Sunday, January 26, 2014

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What should you look for when choosing a car stereo?

Upgrading your car stereo's receiver is the one of the easiest ways to boost your dashboard tech. Here are the seven features we look for when making recommendations.



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Apple looking to build mobile payments service, report says

(Credit:James Martin/CNET ) Apple already lets users buy music, books and apps through an iTunes account. But the tech giant has plans to expand its mobile payment efforts, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.

Citing anonymous sources, the report says that Apple is exploring moving beyond the realm of digital goods and letting users pay for physical goods and services -- such as clothes or a taxi ride -- with an iTunes account. The Journal says that Eddy Cue, the Apple executive in charge of iTunes and the App Store, has already met with industry executives to discuss the topic.

Related postsApple has the Mac to thank for its next generation of devices Facebook bites backDOJ: Court didn't abuse power by appointing Apple monitorSamsung's smartphone momentum takes a hit People buy iPads, get floor tiles The company has also moved Jennifer Bailey, a long-time executive who is running the company's online store, into a new role building the payments business, the article said.

Expanding into a mobile payments business would leverage the hundreds of millions of credit cards Apple already has on file thanks to iTunes. The move would put the company in direct competition with services like Stripe and eBay's PayPal.

The space especially been heating up of late. Stripe recently raised $80 million in funding, at a valuation of $1.75 billion. And activist investor Carl Icahn has also called for eBay to spin off PayPal. Later, he said Apple would make a good suitor for the mobile payments service.

Apple did not immediately return a request for comment. We'll update this post if we hear back.

Topics: Apple Corporate, iTunes Tags: Apple, Carl Icahn, PayPal, Stripe

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Apple has the Mac to thank for its next generation of devices

Thirty years later, the Mac's journey is far from over. It's had an even greater influence on the company's touch devices than the Apple II did on the Mac.



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How the 'Netflix of books' won over the publishing industry (Q&A)

English English EspaƱol Reviews Top Categories More Categories Car Tech Cell Phones Desktops Digital Cameras Home Audio Laptops Printers Tablets Televisions Forums Appliances Camcorders Cell Phone Accessories E-book Readers Games & Gear GPS Hard Drives & Storage Headphones Home Video Internet Access Monitors MP3 Players Networking & Wi-Fi Peripherals Software Wearable Tech Web Hosting You are here: News Latest News Mobile Startups Cutting Edge Internet & Media Security & Privacy Business Tech Crave Apple Microsoft Politics & Law Tech Culture Blogs Video Photos RSS Download Windows Software Mac Software iOS Apps Android Apps The Download Blog CNET TV Most Popular New Releases Products Tech Shows How To Appliances Car Tech Cell Phones Tablets Always On Apple Byte CNET On Cars CNET Top 5 CNET Update Googlicious Next Big Thing The 404 XCAR How To Appliances Computers Home Theater Photography Privacy Productivity Security Smartphones Tablets Web How To Video Deals Today's Deals Coupon Codes Marketplace Blog Log In

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Former homeless man finds success in the speaker business

AudiophiliacMan

Five years ago I wrote about a homeless man in California who wanted to start a speaker company. That man, Kevin Nelson, dared to be different: his speakers could produce stereo sound from a single box. He was way ahead of his time -- nowadays millions of Bluetooth speakers claim the same thing. But Nelson's speakers do a more convincing job of creating stereo. Nelson started working on the stereo from one speaker idea in 1989 and spent years perfecting the concept. He cooked up the name Zealth Audio early on and stuck with it.



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Apple gushes on 30 years of making Macs

This year signifies the 30th anniversary of the Macintosh computer, and who better to reflect on this achievement than the almighty creator Apple? Cupertino has dedicated a corner of its website to such a retrospective, the focal point of which is an inspirational video starring several fans who talk about what Macs have meant to them (embedded below). After learning that Moby is still a thing and that Macs represent a "truly worldwide democratization of creativity," you can peruse a slick, interactive timeline that walks you through all the iterations and how innovative each one was. You can also tell Apple about your first Mac and what you used it for, with that data populating polls around the site. There are worse ways to kill time, so if you've got some to spare, head to the source link and bathe in Cook & Co's glory -- then head on over to our forum to wax poetic about your first Mac.

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Source: Apple

Tags: apple, applemac, mac, macintosh, retrospective, video Next: Google patents ads that offer a free ride to your next shopping spree .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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South Korea rules smartphone users can delete Android bloatware

In a move that we can only hope inspires other mobile regulators, the South Korean government has struck a major blow against Android bloatware. Yonhap News reports that Korea's Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MISP) is bringing the hammer down on preinstalled Android apps, introducing new guidelines that will enable users to delete them. Carriers won't be forced to make apps related to WiFi, user settings, NFC or an app store removable, but even with core services excluded, it puts almost 60 apps installed by the country's three biggest providers at risk. Samsung and LG won't escape the judgment either, with more than half of their 40 default apps facing a less-than-certain future.

The ministry said preinstalled apps are an "inconvenience" to users and cause "unfair competition" between operators and carriers, so it asked them to offer detailed information to users on how much storage their preinstalled apps take up. It also intends to apply the same rules to Google's suite of apps and services, which includes Gmail and Hangouts, although the regulator is still in talks with the search giant. Samsung, LG, SK Telecom and others have until April before the rules come into effect, which could mean Korean users will be able to tweak apps installed on their new Galaxy S 5, should the device launch in the coming months.

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Via: ZDNet

Source: MSIP

Tags: android, apps, bloatware, google, mobilepostcross, MSIP, south korea Next: Apple gushes on 30 years of making Macs .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Scientists replicate kitty whiskers to help robots 'feel'

Cat whiskers are tremendously sensitive, so much so that cats can navigate around our glassware without sending anything crashing to the floor. It's that sort of sensitivity that a team from the University of California, Berkeley, is trying to replicate to help robots of the future. Ultra-sensitive fibers, made with carbon nanotubes and silver nanoparticles are designed to respond to pressure, helping future hardware navigate difficult and low-visibility environments. Team leader Ali Javey believes that the material is 10 times as sensitive as your smartphone display, and could even be used to track your heartbeat -- so maybe we'll be seeing this stuff getting woven together to make the next generation of connected onesies.

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Via: SlashGear

Source: Berkeley Lab (1), (2) (PDF)

Tags: alijavey, CarbonNanotubes, Cats, Robots, science, SilverNanoparticle, UcBerkeley, whiskers Next: South Korea rules smartphone users can delete Android bloatware .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Facebook gets into nerd feud with Princeton, hilarity ensues

In the tech industry, barely a week goes by without one entity saying that another one is doomed. Mostly, however, we just ignore them, but when Princeton claimed that Facebook would collapse in 2017, the social network decided to get its own back. With tongue placed firmly in cheek, data scientists Mike Develin, Lada Adamic and Sean Taylor copied Princeton's slightly suspect method to discover that the university would effectively run out of students by 2021. Then the team went one step further, analyzing Google trends and Facebook likes to learn that, if social engagement stats are to be believed, the planet will run out of air at some point in 2060. If you like it when major corporations go all reductio ad absurdum on their rivals, then head down to the source link and enjoy this timely reminder that not all scientific studies are created equal.

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Source: Facebook, Original study (PDF)

Tags: facebook, Lada Adamic, Mike Develin, Princeton, Sean Taylor, University Next: Scientists replicate kitty whiskers to help robots 'feel' .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Nokia's dumbphones face an uncertain future at Microsoft

"Year-on-year decline." Those are words that no company looks forward to publishing in its earnings reports, but unfortunately we've seen them printed more often than not on Nokia's quarterly statements. Though there have been a few ups and downs, struggling profits and sales have been a general concern for a long time, and unfortunately this quarter's earnings report did little to soothe our worries; Nokia sold 600,000 fewer Lumias than the previous quarter. Now that Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's devices and services division is nearly complete, much of our focus has turned to how the merger will affect the Lumia lineup of Windows Phones. An even bigger mystery at the moment, however, is what Microsoft will choose to do with the rest of Nokia's phones -- namely, the Mobile Phone division, which consists of the company's basic featurephones and the Asha lineup of advanced featurephones, none of which run Windows Phone.

Just after Microsoft announced its intent to acquire the phone maker, Nokia insisted that the division wasn't going anywhere; it has "substantial global reach ... and a strong customer base," but in emerging markets like India and China, it faces intense competition from fully functional smartphone platforms for a similar cost. Even worse, as we learned in yesterday's report, sales from this division were flat -- and as the competition gets heavier, it's going to get worse, not better. Is it worth it for Microsoft to try saving a lineup of handsets that don't feature Windows Phone OS? Or does it make more sense to push lower-end Lumia devices to cater to the next billion smartphone users?

We've seen several companies make huge moves to compete in emerging markets, where even a difference of $10 or $20 can have a significant impact.

In yesterday's report, Nokia stated: "Our Mobile Phones net sales were affected by competitive industry dynamics, including intense smartphone competition at increasingly lower price points and intense competition at the low end of our product portfolio." In other words, an influx of cheap Android and Firefox OS devices is making it difficult for Nokia's lower-end devices to remain relevant in fiercely competitive countries like India and China.

The Ashas, which bridge the divide between featurephones and smartphones, range from $70 to $100; however, Android devices like the Galaxy Pocket cost around $85 in the same markets and offer similar specs with a much wider variety of apps. Firefox OS devices like the ZTE Open are now available for around $75. Heck, even the Lumia 520, which uses the Windows Phone platform, costs roughly the same as an Asha.

