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Monday, September 5, 2011

Internet archive shows Sept. 11 coverage (AP) : Technet

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Internet archive shows Sept. 11 coverage (AP) : Technet

Internet archive shows Sept. 11 coverage (AP)

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 05:25 PM PDT

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer David Bauder, Ap Television Writer – Mon Sep 5, 8:25 pm ET

NEW YORK – For many in New York and Washington, Sept. 11, 2001, was a personal experience, an attack on their cities. Most everywhere else in the world, it was a television event.

TV's commemoration as the 10th anniversary approaches on Sunday puts that day in many different contexts. There is one place, however, for people to see the Sept. 11 attacks and the week after as they unfolded, without any filters.

The Internet Archive, a California-based organization that collects audio, moving images and Web pages for historical purposes, has put together a television news archive of that day's coverage.

More than 20 channels were recorded with more than 3,000 hours of television. Besides major U.S. networks like ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC, the Internet Archive has posted online TV recordings from Moscow, Paris, London, Baghdad, Tokyo, Ottawa and elsewhere.

The site is available at http://www.archive.org/details/911/day.

The material is valuable to researchers, but the Internet Archive wanted to make it easy to use so the general public can go back and see what that day was like, said Brewster Kahle, the organization's director.

"It is one of the top four or five events that have happened on television," Kahle said. "You can think of putting a man on the moon, the Watergate hearings, the Kennedy assassination. I'm hopeful that people will come to this and make their own decisions about how they want to think about it, as opposed to politicians who have been pushing and pulling the event for years."

The archive begins at 8 a.m. ET, or 46 minutes before American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

That alone is interesting for the striking contrast it provides with the last seemingly carefree moments before several tough years. On NBC's "Today" show, Katie Couric talks brightly of "a beautiful fall morning in Manhattan" and the camera pans to a cheering crowd. Charles Gibson mocks his "Good Morning America" colleague Diane Sawyer for writing notes on her hand, and ABC's Claire Shipman said the biggest news in Washington was Michael Jordan giving hints he might return to the basketball court.

Out of a commercial late in the morning shows, even cutting one commercial short on CNN, suddenly came camera shots of a burning World Trade Center, ones that would dominate screens for several hours.

Newscasters were careful before the story became clear. Matt Lauer initially called it an "accident." Morning shows effectively used phone calls from eyewitnesses adding details beyond the faraway camera shots. "It's mind-boggling and it's horrifying," one witness, Jennifer Oberstein, told Lauer.

Then came one of many unthinkable moments: a second plane darting into pictures and crashing into the second tower, exploding in a fireball and falling debris.

"We just saw another plane coming in to the other side," Gibson said. "This looks like there is some sort of concerted effort to attack the World Trade Center that is underway."

Later, when the towers collapsed, one after the other, it seemed so inconceivable that anchors initially couldn't grasp what viewers had seen on the screen. NBC's Tom Brokaw talked of structural damage so severe that the buildings would probably have to be brought down — after one of them already came down on its own.

"The whole side has collapsed," ABC's Peter Jennings said when the first tower came down.

"The whole building has collapsed," ABC's reporter on the scene, Don Dahler, corrected him.

"The whole building has collapsed?" Jennings responded.

CNN's Aaron Brown responded with the horror most viewers no doubt felt when the second tower fell. "Good lord," he said. "There are no words."

"The landscape of New York has just been changed and you have to presume that thousands of lives have been extinguished," Jennings said.

In those early hours, ABC's John Miller and NBC's Andrea Mitchell had raised the name of Osama bin Laden as possibly the man behind the attacks, even as the networks reported the false claim of a Palestinian organization taking credit.

Also interesting are the perspectives from overseas. The BBC in London, for example, showed video of people jumping or falling from the towers — images that American networks stayed away from. In Moscow, a newscaster who broke into a program to report on the towers collapsing displayed a voice halting with emotion.

The site is easy to navigate, with timelines that direct users to specific events of the morning, such as when the second plane hit the trade center and when each tower collapsed. It can be frustrating to use, however, as the video is displayed in 30- or 40-second blocks instead of continuous streams. And there are occasional gaps; large portions of CBS' coverage is missing, for example.

Kahle said he believed it was important to provide this resource. There are surprisingly few ways for people to go back and see television news reports, at least compared to print, he noted.

