Steve Jobs' life is coming to the big screen in two different forms, though movie pirates may not be able to download either film from popular torrent site The Pirate Bay, since it is subject to a mysterious internet attack.
Two men are trying to tweet to aliens, while image-conscious smartphone users are taking drastic actions to keep their jawlines supple.
Meanwhile, love flourishes on Internet radio.
A Tale of Two Steve Jobs Movies
Aaron Sorkin will write an upcoming Steve Jobs biopic based on Walter Isaacson's enormously popular biography, setting up a battle between Sorkin's version and the Ashton Kutcher-led "Steve Jobs: Get Inspired," which already began filming.
Sorkin's version, called "Steve Jobs," has Sony's backing and carries a better pedigree, but since Kutcher's version is already in production, it has a head start.
"Steve Jobs" will focus on a wider swath of Jobs life than Kutcher's version, which hones in on his road to fame. No word yet on casting for "Steve Jobs," but Kutcher probably won't do double-duty.
Pirate Bay May Be Sinking
Popular torrent site The Pirate Bay has been down for over 24 hours, and though the website has not confirmed who is behind the problems, it may be hacking collective Anonymous.
Why would Anonymous hack digital pirates, when they seem to have similar ideologies? The Pirate Bay publicly condemned Anonymous for attacking Virgin Media, so this may be a retribution for their harsh words.
On the other hand, The Pirate Bay is hardly on good terms with copyright holders, so the shutdown may be coming from a different source.
Can We Tweet Aliens?
An experimental art project is attempting to contact far-flung beings by beaming tweets as they happen 22 light years away. People who want to take part can label their tweets #tweetinspace, and the duo behind the project will send the message to the far corners of the universe.
New media artist Scott Kildall and associate professor Nathaniel Stern are collaborating on the project, which is being crowd-funded on RocketHub, a site similar to Kickstarter.
The artists don't expect aliens to respond to the tweets, but want to use the project to illustrate how deeply people want to be connected.
Internet Radio Helps Man Propose to Girlfriend
A man proposed to his girlfriend with the help of popular music site Pandora. Kyle, a blogger, worked with a team of Pandora employees to set up a special station with a recorded proposal.
His girlfriend, Maggie, had recently purchased a car with a built-in Pandora app, so he decided to pop the question as they drove to his graduation dinner.
Kyle got his inspiration from a man who proposed using Internet memes, and he wanted to do something involving tech that also meant something to him and his fiancee. It worked, and Maggie said yes.
Smartphones Are Making You Ugly
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons revealed chin implants are on the rise, and some doctors believe the upswing is a direct result of excessive mobile technology use.
Dr. Mervyn Patterson coined the term "smartphone face" to describe what happens to jaw lines after patients stare down at their smartphones or laptops all day for years.
Of course, people tilt their heads in much the same way to look at books, and there wasn't a widespread case of "librarian face" or "law student face," so the condition may simply be a marketing ploy to encourage desire for plastic surgery.
Young girls are regularly pressured to send nude pictures or record sexual acts, according to a U.K. report, illustrating how technology can push harassment to new mediums.
"A Qualitative Study of Children, Young People and Sexting," a report by researchers at the London School of Economics, Open University and the U.K.'s Institute of Education, found a third of under-18 texters received a lewd sexual image by text or e-mail. On top of that, the focus group research revealed a substantial portion of young males had dozens of sexual pictures of their peers on their mobile devices, indicating their habit of sharing explicit photos with each other.
"Girls are being pressured by text and on BlackBerry Messenger to send 'special photos' and perform sexual services for boys from an early age. In some cases they are as young as 11. Even while we were interviewing them they were being bombarded with these messages," Institute of Education researcher Jessica Ringrose said, explaining how toxic the climate has become.
Navigating burgeoning sexuality is an inescapable facet of adolescence, and many teens dismiss the adult hand-wringing about the upswing in shared sexual images as unnecessary. After all, teens have engaged in sexual activity throughout human history, and some young people rationalize sexting as an extension of a natural exploration.