We've seen several companies make huge moves to compete in emerging markets, where even a difference of $10 or $20 can have a significant impact. Unfortunately, this means it's much more difficult for the Asha lineup to compete today than just a couple years ago when they were first introduced. At the time, the concept was sound -- if you offer a featurephone with smart abilities like a developer platform, messaging/email, social networking and so on, the customers will come. But today, as other platforms like Android and Firefox begin to flourish in emerging markets for the same prices, developers have less incentive to focus on making apps for Asha products, and consumers will become more hesitant to buy into the ecosystem.



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Sony teases 'slimmest' PlayStation device coming to the UK on January 30th

We've had a lucky run with product teasers recently. Instead of being totally vague, they've deliberately given us some inkling of what to expect, and we're hoping that the Sony flyer above -- summoning us to a PlayStation event in London -- does so too. We're told the briefing will introduce UK journalists to the "slimmest" PlayStation device, but we're not told that we're definitely going to witness the launch of a whole new product, which -- to our minds, at least -- suggests we might be looking at the UK launch of the PlayStation Vita TV. At just 13.6mm thick, the Vita TV is the thinnest PS device that we know of and it's currently only available in Japan, so a launch in the UK (or anywhere outside of Asia) could potentially be a big deal. We're gonna go ahead and rule out a super slim PlayStation 4 already, but the other plausible alternative is that the flyer is technically wrong, and that this is the UK launch of the slimmer version of the PlayStation Vita handheld -- in other words, the 2013 Japanese model, which has an LCD screen instead of OLED, better battery life and which is just 15mm thick (20 percent skinnier than the current UK model). In any case, we'll be there at the event on January 30th, with a flask of coffee and a pair of calipers.

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Tags: console, gaming, playstation, sony, teaser, vita, vitatv Next: Nokia's dumbphones face an uncertain future at Microsoft
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LG G Pad 8.3 with LTE could be on its way to Verizon

With LTE speeds putting coffee-shop WiFi to shame, many tablet makers now produce devices in pairs: one model with WiFi, and another with an extra 4G radio and SIM slot. Not LG's G Pad 8.3, though, as both skinned and Google editions of the slate spurn LTE for the sake of their ol' buddy WiFi. It appears, however, that Verizon may've persuaded LG to pull together a cellular version of the G Pad for its network, if puzzle pieces from a recent FCC filing end up fitting together as we'd expect. All we know from the official docs is that an LG tablet, model number VK810, has been approved for the US market with LTE support for Bands 4 and 13 -- Verizon's magic numbers. As PhoneArena points out, the mystery tablet's dimensions are more or less identical to those of the G Pad 8.3, which is where the trail ends. So, it's more than likely we'll see LG launch a 4G model with Big Red soon, but if being tied down ain't your bag, then at least let its existence foster hopes of a carrier-agnostic LTE model sometime later.

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Via: PhoneArena

Source: US FCC

Tags: 4glte, fcc, gpad8.3, lg, lg-vk810, lggpad8.3, lte, mobilepostcross, verizon, vk810 Next: Sony teases 'slimmest' PlayStation device coming to the UK on January 30th
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PlayStation Vita TV review: Sony's first mini-console has some growing pains

Sony had a tiny surprise to share just ahead of the Tokyo Games Show: the PS Vita TV, appearing from inside SCE President Andrew House's jacket pocket. Having already announced a new, slender PS Vita handheld less than an hour earlier, Sony showed off this minute console -- roughly the same footprint as a smartphone -- that plays Vita games, PlayStation games and streams video content, as well as music and video from Sony's own store. It can also connect with multiple PS3 DualShock controllers, allowing for proper, responsive gaming -- something we're not quite used to getting from something so tiny.

You could see it as a brutal counterstrike from the PlayStation team against the cheap, mini-console likes of OUYA and GameStick, even Huawei. Aside from contemporary Vita titles and indie games, you can also tap into an ever-increasing catalog of hits from yesteryear -- something that the Android and iOS platforms also dip their feet into, but with the peace of mind (read: stability) of PlayStation hardware, and the ability to steer the action with a DualShock controller. Sound like something you'd like to try out? Well, unfortunately, unlike the new PS Vita, this is currently a Japan-only deal. What's more, availability in Nihon is directly tied to compatibility there, too; you'll need a Japanese PSN account to even use it. We're still getting a vague line from SCE on whether it will eventually arrive outside of Japan. (It would be a convenient bit of hardware to sell alongside Sony's PlayStation Now streaming-game service, set to launch in the US later this year, right?)

So, is this just a tenuous experiment or a whole new console line for PlayStation? Or, given that it's practically got all the same internals, would you be better off just buying a Vita? Sony PlayStation Vita TV review

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The Engadget Podcast is live at 12PM ET!

Your intrepid Engadget Podcast trio braved the Hudson River and New York City's snow-covered subway platforms to bring you today's 381st episode of the show, and we're even doing it early! Join Joseph Volpe, Terrence O'Brien and Ben Gilbert as we look back at the last week in news and look forward to what might be eaten for lunch shortly following the show. A sandwich? Burritos? The future is unknown.

Join us below for the live broadcast, won't you?

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Tags: butts, engadgetpodcast, podcast, podcasts Next: PlayStation Vita TV review: Sony's first mini-console has some growing pains .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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This case will turn your iPhone into a mobile wallet for $70

After a brief tease earlier this week, Incipio has officially unveiled its iPhone mobile payment case. The Cashwrap Mobile Wallet gives most iPhone users NFC payment support at any place that accepts Isis; beyond the case, all you need is a compatible account and a free app. If you're eager to stop paying with plastic cards, the Cashwrap should be available online for $70. AT&T is only due to launch the peripheral at retail on January 31st, although the recent in-store sighting hints that you might have a chance at scoring a retail unit ahead of schedule.

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Source: BusinessWire

Tags: accessories, apple, att, case, iphone, isis, MobilePayments, mobilepostcross, nfc, peripherals, smartphone Next: The Engadget Podcast is live at 12PM ET!
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Windows 8.1 update may speed up budget tablets

We may not have to wait long to get that Windows 8.1 interface tweak, after all. ZDNet hears from sources that Microsoft wants to release the upgrade, tentatively named Update 1, on March 11th. The patch may let you do more than pin Windows Store apps, too: Redmond's developers will reportedly be able to optimize Windows' memory and storage footprints for lower-end tablets. ZDNet also reports that the software will be more business-friendly, though it's unclear how. We wouldn't be surprised if the launch details change, but it would certainly be nice to get a significant Windows refresh at the same time that we're picking up Titanfall.

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Source: ZDNet

Tags: leak, microsoft, rumor, software, windows, windows8.1, windows8.1update1 Next: This case will turn your iPhone into a mobile wallet for $70
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Gmail and other Google services go down (update 2: outage details)

and a host of other Google services have gone down or otherwise broken. The company's status board doesn't show any issues, but Gmail users are seeing notices that their accounts are "temporarily unavailable." We're reaching out to Google and will let you know if there are any updates.

Update: That was quick; Gmail, Google

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Engadget Eurocast 052 - 1.24.14

Whether you own a Hudl tablet or not, if you're anything like Dan and Sharif, you're keeping it real and doing your shopping at Tesco's. Jamie, always the rebel, actually prefers the overpriced petrol station one on his corner. Amidst the other topics under discussion this week, one question stands out: Got wood? If you're a Moto X fan in the UK, the answer will most certainly be no -- at least not on your phone anytime soon. The team is lively, refreshed and in good form, so do yourself a favor and take a listen to this week's episode the Engadget Eurocast.

Hosts: Dan Cooper, Jamie Rigg, Sharif Sakr

Producer: Jon Turi

Hear the Podcast:

05:07 - Tesco says 400,000 people have already picked up a Hudl tablet with their groceries
14:22 - Motorola's Moto X is coming to the UK, France and Germany on February 1st for £380
24:05 - UK carrier finds loophole to let it increase prices mid-contract
31:08 - In a bid to regain trust, Microsoft okays storage of foreign users' data overseas
36:57 - Netflix ends 2013 with 44 million subscribers, will keep experimenting with pricing

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The original Macintosh 128K gets torn asunder by iFixit

The disassembly ninjas at iFixit are usually focused on splitting open the newest gadgets to see what's inside. Today, in honor of the Mac's 30th birthday, they've turned their tools on a thing from the past: the original Macintosh 128K. As is to be expected, there weren't any wild revelations regarding the 128K's innards when given the full teardown treatment. However, iFixit found that the old machine, perhaps unsurprisingly, is much easier to tinker with than its modern counterpart, the iMac, thanks to an uncomplicated interior design and the fact that it doesn't have any adhesive, anywhere. Before you go diving into your old machine, however, be careful, as both the power supply and CRT run at voltages high enough to fry careless would-be modders. Want to see all of the OG Mac's innards for yourself? The source has got what you need.

