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Wikipedia’s Anti-SOPA Blackout

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 16, 2012 at 11:27 am

Looks like Wikipedia will protest the proposed anti-piracy legislation known as SOPA by disappearing for 24 hours:

“The emerging consensus of the community seems to be for a global blackout of English Wikipedia,” Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, said on Twitter on Monday afternoon.  “Final details [are] under consideration but consensus seems to be for ‘full’ rather than ‘soft’ blackout… This is going to be wow.”

Wikipedians have been considering the radical measure for several weeks, alongside other sites such as Reddit. This weekend’s statement from the White House, which appeared to side with Silicon Valley – prompting criticism from media owners including News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch – has failed to dissuade them of the need for a blackout, making it a controversial decision among some users and editors.

I’m not sure if the people with the most power to nix SOPA–lawmakers–care that much about Wikipedia. But how would they react if even a small percentage of us who do care about Wikipedia were moved by the blackout to call our congresspeople and voice opposition to SOPA?

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MHL, a Possible Solution for the Scarcity of Android Add-Ons

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 16, 2012 at 12:52 am
Pioneer's AppRadio 2

Pioneer's AppRadio 2.

If you own an iPhone, you can choose from a surging sea of add-ons that work with it: speaker docks, in-car gizmos, game controllers, and much more. If you have an Android phone–well, if you’re lucky, the company that made it sells some peripheral devices. (Motorola, invented of such add-ons as the Lapdock, is especially conscientious here.)

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Coming on Thursday: Live Blog Coverage of Apple’s Education Event

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 16, 2012 at 12:13 am

On Thursday, January 19th, Apple is holding a press event in New York at the Guggenheim Museum. It says that the topic involves education. Lots of folks are logically assuming that iPad textbooks are at least part of the story. We won’t know any more details for sure until the event gets underway at 10am ET, but once it does, I’ll liveblog the whole thing at technologizer.com/appleeducation–and I hope you’ll join me. (Head there now if you’d like to get an e-mail reminder when the event begins.)

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CES 2012 Was Big, Very Big

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 15, 2012 at 2:56 pm

Whenever anyone asked me how my CES was going, I said something along the lines of “It seems pretty darn vibrant for a show that’s allegedly in trouble.” Now the official stats are in, and they report record-breaking numbers for both attendees and exhibitors. Chris Ziegler of the Verge:

The fact that neither Microsoft nor Apple are participating in these kinds of events anymore is certainly a sign of something, but 153,000 press, exhibitors, analysts, and staff are suggesting that the death knell could be a bit premature.

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Phineas J. Whoopee, You’re Like Google

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 13, 2012 at 11:57 pm

TIME’s James Poniewozik makes a point that seems obvious, how that I think of it: Tennessee Tuxedo, the semi-educational 1960s TV cartoon starring Don Adams as a penguin, featured elements that are uncannily reminiscent of Google and the iPad.

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Facebook Pumps Up The Volume

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 13, 2012 at 11:40 pm

In Facebook’s never-ending quest to get you to stay on its site even longer, the site has rolled out a new feature for music services on the social networking site. Now, when those music statuses appear on your newsfeed, clicking on their name will pop up a window with a button to “Listen With” that friend. Making it even more fun, you’ll start the music at the exact same point, essentially allowing your friend to play DJ.

The listen feature will works in both individual and group settings. Those friends listening to music will show a music note beside their name. Initially Spotify, Mog, and Rdio are supported, although Facebook says other services are on their way.

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The Big Winner of CES 2012 Is… Microsoft?

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 13, 2012 at 11:35 pm

For a company whose CES swan song is this year, and whose CEO gave a pretty boring keynote address, Microsoft seems to have had an uncommonly successful CES. Windows Phone went into the show a struggling also-ran mobile operating system, and very well may have come out of it a contender.

Why’s that? Two phones made their debut at the show, the Nokia Lumia 900 and the HTC Titan II. Both have been getting glowing reviews from the press for their form and function. Finally it appears Microsoft has devices that look compelling. It couldn’t do much worse: there’s only one way and that’s up!

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Razer’s Project Fiona: A Tablet From Portable Gaming’s Alternate Future

Posted by Jared Newman on January 13, 2012 at 3:19 pm

Unless your head’s in the sand, you know where portable video games are headed: Cheaper to develop, less expensive to sell, easier to pick up and less time consuming to play. Smartphones and tablets are slowly pushing the established games industry in that direction.

Razer is proudly not participating in that version of the future with Project Fiona, a concept Windows-based tablet that plays high-end PC games. The tablet has controller handles on either side of the 10.1-inch display, each with their own thumbsticks, buttons and triggers. Inside, there’s enough processing power to run games like Warhammer 40000: Space Marine and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on high settings.

When Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan was telling me all this a couple weeks before the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, I didn’t entirely believe the company could pull it off. But then I played with Project Fiona myself at Razer’s booth. I don’t know how the company did it–and I dare not fathom at what cost–but the concept actually works.

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The Slippery Slope of Android Differentiation

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 12, 2012 at 10:34 am

I know I’ve been piling on Android as of late, but I just can’t ignore comments from Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha. Speaking to the Verge at CES on Wednesday, Jha says that phone makers will continue to skin Google’s operating system with their own interfaces, making the possibility of a purer Android experience seem more remote than ever.

Motorola “has to make money” he says, and “the vast majority of the changes we make to the OS are to meet the requirements that carriers have”. Wait, haven’t we heard this before? On Monday, I wrote that Google no longer has any control over Android, ceding most of it to carriers and it seems, the manufacturer as well.

The problem is that there are just too many Android phones. That makes phones from different manufacturers awfully similar, which makes it hard for any one model to sell well based on sheer distinctiveness. So carriers layer their own user interface tweaks over Android in an attempt to be different.

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Ads Get More Intrusive on Facebook

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 12, 2012 at 9:44 am

Users of Facebook are reporting that Sponsored Stories are moving from their original position interspersed with standard Facebook ads to the news feed itself, a change that is sure to ruffle the feathers of many. While the ad cannot appear unless the user likes the advertiser’s Facebook page, it certainly feels quite intrusive.

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You may not realize you’re even being hit with an ad unless you read the timestamp closely: Facebook marks the sponsored post as “featured”. Rolling over the tag shows the text “You are seeing this because you like (insert company name). A sponsor paid to place it here”.

Other types of Sponsored Stories allow advertisers to hit up your friends even though they may not like the page, but this type will not. Facebook is smart enough to realize that sticking an ad in the face of somebody who may not care to see it wouldn’t be such a smart idea.

According to Inside Facebook, which looks to be the first to find out about the new ads, the social networking company is performing a gradual rollout. Initially the sponsored news feed posts will be limited to one per day, and won’t be shown on mobile devices. It’s not clear where Facebook plans to take the sponsored stories from there, though.

Either way, I’m not happy about this. My news feed is to find out about the things I care about, not to be pestered with ads. Add to this the fact that it may not be clear that they are ads, and it really bothers me. The only reason Facebook is doing this is because these ads will be worth a lot of money, and on top of that likely have a higher click-through rate as a result of their prominence.

Where does it end?

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