"It is so important yet it has been, up until now, quite ephemeral," he said.

Experts suspect Iran involvement in Dutch hacking (AP)

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 10:25 AM PDT

By TOBY STERLING, Associated Press Toby Sterling, Associated Press – Mon Sep 5, 1:25 pm ET

AMSTERDAM – Hackers who broke into a Dutch web security firm have issued hundreds of bogus security certificates for spy agency websites including the CIA as well as for Internet giants like Google, Microsoft and Twitter, the government said Monday.

Experts say they suspect the hacker — or hackers — operated with the cooperation of the Iranian government.

So far, only a handful of users in Iran are known to have been affected. In addition, the latest versions of browsers such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox are now rejecting certificates issued by the firm that was hacked, DigiNotar.

But in a statement Monday, the Dutch Justice Ministry published a list of the fraudulent certificates that greatly expands the scope of the July hacking attack that DigiNotar first acknowledged last week. The list includes sites operated by Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Skype, AOL, Mozilla, TorProject, and WordPress, as well as spy agencies including the CIA, Israel's Mossad and Britain's MI6.

DigiNotar is one of many companies which sell the security certificates widely used to authenticate websites and guarantee that communications between a user's browser and a website are secure.

In theory, a fraudulent certificate can be used to trick a user into visiting a fake version of a website, or used to monitor communications with the real sites without users noticing.

But in order to pass off a fake certificate, a hacker must be able to steer his target's Internet traffic through a server he controls. That's something that only an Internet service provider can easily do — or a government that commands one.

Technology experts cite a number of reasons to believe the hacker — or hackers — were based in Iran and cooperated with the Iranian government, perhaps in attempts to spy on dissidents. Notably, several of the certificates contain nationalist slogans in the Farsi language.

"This, in combination with messages the hacker left behind on DigiNotar's website, definitely suggests that Iran was involved," said Ot van Daalen, director of Bits of Freedom, an online civil liberties group.

The hack of DigiNotar closely resembles one in March of the U.S. security firm Comodo Inc., which was also attributed to an Iranian hacker.

Gervase Markham, a Mozilla developer who has been involved in the response to the DigiNotar failure, warned Iranian Internet users on Monday to update their browsers, "log out of and back into every email and social media service you have" and change all passwords.

Van Daalen said he believed the DigiNotar incident will ultimately lead to a reform of authentication technology.

Although no users in the Netherlands are known to have been victimized directly by the hack, it has caused a major headache for the Dutch government, which relied on DigiNotar for authentication of most of its websites.

In a pre-dawn press conference Saturday, Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner said the safety of websites including the country's social security agency, police and tax authorities could no longer be guaranteed.

He advised users who wanted to be certain of secure communication with the government to return to using pen and paper.

The Dutch government took over management of DigiNotar, a subsidiary of Chicago-based Vasco Inc., but kept the websites operating as it scrambles to find replacement security providers.

2 Mexicans deny terrorism, face 30 years for tweet (AP)

Posted: 04 Sep 2011 12:43 PM PDT

By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Mark Stevenson, Associated Press – Sun Sep 4, 3:43 pm ET

MEXICO CITY – Think before you tweet.

A former teacher turned radio commentator and a math tutor who lives with his mother sit in a prison in southern Mexico, facing possible 30-year sentences for terrorism and sabotage in what may be the most serious charges ever brought against anyone using a Twitter social network account.

Prosecutors say the defendants helped cause a chaos of car crashes and panic as parents in the Gulf Coast city of Veracruz rushed to save their children because of false reports that gunmen were attacking schools.

Gerardo Buganza, interior secretary for Veracruz state, compared the panic to that caused by Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds." But he said the fear roused by that account of a Martian invasion of New Jersey "was small compared to what happened here."

"Here, there were 26 car accidents, or people left their cars in the middle of the streets to run and pick up their children, because they thought these things were occurring at their kids' schools," Buganza told local reporters.

The charges say the messages caused such panic that emergency numbers "totally collapsed because people were terrified," damaging service for real emergencies.

Veracruz, the state's largest city, and the neighboring suburb of Boca del Rio were already on edge after weeks of gunbattles involving drug traffickers. One attack occurred on a major boulevard. In another, gunmen tossed a grenade outside the city aquarium, killing an tourist and seriously wounding his wife and their two young children.