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Source: iFixit

Tags: 128kMacintosh, apple, ifixit, mac, teardown Next: Engadget Eurocast 052 - 1.24.14
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Apple's Tim Cook: 'There is no backdoor. The government doesn't have access to our servers'

Apple isn't colluding with the NSA to hand over user data and CEO Tim Cook wants you to know that. In fact, Cook feels so strongly about this issue of security that he's gone on record saying the government would need "to cart

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Engadget Podcast 381 - 1.24.14

Ben Gilbert is in charge of today's wild podcast ride, and he's taking Terrence and Joseph into uncharted territory: a place where people actually make cookie dough from scratch. The discussion attempts to swerve around the real issues, but ultimately slams head on into tech-related topics. You'll get the full skinny on Obama's recent NSA announcements, the emotional aspect of Beats Music and Facebook's full-on nerd feud with Princeton. It's a feet up kind of deal, so grab a mug of your favorite tea and settle in for this week's glorious episode of the Engadget Podcast.

Hosts: Terrence O'Brien, Joseph Volpe, Ben Gilbert

Producer: Jon Turi

Hear the podcast:

07:39 - One of the rarest games in the world just landed on eBay
13:17 - Sony teases 'slimmest' PlayStation device coming to the UK on January 30th
14:49 - Microsoft moved 3.9 million Xbox Ones, while Surface sales soared
19:31 - President Obama announces limitations on use of NSA-collected data, puts database in the hands of third party
25:56 - Beats Music builds a unique, if messy, listening experience around emotion
38:46 - WSJ: Apple considering two iPhones with larger screen sizes and metal casings
07:39 - Facebook gets into nerd feud with Princeton, hilarity ensues
13:17 - Pope Francis sees the internet as a blessing for communication

Subscribe to the podcast:



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SoundCloud reportedly in talks with record labels to stem copyright claims

Both listeners and uploaders would likely agree that SoundCloud is becoming the main hub on the internet for user-created audio content. However, it seems as if the company may be looking to grow beyond that. According to Re/code, SoundCloud has started approaching "big music labels" in hopes of landing licensing deals for "some of their songs." While a number of copyrighted tunes can already be found on the site (see above), the music labels still have full control and can easily take down any media that isn't supposed to be there. For SoundCloud users, this would signify having access to a more robust library of songs from known artists, while the record companies would benefit by taking a chunk of money in exchange for a licensing agreement. It could be a bold move for SoundCloud, but with investors recently showing they have quite a lot of faith in it, perhaps the service isn't far off from coming to terms with the almighty music labels.

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Via: The Verge

Source: Re/code

The Wall Street Journal Tags: licensing, music, music labels, music licensing, SoundCloud Next: Engadget Podcast 381 - 1.24.14 .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Samsung's slumping sales suggest China is the next mobile battlefield

Samsung had a rough day yesterday. Its earnings report indicated the company experienced the first posted drop in profit in two years (a mere $7.8 billion, compared to $8.27 billion in the same quarter last year), thanks to a strong Korean won, a special one-off bonus payment to employees and heavy holiday marketing costs. Given its increased year-over-year profits and sales this may not seem so bad, but there is a growing concern that the company has a difficult year ahead, especially for smartphone sales.

The company expects slowing sales in the first quarter of 2014 for its smartphones and tablets, thanks to "seasonality." This means fewer people are buying mobile devices -- as a new Galaxy flagship approaches, many people put off their phone purchase until it comes out. But the company also indicated that the mobile battlefield is only going to get fiercer over the next year, as developed markets are reaching saturation. Now, the war is shifting to developing markets where more people are becoming smartphone and tablet owners for the first time.

With developed markets becoming saturated and experiencing slow sales, regions like China are ripe for the picking.

In its earnings report, Samsung stated: "In 2014, Samsung will focus on expanding its smartphone portfolio both by region and price range, and actively responding to growing LTE demand in Europe and China. Expect ... intensified price competition, amid developed and emerging markets to continue rapid growth." With developed markets becoming saturated and experiencing slowed sales, regions like China are ripe for the picking.

This isn't to say that Samsung doesn't already have a large presence in areas like China and India -- it's currently the market share champion in both countries -- but its dominance is quickly slipping as it faces intense competition from both local and global companies alike. Local powerhouses Micromax and Karbonn are quickly catching up to Samsung in India, and in China, Apple has experienced exponential growth in recent quarters; reports indicate that the iPhone 5s and 5c helped Apple more than double its market share to take third place. The phones launched on China Mobile (the country's largest carrier with 750 million customers) this month, so we expect Apple's foothold to only get stronger there in the coming months. But that's not the only large company making strides in China: Lenovo, which is in second place, is also growing significantly.

If the rumors about Apple releasing iPhones in larger form factors are true, Samsung will have to directly compete against a major force that didn't exist last year.

Not only is there more competition in these countries in general, there's also a much more pointed focus on specific form factors and price points. As we pointed out in an earlier piece, the under-$100 pricing tier is becoming very aggressive, especially in emerging markets. Additionally, the large-screen smartphone, a form factor once dominated by the Galaxy Note, is now covered by nearly every major company. If the rumors about Apple releasing iPhones in larger form factors are true, Samsung will have to directly compete against a major force that didn't exist last year.

As the battle continues to intensify in countries like China, where demand is growing at a tremendous pace, Samsung's profit margins will get squeezed as phone prices plunge. Thus, we expect to see the company hit tablets and wearables even harder in 2014 -- according to Samsung, the former will experience a 20 percent increase in demand, and it has more of the latter on the way as well. We don't know if it will be enough for the company to enjoy a record year, but Samsung is under more pressure to bedazzle its customers than at any time in recent memory. It's just going to have to be more creative to stay on top.

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Tags: developing markets, earnings, editorial, emerging markets, loveisalsoabattlefield, mobilepostcross, samsung, smartphones Next: SoundCloud reportedly in talks with record labels to stem copyright claims .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Google glitch flooded at least one poor guy's inbox

Users around the world dealt with Gmail woes earlier today, but at least one faced an even stranger Gmail problem. David Peck, a private banker from Fresno, California, has been receiving thousands and thousands of emails from strangers -- all because of a bizarre Google search result glitch that apparently kicked in yesterday.

The culprit? A dodgy link that appeared when users perform a Google search for "Gmail." If they were logged into a Gmail account at the time, clicking that link opened a blank email aimed at Mr. Peck's Hotmail address, and more than a few curious users decided to fire off messages. Some of those myriad emails were questions, some were blank, but Peck told TechCrunch that he was receiving about 500 emails an hour.

Turns out, Mr. Peck may not have been the only victim here. Earlier this week, Search Engine Land reported a similar link issue that pointed to yet more people's email addresses. We haven't received reports of other inboxes getting slammed by strangers, but a Google spokesperson just confirmed that the now-fixed glitch caused "some email addresses on public webpages" to "appear too prominently in search results." Peck's story started making the rounds on the heels of a widespread Google app outage, but that was just bad timing -- the company also stated that the two issues were unrelated.

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Source: TechCrunch

Tags: email, glitch, Gmail, google, hotmail Next: Samsung's slumping sales suggest China is the next mobile battlefield .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Apple is reportedly building a mobile payment service

There are plenty of existing mobile payment systems that let you buy goods with your iPhone, but there are now signs that Apple wants to take on some of those duties itself. The Wall Street Journal claims that the company is in the early stages of building a mobile payment infrastructure that would let its customers buy all kinds of products and services, not just those in its own stores. Sources say that Cupertino has tasked the former head of its online store with getting the service off the ground, and it's reportedly discussing the idea with other companies in the tech industry. Apple isn't commenting on the rumor, but it has been researching mobile payments for years -- we know it's at least intrigued by the concept.

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Source: Wall Street Journal

Tags: apple, e-commerce, ios, iphone, leak, MobilePayments, mobilepostcross, payment, rumor, shopping, smartphone Next: Google glitch flooded at least one poor guy's inbox
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Daily Roundup: PlayStation Vita TV review, the future of Nokia featurephones and more!

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.



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Netflix 'post-play' feature that automatically jumps to the next episode is now optional

Netflix has been rolling out a 'post-play' experience (shown above) on various platforms since late 2012, but not everyone is a fan of how it jumps to a new episode automatically. That's not a problem anymore, since TechHive points out that now there's a toggle in your Netflix account settings (under playback settings) that keeps it from playing the next episode automatically. By default the feature is on, although as Netflix explains, it still requires a prompt of some kind to keep going after a couple of episodes have played. The post-play UI remains intact no matter what you choose, so watching the credits for every last best boy, grip and "no animals were harmed in the making of" will still require jumping on the remote to zoom back in. Of course, if your main concern is of House of Cards moving on an episode or two after you've dozed off, then this will fix it. Like other settings it's locked to individual profiles, so turning it off for the kids can keep them from turning out like the rest of us -- far too lazy to bother clicking a button to advance.



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Easter egg-filled panorama of Seattle is Microsoft's latest Photosynth art project

After all the panoramas, street views and 3D flights of fancy through cityscapes, how can Microsoft make the next one different? Apparently, by teaming up with over 100 of Seattle's local artists and performers to cram this 360-degree panorama full of imaginative easter eggs (like the airship seen above). Dubbed the Gigapixel ArtZoom, Microsoft unveiled it tonight at the Seattle Art Museum but like other Photosynth projects, anyone with a browser can dive in right now. 2,368 twenty-two-megapixel images were shot from the Bay View condominium building and stitched together with Microsoft's Image Composite Editor software -- it's the same system behind Windows 8.1's panorama feature and Bing Maps. Click and zoom through the resulting image on a Where's Waldo-style search for the performers (inserted via separate photoshoots after the original shoot and highlighted with additional info) on its dedicated website here, or check after the break for a behind the scenes look at how it was made.