Some sexting can be just that, if it stays between the people involved, and the picture sender acts for the right reasons. But the type of persistent, pestering behavior exhibited by many of the young men in the study, coupled with their tendency to pass intimate images around and objectify their subjects, clearly marks this type of behavior as bullying and abusive, not an innocent sexual experiment.
Teen cruelty is nothing new, but recent high-profile suicides springing from relentless bullying is putting a spotlight on the issue, and parents, educators and adults everywhere are desperate to curb socially vicious behavior.
Mobile technology opened up new venues for bullying, letting aggressors bombard their targets at all hours of the day, through Facebook, Twitter, text messages and more. Hurling insults online affords the bully an emotional distance, so young teens making cutting remarks feel secure doing so via social networks or text messages. As a result of the attackers' ability to infiltrate more areas of their lives, bullied adolescents have fewer places of respite. Young people check their phones everywhere, including the home, which brings the problem to more intimate spaces.
In some cases, like the situation between Tyler Clementi and Dharun Ravi, bullying is inextricably linked with technology, with aggressors pursuing and humiliating their targets entirely by digital communication.
Boys far too shy to demand girls take their clothes off in person feel empowered by the distance built into texting, and young people who are well-mannered in person may behave like outsized charlatans on instant messenger.
With young people often outpacing their teachers and parents when it comes to tech savvy, the lack of supervision and education about online etiquette contributes to the churlish behavior. And though some research shows teen sexting is not as rampant as it is often portrayed in the media, this recent study suggests it is still a sizable problem that can lead to widespread self-esteem issues among bullied girls.
Even though U.S. law officials are trying to amend current child pornography laws to keep ignorant teens off sex offender registries, sending these salacious texts can often still land teens in trouble with authorities.
To quell this damaging behavior, parents and educators need to step up to the plate and begin a comprehensive online etiquette campaign. While teens may never stop sending each other naked photos of themselves, smart education strategies can point out and change the climate of blatant sexual harassment.
Brainput, a device that promises to help drivers multitask, may actually put drivers in danger.
Researchers at MIT, Tufts and Indiana University created a portable brain sensor that's small enough to wrap around the forehead. Brainput recognizes when users are multitasking and feeds information to one or more devices ranging from computers to cars, promising to ease the wearer's responsibilities by automating the devices.
Brainput operates like a standard-issue brain monitor, but its software responds to brain wave activity, signaling multitasking, and sends information to one of the user's devices. Though researchers experimented with robots, they believe Brainput can help automate cars, military vehicles and a variety of other machines.
The idea of "smart cars", or partly automated vehicles, is catching on, especially for their ability to help older drivers stay behind the wheel. And Brainput can work as a smart car accessory, sending the vehicle into an automated state while the driver texts or plays a quick game of "Angry Birds."
But distracted driving deaths caused by smartphone use are on the rise, and lawmakers and police are going to great lengths to curb the destructive behavior. Although the campaigns to curb distracted driving are intense, the increasing ubiquity of smartphone use is making it difficult to stomp out altogether.
If Brainput takes hold as a car accessory, it throws a curveball at distracted driving opponents, since habitual in-car phone users can defend themselves by claiming their car was being automatically driven. As with other smart car technology, this can do more harm than good, as drivers wouldn't pay attention to the task they delegated. And if Brainput's automatic commands experienced a glitch or a delay, drivers may get in an accident.
Like Google's automated cars, currently being test-driven in Nevada, Brainput can give people behind the wheel too much peace of mind, encouraging them to stop paying attention, which leaves everyone on the road at the mercy of a computer program.
Brainput is helpful behind a desk, sending messages while attention drifts away. But when the task is as potentially life-and-death, Brainput does more harm than good.
Cyber-attacks on small businesses are repelling customers and costing a fortune, leaving owners with tough choices on how to strengthen their online defenses against increasingly common security breaches.
