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Monday, July 4, 2011

Next gen video games let players control the story (AP) : Technet

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Next gen video games let players control the story (AP) : Technet

Next gen video games let players control the story (AP)

Posted: 04 Jul 2011 10:46 AM PDT

By RYAN NAKASHIMA, Associated Press Ryan Nakashima, Associated Press – Mon Jul 4, 1:46 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – Menacing alien machines descend on Earth, and amid all-out war, a soldier searches a building to find a frightened boy hiding in a vent.

"It's OK," says the soldier.

"Everyone's dying," the boy replies.

The soldier must choose: Help the boy or tell him to flee.

Though it's full of dramatic tension and realistic animation, this isn't a scene from the next Hollywood blockbuster. It's actually from upcoming video game "Mass Effect 3."

Game makers are crafting more sophisticated story lines and creating characters that evolve based on their experiences within a game. It's an attempt to interest new customers and reverse a decline in video game sales as the maturing business fights for people's attention in the face of new devices such as the iPad.

A new crop of games calls for players to make choices that go beyond selecting a weapon. Among other things, players are asked to make moral decisions that force their characters — and the game's narrative — to evolve in different ways. Upcoming games such as "Bioshock Infinite" and "Star Wars: The Old Republic" tap into this vein.

These storytelling games couldn't come at a better time. U.S. sales of gaming consoles and video games hit a peak in 2008, at $21.4 billion, according to market research firm NPD Group. Since then, however, annual sales fell 13 percent to $18.6 billion in 2010. So far in 2011, sales are flat compared with last year.

With the recent Supreme Court decision protecting violent games as free speech, it's more appropriate than ever for games to have more of a message.

Part of the goal of involved storytelling is to keep players occupied for longer, playing out stories through to the end. Video game makers are trying to stop players from getting bored and quickly offloading games onto used game shops, which can sap sales.

The new games merge first-person shoot-em-ups with movie plotlines to develop what some in the industry are calling a new art form.

In the past, games mostly sandwiched so-called theatrical "cut scenes" between bouts of trigger-finger action. In "Grand Theft Auto IV," for instance, players are given missions on a roughly linear progression as other hoodlums call by cellphone and recruit them to participate in crimes that will elevate the player in rank. Players can follow along or ignore the story lines in favor of other pursuits, such as discovering hidden details like the giant, chained heart inside the Statue of Liberty lookalike.

Gradually, non-action scenes are becoming more central to games and the story is the focus. "Grand Theft" was a start in that direction, with two different endings depending on player choices. The new "Star Wars" game will have about 20 different endings and a billion ways to get there.

"Photographs tell stories. Movies tell stories. Songs tell stories. Games tell stories," said Ken Levine, creative director for Irrational Games.

Levine's studio is poised to release "BioShock Infinite" next year. The shooting game confronts main character Booker with moral decisions — like saving a man from execution or putting down a horse — all the while roaming around an immersive floating world that resembles early 20th century America.

"My mom's not going to connect to the story of `Mega Man 2,'" Levine said, referring to the pixelated Capcom game from the late 1980s. "But hopefully she can connect to a story like this."

These storytelling games represent yet another way the video game business is reaching out to people who have not traditionally considered themselves "gamers." Mobile games including "Angry Birds" and addicting social-network games such as "FarmVille" have gotten more women to play. Motion controllers from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have turned video gaming into a physical workout that appeals to young and old.

Storytelling games could appeal to those attracted to character development more than killing.

Lindsay Grace, professor of interactive media studies at Miami University, said the video game industry is trying to accomplish what Hollywood has turned into a science: entering new markets by offering a little something for everyone — a little romance, a little action, a little this and that.

"Games have started to understand this in the last four to five years, but they are later to understand that than film," he said. "Before, it was a shooting game, and that's what you do."

Grace, who's been studying video games for seven years, believes the answer is not in more big-budget shoot-em-ups, but in independent video games pushing the boundaries of entertainment.

