Medical robotics come to Kaiser (photos)

OAKLAND, Calif.--At Kaiser Permanente's Garfield Center for Innovation, the health care giant is testing not just robotics, but new, more efficient hospital room designs.

Kaiser held a demonstration day at the center Thursday for physicians and health care professionals to check out, and give feedback on, future technologies being evaluated for rollout.



Read more: http://news.cnet.com/2300-11386_3-10006378.html?tag=cnetRiver#ixzz1BlyIhhlM

Read More

U.K. astronomers discover hottest planet ever found

A team of astronomers in Britain believe they have discovered the hottest planet ever found.

While Venus, right here in our own solar system, was once the hottest known planet, astronomers in the past 20 years have expanded their search outside of the Milky Way.

As a result, planets have been identified that far exceed the 460 degrees Celsius temperature of Venus -- some with scorching temperatures approaching 1,000 C.

But astronomers from England have discovered what is now believed to be by far the hottest plan ever found.

Simply called WASP-33b, the planet is located in the far-off Andromeda constellation, 378 light years from Earth, and boasts a scorching temperature of 3,148 C.

The temperature readings were made using the William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Morocco.

Astronomer Alexis Smith, of Keele University in Staffordshire, U.K., led the study

"Given the nature of its host star and its very short orbital period, WASP-33b has the largest equilibrium temperature of any known exoplanet," said Smith's report.

That temperature means WASP-33b -- which is about 1.4 times the size of Jupiter -- is actually hotter than some stars.

The planet is considered a "hot jupiter" because it orbits close to its star, completing a full rotation every 29.28 hours.

By comparison, it takes planet Earth 365 days to complete a full orbit around the sun. The fast rotation effectively means WASP-33b experiences the equivalent of an Earthly year in 1.2 days.

It is also much closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. While Earth is 93 million miles from the sun, WASP-33b is only 1.86 million miles from the star it orbits.

Though that is not the closest known orbital distance between a star and a planet, WASP-33b's star is among the hottest to host a planet.

The star that WASP-33b orbits has an estimated temperature of about 7,160 C. The sun, by comparison, is about 5,600 C.

Read More

Top-rated reviews of the week (photos)

Here's our weekly roundup of the new products CNET reviewers liked best.

Canon EOS 60D (body only)

Editors' rating: 4 out of 5

The good: Very fast; articulated display; excellent video quality and options.

The bad: Some annoying interface conventions.

The bottom line: The Canon EOS 60D is in many ways a great camera: fast, feature-packed, and with excellent photo and video quality. Some annoying aspects of its control layout dim its shine a little, however, so try before you buy.



Read more: http://news.cnet.com/2300-1041_3-10006381.html?tag=topStories3#ixzz1BlwiAZUz

Read More

Facebook raises $1.5 billion

Confirming reports that have swirled for weeks, Facebook said Friday that it has raised $1.5 billion from Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies. The investment gives the company a valuation of approximately $50 billion.

The company also confirmed that it plans to begin filing public financial reports by April 2012 -- a move likely to coincide with an IPO.

243Email Print CommentRegulatory rules are forcing Facebook's hand. When companies have more than 499 shareholders, they're required to publicly disclose their financial results and file quarterly reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Facebook said it expects to pass the 500 shareholder mark sometime this year.

The Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) deal has two parts. The first is a $500 million investment from Goldman Sachs directly, several of the funds it manages, and Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investment group that already owned a chunk of Facebook.

The second is a $1 billion investment from Goldman Sachs' wealthy individual clients.

On Monday, Goldman Sachs moved to limit that opportunity to only its non-U.S. clients, a decision it attributed to the "intense media attention" the deal has attracted since it came to light earlier this month. Keeping American investors out of the pool limits the scrutiny U.S. regulators can apply to the deal.

Facebook took pains to make clear that it was approached about the investment deal -- not the other way around.

"DST and Goldman Sachs approached Facebook to express their interest in making an investment, and Facebook decided it was an attractive opportunity to bolster its cash reserves and increase its financial flexibility with limited dilution to existing shareholder," the company said in a press release.

It also didn't take as much cash as it could have.

"Facebook had the option to accept between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the Goldman Sachs overseas offering," the company said. "While the offering was oversubscribed, Facebook made a business decision to limit the offering to $1 billion."

Facebook now has over 500 million users, and according to a recent Hitwise study, surpassed Google as the most visited site in 2010.


0:00 /6:31Does Facebook hurt real friendships?
A $50 billion valuation is a big step up for Facebook, which had a $15 billion valuation three years ago, when Microsoft paid $240 million for a 1.6% ownership stake.

But it could prove tricky to sustain once the company goes public and has its shares traded more broadly. At $50 billion, Facebook would be worth more than media and e-commerce companies like News Corp., CBS, Yahoo and eBay.