On Aug. 25, nerves were further frayed when residents saw armed convoys of marines circulating on the streets, making some think a confrontation with gangs was imminent.

That is when Gilberto Martinez Vera, who works as a low-paid tutor at several private schools, allegedly opened the floodgates of fear with repeated messages that gunmen were taking children from schools.

"My sister-in-law just called me all upset, they just kidnapped five children from the school," Martinez tweeted.

In fact, no such kidnappings occurred that day. Defense lawyer Claribel Guevara said the rumors already had started and that Martinez Vera was just relaying what others told him. She said he never claimed to have firsthand knowledge of the incident.

But in a subsequent tweet about the kidnap rumor, he said, "I don't know what time it happened, but it's true." He also tweeted that three days earlier, "they mowed down six kids between 13 and 15 in the Hidalgo neighborhood." While a similar attack occurred, it didn't involve children.

Prosecutors say the rumors were also sent by Maria de Jesus Bravo Pagola, who has worked as a teacher, a state arts official and a radio commentator. She says she was just relaying such messages to her own Twitter followers.

"How can they possibly do this to me, for re-tweeting a message? I mean, it's 140 characters. It's not logical,'" said Guevara, quoting her client.

Better known on the radio and social networks as "Maruchi," her Facebook site now features the Twitter logo, a little bluebird, blindfolded and standing in front of the scales of justice, with the slogan "I too am a TwitTerrorist."

Online petitions are circulating to demand her release, and the pair's cause has been taken up by human rights groups that call the charges exaggerated. Amnesty International says officials are violating freedom of expression and it blames the panic on the uncertainty many Mexicans feel amid a drug war in which more than 35,000 people have died over the past five years.

"The lack of safety creates an atmosphere of mistrust in which rumors that circulate on social networks are part of people's efforts to protect themselves, since there is very little trustworthy information," Amnesty wrote in a statement on the case.

In violence-wracked cities in the northern state of Tamaulipas, citizens and even authorities have used Twitter and Facebook to warn one another about shootouts.

Anita Vera, Martinez Vera's 71-year-old mother, said her 48-year-old son still lives at her house with his girlfriend. She said he told her that had posted his messages after the panic had already started.

"He told me "Mom, I didn't start any of this, I just transmitted what I was told,'" Vera Martellis said after visiting her son in prison.

"He used the computer, but I swear that my son never wanted to do anybody harm, or start a revolution, like they say he did," said Vera, who ekes out a living selling flowers.

Raul Trejo, an expert on media and violence at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the terrorism charge is unwarranted, but described the case as "a very incautious use of Twitter."

He noted that in Mexico, "Twitter has been used by drug traffickers to create panic with false warnings." In one case, a wave of messages about impending violence shut down schools, bars and restaurants in the central city of Cuernavaca last year.

Trejo said Twitter users must learn "not to believe everything, and simply take the Twitter messages as an indication that some (report) is making the rounds."

But the real problem appears to be that governments cannot prevent drug cartel violence or even accurately inform citizens about it. Local news media are often so battered by kidnappings and killings of reporters that, in many states, they are loath to report about it.

"These Twitter users had accounts with a few hundred followers," Trejo noted. "If these lies grew, it is not so much because they propagated them, but because in Veracruz as in most of the rest of the country, there is such a lack of public safety that the public is inclined to believe unconfirmed acts of violence ... The government doesn't make clear what is happening."

Defense attorneys also say their clients were held incommunicado for almost three days, unable to see a lawyer.

It appears one of the most serious sets of charges ever brought for sending or resending Twitter messages.

Tweeter Paul Chambers was fined 385 pounds and ordered to pay 2,000 pounds ($3,225) in prosecution costs last year for tweeting that if northern England's Robin Hood Airport didn't reopen in time for his flight, "I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"

Venezuelan authorities last year charged two people with spreading false information about the country's banking system using Twitter and urging people to pull money out of banks. They could serve nine to 11 years in prison if convicted.

In 2009, a Chinese woman was sentenced to a year in a labor camp for posting a satirical Twitter message about the Japan pavilion at the Shanghai Expo.

