grand.

Any games that support AMD's Eyefinity technology for multi-monitor gaming could take advantage of a setup like this. The additional software required to make it all happen works essentially just like outputting a game to a multiple monitor setup, but adds some adjustment for the curvature of the projection screen. If you've got the spare cash, or are willing to contemplate a second mortgage on the house, let us know how this one fares in your living room.

iPad App Review: Splashtop Remote Desktop lets you control your computer from your iPad (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 06:56 PM PDT

By Tecca tecca – 2 hrs 2 mins ago

The iPad is a great tool and a well-designed piece of technology. There are many things it's good at, such as acting as a digital cookbook, surfing the web, and playing movies and games. However, a tablet will never be able to do everything that a desktop or laptop computer can do. But thanks to apps like Splashtop Remote Desktop, the gap between tablets and computers is slowly closing.

Easy setup
You'll need 2 pieces of software to get Splashtop Remote Desktop up and running. First, you'll need the iPad app, which works with either version of the tablet. Just download and install it like any other app.

Then you'll need to install the streaming program on your computer. The Windows version runs on XP, Vista, and Windows 7; the Mac version runs on OS X 10.6 or higher. No matter what operating system you use, your computer needs at least a 1.6GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM.

Setup is straightforward. When you install the streaming program on your computer, you'll be asked to create a password. When you connect remotely to your computer with the iPad app, you'll be prompted to enter this password. This keeps unwanted guests out of your computer, should your tablet ever get stolen.

The app and streamer work by communicating over your home network. Once you've installed the streamer, the iPad app will automatically discover your computer — simply tap on your computer name to get started!

Simple controls
Once you establish a remote connection, controlling your computer is straightforward. Simple 1-, 2-, and 3-finger touch commands let you easily click, scroll, and zoom the screen. If you're already comfortable navigating on an iPad, these will be very familiar to you. Pop up a virtual keyboard for any typing you need to do.

By default, the streamer program resizes your computer's desktop to be the same resolution as your iPad. You can change this by going into the iPad app and configuring the settings for the computer. You can choose either 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 (default), or you can use the remote computer's native resolution. If you opt for the latter, you may find yourself zooming in and out more, so we recommend leaving this setting alone and using the default resolution.

Why you want this program
While definitely a robust piece of technology, the iPad still suffers from a few shortcomings, including its lack of Adobe Flash support. Flash has long been a standard on the web, and quite a few websites use it in some way, shape, or form. While many are moving towards HTML5 for videos, many popular sites such as Hulu still only support Flash. We should note that if you are a Hulu Plus subscriber, there is an official app that will let you stream directly to your tablet without using Splashtop.

With Splashtop Remote Desktop, you can enjoy any video (on the web or elsewhere) by simply connecting remotely to your computer and streaming the video straight to your iPad. It transfers all audio by default, as well, giving you a great all-around experience.

But this app lets you enjoy far more than just video. Because it allows you to quite literally control your computer, you can do anything you would like on your iPad — including playing music, video games, and much more. This video gives you a better idea of what's possible with Splashtop remote.

Nothing is perfect
While this app offers a number of great features, we have noticed a few drawbacks. The overall quality of the remote connection makes the image on your tablet a little blurry. Options to control the image quality are a bit lacking even at the highest settings. We would love to see some higher-quality options.

We should also point out that while Splashtop Remote Desktop does let you remotely control your computer, it officially only works as yet via a local network — not the internet. An experimental feature enables internet access, but in our testing, it was slow, choppy, and virtually unusable. If you absolutely need internet connectivity, we suggest you stick to something like LogMeIn Ignition for now.

A great option
Overall, we think that Splashtop Remote Desktop is a great option if you're looking for a way to remote control your home computer from your iPad, and we give it a solid 4 out of 5 stars. Regularly priced at $4.99 on the App Store, it's available for a limited time for just $1.99.

Post by Jacob Bolm

More from Tecca:

Why Augmented Reality Is Poised To Change Marketing (Mashable)

Posted: 07 Jun 2011 07:25 PM PDT

Sam Ewen Sam Ewen – Tue Jun 7, 10:25 pm ET

Sam Travis Ewen is the CEO and founder of Interference Incorporated, a non-traditional marketing agency, and is co-founder of Supertou.ch an immersive technology company focused on bringing human computer interaction (HCI) to real-world environments. If you've read Daniel Suarez's techno thriller Daemon or William Gibson's Spook Country, then you've encountered a world where there is no dividing line between physical and virtual realities. This vision is also advanced in the films Blade Runner, Minority Report or Children of Men which feature floating screens and active surfaces that come alive at a gesture or command. While this may seem like fantasy, those in business and marketing need to start paying attention to how real this all becoming.

[More from Mashable: NBC's The Voice Treats iTunes Sales As Viewer Votes]

The fields of augmented reality, projection mapping and Kinect hacking are where some of the most exciting work is happening. The changes are occurring so rapidly and in such variety that it is hard to keep up. But what many startups, hackers, corporations and tech artists are creating -- a hybrid between computer interactivity, data, social media and how those relate to our physical world -- is not only mind-blowing, but it is also a teaser for what media and communication experiences will look like in the near future.

Here is a taste of what's going on.

[More from Mashable: 10 Eco-Friendly Accessories for a Greener Office [PICS]]

Augmented Reality

Remember when AR was all about little black-and-white codes that made pretty little animations play on your webcam? It seemed like a fun trick back then, and a few brands (Lego, best of all, and maybe Ray-Ban for an honorable mention) used it to create new ways to digest their products or play simple games.