According to a Neustar study, 70 percent of surveyed businesses experienced prolonged distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks that drove away countless customers and millions of dollars in potential revenue.
Over five hundred IT professionals admitted their greatest fear is the customer backlash and heavy cost of distributed denial of service attacks. DDoS attacks overload servers with requests, overwhelming websites in a heavy flow of traffic.
Retailers worried about hacking the most, as such attacks cost an average of $100,000 per hour.
"This is a significant amount of money," observed Ted Swearingen, director of the Neustar Security Operations Center. "People don't realize there are a lot of other costs associated with DDoS, such as brand damage."
Neustar's study suggests if large firms suffer monetarily from cyber-attacks, small businesses have an even harder time handling increased security breaches.
For instance, Sony stands out as a significantly damaged brand, following a string of Anonymous DDoS hacks from April until October 2011. The attacks cost millions in cleanup and forced the company to compensate disgruntled users for failing to protect their data.
The Japanese company was big enough to stay afloat following this disaster, but most small entrepreneurs would have sunk in its wake. And in this case Anonymous hackers didn't even aim to steal from Sony's financial centers, preferring instead to humiliate the electronics maker by publicizing user information.
"While Anonymous has been getting a lot of headlines, our data tells us that most of these attacks are happening for the old-school reasons of why you'd want to knock out a site: financial gain and competitive advantage," said Sweringen.
Small businesses are just as vulnerable as big corporations against financial DDoS attacks, since the payout is lower but the threat of retaliation much slimmer. And financially motivated attacks are increasingly common, as Swearingen states.
"You have a one in three chance of a DDoS attack. It is something that IT teams and companies need to prepare for," he warns.
But under five percent of participants in Neustar's study have any protection against DDoS attacks, using only firewalls and rudimentary software to discourage hackers.
Further, many businesses use generic passwords like "password1" and "1234" to shield sensitive data rather that switching to complicated, unhackable codes.
Cyber-insurance, sold by firms like Travelers Companies and Chubb, also offer a refuge to both small and large businesses seeking protection against cyber-criminals. Still, this method is only partially helpful as it may not cover certain claims like civil lawsuits.
New government regulations may also soon enable small businesses to collaborate with the National Security Administration in warding off cyber-criminals. But civil rights advocates say these bills violate the First Amendment and may eliminate more liberties than they grant.
With the number of cyber-hacks is the rise, small companies will need to set aside finances for comprehensive preparations to fortify their electronic defenses to avoid Sony's fate. However, they will also need to weigh whether the investment will be money well-spent, or if any company can really be protected against the ever-increasing -- and more aggressive -- amount of cyber-attacks.
A bikini made of old electronics stirred up controversy about women in tech, while one man used body modification to wear his iPod in an unusual way.
Freddie Mercury sang to adoring crowds, despite being dead, while Alan Rickman's mundane daily deeds became a source of amusement.
Meanwhile, generous Twitter users donated their unused characters to a good cause.
Bathing Suit Made From Old Electronics Sparks Debate
Jennifer Shannon and Andi Cheung designed a provocative bikini made of outdated bits of electronics and created a magazine mock-up to spark a debate on how women occupy the tech sector.
The photos of a model wearing the deeply impractical swim wear, accompanied by statements like "Women have their own strengths, like fashion" are pushing buttons online.
The artists behind the photoshoot wanted to point out the marginalized position women still occupy in the tech sector, but some bloggers are taking their satirical product literally.
Hologram Freddie Mercury Rocks a Crowd
A holographic image of flamboyant, beloved Queen front-man Freddie Mercury appeared at the Dominion Theater in London.
The deceased Queen superstar performed to honor the 10th anniversary of the "We Will Rock You" musical, alongside members of its cast.
Guitarist Brian May prefers to call the image an "optical illusion," and expressed regret that the Tupac hologram at Coachella happened first, as the band has tried to bring Mercury's visage to the stage using technology for some time.