"Twitter Terrorists" Could Get 30 Years in Prison (Mashable)

Posted: 04 Sep 2011 02:20 PM PDT

Emily Banks Emily Banks – Sun Sep 4, 5:20 pm ET

What might the 2011 version of Orson Welles's War of the World's radio broadcast look like using today's fastest method of information-sharing? Gerardo Buganza, the interior secretary for Veracruz state in Mexico, said it could very well be the "Twitter terrorism" caused by two people who allegedly spread false reports of gunmen attacking schools and kidnapping children. Those reports caused such panic when parents scrambled around the city to get to their children that there were dozens of car accidents and emergency phone lines were jammed.

[More from Mashable: Google Considers Suggested User Feature for Google+]

The two people, a private school teacher and a radio presenter, now face 30 years in prison for charges under terrorism laws.

According to the Guardian, these are the most serious charges ever for inciting chaos or violence through Twitter.

[More from Mashable: 5-Minute Guide to Getting a Job in Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]]

Prosecutors claim one of the defendants tweeted, "My sister-in-law just called me all upset, they just kidnapped five children from the school."

Both defendants claim that they only repeated what they saw elsewhere on the Internet.

Do you think people should be imprisoned for inciting violence or chaos using Twitter? How serious should the punishment be? (Welles received no punishment for the mass hysteria that the Halloween 1938 broadcast caused.)

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Dell to partner Baidu to develop tablets, mobile (Reuters)

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 07:36 PM PDT

By Melanie Lee Melanie Lee – 1 hr 39 mins ago

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Dell Inc said on Tuesday it will partner China's top search engine Baidu Inc to develop tablet computers and mobile handsets.

Baidu offered a glimpse of its upcoming mobile operating system and launched a new mobile application platform last Friday aimed at bolstering its presence in the increasingly competitive mobile web market.

"We have a partnership with Baidu and you know we have the Streak 5 tablet, so the partnership will be in that space," said a Dell spokeswoman, adding that both firms were also cooperating on the mobile handset front.

Dell declined to give a timeline for the launch of the devices, but local media reported on Tuesday, quoting sources, that it may be as early as November.

"I don't think Baidu is targeting the low-end segment of the market, if they are there are plenty of local Chinese vendors they can work with...This could mean that Baidu may have ambitions for the international market because Dell is an international brand which they can leverage," said Sandy Shen, a Shanghai-based research director with Gartner.

Dell's Streak 5 tablet is a five-inch Android-based tablet that was discontinued in the United States last month.

Baidu declined to comment.

The Dell-Baidu partnership is one of several announced recently.

Global search leader Google announced last month it would pay $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings in a move that will put Google into a lower-margin manufacturing business and pit it against as many as 38 other handset companies that use Google's Android software.

Research in Motion, Nokia and the cable television business are emerging as potential winners after Google announced its deal.

If other handset manufacturers shy away from Google's Android system, Nokia and RIM could stand to benefit.

Pay TV companies could also be boosted if Google, which would own Motorola's set-top box business, backs down on disrupting the cable industry.

The deal is unlikely to have an impact on Apple Inc's quest for the hearts and minds of smartphone customers, analysts said. Now that Google is a direct competitor, Apple may drop some Google products in its devices.

Microsoft Corp, which has been touting its Windows software as an alternative to the operating systems of Android and Apple, views are mixed as to the deal's effects.

Android handset makers may be more willing to take a gamble on the unpopular Windows phone as an alternative, but customers show few signs of interest in Microsoft's belated attempts to find a foothold in the smartphone market.

Nokia decided earlier this year to go with Microsoft's Windows operating system instead of its MeeGo software, which is being phased out. Nokia is pinning its turnaround hopes on new Windows-based phones due later this year.

Probably the biggest deal to happen recently was the announcement from Hewlett Packard that it might spin off its PC division and kill its tablet computer.

Amazon.com is also said to be readying a tablet computer for release soon as is retooling its website to make it more tablet-friendly.

(Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Matt Driskill)

Iranian Internet users were victim to spying: report (Reuters)

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 05:18 PM PDT

– Mon Sep 5, 8:18 pm ET

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – About 300,000 Internet users in Iran have been spied on last month by one or several hackers who stole security certificates from a Dutch IT firm, a report presented by the Dutch government said on Monday.

Using a stolen certificate the hacker, or hackers, monitored people who visited Google.com, could steal their passwords and could obtain access to other services such as Facebook and Twitter, said Dutch IT firm Fox-IT, which wrote the report.

A certificate guarantees that a web surfer is securely connected but a stolen certificate enables a hacker to pretend a web surfer is securely connected to a website without the surfer knowing he is being monitored.