Actually, there was very little 'reality' being augmented with those. But now that the concept has matured, we're starting to see a very different AR come to life. With your phone's camera becoming the input device, apps are popping up that let you view a building in your city and find out if there is available office space for rent in it, make newspapers, magazines and outdoor imagery come to life, get translation on the fly or see a person's social profile as they pass you on the street.

As our desire to check in and share location-related media grows, we're going to see the ability to overlay those actions on real space through these tools and new ones coming.

Where to start:

Projection Mapping

Projection mapping has been around for a few years now, but it is starting to come into its own with some high profile stunts. Projection mapping software looks at the shape of an object and creates a 3D map of it, allowing an artist to overlay imagery -- usually on a large surface or structure.

Why is this interesting? Because it provides the ability to change the experience of a physical object creatively, so at one point the object was one thing, and then right in front of your eyes it appears to be another. Ralph Lauren made a recent splash with this tech at a high profile event, projecting a 3D spectacle on the facades of flagship stores in New York and London.

Infiniti and Toyota have used the technique effectively to make their cars defy the laws of nature at private events. Others have used it to augment architecture and living spaces in such dramatic ways that you would have to touch them to see if the change was real or simply a visual trick. If all the structures around us were a canvas, imagine what we could do with them.

Where to start:

Kinect Hacking

On November 4, 2010, Microsoft took a major step toward reasserting itself as a leader in future tech. The release of the Kinect for its Xbox system, -- and how the Kinect was adopted by the creative/hacker community -- has ushered in a new era for augmented reality.

Why is the Kinect so innovative? It's not really breaking new ground, technology-wise. But it's the way in which it combines existing tech -- a multi-array microphone, an RGB camera, an infrared depth sensor -- that makes it smarter and cheaper than preceding attempts. Perhaps more importantly, it's hackable. And recognizing the innovation that could come of this, Microsoft is due to release an SDK that will allow the curious and the research-minded alike to tinker with ease.

In just a few short months, developers have used the Kinect to create everything from optical camouflage to body-controlled light shows. Beyond the novelty, the practical implications of tying gestures to computer control are abundant.

Here are a few impressive examples of Kinect hacks in action:

These technologies (and a variety of others) are radically changing the way the physical and digital worlds interface. Because media and marketing are moving ever closer to the technologies that feature (and often reward) user engagement and user creation, these innovative types of input/output mechanisms will directly lead us into a new era of active and reactive brand communication and experience.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Jason McDermott.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Citi confirms data breach at Citi Account Online (Reuters)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 08:37 PM PDT

– 24 mins ago

Bangalore (Reuters) – Citigroup Inc confirmed a computer breach at Citi Account Online, giving hackers access to the data of hundreds of thousands of bank card customers.

The bank recently discovered unauthorized access at Citi Account Online through routine monitoring, a spokesperson told Reuters in an email.

The bank said about 1 percent of its card customers were affected by the breach.

The name of the customers, account numbers and contact information including email addresses of the affected accounts were viewed, Citi said.

Other information such as birth dates, social security numbers, card expiration date and card security code (CVV) was not compromised, Citi said.

"We are contacting customers whose information was impacted. Citi has implemented enhanced procedures to prevent a recurrence of this type of event," the spokesperson said.

The Financial Times first reported about the data breach.

(Reporting by Abhishek Takle in Bangalore; Editing by Vinu Pilakkott)

Pressure builds on Weiner to resign (AP)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 08:47 PM PDT

By ANDREW MIGA and DAVID ESPO, Associated Press Andrew Miga And David Espo, Associated Press – 11 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Embattled New York Rep. Anthony Weiner's prospects for political survival dimmed precipitously on Wednesday with the appearance on the Internet of an X-rated photo said to be of the congressman — and the first calls from fellow Democrats for him to step down.

"In light of Anthony Weiner's offensive behavior online, he should resign," Pennsylvania Rep. Allyson Schwartz, a member of the party campaign committee's leadership, said in a statement that was quickly followed by similar expressions from other Democrats.

Separately, as the political scandal increasingly roiled the Democratic Party, several officials said that Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin, was pregnant. An official at the State Department, where Abedin serves as deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, had no comment. Abedin was traveling with Clinton on an official trip to the Mideast and Africa.

Weiner, 46, has admitted sending explicit photos and messages via the Internet to about a half-dozen women over the past three years. He vowed at a news conference on Monday to remain in office, and one lawmaker who spoke to him on Wednesday said Weiner indicated he still hopes to ride out the furor and remain in Congress. That lawmaker spoke on condition of anonymity, saying it was a private conversation.

But the appearance of a photo of a man's genitals added yet another aspect to what appears to be a sex scandal without actual sex in the age of social media. According to conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, Weiner sent the picture of himself to one of the women with whom he corresponded online.

The Associated Press has not been able to independently confirm that the photo is of Weiner. On Wednesday, spokeswoman Risa B. Heller noted in a statement that Weiner had said at a news conference on Monday that he "has sent explicit photos. To reiterate, he has never met any of these women or had physical contact with them."

The photo made its way to the website Gawker by a circuitous route, after Breitbart showed it to the hosts of Sirius XM radio's "Opie and Anthony Show."

One of the women whom Weiner sexted, Lisa Weiss, a 40-year-old blackjack dealer from Las Vegas, said the online relationship started as flirtations, and he escalated the graphic comments.

"Yes. I was very shocked at the beginning. ... I would want to talk politics," she said in an interview on Inside Edition. "But he would turn it creepy."

By day's end Wednesday, at least six House Democrats had called for Weiner to step down.

Schwartz was the first, and politically the most significant because of her position as a senior leader on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Weiner's predicament has rocked the Democratic Party, particularly the women who hold leadership posts and have faced a choice between calling for a resignation or hoping that refraining from doing so would lead him to quit without being told.

In the interim, few pass up the chance to signal to Weiner that he should step down.

The head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Sen. Patty Murray, told reporters during the day that Weiner's troubles "of course" complicate the party's efforts ahead of in the 2012 elections.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. said, "I just view it with great surprise and dismay. That's all I can say."

Feinstein and Murray were first elected to the Senate in 1992, the so-called Year of the Women that was a watershed in Democratic political history.

The party's leader in the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California has called for an ethics committee investigation to see whether Weiner's actions violated any House rules.

Pelosi and the party's chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, declined to respond directly on Tuesday when the Republican chairman, Reince Priebus, urged them to say whether they believe Weiner should step down.

The Democratic National Committee has adamantly refused to comment, while a spokesman in Wasserman Schultz's congressional office has said only that she supports Pelosi's call for an ethics investigation. By contrast, the former Democratic Party chairman, Tim Kaine, has urged Weiner to quit. Kaine is running for the Senate in Virginia.

While declining to make any public comments since Monday, Weiner has been on something of an apology tour by telephone. He has contacted fellow House members and former President Bill Clinton, who officiated at the congressman's wedding to Abedin nearly a year ago.

The officials who spoke about the telephone calls did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were private matters.

___

Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman in Washington and Beth Fouhy in New York contributed to this report.

E3 2011 event: Shigeru Miyamoto reveals insights at Nintendo Developer Roundtable (Digital Trends)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 07:28 PM PDT

Matt Behrens Matt Behrens – 1 hr 30 mins ago

(This article comes courtesy of N-Sider, a site for well-adjusted Nintendo fans. N-Sider has served the Nintendo community for more than a decade.)

Last night, we had the privilege of once again attending Nintendo's Developer Roundtable. These events put luminaries from Nintendo's internal development teams up on stage without interference from the sales guys, allowing them to go into depth about their latest efforts for us, the media.

This year's roundtable was attended by Shigeru Miyamoto (who I trust needs no introduction), Legend of Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma, and EAD Tokyo (of Super Mario Galaxy fame as well as Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat and Flipnote Studio) head Yoshiaki Koizumi. As the roundtable opened up, Miyamoto told us today we'd be focusing on current titles such as those announced for the Nintendo 3DS and the upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and also reminded us—and, by extension, you, dear reader—about the launch of the Nintendo eShop this week and the availability of ten fully-3D trailers for 3DS games that you can download there for free. (Not a lot of us had actually done this yet—Miyamoto seemed a little taken aback.)

With the preliminaries out of the way, the event then began in earnest.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D

It is the 25th anniversary this year of the Legend of Zelda series, and Miyamoto and translator Bill Trinen concluded it was probably thirteen years since the original The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was released. Miyamoto said that even though he knew the game extremely well back then, playing it again now brought a realization that perhaps he doesn't remember it quite so well now. Seeing the game through a this prism brought a different feel, particularly with the script; lines that he joked he was telling his staff were no good seemed to be pretty good after all after being filtered through the prism of time.

legend-of-zelda-oot-e3-2011

This month’s release of Ocarina of Time 3D features hint movies that are intended to help players who are totally new to the game to solve puzzles they might otherwise be stumped by. Miyamoto said their intent with the hint movies is not to solve the puzzle for the person, but rather to encourage them to solve the problem on their ownâ€"to that end, they will not show the solution itself, and will not be available until the player has failed at solving the puzzle a number of times.

For those who are not at all new to the series, they̢۪ve also included the mirrored Master Quest mode, and a mode in which you can re-fight bosses from the game.

Star Fox 64 3D

Lots of people think of Star Fox as a shooting game, Miyamoto says, but he always thinks of it as a game about flying through space, over, around, and under obstacles. To that end, he found himself revisiting the question of inverted controls. A show of hands was taken; most people preferred their flight controls inverted—the scant few that did not must have grown up as Sega fans, he joked.

star-fox-64-3d-asteroids

As a designer, multiple control options troubles Miyamoto. He wishes that the industry could standardize on just one option. He felt Star Fox 64 3D was a point at which it might be interesting to reopen discussion on this point because the slide pad was not a stick—therefore it might not necessarily make sense to invert controls with it. (I was a little taken aback by this comment, actually. The slide pad may not be a stick, but it feels exactly like one. I'm not quite sure what he was getting at.)

The advent of gyro controls brought Miyamoto a new opportunity to unify the industry, he joked; but in all seriousness, he liked the idea of using the 3DS as a viewfinder, moving it through space. (He didn't talk about this—or, indeed, anything about Wii U—but it's pretty obvious to see the implications of this with Wii U as well… it's almost like a next-generation pointer.) For Star Fox 64 3D, he felt that it worked most well to move the series up and down for vertical movement, but use the slide pad to steer side-to-side.

Super Mario Kite and other asides

The as-of-yet-untitled Mario Kart for 3DS brings the new glider transformation to the series, which Miyamoto joked made him want to call the game "Super Mario Kite." He also noted that Retro Studios is pitching in on this one, doing course-designing duty.

mario-kart-3ds-e3-2011-2

Gyro controls were apparently more interesting a topic, though, so we got back to that one fairly quickly. One of the problems with it on the 3DS is that it's difficult for the 3D to stay in focus (something I've personally noticed even as I get more used to my 3DS, typically preferring now to have the 3D effect jacked all the way up.) It's OK to play games in 2D if it's comfortable, Miyamoto says, but he asks that you please do flip the slider upward for the cinema scenes in Ocarina of Time.