Read More

Power cord lights up as electricity flows

Think about the "vampire electronics" in your kitchen -- all of those blenders, coffee pots, toasters and toaster ovens that are sucking down power simply because they're plugged into an outlet.

These electronics gobble an estimated 5% to 10% of all the electricity used in U.S. homes, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

But what if you could see your money going down the drain? Would visualizing power use help you save energy?

That's one possible effect of a new smartphone charger from Dexim.

When electricity is flowing down the charger's cord, blue lights travel down the cord, too, letting users see the energy that's needed to charge their smartphones. The lights zip down the cord more quickly when the phone is almost out of juice, since more electricity is needed.

Patrick Tarpey, a spokesman for the company, said this "electro-luminescent wire" is intended as a visual reminder for phone users so that they can see from across the room whether their phone is almost charged.

They'll know it's almost ready when the lights slow down, he said. That occurs when the phone is 65% charged. The charger shuts down completely and the light goes off when the charge is complete, he said.

"There's not really anything that's much like it out on the market," Tarpey said.

The charger, which only works with Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPod, is expected to be available for $40 in February. It will be sold on Amazon.com and on Dexim's website, Tarpey said.

Tarpey said the Dexim charger isn't intended to guilt consumers into using less energy. It's just meant as a neat visual indicator of power use. It could have that guilt effect, however.

BJ Fogg, director of the Persuasive Tech Lab at Stanford University, wrote in an e-mail to CNN that the charger "will influence some people (not all people) to recharge their phones differently."

"It's a cool idea," he said.

Academic researchers have been looking at the idea of visualizing power and cutting down "vampire" electricity usage for some time.

For example, Swedish nonprofit research group Interactive Institute has developed a product it calls the Power-Aware Cord -- a surge protector that lights up when it's pulling power from the wall and gets brighter as more power is used. (TIME named this one of the best inventions of 2010.)

The group outlines its motivations in a 2005 academic paper (PDF):

"Electricity is both invisible and intangible. We can see, feel, hear and even smell its effects, but we can not really perceive it," the paper says. "As the effects of electricity (light, heat and so on) often are taken for granted in our domestic homes today, electricity becomes even more invisible.

"In order to support increased awareness in the area of consumer energy consumption, on a large scale in society as well as on the mundane level of the home, it is crucial that people learn about different amounts of energy used by the electric products in their everyday life.

"If this awareness is increased, people might gain control over their own local relationship to this invisible global resource. Ultimately this will lead them to question their energy behaviors."

In the 2006 post "Glowing Guilt," the tech blog Gizmodo put this idea into simpler terms:

Read More

Agua Caliente Solar gets $967 million loan guarantee

Energy Department said on Thursday it awarded a $967 million loan guarantee to an NRG Energy subsidiary to help pay for the world's biggest solar power plant using photovoltaic panels.

The loan guarantee will support the construction of the 290-megawatt Agua Caliente Solar generating facility in Yuma County, Ariz., that will use thin solar panels.

Energy Department said on Thursday it awarded a $967 million loan guarantee to an NRG Energy subsidiary to help pay for the world's biggest solar power plant using photovoltaic panels.

The loan guarantee will support the construction of the 290-megawatt Agua Caliente Solar generating facility in Yuma County, Ariz., that will use thin solar panels.

Read More

New York City invests in urban green tech

The NYC Urban Innovation Center is a partnership between the City, universities, and businesses that aims to identify effective green building technologies. A location has not yet been chosen, but Columbia University, the City University of New York, and Polytechnic Institute of New York University will be involved.

It will be funded by $250,000 from the New York City Economic Development Corp and the three universities will provide money in kind. The group is also seeking funding through memberships.

IBM will be involved in the research by providing computing technology to analyze building performance and evaluate different building products, said IBM energy and environment executive ...

Read More

Google CEO surprise: Larry Page replacing Eric Schmidt

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, brought in a decade ago to provide suit-and-tie management to the search giant, had a Twitter-size explanation for stepping aside Thursday to make way for the return of co-founder Larry Page.
"Day-to-day adult supervision no longer needed!" Schmidt said on his Twitter feed as word of Google's unexpected shake-up spread.

The announcement that the 37-year-old Page, who with Sergey Brin established Google in 1998, will return to run day-to-day operations as CEO upstaged Google's own good-news fourth-quarter earnings report.

The shake-up capped what is shaping up as one of the most tumultuous weeks in Silicon Valley history. Just three days earlier, Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs announced he was taking an unspecified medical leave, raising questions about the company's future without its iconic leader in charge of operations.