Slow-Mo Alan Rickman Gets Big Laughs
Set to a dramatic score, some Alan Rickman super-fan created a slow-motion video of the venerable British actor preparing tea for himself in a sparsely decorated room.
Rickman is largely silent throughout the nearly-seven-minute film, although after four minutes pass, he begins to look directly in the camera and slowly raises his hand to hail the cameraman.
Hopefully someone can mash up tea-sipping Rickman and the slowed-down, drunk-sounding Jeff Goldblum clips for more comic mayhem.
Literally Stuck to His IPod
Body piercer Dave Hurban invented what he calls a "strapless watch" by implanting four metal studs into his wrist and affixing an iPod to his skin with magnets. Hurban works at a tattoo parlor, so he was well-equipped to try out the unusual procedure.
The heavily pierced and tattooed innovator showcased his novel arm accessory on YouTube, explaining how other could get a similar look.
Over 900,000 viewers watched the clip in about two weeks, illustrating other people are interested in getting the unique body modification.
Donate a Tweet
A new program called Hashtags4Heros takes unused Twitter characters and adds messages about the Wounded Warrior Project, which helps wounded veterans. The program wants to raise awareness about WWP through these charity tweets.
Hashtags4Heros is a Twitter application created by defense contractor Raytheon, a supporter of WWP's message. Users who want to give a one-time donation, but don't want to have their leftover Twitter characters taken all month, can tweet directly from WWP's website.
The app originally aimed to donate 30,000 Twitter characters by the end of Military Appreciation Month, but due to its overwhelming success, it bumped the goal up to 300,000 by Memorial Day.
New data suggests Google+ is not capturing users the way the Google suggests, but the research may not be as damning as analysts think.
Research company RJ Metrics found that of the 40,000 Google+ accounts it monitored, 30 percent of users who make a public post on Google+ never post again. Metrics also discovered that the average number of public posts is declining steadily each month, and the average post gets less than one reply.
Finally, Metrics said that Google+ users spent just a little more than 3 minutes a month visiting the site, while the average Facebook user spent more than seven hours on its social network over the course of one month.
Metric's data may pour cold water on the glowing statistics Google likes to put out about its new service, which they say boasts 170 million users, but the research does not necessarily mean all is doom and gloom for the young social network. All the activity Metrics observed and recorded was of the public variety; the company was not allowed to watch private interactions between Google+ users.
For example, if a member made a post that was only viewable to a specific circle of friends it went unnoticed by Metric's research. All replies and interactions on those posts were also subsequently ignored.
The exclusion of private posts and interactions in Metric's Google+ research skews the company's findings against the social network. Users' ability to post things so that only specific groups will see the content is one of the biggest draws of the service. Google said that more interaction and sharing occurs privately than publicly on Google+, making public posts just a small part of the social network's overall package.
Still, while Metric's research does not represent all the user's activity on Google+, it's safe to say the service still lags far behind Facebook. The software giant continues to attempt to put a public spin on its social network, and not admit it has fallen short up to this point. It has made recent moves to boost photo sharing and improve its mobile app, but measures have not yet been able to close the distance between the two social network rivals.
Google's social network may not be as vacant as Metric's research makes it seem, but the company is likely telling less than the truth when it says it's happy with its performance. In this case, reading between the lines both parties are putting out gets closer at the reality of the fledgling social network's popularity.
Mobile payment system Isis is ramping up its efforts and signing partners left and right, but rising to the top of a crowded field may not come easy.
Fifty vendors partnered with Isis in preparation for its upcoming trials in Salt Lake City and Austin. Isis snagged big vendors like Coca-Cola and Macy's, suggesting retailers have some degree of confidence in the mobile payment system, which is a joint venture from AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.
Isis scored a win by signing up a wide coterie of vendors for its trial cities, which includes a pilot program for commuter use on Utah's public transit system, but the mobile payment field is growing increasingly crowded. Isis faces competition from other NFC-based mobile payment technologies like Google Wallet, although the search giant's mobile wallet is not catching on quickly.
