140 characters can get Indonesians 12 years in jail
Indonesia’s Communications and Information Minister has declared that anyone tweeting illegal content, such as blasphemy, pornography, and threats, could spend up to 12 years in prison.
Indonesia has a strained history with free speech issues and open media, so laws that would punish Twitter users harshly for their words isn’t entirely surprising. The case of Prita Mulyasari is one huge example that shows how uncomfortable the country is with online communication. Mulyasari was jailed and … Continue Reading
Google Wallet flaw takes the lock off your mobile money
A new vulnerability in Google Wallet gives access to your funds, even after the application data has been erased.
Google Wallet allows you to digitize your credit cards and pay for things using near-field communication (NFC). That is, all you have to do is touch your phone to a device and your item is automatically charged. Google has touted that its wallet isn’t like the leather ones—it actually has a lock on it. This lock … Continue Reading
Say good-bye to your address book, Evernote’s contact app Hello is better
Every phone has a contact list, but how useful is it? According to Evernote chief executive officer Phil Libin, not very helpful at all. His answer to the standard address book is Evernote Hello, a photo-based contact app which organizes contacts “visually, chronologically and contextually.“ The app got some major updates today to help it kill the contact list once and for all.
Hello was released in December 2011 and didn’t take off … Continue Reading
Activision Blizzard earnings: Call of Duty Elite snares 7M subscribers
Activision Blizzard reported today that its new Call of Duty Elite social network service for hardcore gamers has signed up 7 million subscribers since going live in November.
The subscriber number includes both free and paid memberships and it represents a sizable chunk of the overall numbers of users that bought the game. About 1.5 million of those users have chosen to pay $4.99 a month for the privilege of getting the latest content for … Continue Reading
Activision Blizzard earnings: World of Warcraft resists the assault from EA’s Star wars
Activision Blizzard has beaten earnings expectations for its third fiscal quarter ended Dec. 31, and its major cash cow is still holding up. World of Warcraft didn’t suffer after Electronic Arts launched its massively multiplayer online game Star Wars: The Old Republic Blizzard. World of Warcraft ended the year with 10.2 million paying subscribers, down only slightly from 10.3 million in the previous quarter.
Bobby Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard, said in an analyst … Continue Reading
How Google plans to avoid Facebook’s “games ghetto” with Google+
“We’ve seen communities ruined by games,” said Google+ engineering director David Glazer to a room full of app developers.
“How do we find that balance between people who are interested in games… without having the problem of more spam?”
Glazer said these words onstage today at the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco, and it was quite clear which community he was talking about: Facebook, which itself sees gaming as a sort of double-edged … Continue Reading
Windows on ARM coming around Windows 8 release, will have Office 15 apps
Microsoft’s plan to bring Windows to ARM chips has been a curious endeavor, mainly because the company hasn’t offered up many specifics about how the new version of Windows will differ from the traditional x86 and 64-bit versions of the operating system.
That all changed today with a nearly-9,000 word blog post by Microsoft’s Windows unit president Steven Sinofsky, in which he divulged a slew of details on Windows on ARM (WOA).
The big takeaways … Continue Reading
Stealth-mode app TimeRazor helps you find time for your favorite events, raises $3.4M
Launching in March, TimeRazor is an app that will help you find events and offers near you, so you don’t miss out. The company announced today it has raised $3.4 million from private investors.
TimeRazor is tackling the “fear of missing out” or FOMO as the company calls it. It realized that people are often so busy with errands and tasks they need to do, that they miss out on the fun events they want … Continue Reading
When the Google+ Platform is opening for developers and why it’s taking so long
The Google+ Platform is still a relatively small collection of read-only APIs, but Google is definitely preparing for a wide and varied set of features for developers.
At the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco Thursday, Google+ engineering director David Glazer (pictured) revealed that Google will roll out more enhancements to the social networking platform “when we’re delighted with how it’s working.”
It’s a vague answer to an important question, and it has a … Continue Reading
Hasbro licenses game characters and brands from Zynga
Hasbro and Zynga are announcing a deal where the big toy company will create toys based on Zynga’s game characters and social gaming brands. It’s a marriage of the old new game worlds that makes sense as the physical and digital worlds converge.
The deal helps keep Hasbro more relevant for a generation of kids who are growing up with online social games. While Facebook is still technically not for kids, a lot of social-game … Continue Reading
What a Navy Seal Team Six veteran can teach professionals about failure
The U.S. Navy Seal Team Six became famous as an elite military group for succeeding in its quest to find and kill Osama Bin Laden. But a nine-year veteran from the team told an audience of game developers today about failing and how to deal with it.
Isaac Gilmore retired from the Seals last August and now is consulting as managing partner at 3SJ Tactical Solutions. It turns out that his experiences from working with … Continue Reading
Groupon keeps moving the goalposts, leaving investors scratching their heads
Groupon reported its first quarterly earnings as a public company this week and blew away its numbers — in the sense that it stopped reporting key numbers investors need to assess the health of its business.
Based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), the daily-deals company continues to lose money. But the bigger concern for investors is Groupon keeps changing how it wants to be measured and hiding metrics that point toward a deterioration of … Continue Reading
Obama shows further mastery of social by tweeting Spotify campaign playlist
Many analysts think President Obama won the 2008 election partly due to his campaign’s ability to use social networks and the web to rally and influence voters. And now with the 2012 election season upon us, Obama is showing he still gets it with the release of a subscribe-able 28-track Spotify playlist.
Obama’s official Twitter account today posted a new Spotify playlist titled “2012 Campaign Playlist” with the message: “A little Wilco, a bit of … Continue Reading
Foxconn hacked by group that says “damage is bliss”
Manufacturing company Foxconn was hacked this week by a new group of “greyhat” cyber criminals who say tearing down companies is fun.
“So Foxconn thinks they got ‘em some swagger because they work with the Big Boys from Intel, Microsoft, IBM, and Apple? Fool, You don’t know what swagger is,” said a SwaggSec member in a letter addressed to “Users of Cyberspace.”
SwaggSec, which started tweeting about their hacking endeavors on January 26th, released access … Continue Reading
Lessons from the past: The new arcade of the iPhone is just like the arcade machines of the 1980s
The new arcade on the iPhone is a whole lot like the old arcades of the 1970s and 1980s, according to a team of veterans from Atari.
That means you can learn lessons for today’s game designs from the history of the arcades. That thinking is driving Innovative Leisure, a startup that is pulling the veterans into a kind of reunion company headed by Seamus Blackley (pictured far right and at bottom) and Van Burnham. … Continue Reading
Double Fine Adventure shatters Kickstarter record with $750,000 raised in first 24 hours
Earlier this week crowd-funding site Kickstarter set a new record when the Elevation iPhone Dock became the first project to close in on the $1 million dollar mark. But that milestone isn’t likely to last long. In its first 24 hours, a project from gaming studio Double Fine Adventure’s Kickstarter project has raised more than $750,000 on Kickstarter and it shows no signs of slowing down.
As GamesBeat reported yesterday, Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert … Continue Reading
Send your lover a digital Valentine with Lovestagram
Valentine’s Day is less than a week away, and if you’re looking for a cute and Earth-saving way to show your special someone how much you care, we’ve got you covered*. Kaitlyn Trigger, girlfriend of Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, created Lovestagram, a simple Valentine creator that uses your Instagram photos.
Trigger built the app as a Valentine’s present to Krieger and has opened it up for everyone to use. She taught herself how to code … Continue Reading
Google likely to launch Dropbox-like cloud storage service soon
Search king Google is close to launching its own cloud storage service similar to Dropbox or Amazon CloudDrive, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
If the report holds true, Google will be entering an extremely crowded market with a product simply called Drive. (No relation to the awesome Ryan Gosling movie.) On top of Dropbox and Amazon, th market consists of strong players like Microsoft SkyDrive, Box, SugerSync, and many others.
Drive’s … Continue Reading
Alibaba suspends public trading to buy back its stock from Yahoo
Alibaba has suspended public trading of its shares in Hong Kong as it prepares to buy back the 40 percent stake held by Yahoo.
The transaction is said to be worth between $10 billion and $11.5 billion.
In a filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange, Alibaba representatives said the company would be releasing a statement today that would be “potentially price sensitive.”
Late last year, Alibaba began rounding up the financing to buy back … Continue Reading
Bankrupt Kodak will stop producing cameras in 2012
Kodak, the beleaguered company that invented the handheld camera, is slashing its product lines in an attempt to survive a rapidly changing consumer electronics landscape.
The company began preparing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy at the very beginning of 2012; the filing was complete on January 18.
The iconic company will ease production of its cameras, including digital and pocket video cameras, as well as its digital picture frames, before the summer of 2012 is over. … Continue Reading