"From indie games to more mainstream offerings, in the next decade or so we are going to be seeing a greater diversity in subject matter," said Scott Steinberg, the chief executive of video game consulting company TechSavvy Global. "The selection of games will more closely resemble your selection of movies."

Market tracker NPD Group doesn't track or categorize "storytelling" games specifically. But many of the games that have had commercial success dive deep into narrative territory. "Grand Theft Auto IV" has sold 20 million units since its record-breaking April 2008 launch. "L.A. Noire" was the top-selling game in the United States in May, with an estimated 899,000 units, despite an industry downturn.

A-list actors, writers and directors are increasingly participating in the industry, lending their voices, faces and ideas to the medium.

Guillermo Del Toro, the Oscar-nominated director behind such hits as "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Hellboy," recently cut off work on the unfinished "The Hobbit" movies in part to free himself to work on video games. One of his first new projects is with game maker THQ on a future release called "Insane." Guillermo envisions the making of the game to take up eight to nine years of his creative life.

"We are in the infancy of people recognizing video games as art," Del Toro said in a recent interview.

He believes game releases will become major cultural events someday, much like big-budget movies. "In order to be a storyteller in the 21st century, we urgently need to learn to tell stories through video games," he said.

Aaron Staton, an actor from the Emmy-winning television series "Mad Men," said he signed on to play detective Cole Phelps in the epic crime game "L.A. Noire," to be part of the cutting-edge method of storytelling that the game explores.

Staton studied 2,200 pages of script in order to act out all the story lines that evolve from player choices. A key game mechanic is determining how the detective will react to suspects in the interrogation room. Deciding to believe or doubt them moves the story into what he describes as "its own separate reality."

Many recent games have featured actors' voices, but in "L.A. Noire," their facial expressions and voices become "an important aspect of the story of the game and the game play itself," Staton said. "So I thought that it would be exciting."

Actions in these games are meant to have consequences that go beyond passing levels or gaining points. They unlock new, unexplored chapters, like a book that has dozens of endings, and provide lessons for the characters along the way.

A love triangle is expected to develop in "Mass Effect 3," but only if characters created romances in the earlier two versions.

In "Star Wars: The Old Republic," gamers can choose to play do-good Jedi Knights, evil Sith lords or six other classes of characters. Sparing an enemy's life, for instance, will determine which direction the game heads and whether companions cooperate or betray the player later on.

Daniel Erickson, the lead writer of the "Star Wars" game, said the amount of storytelling content was unprecedented. The studio behind it, BioWare, created more than 10,000 characters to talk to and used voices from more than 1,000 actors.

The alternate paths amount to more than 60 "Star Wars" novels worth of content in a script that, if read completely, would last longer than the entire 86-episode run of the HBO television show "The Sopranos," which would take three days without sleep.

"BioWare is a lot closer in structure to an ongoing TV series studio when it comes to the writing department than it is to a classic game design studio," Erickson said. "It is story that drives everything."

___

AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay in New York and Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Secret Service to probe hack on Fox News Twitter (AP)

Posted: 04 Jul 2011 02:32 PM PDT

– Mon Jul 4, 5:32 pm ET

WASHINGTON – The Secret Service said Monday it will investigate the hacking of Fox's political Twitter account over updates claiming that President Barack Obama had been assassinated.

Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie says the law enforcement agency whose job it is to protect the president will conduct a probe of the false postings and that "we will conduct the appropriate follow up."

Hackers broke into the FoxNewsPolitics account early Monday, leaving a series of six tweets reporting that Obama had been shot to death in Iowa and the shooter was unknown.

In a statement posted on its website, Fox News called the tweets "malicious" and "false."

"We will be requesting a detailed investigation from Twitter about how this occurred, and measures to prevent future unauthorized access into FoxNews.com accounts," said Jeff Misenti, vice president and general manager of Fox News Digital.

An online magazine at New York's Stony Brook University, Think, reported that initial posts around midnight indicated the Fox News Twitter account had been hacked by a group called the Script Kiddies. Harmless posts announcing the group's hacking of the Fox News account were followed by the false posts about Obama, according to Think.

A Think staffer, Adam Peck, wrote on the magazine's website that he had exchanged electronic messages with a person claiming to be with the Script Kiddies shortly after the initial hacking. Later, however, the unidentified person would not confirm that the group was behind the Obama posts, Peck wrote.

Obama is spending the Independence Day holiday at a barbecue at the White House with military families and administration staffers.

Fox's political Twitter account has more than 34,000 followers. Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google temporarily disables 'Realtime' search (AP)

Posted: 04 Jul 2011 09:04 AM PDT

By The Associated Press The Associated Press – Mon Jul 4, 12:04 pm ET

Google Inc. has temporarily shut down a search engine feature that allows users to find real-time updates from Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and other social networking sites.

A message posted early Monday on Twitter by the team behind Google Realtime says the search feature has been temporarily disabled while Google explores how to incorporate its recently launched Google+ project into the feature. The tweet tells readers to "stay tuned."

The company envisions including Google+ information along with other Realtime data from a variety of sources, said Gabriel Stricker, a Google spokesman.

Google+ is the search giant's latest stab at entering the social networking segment of the Internet. The project was unveiled last week and lets users share things with small groups of people.

Seagull Camcorder Owner Surfaces, Says His Viral Video Was Real [VIDEO] (Mashable)

Posted: 03 Jul 2011 06:11 PM PDT

Charlie White Charlie White – Sun Jul 3, 9:11 pm ET


(Click the red "CC" icon for English translation)

[More from Mashable: Google Chrome Ad Chronicles Justin Bieber's Career [VIDEO]]

Remember that camcorder-stealing seagull video we showed you last week? On Sunday, a tipster led us to Lukas Karasek, the owner of that camera, who says the remarkable video was not faked.

We had our doubts about whether this was an actual occurrence, or a setup intended to be a viral video on behalf of camcorder maker GoPro. It is possible that Karasek did set down his tiny camera, which you can see in this video, in front of the seagull, which promptly flew away with it and into viral video history.

[More from Mashable: Seagull Snatches Camcorder, Flies Into Viral Video History [VIDEO]]

SEE ALSO: Seagull Snatches Camcorder, Flies Into Viral Video History [VIDEO]

By the way, that video had viewership in the tens of thousands when we first posted it, and now it's been viewed more than 1.6 million times.

Crazier things have happened. Listen to his plausible explanation, and then let us know if you think this guy is leveling with us or not. Do you think that video was faked?

Thanks for the tip, Lubomir!

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Baidu picks Microsoft for English search (Reuters)

Posted: 04 Jul 2011 10:25 AM PDT

By Jason Subler and Georgina Prodhan Jason Subler And Georgina Prodhan – Mon Jul 4, 1:25 pm ET

SHANGHAI/LONDON (Reuters) – China's Baidu is to partner with Microsoft for English-language search, giving the U.S. software giant a chance to expand its tiny Web presence in a market Google has stepped back from, and helping the Chinese company's international ambitions.

The tie-up will direct English searches from Baidu to Microsoft's Bing, which will deliver the results back to Baidu's Web pages, Baidu said in an emailed statement on Monday.

Baidu has about 80 percent of the search market in China -- a nation with almost half a billion Internet users and still only about 30 percent penetration -- after Google left mainland China in a high-profile fallout with Beijing over censorship.

Bing -- which filters out results in China relating to controversial subjects, such as political dissidents, Taiwan or pornography, to be able to operate in the country -- has a negligible share of the market, while Google has nearly 20 percent counting visits to its offshore sites.

Baidu spokesman Kaiser Kuo said Bing was not submitting to any further censorship or restrictions on its English search as a result of the deal "than they already do." Microsoft had no immediate comment beyond confirming the partnership.

Google is losing share to Baidu but is still number two in China. Worldwide, Google runs about 84 percent of Web searches, followed by Yahoo with 6 percent and Bing with 4 percent, according to analytics firm Net Applications.

"Google has potentially shot itself in the foot when it comes to cooperations in the Chinese market," said Daniel Knapp, analyst at media industry research firm Screen Digest.