The report, which Dutch Interior Minister Henk Donner sent to the Dutch parliament, confirmed a statement last week from Google when it said that it had received reports of attacks on Google users and that "the people affected were primarily located in Iran."

"The list of domains and the fact that 99 percent of the users are in Iran suggest that the objective of the hackers is to intercept private communications in Iran," Fox-IT said.

Social media such as Twitter and YouTube were used during protests in Iran after presidential elections in 2009, and Iranian authorities have been trying to fight opposition on the Internet, said Afshin Ellian, who fled Iran in the 1980s and is professor at Leiden University's law faculty.

"Tehran wants to be aware of oppositional activities inside and outside Iran. Using that information they can forcefully act against the opposition," Ellian said in his blog on the website of Dutch magazine Elsevier.

In April, there were signs Iran was helping Syria put down anti-government protests with advice on monitoring and blocking Internet use, a U.S. official said at the time.

Dutch minister Donner told reporters he had not been able confirm that the certificates, which were stolen from Dutch IT firm DigiNotar, were hacked by Iranian state authorities.

"The only thing we have been able to establish is that the people who complained were in Iran," Donner said.

The Dutch government said on Sunday that Dutch state websites may no longer be safe following the DigiNotar attack and the cabinet was investigating whether its sites were hacked by Iran.

The hacker or hackers also fabricated certificates for a website of Israel's intelligence service, Mossad, the CIA and Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and other sites such as AOL and Microsoft, Fox-IT said.

"NO ANTIVIRUS PROTECTION PRESENT"

The hacker or hackers left their fingerprint with the Persian words 'Janam Fadaye Rahbar', meaning 'I will sacrifice my soul for my leader' and identical to a message left when IT company Comodo was attacked in March, Fox-IT said in the report.

DigiNotar's network and procedures were "not sufficiently secure" to prevent the attack, Fox-IT said.

"The software installed on the public web servers was outdated and not patched. No antivirus protection was present on the investigated servers," Fox-IT said.

The Dutch government was investigating who has been involved in hacking the Dutch firm DigiNotar and the company was held responsible for possible negligence, Donner said in a letter to parliament.

"We are looking at the criminal and civil responsibility. The company and its U.S. mother company are cooperating," Donner said.

DigiNotar is owned by U.S.-listed IT firm VASCO Data Security International, which said in a statement earlier on Monday it did not expect the "incident" to have a significant impact on its future revenue or business plans.

(Reporting by Gilbert Kreijger; Editing by Michael Roddy)

Dragonquest X will be an online RPG, confirmed for Wii 2012 and WiiU (Digital Trends)

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 06:56 PM PDT

Jeff Hughes Jeff Hughes – 2 hrs 18 mins ago

dragonquest x logo IISquare Enix revealed more information about the next numbered Dragonquest title in a recent press event. The official title is Dragonquest: Awakening of the Five Tribes, and is confirmed for both the WiiU and the Wii. There is no release date set for the WiiU, but the Wii will be getting the game sometime in 2012.

This latest installment of the popular Dragonquest JRPG series has been eagerly awaited by fans since the game's announcement in 2008. Yuji, Horii, composer Koichi Sugiyama and of course character designer Akira Toriyama are all on board with the project. However, Square Enix will not be relying on third-party developers for the game, so that means DQ8 and developers Level-5 are out of the picture.

Rise of the Five Tribes' main innovation is the MMO leaning. The game will be an online RPG, less WOW, probably more like Monster Hunter Tri. Players will form parties online, and there may be a monthly online fee.

dragonquest screenshot

The WiiU version will have a visual advantage, but will inhabit the same online world as that of the Wii's. Players will be able to use all the attachments, from Wiimote to USB keyboard. There is also talk that the 3DS will be used in the game, players will be able to transfer and share data using Streetpass.

The game will consist of five continents in the large world of Astortia with five races. Players will have the option of choosing a character from one of the five races: dwarf, ogre, elf, little robed "pukuripo" and the blue "weddy" water creatures. Doesn't seem to be any room for humans.Players will be able to play offline and can recruit NPCs into their party, though its not clear if offline play is only limited to a few initial hours. Battle commands will be menu based.

This definitely calls for a sigh of relief as Dragonquest X was starting to look like it would never be released, though the 2012 is for Japan not North America. Those of you that want it sooner, beta testers will be needed in the future. Keep checking the games' site at www.dragonquest.jp.

Via Neogaf and Joystiq

Get mobile disaster preparation and response with the FEMA Android app (Appolicious)

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 01:30 PM PDT

Woman on Facebook date tricked into being getaway driver (Digital Trends)

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 08:23 PM PDT

Trevor Mogg Trevor Mogg – 52 mins ago

speeding carIt's safe to say that as far as dates arranged through Facebook go, most pass by without major incident.

The same can not be said of the encounter between Leah Gibbs and Adam Minton. Gibbs, 23, met Minton through the popular social networking site and the pair appeared to get on so well that they decided to meet. According to a Daily Mail report, the plan had been for Gibbs to spend the evening watching a DVD at Minton's home in south Wales.

But when Gibbs arrived at Minton's home, he told her he needed to pop round to a friend's place. He asked if she could drive him. Gibbs, no doubt wanting to make a good impression, obliged.

Minton directed Gibbs to some nearby shops, where he told her to wait for him. A few minutes later, she saw Minton running back to her car. When he jumped inside, he shouted: "Go, go, go!"

It can be said with a fair degree of certainty that such words are rarely spoken following a meeting with a friend. They're far more likely to be uttered in moments of great stress, when one needs to leave a location in a hurry – like when you've just robbed a shop at knifepoint, for example.

According to Gibbs, Minton was a different man following his "meeting with a friend." As they drove back to his home, Minton's rudeness was enough to convince the disappointed 23-year-old that the date was over.

As Minton tried to persuade her to come into his house, the police turned up. It was then that Gibbs got the shock of her life. They accused Minton of robbing a shop at knifepoint and Gibbs of being his accomplice.

She told the Daily Mail: “I thought I would be ending the night in Adam’s arms. Instead, he had landed in the long arms of the law and I was facing jail.â€

She spent a night in police custody before investigators finally believed her story that it was merely a Facebook date gone wrong and that she had nothing to do with the crime.

Minton has been jailed for four-and-a-half years for the robbery. It's likely that should Gibbs ever arrange another date through Facebook, she'll be leaving her car at home.

 

[Image courtesy of Blazej Lyjak/Shutterstock]

Ford Evos concept car (Digital Trends)

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 01:41 PM PDT

Amir Iliaifar Amir Iliaifar – Mon Sep 5, 4:41 pm ET

Ford-Evos-Concept


Imagine streaming music in your house and when you get up to leave that same music starts up in your car. That is exactly what the Ford Evos concept car is aiming to do. But of course, streaming music from your home to your car isn't the only futuristic feature this plug-in hybrid has to offer. In addition to media streaming, the Evos will be able to communicate with the cloud and other mobile devices like your cell phone, heat or cool the interior prior to entering the vehicle. The concept cars will also automatically close the garage door as you pull out of your drive way. Forget to turn off the lights? The Evos could do that too.

The exterior of the car features a sexy coupe style with gull-wing doors and is powered by a 2.0 liter Atkinson cycle gasoline engine in conjunction with an electric motor and lithium-ion battery pack. Ford has scheduled to unveil the Evos to the public at Frankfurt Motor Show this month and while the Evos is not intended for production, Ford has announced that the design strategy showcased in the Evos will appear on production cars in a few months.

Crimson Steam Pirates tops iPad Games of the Week (Appolicious)

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 02:00 PM PDT

China's Baidu to launch Android-based mobile OS (Digital Trends)

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 11:56 AM PDT

Geoff Duncan Geoff Duncan – Mon Sep 5, 2:56 pm ET

Baidu YI

At its annual Baidu World event in Beijing, leading Chinese search engine Baidu announced it will be offering its own Android-based mobile operating system, dubbed Baidu Yi—"Yi" translates as "Easy." The mobile OS builds on Google's Android operating system, but directly integrates Baidu service offerings, including Baidu's mapping service, an ereader, a location-savvy business directory, and Ting, Baidu's legal music service. Baidu Yi will also support technology Baidu has already rolled out for Android devices— including its input method for typing or hand-drawing Chinese script—as well as cloud-supported services for data back and social sharing.

The move comes shortly after Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba announced it was launching its own mobile operating system dubbed Aliyun, with integrated support for Alibaba services. Aliyun is based on Linux, but will reportedly run Android apps.