More pressingly, Isis will face off against Square and PayPal, two alternative mobile payment systems bolstered by their ease of use and name recognition. PayPal is already a popular online payment service, and its trial run in Home Depot and expansion into stores illustrates the eBay-owned company wants to dominate mobile payment as well.
For its part, Square's simple payment system received a stamp of approval from the Obama campaign's fundraising staff, and it may appeal to people who do not want to buy a phone outfitted with NFC -- although most popular smartphones will have the technology in the near future.
Isis is off to a late start, but its decision to focus on a powerful alliance of businesses puts power behind it, and its affiliation with major credit card companies may boost consumer confidence in the service. The big names behind Isis may win over customers wary of mobile payment systems in general.
Moreover, with big box stores like Target and Wal-Mart installing NFC technology in anticipation of e-wallets, the wide array of partnerships Isis enjoys will make using the system convenient for consumers. Isis recently teamed up with merchants to improve its point-of-sale services and further smooth out operations, so it may attract customers with unprecedented ease of use.
With Apple contemplating its own NFC payment system, Isis will have to work extra hard to stand apart from its competition to emerge on top in the mobile payment race.
Isis sounds good in theory, but the trials in Salt Lake City and Austin will put the idea to the test and gauge consumer interest. Getting big stores on board was a clever step, but making sure people find the system more appealing and secure than Square, PayPal or other emerging programs will be a bigger challenge.
Research in Motion's BlackBerry 10 operating system has some appealing features, but its glaring absence of available apps will hurt the company's efforts to regain relevance.
The Waterloo, Ont.-based company focuses on making the user experience on its updated platform as "fluid" as possible. This includes new gestures so customers can see all notifications without leaving the device's home screen, a messaging app that includes IMs, emails and text messages in the same space and a new live tile system and app drawer.
When the iPhone and Android smartphones began to emerge, RIM missed the boat by failing to evolve its OS to keep up. Now, the company is missing it again as it spends all its time updating BlackBerry's user interface while ignoring the health of its mobile app store. Features like live tiles on the home screen and an updated, intuitive keyboard are nice interface ideas, but they may not be enough to make customers go with BlackBerry over platforms with more established app stores.
BlackBerry 10's ability to run apps fully in the background without having to pause them could be a standout feature for the platform. However, most of what RIM is doing with its new OS are things that Apple and Google have already accomplished with iOS and Android, simply in a new packaging.
Android and iOS offer hundreds of thousands of mobile apps, giving customers hundreds of different ways to use their devices. Developers are eager to support the platforms due to the number of users each has, but they will likely shy away from BlackBerry 10 until the OS builds a larger customer base.
RIM was eager to show off the new look of BlackBerry 10, and with good reason. It offers a fresh take on some classic smartphone features and is the biggest leap the operating system has ever taken. But the company's failure to aggressively recruit developers and give them incentive to support the platform will ultimately be its undoing. RIM has promised developers $10,000 for apps for the BlackBerry platform, but that may not be enough compared to the potential audience and profits rival systems offer.
The BlackBerry 10 platform will launch later this year, but it may end up being the best platform no one is using because of its dire app situation.
Could a brain scan supersede the SAT college entrance exam? One professor says yes, but practical and ethical questions linger.
UC Irvine professor emeritus Richard Haier insists brain scans could replace standardized testing within a lifetime. Haier experiments with brain scans, and his decades-long research revealed brain scans show the most intelligent people often have highly efficient brains.
Haier summarized how brain scans could process data about the quality and quantity of grey matter and synapse activity to make assumptions about someone's job suitability, saying, "The brain imaging data algorithms that combine all this information could well give an accurate indication of your intelligence and your cognitive strengths and weaknesses -- maybe even your vocational talents."
The most intelligent people did not have a surplus of brain activity while they solved a puzzle, suggesting their brains needed to work less to come up with the correct answers.
Haier is overly optimistic about society's ability to rectify the tangle of social issues springing from measuring someone's worth by their brain function.