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Source: GigaPixel ArtZoom

Seattle Times, Fast Company Design Tags: 360, art, gigapixelartzoom, microsoft, panorama, photosynth, seattle Next: Netflix 'post-play' feature that automatically jumps to the next episode is now optional .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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SoundHound's music search app turns its focus to the Grammys with real-time updates and more

Awards nights tend to give rise to slews of app tie-ins, and for this year's Grammys, SoundHound's tossing its hat in the ring. In addition to being able to recognize songs by "listening" to them, the refreshed app comes with a dedicated page for the event that currently lists performers and nominees. Anyone who clicks SoundHound's orange button during the live broadcast on Sunday night, though, will see real-time info, the list of winners and relevant Twitter posts instead. Chances are, music lovers don't exactly need SoundHound to identify "Just Give Me A Reason" and other nominated songs. Those who find these special features useful, however, can download the app from the source links below.

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Source: Google Play, iTunes, BlackBerry World, Windows Phone Marketplace

Tags: android, app, BlackBerry, grammys, hdpostcross, IOS, mobilepostcross, music, soundhound, WindowsPhone Next: Easter egg-filled panorama of Seattle is Microsoft's latest Photosynth art project
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Feedback Loop: 30 years of Mac, mechanical keyboards, Bitcoin alternatives and more!

BYDave Schumaker25 minutes ago 0

Welcome to Feedback Loop, a weekly roundup of the most interesting discussions happening within the Engadget community. There's so much technology to talk about and so little time to enjoy it, but you have a lot of great ideas and opinions that need to be shared! Join us every Saturday as we highlight some of the most interesting discussions that happened during the past week.



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Sonatype Updates Component Lifecycle Management Platform To Protect Open-Source Components

Software components are a vital aspect of app development. They are the pieces of code that make the software what it is, and they can come from thousands of sources. But they can be subject to tampering. For example, last summer, Chinese hackers exploited vulnerabilities in Struts, an open-source framework for developing Java-based web applications. Struts has been managed under the umbrella of the Apache Foundation. It was recently announced that Struts had reached its “end-of-life” and will no longer be supported.

To help address this issue, Sonatype has updated its component lifecycle management (CLM) technology to protect software developers from using rogue open-source components that could be used to attack any kind of software, including an app for your phone or even your car or heart monitor. The technology then automates the process for enforcing policies that help provide assurances to the software developer that the components are okay to use.

Sonatype allows for components to be fixed through the software development cycle to help identify flaws such as those that surfaced when Struts was hacked.

Features in the new version include an inventory that notifies developers about the potential issues of the components that might include security risks and what components are out of date or might have potential licensing liabilities. It also includes the ability to replace unsafe components with the appropriate version. It’s that ability to identify components that becomes important as software integrates into everyday things, said CEO Wayne Jackson in a recent phone interview.

Sonatype also announced that it has hired well-known security expert Josh Corman as its chief technology officer. Corman, who is known for his work at 451 Research, Akamai and IBM, tells me in an email that the work at Sonatype correlates to his focus on defensible infrastructure, application security and how to make the Internet of Things less vulnerable to attack. A preventive approach is needed with the spread of connected things. In many respects IT is growing faster than the ability to secure it,  as he discussed in a TED talk this past December.

So does the risk of open-source software components unleash an unhealthy dose of FUD? No. Instead, it’s a good reason to give thought about how to prevent security exploits instead of just continuing reacting to crises as they inevitably arise.



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Glitch Is Causing Thousands Of Emails To Be Sent To One Man’s Hotmail Account

David S. Peck is getting a lot of emails. In a glitch possibly related to the massive Gmail outage underway right now, there’s an odd bug in Google search which is pointing users directly to his personal email address. The address appears in a “Compose” window that pops up when the top search result for Gmail is clicked. Yes, it’s bizarre. Very, very bizarre.

Several of us at TechCrunch have been able to duplicate this bug, first brought to our attention by a tipster. Given whatever is going on with Gmail right now, your mileage, as they say, may vary. 

To reproduce the bug, first search for keyword “gmail” on Google. The top organic search result says “Gmail – Email from Google,” and beneath that are two other sub-links, one that says “Email” on the left, and the other which reads “Gmail – Google.” Click the one on the left (where the text reads “10

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Apple’s Tim Cook On PRISM: “There Is No Back Door. The Government Doesn’t Have Access To Our Servers”

ABC News is planning to air an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook this evening, but a few bits and pieces have already started trickling out. In the first big excerpt to be released, Cook touches on his concerns regarding the NSA and their deeply controversial PRISM surveillance program.

“The government doesn’t have access to our servers,” Cook says. “They would have to cart us out in a box for that.”

Here’s the transcript of the released excerpt:

David Muir: “What is your biggest concern — with the surveillance program here in this country?”

Tim Cook: “I’ve been pushing very, very hard to open the books and be totally transparent. Much of what has been said isn’t true; there is no back door. The government doesn’t have access to our servers. They would have to cart us out in a box for that. And that just will not happen. We feel that — strongly about it. But I do want to be transparent, because I think transparency would help put everything in perspective.”

David Muir: “Do you think Americans, Tim, would be more at ease if you could tell them more?”

Tim Cook: “I do.”

The Video:

Of course, as many have pointed out since companies first started making these sorts of official statements, there are many a concern that even “The government doesn’t have access to our servers” can’t sate. Talk of theoretical gag orders aside, one of the most disconcerting tenets of the PRISM program is the idea that the NSA doesn’t need a company’s approval (or even for the company to know) for them to start gathering data; they purportedly just snatch what they can as the data passes through the Internet’s central hubs.

In that case, all Apple can really do — besides fighting hard for transparency — is encrypt the hell out of things (like they do with iMessage) and hope their encryption is up to snuff.



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Nighttime Smartphone Browsing Is Bad For Your Job

We all already know it, but now it’s confirmed: nighttime smartphone use will ruin you the next day, reducing your productivity and focus after you wake up. Michigan State University business researcher Russell Johnson and his team produced a survey of American workers, asking how often they checked their phones after 9pm and how they felt at work. In short, they found correlation between late night smartphone use and performance.

The survey assessed “mental depletion/fatigue using a validated survey that participants completed the following morning” and noted focus and attention span.

“Smartphones are almost perfectly designed to disrupt sleep,” said Johnson. “Because they keep us mentally engaged late into the evening, they make it hard to detach from work so we can relax and fall asleep.”

Johnson asked managers as well as a broad sample of U.S. workers about their late night habits. It seems that using a smartphone can “zap” your energy more than watching TV or sitting in front of a computer. Because they are so close to your bedside and because they emit unrestful “blue light,” they are the worst culprits among everything keeping us from a good night’s sleep.

The associate professor concedes that we can’t always put down the phone, especially when our jobs are on the line.

“There may be times in which putting off work until the next day would have disastrous consequences and using your smartphone is well worth the negative effects on less important tasks the next day,” he said. “But on many other nights, more sleep may be your best bet.”

“An obvious recommendation is to set some boundaries regarding smartphone use, such as completely powering it down after a certain time (e.g., 10pm). Managers can also help in this regard by not sending emails late in the evening,” he said.



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Selling The Wooden Horse In The Age Of The iPad

Is there a more timeless toy than a wooden horse? I dare say there isn’t. N-Gages and iPads will come and go, but the wooden horse is forever.

A pair of brothers have turned to Kickstarter to bring their wooden horse to the masses. Made out of maple and meticulously finished, this toy seems like it will last generations. Don’t expect your kids to hand their LeapFrog down to their offspring.

At this point Kickstarter has begun to transcend funding art projects and iPhone accessories. It’s much more than that now. Kickstarter is quickly becoming ingrained in the creative process. Thanks to Kickstarter, The Smith Tapes was nominated for a Grammy, Music From Brooklyn Babylon was nominated for a Grammy and The Square was nominated for an Oscar. And two brothers from New York are finding a way to fund a wooden horse.

The small company is looking for $35,000 to fund their project. As of this post’s publication, they’re just north of $15,000. The money will be used to place bulk orders, allowing CNC machines to carve out the pieces en masse. Right now, each piece, and there are 30 of them, are cut by hand.

Pledge $16 and they’ll provide you with the 3D CAD files so you can print your own. $45 or more nets you a wooden horse.

Why is this on TechCrunch? As a father to two kids addicted to technology, I’ve watched apps and devices flow through their hands at an incredible pace. Only our trusty iPad 2 has had any lasting effect. But these kids, raised on Android, iOS and the Boxee Box, are mysteriously drawn to mechanical toys such as this horse. In our ever-connected world, there will always be a place for wooden toys. That makes me smile.



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Talk About Timing: Google’s Reliability Team Sat Down For An AMA Right Before Gmail Exploded

Got a tip? Let us know.MenuSearchNewsChannelsStartupsMobileGadgetsEnterpriseSocialEuropeAsiaCrunchGovCrunchUTrendingYahooAppleFacebookTwitterGoogleMicrosoftNSATCTVShowsTCTV NewsAsk A VCCrunchWeekFly Or DieFoundationFounder StoriesTechCrunch GadgetsGillmor GangKeen OnTC CribsTechCrunch MakersAll ShowsAll VideosEventsTechCrunch EventsDisruptCrunchiesMeetupsInternational City EventsHackathonHardware BattlefieldNews AboutSXSWCESE3All EventsSearch TechCrunchSearch TechCrunchSearchCrunchBaseFollow UsFacebookTwitterGoogle

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Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” Gets A Movie Deal

In an era where movie creators simply copy books for lack of original ideas, Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In has been picked up for a movie deal.