"Chinese local players like Baidu would be very wary about striking up a relationship with Google, a rogue authority in the eyes of the Chinese authorities. Microsoft has always been very diffident -- for Baidu it's much safer," he added.

The new tie-up, due to be launched later this year, builds on existing cooperation between Baidu and Bing on mobile platforms and page results.

Baidu is beginning to diversify from its core search business to compete in the fast-growing segments of mobile and social networking. [ID:nL3E7HO1IY][ID:nN27174987] It also has a Japanese search service that is currently loss-making.

Search engine marketing company Greenlight said it saw the deal as positive for both sides, and could envisage the new partners dominating the Chinese search-advertising market.

"Whilst it represents an opportunity for Bing to make more money from the Chinese market, Baidu gets what it needs to expand overseas when it is ready to do so," said Greenlight Chief Operating Officer Andreas Pouros.

"Microsoft has entered the Chinese market slowly and has made some friends, in a way that the Chinese government will have no issue with. This should leave Baidu and Bing to control the Chinese search ad market without too much difficulty."

Baidu made $1.2 billion in online marketing revenues last year, up 78 percent from 2009. Microsoft's total online advertising revenue in fiscal 2010, including a small contribution from Bing, was $1.9 billion.

Some analysts were skeptical over how much demand there would be for English search on Baidu.

"It's a good thing, but I see very minimal impact for Baidu. I don't see a lot English keywords going through Baidu. It goes through Google," said Wallace Cheung, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Credit Suisse.

(Additional reporting by Melanie Lee and Samuel Shen; Editing by Matt Driskill and Louise Heavens)

Anonymous hacker group hits Apple, publishes data (Reuters)

Posted: 04 Jul 2011 10:08 AM PDT

– Mon Jul 4, 1:08 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The Internet vigilante hacker group Anonymous claimed to have broken into an Apple Inc server and published a small number of usernames and passwords for one of the U.S. technology company's websites.

Anonymous said on Sunday via its account on microblogging site Twitter that Apple could be a target for hackers and released the data as part of its Anti Security, or "AntiSec," campaign.

"Not being so serious, but well ... Apple could be target, too. But don't worry, we are busy elsewhere," Anonymous said on its Twitter feed, where it shared a link to the data posted on text-sharing website Pastebin.

Anonymous said the data included 27 usernames and passwords for the www.abs.apple.com website.

The website, used by Apple for online surveys, on Monday displayed an error message that said the server was temporarily offline.

A spokesman for Apple declined to comment.

Anonymous teamed up with the Lulz Security group of hackers late in June. LulzSec, which gained wide recognition for breaching the websites of Sony Corp, the Central Intelligence Agency and a British police unit among other targets, said it had accomplished its mission to disrupt corporate and government bodies for entertainment.

Security experts who have researched LulzSec's origins say it emerged from Anonymous, which became famous for attacking companies and institutions that the group considered opponents of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.

Anonymous earlier this month released scores of private e-mails and other data from an Arizona police website. LulzSec first released dozens of internal documents from the same Arizona police website in June.

(Reporting by Marius Bosch in Johannesburg and Poornima Gupta in San Francisco; Editing by Gary Crosse)

Farrar breaks Tour de France duck as Garmin win again (AFP)

Posted: 04 Jul 2011 10:29 AM PDT

by Justin Davis Justin Davis – Mon Jul 4, 1:29 pm ET

REDON, France (AFP) – American Tyler Farrar of Garmin-Cervelo upstaged the hopes of British sprint rival Mark Cavendish on his way to a maiden Tour de France victory on the third stage Monday.

World champion Thor Hushovd of Norway kept possession of the race leader's yellow jersey as Garmin celebrated their second win on the trot, having won the 23km team time trial at Les Essarts on Sunday.

Cavendish, who has won a record 15 stages in the past three years, had a powerful lead-in to the finale by his dominant HTC-Highroad team.

However the Isle of Man rider found the going tough after a final bend forced many riders to slow down and lose momentum. Despite a late burst, he could only finish fifth.