Baidu already has a strong presence on Android devices in China, with some industry estimates putting Baidu search on 75 to 80 percent of all Android devices sold in the country. After Google's retreated from the Chinese search market in the wake of cyberattacks and ongoing censorship requirements, Baidu has capitalized on the opportunity: the company now has roughly an 80 percent share of the Chinese search market. Baidu claims some 200 million registered users.

Some industry watchers have questioned why, with such a strong presence on Android and search in China, Baidu feels a need to launch its own operating system. The answer is likely that Baidu needs to create an ecosystem of customers—not just users—who rely on a broad swath of its services, rather than just search. Baidu Yi will primarily be a platform that features an integrated, complete Baidu experience, in the same way a pure Android smartphone currently represents a pure Google experience, without overlays, crapware, and revamped interfaces imposed by handset developers and carriers. Sure, plenty of phones will have Baidu search and other services, but the company apparently hopes mobile users will want to buy into a first-class Baidu experience.

Netflix launches in Brazil, 43 more countries to follow (Digital Trends)

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 11:31 AM PDT

Geoff Duncan Geoff Duncan – Mon Sep 5, 2:31 pm ET

netflix-streaming-1

Back in July, Netflix promised it would launch its service in dozens of Latin American countries, and today the streaming video service made good on that promise, launching Netflix in Brazil and saying service would be available in 43 more Latin American and Caribbean countries by September 12.

"We are excited to be bringing Netflix to Latin America and the Caribbean," Netflix CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings, in a statement. "People throughout the region are online in ever-greater numbers and they love movies and TV shows. We are proud to bring them the Netflix experience of instantly enjoying as many movies and TV shows as they want, when they want for one low price. "

A Portuguese-language version of the subscription video service is live today in Brazil, where it's priced at BR$14.99 per month. Customers can tap in from PCs, Macs, smart TVs, and game consoles (the PS2, PS3, and Wii for now), although there's no mention of streaming service for other platforms like Apple's iOS or Android. The service offers unlimited streaming of Netflix's movie and television selections via the Internet.

In September 7, Netflix plans to light up Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, with the latter two priced at US$7.99 per month and the former running 39 pesos a month. September 8 will see Chile and Bolivia come online, September 9 will see the "Andean region" including Columbia, Peru, Venezuela, and Ecuador. September 12 will be a big rollout, with Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean all coming on line at once: pricing in the Caribbean will be US$7.99 per month, while in Mexico Netflix streaming will run 99 pesos per month.

In the Caribbean, service will be available in both Spanish and English.

Netflix says it has been training customer support personnel in the new service regions to be able to offer the "excellent" customer support that Netflix offers in the U.S. and Canada.

San Francisco police help search for lost iPhone (AP)

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 12:09 PM PDT

– Mon Sep 5, 3:09 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco police officers helped Apple Inc. investigators look for a missing iPhone prototype that was left in a city restaurant in July, the police chief said, the second time in two years the company has lost an unreleased smartphone.

Police Chief Greg Suhr told the San Francisco Chronicle ( http://bit.ly/oOfTi1) that four plainclothes officers accompanied two Apple investigators who searched a San Francisco home for the iPhone prototype.

Apple employees who contacted the department asking for help finding a lost item conducted the house search after asking the resident's permission, and the officers did not enter the home, according to police.

Apple tracked the smartphone to the home using GPS technology, but the gadget wasn't found there, said Lt. Troy Dangerfield.

Apple officials have declined to comment on the case.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company is reportedly planning to release a new version of its popular iPhone this fall.

The SF Weekly newspaper reported that Sergio Calderon, who lives in the home, said he believed all six people were police officers and would not have let the two investigators inside if he knew they worked for Apple.

Suhr said he didn't know how the Apple employees presented themselves to Calderon.

"The reason we do civil standby is to make sure there isn't a problem," Suhr told the Chronicle. "Whatever conversations the employees had with the resident, I can't say."

Suhr said it's not uncommon for San Francisco police officers to help private investigators.

There was no record of the officers' involvement in the search because Apple did not want a lost property report created, which was within the company's right, Suhr said.

Last week, two men were charged with misdemeanors for selling a lost Apple iPhone 4 they found in March 2010 in a Redwood City, Calif., bar. That phone was sold to the gadget blog Gizmodo.com for $5,000, prosecutors said.
at 9:28 PM

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