Those of us who brought our 3DSes to the roundtable got a special gift as well—a Mii named "MiyamoTo," who Miyamoto noted was his personal Mii from his own 3DS—my colleague Dean Bergmann, who was sitting next to me, had Miyamoto's official Mii, which Nintendo has distributed via QR codes, saved on his 3DS; the differences were quite apparent. A hidden staffer was apparently quite busy repeatedly clearing Miyamoto's StreetPass queue so that we all had a chance to get the man on our 3DS. I did, which I've gotta admit was pretty darned cool.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

To hopefully avoid the wireless interference problems that plagued E3 2010′s Skyward Sword demo, we were once again asked to turn our wireless devices off—including those frantically-StreetPassing 3DSes in our bags. Series producer Eiji Aonuma took over at this point, with Nate Bihldorff playing the game.

But before jumping into Skyward, Aonuma had one thing to say about Ocarina of Time 3D, regarding the Water Temple difficulty from last year's roundtable. Apparently, there was actually a push to make the Water Temple easier through level design, but Aonuma defended it vehemently, saying that there was nothing wrong with the temple, only the difficulty of removing and replacing the iron boots—he considers that problem fully solved thanks to the addition of the touch-control item menu in Ocarina 3D.

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Moving on to Skyward Sword, we went through a couple demos on the Japanese version of the game. The first demo was called "Dowsing," a demonstration of Link's sword's ability to act as a sort of dowsing rod to find hidden pieces of a key Link needs to get into a dungeon. As you use it to point in the environment, you get visual and auditory feedback indicating if you're pointing in the right direction or not—this was used to great effect over a rather large area of terrain. The problem isn't totally solved for you, though; you still need to figure out how to get an item out—one was under a structure and another behind a rock wall that was far away from a supply of bomb flowers.

The other demo was called "Siren," and involved the otherworldly Siren world Link enters by stabbing his sword into a magic circle; in here, Link needed to collect droplets while avoiding guardian statues that could take him out with one hit. (It looks eerily like similar sequences from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess… thankfully, the mechanics are a little different.) These guardians come to life when Link walks outside his safe zone, and return to resting position when he collects a droplet.

There are a large number of droplets scattered all over large area. Link needed to display a lot of dexterity, leaping across gaps in ivy-covered walls and running up hills, to get them—particularly as he was being pursued, requiring the use of judicious dashing. (Alas, Mr. Bihldorff was not quite judicious enough, and was eventually taken down.) The key to these and other sequences was to know the area well. Skyward Sword will re-use familiar areas again and again for new kinds of sequences, testing your familiarity with these areas each time—they've put a lot of work into the map system to this end.

Super Mario (3DS)

Super Mario still doesn't have a title, and it's all Miyamoto's fault, producer Yoshiaki Koizumi joked. They do have a number of themes in the works, though—and maybe there are clues in the demo on the show floor.

The game is a return to a more traditional Mario world, we were told as Bihldorff played the game for us. Koizumi said Galaxy had afforded him the opportunity to really be experimental and explore Mario, learning about the tempo and excitement of the game—and Super Mario had indeed learned from those experiments even as it returns to the past.

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As he spoke, Bihldorff demonstrated the Tanooki suit, returning from Super Mario Bros. 3 but with a different ability set—it's pretty much exclusively good for drifting and slowing Mario's fall. At that point, Bihldorff missed a key jump and would have fallen to his death were it not for the suit—but he was able to use it and some wall jumps to get back up again, to applause from the audience. The suit was intended to give amateur players landing, but—as Bihldorff demonstrated—could also be used by skilled players to great effect.

There were a lot of 3D props being shown off in the demo that we unfortunately could not see on the big screens, but it was pretty easy to tell where they were—using our imaginations, it was almost as good. Super Mario on 3DS afforded the developers new opportunities to really show things coming out of the background, which was difficult to do before; we saw this extensively with things like spiked skewers and Cheep-Cheeps. There was also a special top-down level created as an homage to Zelda for its 25th anniversary that we could tell would look really good in 3D, with many things like lava geysers shooting up out of the screen as well as some trampoline platforms that, in the top-down environment, must have looked very impressive as Mario soared to great heights. Lots of impressive 3D to be had here, I'm sure.

Luigi's Mansion 2

The last game discussed was Luigi's Mansion 2, for which we saw some exclusive gameplay footage. It's slated for hopefully early next year, Miyamoto said, and is actually being done by Next Level Games, most recently famous for their Wii Punch-Out!! game—it's actually not being overseen by EAD, but Miyamoto said he has taken personal responsibility for it nonetheless. Luigi's Mansion, Miyamoto said, was made because he wanted to, after they used the GameCube version to create some early tests on the 3DS.

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The gameplay footage showed a few things from the floor demo as well as levels where Luigi works with Toad to accomplish some goals such as finding ghosts that can only be seen in mirrors. There was also a lot of gameplay involving things I didn't do in the demo because I didn't know I could, like pulling wallpaper off certain walls to find secret areas and the like. Miyamoto commented at the end that he thinks that because of the mix of action and puzzling, Luigi's Mansion 2 will be a game that will probably appeal to both male and female players.

Q&A

Finally, we wrapped up with a little Q&A from the audience. The first questioner asked why 3DS had not seen any expanded-audience titles like Brain Age or similar yet, neither released or in-development. Miyamoto seemed shocked by the question because Nintendogs + catsdid, in fact, exist already, noting that it came even before Mario. More to the point, though, he said that the built-in software was supposed to fill this role somewhat for the people who were not necessarily interested in the franchise entries being made and released now.

The DS was also a more experimental system, Miyamoto added, noting that the software naturally followed the fact that they had a new play style, with dual screens and a touch screen, to introduce and explore. 3DS, by contrast, was designed to bring a more traditional experience, and as such he would like to bring a lot of traditional games to the system—there are so many, he said, that he has a hard time picking which to do first. With that said, titles with broader appeal were in the works, and announcements would come later on those.

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Another audience member asked about what Miyamoto thought about the divide between what boys and girls liked, given his comments on the appeal of Luigi's Mansion 2. The question seemed to stump everyone on stage for a bit, but Miyamoto eventually came up with a few anecdotes, like how women do play a lot of Mario, but Galaxy sounded too masculine, and how some girls had found the original Luigi's Mansion too scary.

All that said, Miyamoto said he generally does not try to separate between the two when making games, though he noted that Star Fox was a particularly masculine game based on a boy's dream of flying a jet fighter. Koizumi also jumped in here to follow up on Galaxy, saying that it was made in part as a fulfillment of his dream as a boy of flying around in space—and noted that the new Super Mario was free from that sort of thing.

The next question was rather pointed: was Skyward Sword Nintendo's last game for Wii? Miyamoto said that his responsibility, he feels, is to look forward and always develop for Nintendo's newest systems; as such they are winding down on Wii internally. That said, many Nintendo partners are still working on Wii titles and more announcements are forthcoming from Nintendo on that front.

Aonuma interjected that he wants to make Skyward Sword a title worthy of sending Wii off with. Miyamoto joked that he had told Aonuma that if it wasn't good enough, it would be the last Zelda title completely—and similarly, that he'd told the Star Fox team that if they couldn't revive interest in the franchise, that they'd stop making Star Fox games as well.

Super Mario was the next topic as an audience member asked about Mario feeling "slow" in the demo. Koizumi said that the tempo has changed somewhat to help maintain an accurate feel to the game, but he said that he was striving to keep Mario both fast and accurate, and still challenging.

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The Vitality Sensor was also asked about. Miyamoto said they have found it rather difficult to make the device stable, and as such have not brought it to market.

The final question brought was a doubleheader, about the Tanooki suit in Super Mario. Why doesn't he fly, and where in the heck did the idea of having a racoon fly come from anyway? Flying does cause issues in 3D, they said, so the feature was not put into the game, quite simply.

For the second half of the question, Miyamoto called up long-time collaborator Takashi Tezuka—a real treat. Tezuka said that when designing Super Mario Bros. 3, they had simply begun by deciding they wanted Mario to have a tail, for things like the spin attack. Once he had one, though, the ideas just flowed from there. At first, they thought maybe making it flutter could make Mario jump further—and they decided that it felt so good, that they'd just go ahead and make him fly.

Wrap-up

We were forbidden to ask about Pikmin throughout the roundtable, and because we were so good about not asking about it, Miyamoto did actually give us a little tidbit about it, which he said was sort of hard to do, given internal conflict between his corporate side, which dictated he should not talk about unannounced games, and his personal side, which wanted to tell us all about what he was working on. He noted he wanted to make it for its 10th anniversary, but simply could not. They were indeed working on it for Wii, but are now looking at moving it over to Wii U, in part because he really likes how it looks with the system's advanced graphical capability.

Maybe, he said, we could expect to not have to wait very long for it, since work has already been done for it. But, he noted, they are not officially making any game announcements at all for Wii U at this point. So all we can do for those little guys at this point is hope.

EBay seeks acquisitions to speed impulse buys (Reuters)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 02:41 PM PDT

By Georgina Prodhan Georgina Prodhan – Wed Jun 8, 5:41 pm ET

LONDON (Reuters) – EBay is hunting for acquisitions to speed up its development of image recognition and augmented reality features as the online retailer and auctioneer seeks to capitalize on the potential of mobile phones to help consumers make impulse purchases.

Image recognition, which rival Amazon.com already has, would allow users to photograph an object with their phone, send the image to eBay, find a match in the online store and buy it within seconds -- before losing interest.

Steve Yankovich, head of eBay mobile, told Reuters his division had the company's full support to spend money on innovative technology, as the fastest growing part of eBay which is helping to renew the 15-year-old company's image.

Augmented reality features could allow users to see themselves in items of clothing they might want to buy, picture a car they like in different colors, or see what kind of light a lamp would shed in their living room.

"The company is really behind using mobile as an innovation platform to try new ways to engage the user ... and it's also a place where they see investing in technology as the right thing to do," Yankovich said in an interview in London on Wednesday.

"I'm looking for companies that do interesting things with image recognition and also augmented reality," he said, adding that he hoped to have image recognition and more augmented reality features available this year.

EBay, which says it is bigger than Amazon in mobile commerce, expects to more than double its mobile gross merchandise volume this year to $4 billion. Last year eBay's total gross merchandise volume was $53.5 billion.

Amazon does not break out mobile sales but eBay has about half the estimated total global market for physical goods sold via mobile.

Yankovich said eBay's mobile users were both growing fast in numbers and were typically more engaged than users on computers, visiting the site 10 to 15 times per day to check the status of their bids for items in the marketplace or simply to kill time.

"People have a few moments of spare time all throughout the day and they're snacking, they make little snacks of eBay," he said. "And the situation they're in is inspiring the purchase."

He said speed of result was key to closing a transaction.

"It's fleeting. If you get pulled off of what you're doing -- and you do when you're out and about -- if I can't get you to do it super-fast you might never get back to it so you might not buy," he said in the interview at the Open Mobile Summit.

"When the tsunami happened in Japan our bids per minute on mobile dropped. It's not because we do business on eBay in Japan -- we don't -- but people were snacking on some news instead of some eBay."

Yankovich said listing an item for sale on the site took 38 seconds on a mobile phone, compared with 20 minutes on the computer website, aided by time-saving features like being able to scan in a barcode instead of typing in details.

EBay bought barcode technology firm Redlaser last year to help make the mobile experience smoother.

Yankovich said eBay was receiving 420,000 new listings per week just from Apple's iPhone, and had won 300,000 new shoppers on the iPhone this year who had never made an eBay purchase before.

EBay also has mobile apps for the iPad, Google Android phones, Research in Motion's BlackBerry and Microsoft's Windows Phone.

(Editing by Greg Mahlich)

Facebook under fire for photo tagging feature (AFP)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 06:05 PM PDT

– 2 hrs 54 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Facebook is coming under fire for a feature that uses facial recognition software to allow members to tag pictures of their friends on the social network.

The "Tag Suggestions" feature made its debut on Facebook in the United States six months ago but has drawn renewed attention this week after the social network began rolling it out to other countries.

Tag Suggestions uses facial recognition software to match newly uploaded photos to photos that have been tagged elsewhere and suggests the name of the friend in the photo for tagging.

Although the feature was launched in the United States in December, it began coming under scrutiny again this week following a blog post by Graham Cluley of the security firm Sophos.

Cluley objected to the enabling of the photo tagging feature without giving users any notice and the fact that it is an opt-in instead of an opt-out process, meaning users were included unless they specifically changed their settings.

"The tagging is still done by your friends, not by Facebook, but rather creepily Facebook is now pushing your friends to go ahead and tag you," Cluley said.

"Facebook does not give you any right to pre-approve tags," he said. "Instead the onus is on you to untag yourself in any photo a friend has tagged you in. After the fact."

"Many people feel distinctly uncomfortable about a site like Facebook learning what they look like, and using that information without their permission," he continued.

"The onus should not be on Facebook users having to 'opt-out' of the facial recognition feature, but instead on users having to 'opt-in,' Cluley said.

A member of the US House of Representatives also objected on Wednesday to the opt-in nature of the photo tagging feature on Facebook, which has been forced to weather a number of privacy storms over the past few years.

"Requiring users to disable this feature after they've already been included by Facebook is no substitute for an opt-in process," said Representative Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts.

"If this new feature is as useful as Facebook claims, it should be able to stand on its own, without an automatic sign-up that changes users' privacy settings without their permission," Markey said in a statement.

Facebook, which has more than 600 million members, said Wednesday that the feature was intended to make it easier to tag friends in photos but apologized for not sharing more information.

"We launched Tag Suggestions to help people add tags of their friends in photos; something that's currently done more than 100 million times a day," a Facebook spokesman said in a statement to AFP.

"If for any reason someone doesn't want their name to be suggested, they can disable the feature in their Privacy Settings," the spokesman said.

"When we announced this feature last December, we explained that we would test it, listen to feedback and iterate before rolling it out more broadly," he said.

"We should have been more clear with people during the roll-out process when this became available to them," the spokesman said.

Efforts Frantic to Reverse Obama's Re-Election Support Drought (ContributorNetwork)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 05:00 PM PDT

Patricia Campion Patricia Campion – Wed Jun 8, 8:00 pm ET
Contribute content like this. Start here.

According to a recent report by ABC, "a legion of 1,600 newly-recruited Democratic campaign volunteers, armed with Tweet-producing smart-phones and a contagious spirit of enthusiasm, are fanning out across 40 states today to begin laying the groundwork for the reelection of President Barack Obama."

Conversely, the latest Rasmussen national telephone survey, only 24 percent of likely U.S. voters believe their political views line up with those of the president.

The latest Gallup Daily tracking three-day average shows that only 41 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing as president. Among members of the military Obama is given only a 37 percent approval on overall job performance . Regarding the deficit, Americans give Obama a dismal 27 percent approval.

By a margin of 2 to 1, as revealed by The Washington Post, Americans say the country is seriously on the wrong track while 9 out of 10 rate the economy in negative terms. Despite the administrations feverish attempts to convince Americans that Obama's policies have "brought us back from the brink", nearly 6 in 10 say the economy has not started to recover.

The most difficult pill for democrats to swallow is Obama's lost support among blacks, a decline of 7% in March said the Los Angeles Times. Equally ominous is Gallup's report that his approval among Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing demographic where his approval levels have fallen 11 points to tie his term low of 54 percent.

Also according to Gallup, Obama's approval dropped to an all-time low of 48 percent among America's poorest in April, This now leaves the president with less-than-majority approval among all income brackets reported in Gallup's presidential approval surveys.

In a Gallup poll regarding party line approval numbers, Obama gets what one would expect; 85 percent approval from Democrats and 16 percent among republicans. The numbers that do not bode well for Obama's hope for re-election are his numbers among Independents which has slipped to 47% among moderates and 38 percent among "Pure Independents".

And it gets worse.

According to a recent CNN Opinion Research poll, half of all likely voters say they are likely to support an un-determined Tea Party candidate rather than Obama. Additionally, the poll reveals that President Barack Obama's approval rating has dropped to an all-time low of just 42 percent and 56 percent say Obama has fallen short of their expectations.

As for the May prediction by Newly appointed DNC Chair, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz to ABC News that Democrats will reclaim the House and that Obama will win re-election, American voters disagree.

According to a report in the Cypress Times, respondents of the CNN Opinion Research poll say Congressional Democrats come in 9 points under when likely voters consider which party they'll support in 2012, proving that the same pariah factor that caused democrats to flee Obama during the November midterms will be a factor in the 2012 primary elections. Only 37 percent of those polled by CNN say they would vote for an Obama backed candidate while half say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate supported by the Tea Party.

A more staggering revelation according to another CNN Opinion Research poll is that more than half of registered voters believe President Obama will lose a bid for a second term. A full 51 percent say they definitely or probably will not vote for Obama, while 47 percent say they're predisposed to vote for him.

Obama is also losing favor among his traditionally supportive members in the Jewish community.

In a previous article I wrote, "Obama Backpedals on Israel Support, Could Further Compromise Reelection", I predicted the real and potential political fallout to be expected from Obama's insulting demands to force Israel to reconfigure its border to their 1967 lines. Subsequently, The Wall Street Journal reported that Jewish donors and fundraisers threatened to pull their financial support prompting the DNC to launch a major pro-Obama pushback in the Jewish community. According to The Jewish Week, the White House even took the "unusual step of posting a lengthy defense of Obama's Israel record on its website".

According to the CBS story, Obama's "legion" of campaign volunteers were described as "college students, recent graduates, teachers, and retirees" who aim to "grow and re-energize" the Obama grassroots volunteer network. The problem is, where that may have worked in 2008, after almost 3 years of what Obama meant by "Hope and Change" the roots of his network grass appears to be infested with the grubs of disillusion, disappointment and utter apathy. With having little more than a detached toupe of nutrient starved astro-turf left, which threatens to be blown away in the oncoming winds of the 2012 election, Obama has some serious problems.

Behind the administration's denial and the volunteer "contagious spirit of enthusiasm", consider the DNC to be in official panic mode.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

iOS 5 cuts the USB cable for good (Appolicious)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 03:00 PM PDT

Senate panel backs auctions of TV airwaves (Reuters)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 03:13 PM PDT

Analysis: Crunching Big Data more than a byte-sized bet (Reuters)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 12:37 PM PDT

By Sayantani Ghosh Sayantani Ghosh – Wed Jun 8, 3:37 pm ET

BANGALORE (Reuters) – Download a full-length movie on your computer and you'll need about 700 megabytes of space. Now multiply that digital mass by 2.7 trillion.

That's roughly how much digital data the world will spit out this year -- a mind-boggling pile of real-time information, which, when processed and analyzed, holds the key to faster service at retailers, better customer care at banks and speedier diagnosis when you visit the doctor.

Market research firm IDC, which pegged 2008 global digital output at 180 exabytes -- 1 exabyte is a little over 1 billion gigabytes -- expects that to jump 10 times this year and reach 35,000 exabytes by 2020.

The tech industry calls it Big Data.

"Think of a stack of DVDs reaching from earth to the moon and back," said David Thompson, Chief Information Officer at Symantec, a firm that manages, searches and secures large data sets.

Every phone call made, web page clicked, e-mail sent and online game played leaves data crumbs. These are now being analyzed in real-time to predict trends, spot potential problems and help find quick solutions.

Tibco Software and Informatica, bigger names including Salesforce.com Inc and IBM, and private firms such as Cloudera and Splunk are looking to cash in on this data tsunami -- betting on the potential returns from scouring and analyzing the data, and so helping customers improve their businesses.

Traditionally, data is stored in vast data warehouses, formatted into something the database can understand, and analyzed at the end of the week or month, if at all.

"Because of the volumes and the ways in which data is generated today, centralized database systems are no longer adequate," said Cloudera CEO Mike Olson.

"Computers are getting faster at a pretty good pace, but data is getting big at a much faster pace."

Businesses, seeking a competitive edge, are no longer satisfied with hindsight analysis. They need swift on-the-go insight to learn more, faster, and to pre-empt problems. And they're turning to companies that can offer that.

"The promise and scope of Big Data is that within all that data lies the answer to just about everything," Tibco CEO Vivek Ranadivé told Reuters.

CASE STUDY

Every month, Reliance Communications, India's No.2 mobile carrier by subscribers, and a Tibco client, adds some 3 million customers, but loses 1 million.

Tibco's analysis of available data found that for every 6 calls dropped by Customer Care, one customer switched to a rival service provider. Armed with that, Reliance offered free text messages to those customers before they switched, and saw a dramatic drop in churn, Ranadivé said.

Customer engagement is tracked very closely and, by applying sophisticated analytics, companies can see what aspects of a product customers like and what they don't, BofA Merrill Lynch said in a recent note.

Tibco's revenue jumped 21 percent in fiscal 2010, to $754 million, and it increased its R&D spend by 15 percent. Its shares have risen 5-fold in 2 years to their highest since the dotcom bubble a decade ago, but have dropped 16 percent in the last 4 weeks as markets have broadly been sold off.

VOLUME, VELOCITY, VARIETY

"Big Data is more than just volume. It's also about velocity of information and variety of information," said James Markarian, Chief Technology Officer at Informatica.

His company sees the concept as the coming together of three trends -- a deluge of transaction data such as orders, payments, storage and travel records; interaction data from social media sites; and warehousing to handle and store the data.

Informatica's products help integrate data in various formats from different data sources, making it easier to get into, and search, masses of data.

The soaraway popularity of smartphones and mobile devices, legions of newcomers to the Internet, rapid growth in online shopping and the spread of Facebook and Twitter are big drivers of Big Data.

"Maybe I'm collecting tweets and doing sentiment analysis about my brand; maybe I want to understand what users do when they visit my site, where do they go? what do they look at? what links do they click?" said Olson at Cloudera, which builds software applications on clients' databases.

Healthcare, too, is undergoing massive digitalization, as medical records are created and stored, and medical imaging is transferred to digital form in databases.

Last quarter, non-profit U.S. healthcare provider Oschner used Informatica to improve the quality of data in its legacy system, migrate that to a new system, and protect confidential medical records.

The potential value from real-time data mining in the U.S. healthcare sector alone could be worth more than $300 billion a year, much of that just from cutting costs by about 8 percent, according to a report by market researcher McKinsey.

U.S. oil company Chevron Corp accumulates some 2 terabytes of data a day -- 1 terabyte is 1,024 gigabytes -- while the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle accelerator, can generate data at 40 terabytes a second, the McKinsey report said.

Informatica increased its R&D spend last year by more than a third to over $100 million, and its revenue rose 31 percent. Its shares have also risen strongly and last week hit a life high of $59.98.

PEERING INTO DARK CAVES?

"Some of the most valuable data is also some of the most challenging to take advantage of, and that's called machine data," said Steve Sommer, Chief Marketing Officer at Splunk, a machine data management company inspired by spelunking, a U.S. term for caving, or potholing.

Sommer said much of this data can't be analyzed through traditional approaches as it doesn't have a standardized format -- for example, the many different types of Facebook posts.

Customers want to be able to constantly add, work with and understand terabytes of data in real time, he noted.

"And they need the flexibility to add, at a moment's notice, any format of data, and they want a system that can immediately understand the data and come up with insights for them."

Splunk, which has Salesforce.com, Facebook and the newly public LinkedIn Corp among its clients, likes to think it's the 'Google for data' -- looking in customers' hardware, databases, servers and networks to understand the infrastructure and see how this can be parsed to help the business.

McKinsey has warned of a shortage of analytical talent to make the most of Big Data, saying the United States alone needs 140,000-190,000 people with the necessary analytical skills.

"Big Data will become a larger liability instead of an asset for most organizations," said Symantec's Thompson.

"Data needs to be handled intelligently and this is an opportunity for IT departments to really get their head around what type of data they have, what they retain long term and what's of true value to the corporation."

With the useful life of data dropping dramatically, so is the amount of time to do something about it.

"The answer is not to try to build the mother of all databases. The answer is to extract the right data at the right time and put it in the right context," said Tibco's Ranadivé.

"You don't need Big Data if you have the right little data."

(Reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore, Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

Gartner cuts 2011 global PC growth forecast (AFP)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 04:05 PM PDT

– Wed Jun 8, 7:05 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Technology research company Gartner lowered its forecast Wednesday for worldwide personal computer growth amid a sharp drop in sales of mini-notebooks and rising interest in tablets such as Apple's iPad.

Gartner said PC shipments were expected to grow 9.3 percent this year, reaching 385 million units. Gartner had previously forecast PC unit growth of 10.5 percent for 2011.

"Consumer mobile PCs are no longer driving growth, because of sharply declining consumer interest in mini-notebooks," Gartner research director Ranjit Atwal said in a statement.

"Mini-notebook shipments have noticeably contracted over the last several quarters, and this has substantially reduced overall mobile PC unit growth," Atwal said.

"Media tablets, such as the iPad, have also impacted mobile growth, but more because they have caused consumers to delay new mobile PC purchases rather than directly replacing aging mobile PCs with media tablets," he said. "We believe direct substitution of media tablets for mobile PCs will be minimal."

Gartner said it expected businesses to drive PC growth rather than consumers, who were "maintaining a tight rein on their spending in response to continuing economic uncertainty."

"Businesses sharply reduced replacements and extended PC lifetimes in response to the recession," said Raphael Vasquez, research analyst at Gartner. "Businesses have begun replacing aging PCs more vigorously."

Gartner also said the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan had only a minor impact on worldwide PC shipment growth.

"PC vendors have so far managed the threat of Japanese component disruptions," added George Shiffler, research director at Gartner.

Police: Computer tech installed peeping software (AP)

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 07:52 PM PDT

– 1 hr 7 mins ago

FULLERTON, Calif. – A Southern California computer repairman suspected of installing spyware on laptops that enabled him to snap and download photographs of women showering and undressing in their homes was arrested Wednesday at his home, police said.

Police began investigating when a Fullerton resident complained about suspicious messages appearing on his daughter's computer last year. Trevor Harwell installed software that took control of computer webcams on his clients' Mac laptops, Fullerton police Sgt. Andrew Goodrich said.

The software sent fake error messages telling users to "fix their internal sensor soon," and "try putting your laptop near hot steam for several minutes to clean the sensor," Goodrich said.

The error message prompted some victims to take their laptops into the bathroom with them when they showered, he said.

"Once he had access, he would take photographs of the users, usually women," Goodrich said. "Often, the female victims were undressed or changing clothes. Harwell then stored the photos on a remote server, and eventually downloaded them on his own computer."

Detectives seized hundreds of thousands of still images and videos from Harwell's computer and identified several victims, Goodrich said.

Investigators believe Harwell, a technician for Rezitech Inc., may have exploited computers connected to Biola University's internal network. Harwell, 20, is a former student at the La Mirada Christian college, where many of the victims attended.

Orange County Superior Court records show that Harwell faces 12 felony counts of computer access and fraud, The Orange County Register reported. It wasn't known Wednesday evening if Harwell had obtained an attorney.
at 9:32 PM

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