"I'm very disappointed. We took it on and we were left just a bit short with too far to go," said Cavendish, who complained that eventual stage runner-up Romain Feillu had been like a "kamikaze".

"I was fighting with (Jose Joaquin) Rojas into the last corner and kamikaze Feillu came flying in. He causes havoc in every sprint. He took me out on the last corner."

Team Sky rider Geraint Thomas rounded the bend on his own, but with no teammates to follow up he was soon swamped by Garmin as Hushovd and New Zealander Julian Dean dragged Farrar towards the finish.

Vacansoleil's Feillu and Movistar rider Rojas launched late charges, but Farrar came over the finish half a bike length clear.

"It's fantastic, I've been working to get this for a long time," said Farrar.

"It's the first mass sprint of the Tour, and it's always a bit chaotic. But the team almost made it easy for me.

"We showed yesterday how strong our team is, winning the team time trial. It was a relief, and took the pressure off the shoulders.

"It just keeps on getting better now."

Although his win came on America's Independence Day, Farrar -- who made a 'W' gesture shortly after crossing the line -- immediately dedicated the victory to stricken friend Wouter Weylandt of Belgium.

Leopard-Trek team rider Weylandt was one of Farrar's best friends, but crashed to his death in the Giro d'Italia in early May.

"It's been a horrible past few months," said the American.

"In the end I wanted to come back and do something to pay tribute."

On one of the few flat finishes of the first week all eyes had been on Cavendish, and his HTC-Highroad team played a big role in helping drive the pace as the bunch launched an ultimately successful pursuit of an early breakaway.

The tricky 1.1km climb over the Saint Nazaire bridge with 56.5km to race, combined with treacherous crosswinds, forced a split in the peloton -- leaving yellow jersey contender Ivan Basso stranded for several kilometres in a small chase group.

After some more frantic chasing, with 9km to go the last two remnants of the five-man escape, Spaniard Jose Ivan Gutierrez (Movistar) and Frenchman Mickael Delage (FDJ) were caught.

Despite HTC taking over with 4km to race with German Tony Martin and Australians Matt Goss and Mark Renshaw leading Cavendish in, their plans began to unfold when Lampre's Danilo Hondo pulled off the front on a small rise.

Further chaos ensued when a Vacansoleil rider countered his move and was only caught with 1km to go.

The final bend then did the rest, with Cavendish admitting he was lucky to stay upright.

"I was off my front wheel round the last corner. I thought I was down at one point but I managed to keep upright," added the Manxman, who battled to close the gap in the final 500 metres before finishing fifth.

"I couldn't win but I managed to keep myself in contention for the green (jersey)."

Best Android apps of the year (so far) (Appolicious)

Posted: 04 Jul 2011 02:00 PM PDT

Google Realtime loses Twitter feed, will replace with Google+ (Digital Trends)

Posted: 04 Jul 2011 07:37 PM PDT

Jeff Hughes Jeff Hughes – 2 hrs 5 mins ago

google twitterYesterday, Google's Real-time Search went missing and the URL returned a 404 error. Apparently, the company took it down because it is planning on retooling the feature due to an expired contract with Twitter as well as because of the recent release of the Google+ social networking service.

Real-time Search was a feature that included news updates from Facebook fan pages, Gowalla, Quora, MySpace, Google News links, Me2day, Jaiku and many more social networking sites, but Twitter was the most dominant in this service. With Twitter gone, the content left behind may not have seemed enough to patch up the hole left by the San Francisco based mini-blogging service.

According to Searchengineland, since October 2009 Google had an agreement with Twitter to include their updates through a special feed but on July 2 that contract expired and the company couldn't access the Twitter feed anymore. Google took the service down yesterday to rethink their strategy.

The company says that once Google Real-time Search comes back from hiatus it will integrate Google+ content, though the timeframe for the relaunch is uncertain right now. The company also says that Google+ content will share Real-time Search with third-party content: "Our vision is to have google.com/real-time include Google+ information along with other real-time data from a variety of sources."

With Google+ the company isn't as hard up for social networking as they were in 2009 measuring up against competition such as Microsoft. Searchengineland comments that Twitter still needs Google's archive search, though Bing seems to still be in business with Twitter with their Social Search. Both Google and Twitter agree, in statements, that business was good and plan on collaborations in the future. Google says that Twitter information which is publicly available to their crawlers is still discoverable by the search engine.

New Wi-Fi enhancements could double electronic battery life (Digital Trends)

Posted: 04 Jul 2011 09:48 AM PDT

Jeffrey Van Camp Jeffrey Van Camp – Mon Jul 4, 12:48 pm ET

battery-life-indicator

There's nothing worse than having your cell phone die before you're able to charge it. Finally, scientists seem to be doing something about it. Last week, we reported about a new substance that could triple the life of lithium-ion batteries. About that same time, another story broke that we (I) failed to report in a timely manner. The Register reports that a Duke University researcher named Justin Manweiler has figured out another way to double mobile gadget battery life (yes, double) by better managing Wi-Fi signal searching.

One of the big drains on battery life is searching for Wi-Fi and 3G signals. Currently, phones, tablets, and other gadgets have to wake up periodically, check in with their Wi-Fi access point, and then see if there's any new data to download. The access points help a bit too by bundling data together into large packets. This Wi-Fi power saving technique is already an improvement over the dark ages when devices didn't get to sleep at all and had to get data that wasn't optimized. Add in multiple access points, however, and things get bad. Manweiler found that when there are multiple Wi-Fi access points in range of your phone or device, the device has to be on and transmitting as much as five times as long due to contention between access points. This wouldn't be a problem, except that there is almost always at least one other access point within range of us at any one time. Wi-Fi is everywhere these days.

However, thanks to Manweiler's innovation, battery life on Wi-Fi (which carriers like AT&T use for service in some urban areas), may get an efficiency boost. Known as SleepWell, it works by dynamically rescheduling traffic and coordinating data between access points.

"By carefully modifying the timestamps – as a part of the Wi-Fi clock synchronisation process – the SleepWell AP regulates the client's sleep and wake-up schedules," said Manweiler. "Results show a median gain of up to 2x when Wi-Fi links are strong. When links are weak and the network density is high, the gains can be even more."

The best part about this technology is that you won't have to buy a new device to take advantage of it. It needs to be implemented in the access points themselves. To learn more, check out Manweiler's paper: Avoiding the Rush Hours: Wi-Fi Energy Management via Traffic Isolation.

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

Protect yourself on the Internet with Net Safety Tips on the Go (Appolicious)

Posted: 04 Jul 2011 08:30 AM PDT

Lawyer: UK paper hacked into abducted girl's phone (AP)

Posted: 04 Jul 2011 09:43 AM PDT

– Mon Jul 4, 12:43 pm ET

LONDON – A lawyer for the family of a murdered British girl has claimed that The News of The World tabloid hacked into her cell phone after she went missing.

Mark Lewis said Monday that the parents of 13-year-old Milly Dowler, who was abducted and slain in 2002, are pursuing a claim for damages from the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid.

Lewis says the hacking occurred when Dowler was first reported missing and could have jeopardized the police investigation.

The News of The World is at the center of a widening phone hacking scandal that so far mainly involved celebrities and public figures. The paper has admitted wrongdoing and reached cash settlements with some of the victims, including actress Sienna Miller.

Police and the tabloid's publishers News International declined to comment on the allegations.

Tiny Spanish company launches book-sharing site (Reuters)

Posted: 04 Jul 2011 06:19 AM PDT

By Cristina Fuentes-Cantillana Cristina Fuentes-cantillana – Mon Jul 4, 9:19 am ET

MADRID (Reuters) – Tiny Spanish firm 24symbols has launched a digital book reading and sharing site modeled on European digital music service Spotify, aiming to generate income from publicity and subscriptions.

Users can read books for free if they accept viewing display ads in the margins, or pay a monthly fee to read without commercial publicity. The service was launched on Thursday and is currently available on computers and telephones.

"The advantage for users is they can read for free, if they view a bit of publicity," said Aitor Grandes, chief executive of the small firm, told Reuters in an interview.

The company aims to attract 8.5 percent of its users into premium subscription accounts.

Grandes said 24symbols -- the name refers to the Greek alphabet -- would help fight piracy that has plagued the music, publishing, movie and television industry online by keeping material on servers rather than allowing it to be downloaded to individual consumer devices.

"If you make available an easy-to-use service with reasonable prices people won't spend time going to pirate networks to download things," he said. "Time is money."

24symbols will be a small player attempting to take on some giant rivals, such as Amazon.com Inc's Kindle for downloadable books, Barnes & Noble Inc's digital books and reading services already available on Apple's iPad. Google is also working on an online books project.

Grandes said 24symbols is different from all those competitors because of its subscription model, which means people don't have to pay for each individual title, and because of its integration with social networking sites.

The company will distribute 70 percent of revenue to publishers in proportion to pages read by consumers. Also, publishers will be able to see how many their books are shared and recommended through social sites.

Currently 1,000 titles are available -- almost all classics in the public domain -- in Spanish, English, Portuguese and Dutch, and Grandes hopes to reach 30,000 titles by the end of the year.

24symbols is also awaiting Apple's approval for its iPad application.

Grandes said he was seeking financing.

"To market a bit, to keep having a quality product and be able to get international content we will need to get another round of financing. We're looking at risk capital from the U.S. and Europe," Grandes said.

(Editing by Inmaculada Sanz and Fiona Ortiz)

AntiSec hackers target Apple servers (Digital Trends)

Posted: 04 Jul 2011 09:25 AM PDT

Andrew Couts Andrew Couts – Mon Jul 4, 12:25 pm ET

antisec

One of the big selling points of Apple computers is their high level of security against malware and other malicious software. But the latest breach in the "Operation AntiSec" hacker campaign might put a damper on that stellar reputation. This weekend, the group claimed to stolen 27 usernames and passwords from a vulnerable Apple.com link, and published the private data online via Pastebin.com.

The breach was announced on Sunday via the The Hacker News. Operation AntiSec (aka OpAntiSec or just AntiSec) is a cyberattack campaign carried out by a coalition cadre made up of Anonymous and members of the now-defunct Lulz Security hacker group.

Reports indicate that the stolen user data does not contain any public user information.

According to the @AnonymousIRC tweet, Apple "could be [a] target" in Operation AntiSec. But the group says "don't worry," they "are busy elsewhere." Of course, that's not exactly reassuring if you're an Apple customer. But at least they've given everyone a bit of warning if, in fact, they do plan to go after Apple in a more concerted attack.

Operation AntiSec has wreaked havoc on companies like Sony and AT&T. But the campaign has centered particular attention on the law enforcement agencies of Arizona in protest of the state's controversial immigration policy. So far, AnitSec hackers have hit Arizona authorities three times.

It is not yet clear what will be the next target on the AntiSec list. Though it is safe to assume that there is a next target: According to a tweet from @AnonymousIRC, posted at about 12pm EST today, the group is "[p]reparing a nice gift for the US' birthday today. But no promises yet as we value quality over a rushed release. Stay tuned."

Alibaba Group to launch mobile OS in Q3: report (Reuters)

Posted: 04 Jul 2011 07:27 PM PDT

– 2 hrs 15 mins ago

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China's top e-commerce group Alibaba Group is preparing to launch a mobile operating system in the third quarter, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

The mobile operating system, to be developed by Alibaba's cloud computing unit, will also provide mobile applications, the paper said quoting an unnamed source close to the matter.

An Alibaba Group spokesman declined to comment.

Chinese Internet firms have expanded their mobile presence by developing operating systems, games and applications to tap the high growth of the segment.

China's top search engine Baidu is also developing its own mobile operating system based on Google's Android platform, local media reported recently.

(Reporting by Melanie Lee; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner)
at 9:53 PM

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