The SAT already comes under criticism for being less objective than it seems, as certain demographics receive educations that better equip them for the test than others. But for all its faults, the fact that someone of average intelligence can master the SAT if they try hard enough illustrates the test can reward both naturally brilliant people and workhorses.
Doctors use brain scans to diagnose strokes, so why is diagnosing intelligence different and far more dangerous?
Scanning the brain and coming to a conclusion about how much a person can accomplish intellectually may prevent people of average intelligence from pursuing far-fetched dreams of math super-stardom, but a brain scan determining aptitude may needlessly circumscribe the lives of a larger percentage of the population by placing limits on their ambitions.
Not everyone who comes up with a brilliant idea or implements a complex assignment accomplishes the task with ease -- hard work and luck often trump natural inclination, and telling people not to bother trying will do much more harm than good. A brain scan will measure cognitive ability, but not drive, motivation, commitment or emotional intelligence, which are all often integral to success.
Replacing the SAT with a brain scan would hurt people who are not natural savants, but who work incredibly hard to maximize their potential. The world needs both kinds of people, and judging students and potential employees only on their natural aptitude may reward people who are content to rest on their laurels, and punish people who work hard to learn new things, which will make for a less-balanced society.
Students who want to understand how their brains work may want to take the brain scan as a diagnostic test, but parents, admissions officers and job boards should not use the scan to decide where or what children study, or what jobs are suitable for certain candidates.
Scientists have developed virus-powered electrical chargers capable of harnessing energy from footsteps, a milestone in the continuing advancement of green mobile technology.
The stamp-sized generator, created in Berkeley Labs, relies on the piezoelectric M13 virus to produce electrical charge when pressed. Fitted to shoe soles, it may one day allow users to power mobile electronics as they walk.
The key to improvements lies in modifying the harmless virus, whose rapid reproduction and natural orderliness make it ideal for bioengineering. But M13 is not alone in its power-producing capabilities, as researchers around the world are demonstrating in their rush to develop green mobile charging technology.
Last week, 24-year-old Anthony Mutua of Kenya announced a shoe-powered cell phone charger that also generates electricity under pressure. Mutua's $46 device, slated for mass production, relies on a thin crystal chip to extract power from footfalls.
InStep NanoPower, a company created by University of Wisconsin students Tom Krupenkin and Ashley Taylor, is also joining the race, seeking to market thermodynamically powered "in-shoe" technology by 2013.
Besides using chip-fitted shoes to charge cell phones, scientists are developing clothing and exercise machines that can extract electricity from human movement.
The U.S. military is working to develop movement-sensitive e-textile fabric for its soldiers that will allow them to charge mobile devices in the field without cumbersome cords and wires.
Even concert-goers can benefit from such technology, using piezoelectric shirt pockets to harness vibrations from drums and guitars to charge cell phones.
And German-made Silverback "Starke" bicycles, along with treadmills at England's Green Heart Gym, now use movement-generated energy to power portable batteries and LED lights.
Developments like these herald a new era in mobile technology. Movement-powered cell phones will likely reduce the need for fossil fuel-based electricity, resulting in less environmental pollution as well as promoting human health with increased exercise.
Furthermore, in today's gadget-centric world, green charging technology may enable users to stay even more digitally connected than they are now. This development would certainly benefit the entire mobile market, which may see higher profits as a result of their products' ability to organically keep a charge.
Currently, the prototype virus-powered device produces one-fourth the voltage of a triple A battery, only enough to run a small LCD. As Berkeley scientist Seung-Wuk Lee joked, "Do not expect this virus-based device to run your water heating unit."
But Lee, along with Byung Yang Lee and Ramamoorthy Ramesh, are still experimenting in hopes that the virus-coated generator will revolutionize the mobile industry.
"Because the tools of biotechnology enable large-scale production of genetically modified viruses, piezoelectric materials based on viruses could offer a simple route to novel microelectronics in the future," Lee predicted.
Tags:
