Computers

Yahoo's board is meeting Sunday evening to decide whether to buy Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash, Kara Swisher and Peter Kafka reported last night. So that means there are only a few hours left for Facebook to submit a compelling counter-offer. Anecdotally, young people are deciding that Facebook is no longer cool and are decamping for Instagram and Tumblr. Facebook already owns Instagram. So now the question is whether it also wants to own Tumblr. The man who broke the original Yahoo-might-buy-Tumblr story (along with Ms. Swisher), Peter Kafka, told us this morning that thinks the chatter that Facebook will swoop in with a massive wad of cash at the last moment is overblown. Facebook has had plenty of opportunity to buy Tumblr, Mr. Kafka suggests. If Facebook actually wanted Tumblr, in other words, Facebook would have already bought Tumblr. So that leaves Yahoo. According to Ms. Swisher and Mr. Kafka, the Yahoo-Tumblr deal is already fully baked, with Tumblr founder David Karp getting a four-year deal to stay on as Tumblr boss and grow the site independently from Yahoo. This may mean that Yahoo is not planning to aggressively "monetize" Tumblr after the deal, and that Yahoo will therefore not have to deal immediately with Tumblr's reported porn problem. The $1.1 billion purchase price, meanwhile, will vaporize more than a third of Yahoo's cash balance, which will presumably leave some at the company wondering whether Yahoo should have spent so much money buying back its stock over the last couple of quarters. In any event, we'll know in a few more hours whether Facebook really wants Tumblr or whether it's going, going, gone to Marissa Mayer and Yahoo... Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

Google is teaming up with NASA to create a lab dedicated to the study of artificial intelligence. To accomplish this task, the team has purchased a quantum computer from D-Wave Systems and will be up and running in Q3 this year. The Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, as the entity is called, will focus on machine learning, which is the way computers take note of patterns of information to improve their outputs. Comments

It started innocently enough. “Let’s get together and jam” lead to a rehearsal song list, and  the possibility of starting a band. I had about a week to organize and prepare for a mostly full band rehearsal. We don’t have a singer yet, so that duty, sadly, has fallen on me until we get someone. As noted on this site before, I’m a guitar player. By nature, I’m a very organized an prepared individual, and I wanted to get everyone prepared for the songs ahead of time. After I sent out links to YouTube clips of the songs to the other members, it was time to get to work. Here are the apps and devices I used that made my life a lot easier during this process. Practice, practice, practice One of the nice things about being the person everyone points to and says, “pick some songs” is, well, the songs I picked I already pretty much knew. However, there’s a huge difference between kinda knowing the song, and knowing it enough for a rehearsal. The first thing I did was create an iTunes playlist with the tunes. When I was driving around, I played nothing but those songs to get them stuck in my head. When it came to actually putting my fingers to the fretboard, I used AmpliTube on my iPad for 90 percent of my practice — the other 10 percent were with my live rig to get the sounds right. One nice thing with AmpliTube is it will load the songs from my Music.app playlists and let me play along to them, as well as speed up and slow down parts. If there was a part I found particularly tricky to learn, I used Riffstation on OS X to loop that segment while I used the AmpliTube Orange amps to play along. For the first set of rehearsals, I also didn’t worry too much about getting the solos note-for-note, and instead focused on catching the feeling of the solo. I used my Fender Squire USB guitar for most of my practicing since it easily plugs into my iPad and Mac. For what I was doing, I didn’t really care about my overall guitar sound; I just wanted to balance the volumes so I could hear both the song and my guitar equally. Then, I practiced. A lot. Charting I was asked by the bass player to chart the songs for a cheat sheet during rehearsal. While there are plenty of programs that will let you chart songs, I found them to be too advanced for my needs. What I really just needed to do was have the lyrics and then put the chord changes over it. So, I used Pages ($19.99). I went to a lyric website, cut and pasted the lyrics into Pages, and then added the chords and beat markers over the lyrics. This worked fantastically. In addition to giving the bass player a cheat cheat, I also had something I could reference during rehearsals. If I couldn’t remember how the chorus went, I had my own little cheat sheet. I printed out charts for her and the drummer, and had my iPad ready for my reference. Running the rehearsal Generally, I frown upon singers who use cheat sheets live, but in practice, obviously they are fine. Plus, I’m just filling in until we get a real singer (hopefully soon, I really can’t sing). I needed cheat sheets where I could see them while standing up, and I didn’t have a music stand that went that high. Plus, I wanted them right in my face. For my cheat sheets, I used the iKlip 2 ($39.99) from IK Multimedia. It’s a mic stand holder for your iPad 2, 3 or 4 in a fairly secure fashion. Note: it slides into the holder, so I’d be a cautious using it during gigs. Not because it’ll fall out, but it’d be easy for someone to just snag the iPad during breaks. So, if you use it, make sure you take the iPad off when you walk off stage. I was able to position my iPad with the iKlip so I could read the lyrics while warbling. A minor pet peeve is that I can’t get the iKlip to hold my iPad in the portrait position on the boom portion of the stand. Instead, I had to clip it on the main stand just under the boom. If a note about ho

Last year, Facebook marked a new milestone in its nine-year history. It lost users. While the network did pass the 1 billion monthly active user threshold globally in 2012, Facebook also lost 1.4 million U.S. monthly active users late last year, a small but symbolic decline. Nor was it the only network experiencing a slowdown. After years of double-digit expansion, social media use in the U.S. leveled off markedly last year. American social media users grew an estimated 6.8% in 2012, a far cry from 30 percent growth rates just a few years ago. With so many of the country’s 221 million netizens already logging into social networks, growth is forecast to slow to a trickle in the years ahead. Overseas, however, the social media landscape is entirely different. In India, social media users grew by an estimated 51.7% in 2012, no small change in a country of 1.25 billion people. Indonesia followed closely behind with a 51.6% growth rate. China’s social media user base expanded 19.9%. Latin America grew at a 16.3% clip, while Russia grew by 11.1%. To be sure, an ever-growing number of these international users are turning to Facebook. In fact, Facebook is now estimated to be the most popular social network in all but 10 countries. But there are numerous and notable holdouts. Around the world, localized, country-specific social networks are expanding, commanding the attention of billions of users in some of the planet’s fastest-growing economies. For global companies willing to dive in, the rewards are sizeable. But so are the risks. International Social Media Giants Perhaps nowhere are stakes higher than in China, where the blocking of Facebook and Twitter has given rise to wildly popular homegrown alternatives. By some estimates, nearly half of the country’s population of 1.3 billion is online and active socially. The Chinese social media landscape, however, is far from settled. The most popular networks are complex hybrids, combining the functionality of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and instant messaging in one platform. Dozens of sites vie for supremacy, and millions of “zombie accounts” make it difficult to pinpoint where users are most active. The aging Goliath of Chinese social media is QQ, an instant messaging platform started in 1999 that claims some 800 million monthly active users. Nowadays, users treat QQ as a jumping off point to access a range of popular networking sites controlled by its parent company, Tencent Holdings. Arguably the most important of these is WeChat, a mobile platform similar to WhatsApp that mashes up instant messaging and video calls with photo sharing and status updates. Launched in January 2011, WeChat (known as Weixin in China) already counts 190 million monthly active users (nearly as many as Twitter) and is growing at an astounding clip of 25 million users per month. Brands like Starbucks, Nike, and Durex are just beginning to test the waters. Another Tencent offering is microblogging platform Tencent Weibo. A fusion of Twitter and Facebook, it counts 277 million monthly active users, with a strong base in smaller cities and less economically developed areas. As on Twitter, messages on the network and other weibos like are limited to 140 characters. But, since each Chinese character represents an entire word or phrase, users have significantly more room for expression than afforded by a standard Tweet. Outside of the Tencent universe, the key fixture on the Chinese social media landscape is Sina Weibo, a similar microblogging service with 287 million monthly active users. Popular in larger cities and among educated users, Sina Weibo has drawn significant attention from international businesses, with 25% of Fortune 500 companies already onboard. It’s China’s original weibo and remains perhaps the country’s most important social network overall. The presence of so many competing networks, not to mention regulatory and censorship

Disney will use 3D-printing technology to put your face on a figure of a Star Wars Stormtrooper.

Dell continues to do its job providing its clientele world-class computers and other consumer electronic devices. Likewise they plan to launch their two new ultrabooks under its business-friendly line this summer according to the leaked roadmap of the company’s preparation. The ultrabooks which will be offered will have an attractive 12.5 inch display and branded as part of the Dell Latitude E700 series. Their label would be Dell Latitude E7240 and Dell Latitude E7440.The first model i.e. Dell Latitude E7240 has got a 1366x 768 pixel display or a 1920 x 1080 pixel touch screen measuring 12.2? x 8.3? x 0.79? and weighs about 2.9 pounds including a 3-cell battery. Dell will offer the Latitude E7240 with an option of Intel Core i3, Core i5, or Core i7 chips — all of which will be “Haswell chips” from Intel. The notebook will consist of 4GB of RAM and a choice of 128GB or 256GB of solid state storage.Business-oriented features include Intel vPro security and mobile broadband options. The battery is also replaceable; Dell will offer 3 or 4 cell battery options.The second model Dell Latitude E7440 is a bit on the thicker and heavier side screening a large display. The notebook has a 14 inch display which will be available with an option of 1366 x 768 pixel or 1920 x 1080 pixel panels. Touchscreen is also optional. Similar to the first model it will be available from core i3 through i7 processors and comes with 4GB of RAM and 500GB of Hard disk space. The notebook measures 13.3? x 9.1? x 0.83? and weighs about 3.5 pounds with a 3 cell battery with an optional 4-cell battery. It has the same business-friendly features as the smaller model, including a removable battery and optional mobile broadband.Both laptop models are expected to come this summer in June.Source: Tech2.hu | News Archive

According to a blizzard of anonymous news reports, Marissa Mayer is working feverishly to land the biggest fish of her career as CEO of Yahoo: namely, the $1-billion-plus acquisition of New York-based Tumblr, the ultra-hip blog network — the two are reportedly involved in discussions that could come to fruition as early as Sunday. Although Tumblr fans seem horrified by the idea, this one makes a substantial amount of sense for both sides. Of course, as Om and others have already mentioned, there’s no guarantee this deal will actually be consummated: it could fall apart on valuation, as so many deals do — or Facebook could swoop in with a much higher offer and snatch Tumblr out of Yahoo’s clutches, the same way it did when it stole Instagram away from Twitter last year for close to $1 billion. It makes Yahoo look desperate — because it is Even if the deal does get done, one of the risks for Mayer and Yahoo is that the company could look desperate by paying more than $1 billion for a site that had revenues of less than $15 million last year (although CEO David Karp has said that figure should hit $100 million this year). That’s an almost bubble-like multiple for a company, and there will likely be plenty of criticism from investors who believe that $1 billion could be better spent elsewhere — in other words, on businesses that would make Yahoo a better return. But the painful fact is that Yahoo doesn’t just look desperate — in many ways it is desperate. Mayer has made some changes since she took over the ailing former web portal, including the acquisition of Summly and a number of other mobile-focused startups and services, but the company still needs to make some aggressive moves if it is going to jump-start any growth at all. And since Yahoo has about $4 billion in cash on hand, it can arguably afford to make a big bet. Yahoo buying Tumblr makes sense. Tumblr is only big, cool, newish social platform that Yahoo can afford.— Henry Blodget (@hblodget) May 17, 2013 For Yahoo, the addition of Tumblr would do a number of things: because of the size and profile of the deal, it would make a major statement about Mayer’s intention to do whatever it takes to revitalize the company, and it would also send a signal to Facebook and Google — and even Apple — that Yahoo is a potential force to be reckoned with when it comes to potential acquisitions. Is doing that worth $1 billion? That’s for Yahoo’s investors and board of directors to decide. Just as important, it would inject some much-needed life and energy into the somewhat stale lineup of content that the company currently relies on, which caters more to the over-50 set than it does to anyone in the much-desired 18 to 25 demographic. More than any other network, Tumblr is the platform of choice for media-obsessed teens and 20-somethings, who spend massive amounts of time sharing photos and videos and animated GIFs on the site — an engine of potential value that Yahoo desperately needs. Tumblr gets a massive exit This doesn’t come without its own risks, of course: As a number of observers have noted, Tumblr’s content contains a large quantity of not only mature or arguably offensive content but outright pornography, which many argue is the source of its massive traffic numbers. How Yahoo (or Facebook for that matter) would deal with this kind of content remains to be seen. 3 q's for Yahoo: 1) Can you convert Tumblr users to Yahoo products? 2) Can you monetize Tumblr PVs? 3) What to do w/ all that Tumblr porn?— Mark Zohar (@markzohar) May 18, 2013 For Tumblr, meanwhile, being acquired would solve a number of problems — the main one being that the company has gone well beyond the “we’re a startup so we don’t really have to make money” stage, and is facing increasing pressure from the investors who have given CEO David Karp more than $125 mil

I'm in Philly for the weekend, determined to prove I can have a great time for less than $100. So far, I'm having a blast and I've still got 80 bucks to play around with. One of my biggest concerns in planning this trip was figuring out how to get around in the cheapest way possible. Luckily, Philly is very pedestrian-friendly, so I've been getting away with walking just about everywhere. But last night, I really needed a ride. It was after midnight, train service had stopped, and I didn't want to fool with buses without knowing which line to take or how to get back to my host's apartment. It didn't help that everyone at the downtown bar where I was hanging out gave me those big "Oh, girl, NO!" eyes when I told them I was thinking about legging it home. So I decided to take a gamble on a free ride-share service called SideCar I heard about. It's supposed to be the anti-taxi. Launched in San Francisco less than a year ago, the SideCar app hooks up willing drivers with people who need a cheap ride, kind of like Uber. But the difference is that SideCar lets ordinary car owners sign up to drive passengers—whether or not they're licensed. It's an awesome concept, but there's just one problem –– city governments hate them. SideCar has expaned to eight cities, and Philly was its first location on the East Coast. They've been battling the city's Parking Authority (PPA) ever since launching earlier this year. The PPA, which regulates taxis, thinks they're a rogue service passing themselves off as a cheap cab service. In fact, after a "sting" operation in February, the PPA impounded three vehicles driven by SideCar drivers and shut the whole operation down. Or so they thought. SideCar is still going strong in Philly, operating its service for free to riders until it convinces the PPA that it's legal. It's faced similar kick back elsewhere, but the company has been sending fleets of drivers into cities like Philly, Boston and even New York anyway, offering free rides on Friday and Saturday nights from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m.. Apart from the legal troubles, my guess is that by offering free rides, SideCar is hoping to get enough people hooked on the service to kick up public support and help them pass muster with local governments. Is it safe? SideCar maintains that they're simply a "technology-based platform that enables peer-to-peer ridesharing." The drivers own their cars and SideCar vets them individually, running "more checks on our drivers than taxi or limo services," it says, "Plus, all matched rides are recorded and GPS tracked for safety." This all brings us back to last night, when at 12:30 a.m. I logged into the SideCar app and punched in my location. A driver was nearby, luckily, and once he confirmed his availability, I sat back and waited. Within 10 minutes, I got a phone call from the cordial driver, who even offered to drive a couple of blocks further to pick me up when we realized I'd given him the wrong address. I didn't have to wonder where he was or when he'd arrive. I could watch his car inch along via the SideCar app's GPS tracker, which also gave me his ETA. From there, it was like hitching a ride with a friend. I hopped in, he drove along to my destination, and we shot the breeze for the 15-minute drive. I don't want to get him in trouble, so I won't describe his car, but it felt brand new, very clean, and didn't have a meter. According to my driver, SideCar has indeed been paying its drivers –– though, according to its website, they don't consider drivers "employees" –– an hourly wage to pick up passengers until they can start officially charging for rides. My driver, who has worked for SideCar about two months, said he gives about 25 to 30 rides per night on the weekend, and he works at a bakery during the day to earn extra cash. When he dropped me off, I offered to tip him and he turned me down. I felt that familiar pang of doubt whenever someone offers something f

Two accounts associated with the Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, have been seized by US authorities for violations of federal law as an unlicensed money transmitter. What effect the two seizures will have on the Bitcoin market is still uncertain at this point. Treasury's anti-money laundering unit, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), in March issued guidance that dubbed digital currency exchanges money transmitters, a finding that obliged such businesses to register with FinCEN and obtain any mandated state licenses. Comments

Sony has announced the sixth installment of the Gran Turismo franchise will be available by this holiday season for the PS3. Gran Turismo 6 will have 33 tracks with 71 layouts with 1200 cars, all fully customizable. Comments