According to the WSJ, Sony Pictures Entertainment has announced that it has acquired the film rights to Ms. Sandberg’s book, which was published last year.

Sandberg’s book, which she penned to help women reach their full potential in today’s workplace, outlines all the reasons why females infrequently ascend to the top of the business world, and gives anecdotes and analysis to solve these underlying problems.

Oddly, Lean In has almost no narrative structure whatsoever, and rather offers analysis and advice. How that will turn into a riveting movie is beyond me.

This isn’t Sony’s first go-around with Facebook-themed content. The studio was responsible for 2010′s “The Social Network” which was a box office hit. That, like Lean In: The Movie, was based on a book, “The Accidental Billionaires.”

It is unclear how closely Sandberg will be working with the filmmakers on the script, but her co-writer Nell Scovell is already hard at work on a first draft of the script.

Though I’m not expecting to laugh and cry at the premiere of Lean In, there is a bit of good news out there for movie lovers in the tech space. If Lean In can be turned into a movie, there’s a really great chance that Bilton’s book, Hatching Twitter — about the origins of the shortwinded social network — will also find its way to the big screen.

Who do you think will play Jack Dorsey?



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Balanced Takes Open Source Product Development To The Next Level With Crowdfunding Campaign

Balanced will be adding a new feature to its arsenal of payments features in the coming months, allowing customers to push payments directly to debit cards. But this product development cycle comes with the support of a number of customers asking for the feature, who are backing the feature with a crowdfunding campaign.

This idea of “open source product development” isn’t exactly new to Balanced: The Y Combinator alum has long depended on customers and partners to help it determine which features it should build into its two-sided payment platform.

Using Github, the team discusses its product cycle and uses community feedback to help it prioritize resources around the development of features that are most requested or could prove most valuable to its clients. That led to the team building out features like the ability to do ACH bank deposits to its platform.

“We advertise ourselves as an open company,” co-founder Jareau Wade told me. “Our code is often open source, and our default is to provide transparency in product development.”

The next step for Balanced in determining demand was to seek crowdfunding for new features through a campaign on Crowdhoster. According to Wade, the money raised isn’t necessarily to fund development, since engineering salaries are largely a sunk cost anyway. Instead, the money is for lifetime support of the feature. And crowdfunding is also a good way to help determine actual customer demand.

When it asked users if they were interested in sending payments to debit cards, there was a groundswell of support. But before it decided to build the feature out, it wanted to determine how many would be willing to pay for the feature, and how much. After all, it’s one thing for customers to say they want a new feature — it’s a whole other thing to set a price.

That’s one lesson that came out of its development of ACH deposits, Wade said, as those who supported the feature via Github weren’t exactly happy with pricing when it was actually released. By having clients prepay to be part the initial beta run of the product, it’s essentially having them put their money where their mouths is and vote on how much volume and which pricing plan makes the most sense.

Since Balanced can’t rip out a feature once it’s been added to the API, the company has to be thoughtful about what it implements and how. While the typical Silicon Valley mantra is to move fast and break things, that’s not a luxury that Balanced has as a payments company.

“We can’t break things, but we still need to move fast,” Wade said. “So we’ve changed that to move fast and make things.”

Those who wish to support the campaign can do so for as little as $25 and get a t-shirt, marketplace customers also have the option of supporting in $1,000, $2,500, and $10,000 blocks, each with a different price per transaction. The $1,000 backers are essentially prepaying for 1,000 transactions, while those who spend $2,500 will be paying $0.75 per transaction. The cost for $10,000 backers goes down to $0.50 per transaction when the feature gets rolled out in May.

Balanced surpassed its $50,000 goal in about a day, with major backing coming from customers like Raise, Wanderable, Crowdtilt, and InstantCab. It’s received money from 24 different backers altogether, but still has several weeks to go in the campaign. With the greenlight from backers, though, it’s ready to move forward with the feature, which it expects to roll out in May.

Balanced has raised $3.4 million from investors that include Andreessen Horowitz, CollabFund, Y Combinator, SV Angel, Brian Chesky, Ashton Kutcher, Yishan Wong, and other angels.



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Study: Copycatting, Diverse Teams, And Transparency Are Keys To Innovation

A fascinating new study explores, in exquisite detail, the hidden secrets of innovation. Rampant copycats, the authors find, are a surprising key to discovering creative solutions. Imitators must, however, be supported with diverse teams and transparency of success.

“You benefit when other people imitate you because they help you explore multiple variations around your solution that you couldn’t possibly pursue on your own,” the authors from Indiana University conclude.

To put the causal path of innovation under a microscope, they did what any good university researcher would do: bribe undergraduates with easy college credit to perform a task. The game — which is described as similar to fantasy football — gauged how well students could rack points up in-game..

Unexpectedly, the researchers found that imitation was beneficial. Or, in academic speak, “the substantial proportion of imitation present in improvements shows that imitated guesses were often the basis for further productive exploration.” In other words, imitation is never identical and the micro-experiments help increase the possibilities explored, ultimately leading to better performance.

Notably, if performance scores were hidden, “participants searched more broadly and randomly, and both quality and equity of exploration suffered.” That is, when we hide our successes, imitators have to experiment blindly.

As ScienceDaily explained, “the longer people played the game, the less they imitated others. The more players there were in a game, the higher the scores. The diversity of solutions decreased over the rounds, and scores increased.” Networks of innovation do learn, and unsuccessful strategies fall off like a vestigial limb.

As our friends at TechDirt note, this has crucial policy implications, because the government has an interest in promoting copycats. Open source-friendly innovation policies help the wide variety of radically transparent imitation that has helped make the foundations of the Internet so pervasive.

For more info, read the full study here (pdf).



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Yahoo Acquires Virtual World Gaming Startup Cloud Party, Will Shut It Down

Yahoo is doing more than just throwing shade at Google on Twitter today and then taking it back – the company has acquired Cloud Party, a browser-based game creation engine. In a blog post today, the Cloud Party team shared that they will be joining Yahoo after two years of operation, and that the service will shut down on February 21, 2014.

Cloud Party is the work of a founding team of MMO and console game industry vets, including Sam Thompson (formerly of Cryptic and Pandemic), Jimb Esser (also ex-Cryptic), Conor Dickinson (ex-Facebook, Tomb Raider dev and Cryptic alum) and Jered Windsheimer (Cryptic, natch). They built Cloud Party as a sort of free-form virtual world experience, similar to Second Life, but with an updated view of what an online virtual world might look like with more emphasis on user-generated 3D content.

It’s not exactly clear what the team will be working on at Yahoo, but it will definitely be games related, as Thompson notes in his farewell blog post that the Cloud Party squad is “excited to bring

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Ask A VC: Foundation Capital’s Charles Moldow On How Startups Are Disrupting Financial Services

Next StoryYahoo Acquires Virtual World Gaming Startup Cloud Party, Will Shut It DownFacebookTwitterLinkedInCharles Moldow Talks Finance, Bitcoin and Mobile Startups

In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, Foundation Capital’s Charles Moldow joined us in the TechCrunch TV studio.

Moldow has a number of interesting financial services startups in his portfolio including peer to peer lending platform Lending Club and alternative stock investing company Motif. Moldow tells me that he sees a huge opportunity in startups that are aiming to tackle the financial services industry and also talks about where he sees the next wave of startups emerging in the space.

He also talked mobile monetization, and more.

Check out the video above!



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Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs…

Good evening, carbon-based lifeforms! Are you ready to become cannon fodder for the coming war against the machines? No? Well don’t worry because you won’t have a choice! Today in TIDWRTWHUFOO we present some warriors from the future that will work alongside and then kill and eat their human counterparts. Mmmm!



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Saturday, January 25, 2014

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End Of An Era As VKontakte Founder Durov Sells His Stake To Russian Mobile Giant

Pavel Durov, the elusive founder of VKontakt (VK) — at 100 million users Russia’s biggest social network — has confirmed that he has sold his 12 percent stake to Ivan Tavrin, the CEO of major Russian mobile operator Megafon. The telco’s second-largest shareholder is Alisher Usmanov, one of Russia’s most powerful oligarchs, a man who has long been lobbying to take over VK.

According to Reuters Usmanov and his allies now control some 52 percent of the company, from his 40% stake via Mail.ru and now Durov’s 12%, while another shareholder group owns 48%. So it looks like he’s pretty much got what he wanted.

Russian business daily Vedomosti has reported that the deal was sealed last month, possibly based on a valuation of $3-$4 billion for all of VK, which is heavily based on an earlier version of Facebook.

Via Google Translate, we present for you an edited version of what Durov posted to his personal VK page today:



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It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way

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There is a story being told about us here in the tech industry in San Francisco — that we are entitled, or that we are oblivious. I don’t believe that’s true. Or I don’t believe that it has to be true.


I’m worried that if we do not have a civil discussion soon, the situation will become violent or contentious beyond recognition. We have already seen rocks smash windows. Now, there are unidentified protesters stalking and harassing individual Google employees at their homes.

The bus protests during the last several months are a symptom of San Francisco’s perennial housing shortage, which has become especially pronounced with 75,000 people moving here over the last decade. Supply just hasn’t kept up with the city’s growth; San Francisco has added an average of 1,500 units every year for the last two decades.

This is a textbook supply-and-demand issue, which — Google buses or not — we can’t avoid. On top of that is another labyrinth of policy choices with unintended consequences like Proposition 13, rent control, the Ellis Act and an attitude of slow growth among those with influence over San Francisco’s permitting process. The bus protests are misguided, because taking buses off the road will increase traffic and it won’t reverse the tide of growth-stage companies that have decided to stay like Square, Twitter, Airbnb and Dropbox.

But they have done one good thing: they’ve pushed housing to the forefront of the mayor’s agenda. Last Friday, Mayor Ed Lee made a seven-point housing plan the centerpiece of his State of the City speech and announced plans to bring 30,000 new or rehabbed units online in the next six years. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.

This is not a new conflict. The Bay Area has two very strong historical legacies of social justice and technological solutionism. They seem more at war than ever, but this is a place where greed and idealism have always co-existed in a peculiar, and sometimes powerful, way. That potent combination created the Mac, which is celebrating its 30th birthday today, and put the world’s knowledge on smartphones in our pockets.

Recently, the tech industry has become a focal point of anger because there is such a jarring disconnect between the “Change The World” language of our industry and the very real and rising inequalities that sit in our own backyard.

Moreover, tech industry workers are increasingly treated like bankers during 2008 in the mainstream media. It’s strange considering how many people I know who came here because they wanted to work on hard, technical problems with meaningful impact.

I’m still researching what can be done, so this is a work in progress. Everyone is going to have to give a little.

Service As A Part of Company Culture

Somehow, somewhere, between my grandfather’s generation here in Silicon Valley and mine, our prevailing rhetoric changed from one of “service” to one of “changing the world.” There is a big gap between the two. The word “service” is deferential and empathetic to those around us, and “changing the world” is individualistic and full of hubris. We have to remember that with or without us, the world will change. That is its nature.

So we have to get back to a simple, humble place where we’re listening to the people that we share the city with. Maybe we’ll end up making more than “custom-designed, one-of-a-kind, bespoke” apps to communicate with our personal assistants.

Here’s an example: Zendesk, a San Francisco-based IPO candidate that was originally founded in Denmark, is running the “gold standard” of community benefit programs in the Tenderloin.

That’s according to Del Seymour, a former drug addict who now sits on the city’s Homeless Coordinating Board and gives tours to new Zendesk employees, so they can understand the history of the neighborhood they’re working in.

Seymour takes Zendesk employees to places like St. Anthony’s and the Gubbio Project, where hundreds of homeless people get to rest every day in the pews of the Tenderloin’s St. Boniface Church. He points out where he used to sleep in an old refrigerator bin during his six years on the streets, when he fell into drug abuse after working as a paramedic and firefighter for the city.

“I never thought I would end up there,” he told a crowd of Zendesk employees in front of St. Boniface’s doors.

The City Exposed: Touring the Tenderloin from San Francisco Chronicle on Vimeo.

Zendesk employees did about 1,400 hours of community service last year, doing everything from serving in soup kitchens to tutoring in the Tenderloin Tech Lab to hosting a tech camp for neighborhood kids. They are the only tech company receiving a payroll tax break from the city that won approval from the Citizens Advisory Committee for their community benefit program. The others, including Twitter, Yammer and One Kings Lane, all had their plans shot down this month. (All companies in the mid-Market area receiving the payroll tax break have to set up community benefit agreements.)

Community service has actually become a key recruiting tactic for the company, says the program’s creator Tiffany Apczynski, who spent four years as a journalist in the Tenderloin for the San Francisco Examiner before joining Zendesk.

“Other startups do all this stuff to build a culture. They bring in ping pong tables. They have happy hours,” she said. “But what we do to differentiate ourselves is our social responsibility. We want to avoid an Ivory Tower syndrome.”

Apczynski also knows that even as luxury apartment buildings sprout up on Market Street around Twitter’s headquarters, the Tenderloin won’t gentrify in a classic way. It can’t. Its single-room-occupancy residential hotels are protected by city laws and its historic non-profits like Glide and St. Anthony’s are politically powerful.

Other startups do all this stuff to build a culture. They bring in ping pong tables. They have happy hours. But what we do to differentiate ourselves is our social responsibility.

“Usually, gentrification swings all the way in one direction. But I feel like the Tenderloin is going to become a model for how to establish a truly mixed community,” she said. “San Francisco is a city of compassion. We take pride in our ability to accept everyone, no matter their condition.”

I want to be clear that I’m not promoting some kind of “white tech guy’s burden” or the notion that apps or college- or grad school-educated programmers can magically solve intractable problems like the drug abuse and mental illness that afflicts so many of our city’s chronically homeless.

But at the very least, this is just about empathy and understanding where others are coming from. This is about acknowledging that widening income inequality and media fragmentation have led us to a place where we can physically live on the same streets, and yet inhabit entirely different worlds.

While walking the Tenderloin with Seymour last week, I asked him what he thought people in San Francisco’s tech industry could do. He pointed at a group of teenagers on the street, who come in every day from the East Bay to sell dope at the corner of 6th and Market.

“Teach them how to code,” he said. “The only difference between them and someone in that nice building across the street is that they know how to code.”

The answers aren’t easy. They are time and resource-intensive, and they have to overcome so many of the inequities that are baked into the system to begin with.

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Check Out The Magic (And Technology) Behind Self-Balancing Electric Skateboard Onewheel

Next StoryIt Doesn’t Have To Be This WayFacebookTwitterLinkedInOnewheel

Every once in a while in this job you see something that just fucking blows your mind. Some invention that makes you wonder “How’d they think of that?” and then “How the hell did they actually get that to work?”

That’s how I felt the first time I saw Onewheel, the magical self-balancing electric skateboard that’s currently collecting backers on Kickstarter.

Onewheel is the brainchild of Kyle Doerksen, an electromechanical engineer and board sports enthusiast who previously worked at IDEO. Over the last several years, he’s been toying around with the idea of building a skateboard that would give users the ability to get around while feeling like they were surfing or skiing on powder.

The result is a beautiful and simply designed board that is smart enough to balance users standing still, but powerful enough to move up to 12 miles per hour when users lean to one side.

The Onewheel board has batteries under one foot and control electronics under the other. The control electronics have motion sensors — like what you would find in your iPhone — which run a control loop which tells the motor how to run and balance. The whole thing is powered by a powerful hub motor, which is about a 2,000-watt peak motor or 500 watts of continuous power. It’s all mounted on the type of wheel that would usually be used by a go kart.

While personal transportation and commuting wasn’t something that Doerksen originally had in mind for the Onewheel, a number of KickStarter backers plan to use the board for just that purpose. With that in mind, the team also plans to develop a mobile app with additional features to improve users’ commutes.

“Originally we thought of this as a recreational product. Kind of like, ‘Why do you surf?’ You don’t surf because you have to go somewhere, you surf because it’s awesome,” Doerksen said. “But our backers on KickStarter have shown us that they’re really interested in using it for commuting and so we’re developing some new features that will make it even better for that.”

Check out the video above to see how it works… then go pre-order your own Onewheel on KickStarter.



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How To Successfully “Neg” Facebook

“Facebook may have an irreversibly bad brand,” wrote 22-year old Branch founder Josh Miller in December 2012 in a post about his 15-year old sister’s predilections for social apps. Almost a year later, his chat startup was acquired by Facebook. Awkward.

The “criticize Facebook” > “get bought by Facebook” dynamic in the Branch/Potluck acquisition was so ironic, it was the first thing to come to mind for many upon hearing the news of the merger. Will Oremus over at Slate wrote a whole post peppered with critical quotes from Miller, ending with a quote from SLC Punk: “I didn’t sell out, I bought in.”

Miller had successfully “negged” Facebook.

For the lucky people who are unfamiliar, the concept of “negging” comes from the decades-old craft of pickup artistry, and involves the pickup artist saying something mildly insulting to a target, in order to pique their attention and make them feel like they have something to prove e.g. ”You have a pretty face, but you’d be even prettier if you’d lose the bangs.” The purpose of negging is to take your target ”down a notch” and make them want you more.

Despite Facebook’s Achilles’ heel being teens at the moment, Miller’s negging was just not limited to that sore spot. In one of the multiple posts he wrote about Facebook’s flaws, “Facebook needs Air Jordans,” Miller underscored Facebook’s need to get off its laurels and build standalone apps.

Mr. Zuckerberg, you know those 70 engineers that you had working on Graph Search?

Take ten of them and task them with rethinking online dating. Call it Bar, put the Facebook logo in the footer.

Then take another ten engineers and have them figure out why half of my friends can’t find jobs, even though the other half are working at firms which are hiring. Call it Cover Letter, put the Facebook logo on the About page.

In a post called “The New Facebook” (it really doesn’t get much better than this), Miller compared his eventual parent company to a suburban basement.

Previously, Facebook’s competitive advantage was that it took a lot effort to establish social connections on new services. With Contacts access, that’s less true. Thus, people are flocking to new services.

It’s sort of like the Internet just turned twenty-one! Before, you could only drink in your friend’s suburban basement. Now all of a sudden you can go wherever you want — clubs, bars, you name it.

From what we hear these posts were not brought up during acquisition talks, which first started when Branch was a mere twig, and progressively got more serious when other suitors, like Yahoo, entered the fray. But there’s no way that Facebook Corporate Development didn’t do a Google search for Josh Miller’s name in their due diligence. No way.

For what it’s worth, Miller, not so far from the crucial teenage demographic himself, is on to something in his critiques. Facebook does need Air Jordans, discrete non-branded apps that further the scope of its monolithic product.

Facebook’s social graph becomes less and less valuable in a mobile world when all of your friends are already in your phone. Miller also holds in his writings that the next Facebook will bring way more than friends together, eventually connecting the over 2.5 billion strangers with internet access.

Snapchat, Miller’s teen tech trend darling, took full advantage of the access to users’ address books allowed by iOS and Android, essentially proving it didn’t need Facebook to be popular. This, like in dating, only made Facebook want it even more. Snapchat negged Facebook so hard Zuckerberg cloned it and then tried to buy it for billions when that didn’t work out.

“Welcome, Facebook. Seriously,” CEO Evan Spiegel responded at the time.

If I were a teenager I'd set up a tech consulting firm called Screenshot Of My Homescreen LLC.—
Ashley Mayer (

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The Obama Administration’s Frustrating NSA Week

While Congress and the nation at large have done little except talk and embark on preliminary legal skirmishes regarding the United States’ mass surveillance practices, the forces in favor of reform and change had a decent week. The Obama administration did not.

The president’s speech one week ago on proposed changes to NSA practices was met with skepticism. A sample headline detailing the response: “Jon Stewart skewers Obama’s vague, rambling NSA speech.” The Post was sedate but firm: “Obama goal for quick revamp of NSA program may be unworkable, some U.S. officials fear.”

If the president had hoped that his reform proposals — including mild curtailment of the phone metadata program, some sort of protection for the privacy of foreign citizens and the like — would placate those opposed to the NSA, he was certainly disappointed.

Praise could be found for the president, but in the form of a backhanded compliment. Republican Rep. Peter King was content with the speech, because it didn’t seem to propose meaningful change:

“I didn’t think any changes were called for, any so-called reforms, but the fact is the ones that the President made today are really minimal.

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Apple Preparing For Push Into Mobile Payments For Physical Goods, WSJ Reports

A long-rumored move by Apple is reportedly one step closer to becoming a reality today. The Wall Street Journal says that Apple is looking into a way to expand its mobile payments efforts into a means by which its users can pay for physical goods using iOS mobile devices via their existing iTunes accounts.

It’s not such a stretch: Apple already allows shoppers who frequent their physical retail stores to do this with accessories and other relatively inexpensive items. Using the Apple Store app, users can scan barcodes of products and then authenticate and finalize the purchase using their iTunes Store credentials, the same way they can pay for digital goods including movies and music.

The new WSJ report claims that Apple is looking into a way to expand that kind of shopping behavior beyond just goods in Apple’s own stores, to third-party retailers and service providers including black car hiring service Uber. Apple’s head of iTunes, the App Store and general Internet software and service Eddy Cue is said to be meeting with industry execs in the retail and commerce space to prepare the way for a wide-reaching payments system, according to the WSJ’s sources, and Apple has also reportedly shifted Jennifer Bailey, longtime VP of Apple’s online stores, into a role focusing on building a payments business.

Apple’s existing stockpile of consumer cards on file makes this move seemingly inevitable: it had 600 million users with credit cards on file as of late last year, according to analyst estimates. To put that in perspective, PayPal has around 137 million active accounts, according to the company’s own current figures. The dormant potential for Apple is huge, in other words.

Building a system for payments into the fabric of iOS also makes sense in terms of Apple’s recent moves with regards to R&D and actual shipping technology. It introduced Touch ID with the iPhone 5s, for instance, which provides a secondary authentication tech to help verify the identity of a user (Touch ID is already used for virtual good purchases made through the iTunes store), and with iOS 7 it debuted iBeacons, which can be used as an NFC-style vehicle for conducting device-based mobile transactions in-store. Finally, Apple just recently filed for a new patent that would allow its devices to securely store payment information, and then authorize purchases in a way that doesn’t convey any sensitive user data.

I’ve been writing about the potential Apple has in the field of mobile payments since back in 2010, and nothing much has changed except for the fact that the opportunity is much more mature, increasing the chances of wide consumer adoption. Time and time again, Cupertino has proven itself willing to wait for the right time to strike with new technologies, and while the iTunes card account piece of the puzzle has always seemed a compelling argument in support of Apple entering this market, you could argue that paying for things via your device was still an alien enough concept to keep consumer interest low.

Last year, Forrester estimated mobile payments would become a $90 billion market by 2017, and it’s already growing a rapid pace. If the WSJ’s report today is accurate Apple might finally be ready to claim its spot at the table in preparation for the upcoming feast. And if it does happen, it could drastically alter the positioning of some of the top players currently operating, including Square, PayPal and many more.



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SoundCloud Raises $60 Million At $700 Million Valuation

SoundCloud recently closed a Series D round of funding led by Institutional Venture Partners with the Chernin Group. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news. It has since been confirmed by IVP and SoundCloud. Previous investors also participated in the round, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, GGV Capital, Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures.

SoundCloud’s ultimate goal is to become the audio platform of the web, or the YouTube of audio. Just like YouTube, user-generated content remains the startup’s fuel. Every minute, 12 hours of sound and music are uploaded to the platform. For comparison’s sake, YouTube reports 100 hours of content uploaded every minute.

Many up-and-coming electronic music artists use g SoundCloud to release mixtapes and share them around the web. Well-known musicians also release singles or live recordings on the platform to share them with their fans on Twitter or Facebook. In other words, SoundCloud is the perfect place to transform a music file into a URL and embeddable music player.

Seeing American VC firms putting a lot of faith in a European startup is a big win for the Berlin startup scene.

Back in October at Disrupt Europe, SoundCloud co-founder and CEO Alexander Ljung said that the company was focused on growth and engagement.

That’s why it simplified its premium offering. “The big thing when we made that change is that we went from four different account levels with a fairly wide range of pricing to two different levels with a smaller range,” Ljung said.

With a free account, you can upload up to 2 hours of music, while the most expensive plan allows you to upload an unlimited amount of music for $12 a month (

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Failure Modes

This was a rich month for the deadpool. Prim shut down. So did CarWoo. And much-hyped Outbox. And even moot’s Canvas/DrawQuest, which had 1.4 million app downloads and 400,000 monthly users. All part of the game, right? The circle of startup life, or something.

It’s a truism that most startups fail. But in fact most startups don’t even get to fail, in the way the word is most commonly used in Silicon Valley. The “failures” listed above were, by any reasonable standard, astonishing successes; like athletes who almost-but-not-quite qualified for the Olympics. Most startups never get anywhere near as far as that. Most startups disappear without a trace.

I saw Inside Llewyn Davis last week, and it has haunted me since, mostly, I think, because it’s a brilliantly told tale of abject, anonymous failure, and you don’t encounter that much nowadays, especially in the Valley. Not that we ignore failure. No, the relationship is much more awkward than that. Instead we make a point of celebrating it…as long as it’s part of narrative of struggle which ultimately ends in success.

But the cold hard truth is that most people who fail don’t succeed in the end.

Every creative field — music, movies, books, art — follows a power law, and startups are no exception. (Of course startups are a creative field. They bring into the world richly valued things which did not exist before. That’s why they’ve become so culturally compelling; they’re perceived as combining the coolness of the arts with the filthy lucre of business.) And like every creative field, the startup ecosystem is hit-driven; a few massive successes balance out the vast teeming majority that nobody but a handful of people, or maybe, a few thousand, ever heard of.

For almost every artist/entrepreneur who succeeds — within or beyond their wildest dreams — there are 10 more who were just as smart and talented and worked just as hard but who got hit by bad luck, or were the victims of bad timing, or simply dug where there was no gold. What’s more, the super successes almost invariably got very lucky several times over. (Page and Brin would have sold Google for $750,000 back in the day. Drew Houston had higher ambitions; he would have taken $1 million after tax for Dropbox. They were lucky nobody took them up on that.)

The Valley says, “It’s OK to fail, you learn from it.” But what they really mean is, “it’s OK to fail once or twice, maybe thrice, after you’ve had your big break. But don’t push your luck much further than that.” (There are exceptions, of course, but by definition, they’re exceptional.) Again, just like any other hit-driven industry. Your big break is your first movie, your first book deal, your notice that you’ve been accepted to Y Combinator. After that you’re an insider, you’re part of the industry, looking out from within the walled garden, and you’re afforded two or three more kicks at the can before people start forgetting to return your emails.

The thing is, this is all totally fair.

Because the walled garden is too small for everyone; and if you fail repeatedly, while you learn from those failures, others are learning from their success. How to handle growth, how to cut deals, how to use media attention, how to hire good employees, how to acquire and be acquired, how to ride the fabled hockey stick, how to use each success as a springboard for the next. All lessons that you are not learning while doing your best to overcome the collapse of your latest dream.

Failure teaches you a whole lot of important stuff once, yes — never trust someone who’s never failed at anything, you don’t know if they’ll collapse or explode — but the second time? The third? You just keep falling further behind, while those who were lucky enough (and smart enough, and dogged enough) to succeed are avidly learning how to run faster.

Personally, I’ve always been horribly fascinated by failure; at the same time, I’ve had a weird knack of avoiding it. In the midst of the dot-com boom I quit a software consultancy heading for an IPO to go write novels, and it was universally understood that I was choosing failure over success — until that consultancy went from 110 employees on three continents to four evicted co-founders in the space of eight months, while I sold the book I wrote and spent six years as a full-time novelist. Now I write software for another (far more secure) development shop, effectively selling picks and shovels to would-be miners of this new gold rush.

Some of them have been quite successful. Some have not. Sometimes our clients drive me crazy, but I understand why. I always wanted to be a writer, to the extent that it used to be almost physically painful to walk into a bookstore. In the same way, today’s founders hunger for success. They’re starving for it. And they’re terrified of the prospect of failure.

But just like all other creative fields, most of the hungry hangers-on on the fringes of the tech-entrepreneur industry will never, ever have a real hit. The difference is that this industry is so big, so lucrative, and so fast-growing that they can stay semi-gainfully employed in it indefinitely. Is it better to always be hungry, and always be frustrated, or accept that failure was your lot, and move on? I’d say the former, but then I would, wouldn’t I?

I do believe, though, that those who have tried and failed to build their own dream make for the finest startup employees, the best sergeants and lieutenants, as long as you can make them feel that the enterprise they are joining can in some small way become their own. I would always choose someone who has failed repeatedly over someone who has never really tried to achieve anything. If nothing else, failing again and again teaches you how to keep fighting; and while helping to build someone else’s dream isn’t anywhere near as rewarding as bringing life to your own, it’s miles better than not dreaming at all.



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Tuesday, January 21, 2014

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Google is mapping the history of modern music

It's no surprise that Google has been tracking music uploads, but what's unexpected is exactly what the search giant is doing with all of that info. Interactive maps of music's ongoing journey are charted through Play Music's users' libraries, found over on Google's Research Blog. You could, for example, trace the ebb and flow of a genre era by era (rock remains one of the biggies while electronica's presence is relatively new), or even identify which release from a band is the most prominent. Looking at the Deftones, their biggest album is 2000's White Pony, and they're near the top of the alt-metal heap overall. Music nerds could lose a few days poring over the various ins and outs of the soundtrack to their lives, so be careful who you share this with. Perhaps best of all, Google says this likely won't be the last collaboration we see between the research and music teams.

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Source: Google Research (1), (2)

Tags: bigdata, google, GooglePlayMusic, GoogleResearch, googleresearchblog, graphs, music, StreamingMusic Next: Amazon is thinking about shipping you packages you haven't ordered yet .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Comcast discontinues AnyPlay in-home IPTV device, preps cloud Xfinity TV apps

Back in 2012 Comcast rolled out AnyPlay, a headless (read: not connected directly to a TV) cable box that turned its live TV channels into internet streams users could watch on iOS or Android devices inside the home. Now in 2014 Comcast is discontinuing the AnyPlay service and nudging customers towards other options like Xfinity TV Go and other new features it will roll out later this year. Like a Slingbox that only worked within the house, compared to other cable TV apps AnyPlay had the advantage of directly supporting all the channels, but the downside of requiring additional hardware. It also looks like the leased Motorola Televation boxes that did the TV-to-IPTV magic will be going back soon, as the mobile apps will disappear from stores after March 31st.

So what's in store for the future? Last week at an investors conference, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts showed off a new Xfinity TV app that brings full live TV, video on-demand and DVR access on phones and tablets. We showed you the app last year, which Roberts revealed is being tested in Boston this month and is scheduled to roll out across much of the country this year. It's all part of the new X1 / X2 TV platform which brings more apps to the TV and "turns mobile devices into virtual TV sets" -- hopefully without blanking them out nationwide. Multichannel News adds that Comcast is also testing out gateway devices from Arris that, like AnyPlay, don't connect to directly to a TV, but will push video throughout the home to TVs and mobile devices alike. Comcast also mentioned that at the end of last year, it added to its total number of TV customers for the first time in over six years. We'll see if these new features -- along with cheap internet combo packages -- can pull in more customers, or if people choose life with another provider, or no traditional TV service at all.

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Source: Comcast Support Forums

Multichannel News Tags: anyplay, cloud, comcast, hdpostcross, motorola, televation, x1, x2, XfinityTv, xfinitytvgo Next: Google is mapping the history of modern music .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Feedback Loop: TiVo services, getting fit with apps, fun with a NAS and more

BYDave Schumaker1 day ago 0

Welcome to Feedback Loop, a weekly roundup of the most interesting discussions happening within the Engadget community. There's so much technology to talk about and so little time to enjoy it, but you have a lot of great ideas and opinions that need to be shared! Join us every Saturday as we highlight some of the most interesting discussions that happened during the past week.



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Unknown Sony phone pops up in photos, suggests new Z1 variant could land at MWC

Sony is doing a pretty job keeping itself in our line of sight right now. Not only did it out two (or almost two) new handsets at CES (the Z1 Compact, and a T-mo only Z1S), it also released a brace of mid-rangers a few days later. Today is all about the mystery handset you see in the picture above. A user on XDA claims the handset shows the model number Xperia D6503, and is potentially another Z1 variant. All we know from the image is that the mic grille is now three holes (not a mesh), and the lanyard hole is in a different location. Judging by the crash report on screen, there's some unstable software running, so if it's not a prototype Z1, then it's still almost certainly a pre-production model. XDA user iRimas claims the device has the familiar metal body, but that the thinner bezel houses a screen nearer to 5.2-inches. So, MWC is just around the corner, and Sony likely doesn't want to turn up without something new to show, but whether it's a Z1 "L"-type deal or the fabled/logical Z2/Sirius (or just a prototype) remains to be seen.



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The future of beauty school is Google Glass

At least according to L'Oreal. The hair care giant (and purveyor of giant hair) just announced Matrix Class for Glass, which gives clients and beauty school students a stylists-eye view of your head. The three-part program includes a video series of in-depth beauty tutorials shot with Google's wearable; Matrix Eye for Style, an "exclusive" salon experience provided by George Papanikolas, who will record sessions with the headset; and a series of lessons for beauty professionals given by be-Glassed hair care superstars.

This isn't the first or last time L'Oreal has taken advantage of the wearable; it used Glass to document Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in Madrid late last year and has plans to release a Glass app sometime in 2014. It might seem like an odd coupling considering most glass holes are more Super Cuts than Vidal Sassoon, but L'Oreal says there's an intersection between the early adopters of fashion and tech. According to a study done by its partner at Fashion Week, Nurun, "The futuristic nature of Google Glass appealed to the fashion-forward, tech-savvy audience..." When we start seeing years-old issues of Wired replacing copies of Southern Hair at Truvy's, we'll believe it.

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Tags: beauty, beauty school, education, google, google glass, hair, loreal, matrix class for glass, steel magnolias, tutorials, wearables Next: Unknown Sony phone pops up in photos, suggests new Z1 variant could land at MWC
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Valve: The future of Virtual Reality is just one year away

The most exciting aspect of contemporary virtual reality is its implications. Even using Oculus VR's early duct taped-prototype, most users immediately "get it." You're transported to, say, Tuscany, or an underwater exploration vehicle, or a space fighter, and that experience is enough to trigger a flood of ideas for other potential interactions -- interactions that are dramatically heightened by employing a VR headset. How about deep-sea exploration in 4K? Or maybe Mars? And we're not talking just video games, but experiences. Valve VR lead Michael Abrash detailed that notion in a recent talk:

"Not only could VR rapidly evolve into a major platform, but it could actually tip the balance of the entire industry from traditional media toward computer entertainment."

Abrash believes that VR headsets so vastly outperform other interaction methods (TV, theaters, etc.) that how folks absorb media in general may be impacted by the coming wave of head-mounted displays. His concept of our potential future may be distant-sounding, but the beginning of consumer-grade, extremely polished VR headsets isn't far off: 2015. At least that's what Abrash and Valve are targeting as primetime for VR, and they're laying the groundwork right now.



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Recommended Reading: Spike Jonze predicts the future of UI, confronting tragedy through video games and more

BYTerrence O'Brien1 day ago 0

Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read.



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Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 hits the FCC with Verizon's LTE bands in tow

We've yet to hear more details about the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2's launch this quarter, but a recent FCC filing at least reveals that it might head to Verizon. According to the documents, a particular variant that goes by model number SM-P905V supports Big Red's LTE (4 and 13) bands. Since the 2014 refresh of the 10.1 Note Pro has also passed through the agency with Verizon LTE, the carrier might offer both sizes when the tablets hit the market. Based on the info we got from the gigantic tablet's CES debut, it'll have a WiFi version for those who have no need for mobile internet. Folks set on buying one with long-term evolution speeds, however, may want to cross their fingers for the behemoth to hit their preferred carriers.



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Paramount now releases movies only in digital form

While it's no secret that film-based movie distribution won't last much longer in the US, the big Hollywood studios haven't officially completed their transition to digital. However, one of them may have quietly made that leap -- sources for the LA Times claim that Paramount is the first large studio to send its major movies (not just smaller flicks) to American theaters solely in digital form. Anchorman 2 was reportedly the company's last high-profile analog release, while The Wolf of Wall Street was the first to go all-digital. Paramount hasn't commented on the apparent leak. If the report is accurate, though, the 8 percent of US theaters without digital equipment now have little choice but to upgrade if they want to offer the same selection as most of their peers.

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Source: LA Times

Tags: anchorman2, distribution, film, hdpostcross, hdpostmini, minipost, movies, paramount, theater, thewolfofwallstreet Next: Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 hits the FCC with Verizon's LTE bands in tow .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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