Read More

Verizon challenges FCC Net neutrality rules

We believe this assertion of authority goes well beyond any authority provided by Congress, and creates uncertainty for the communications industry, innovators, investors and consumers," Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel Michael E. Glover said in a written statement

43Email Print On December 21, the FCC's commissioners voted three-to-two to adopt so-called "Net neutrality" rules, which would give the agency regulatory power over Internet service providers. The agency's goal is to prevent Internet providers from blocking or "unreasonably discriminating" against Web content, services or applications.

But the FCC's legal grounds for expanding its authority is shaky, and industry observers predicted that Internet providers would take the issue to court.

"Undoubtedly, there's going to be litigation against it," Rebecca Tushnet, a professor at Georgetown University who specializes in digital media, said at the time.

Enter Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500). The company was already in the thick of the Net neutrality fight after striking a backroom deal with Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) last year that it hoped would head off new FCC rules. It didn't.

The FCC has been through the legal wringer several times in its attempts to police Internet providers.

In 2007, Comcast -- the nation's largest Internet provider -- blocked its subscribers from using peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. The FCC tried to force Comcast to stop, and Comcast fought back with a lawsuit challenging the FCC's authority in the matter. In April 2010, a U.S. court of appeals ruled in Comcast's favor.

So the FCC went back to the drawing board, and adopted a new set of rules last month, based on a fresh legal theory about the scope of its powers.

Verizon isn't impressed.

"Today's filing is the result of a careful review of the FCC's order," Glover said. "We are deeply concerned by the FCC's assertion of broad authority for sweeping new regulation of broadband networks and the Internet itself."

Net neutrality advocates were quick to strike back.

Jay Schwartzman, policy director for the nonprofit advocacy group Media Access Project, accused Verizon of venue-shopping for a friendly court. Verizon, based in New York, filed its appeal in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

Read More

Nokia ditches plans for X7 smartphone on AT&T

The X7 smartphone hasn't been officially announced yet, but details of the device have been leaked online.

The X7, which is still expected to launch outside the U.S. on other carriers, is a touch-screen smartphone designed for mobile gaming that is expected to sport the Symbian 3 software. It's expected to sport an 8-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash on the back of the device and come with four external speakers. Nokia was expected to announce the new phone with AT&T next month in conjunction with the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The X7 would have marked the first smartphone that Nokia launched exclusively on a U.S. carrier since the company's new CEO Stephen Elop took over in September. Elop, a veteran of Microsoft, replaced Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, who had spent 30 years with Nokia.

An AT&T representative declined to comment on the situation. And Nokia issued this statement via a spokesman:

"We do not comment on market rumor and speculation, or ongoing discussions with our operator partners about what plans we may have together in this market. That said, it is well publicized that we are working hard to regain leadership in the U.S. market and we are in active discussions with our operator partners on that strategy. We look forward to bringing meaningful solutions to market together with our operator partners and when we have something to announce, we will do so."

It's not clear why Nokia decided to cancel the U.S. launch of the new smartphone. Nokia has struggled to gain market share in the U.S. market, especially in the fast growing smartphone market. And it has steadily been losing worldwide market share to competitors such as Apple, Research In Motion, and now a slew of competitors selling phones running the Google Android operating system.

Nokia still had about 32.7 percent of the worldwide smartphone market in the third quarter of 2010, according to market research firm IDC, but this is down from 38.3 percent a year ago. Meanwhile, competitors, such as Apple, Samsung and HTC have all gained market share worldwide.

In the U.S., Nokia doesn't even rank in the top five for smartphone makers. For years, the company, which is based in Finland, has talked about the need to break into the U.S. market. One of its biggest problems is finding a U.S. carrier to help subsidize the cost of its devices. Nokia launched the N8 in 2009, but it did not launch the phone with a carrier partner. Instead, consumers can buy the phone at the full retail price of $469. The fact that is has lacked a key carrier partner in the U.S. has hampered sales.

This is why a deal with a U.S. carrier is crucial to Nokia's success. And since Nokia only makes phones for GSM networks, AT&T is the biggest potential partner in the U.S. market. So why would Nokia cancel the sale of the X7 on AT&T?

The Wall Street Journal's source claims that Nokia canceled the launch of the new smartphone because it didn't feel that AT&T would provide enough of a subsidy to consumers buying the device.

U.S. consumers have come to rely on massive carrier subsidies to help defray the cost of owning sophisticated smartphones. Consumers generally expect to pay between $150 and $200 for the latest and greatest smartphones in exchange for signing a two-year contract with the carrier. But the true retail value of these phones is much more than the $200 most people are willing to pay.

For example, AT&T sells the 16GB iPhone 4 for $199 with a two-year contract. And it sells the phone for $599 without the contract. That's a subsidy of $400 per device.

But CNET's source implied that there could be another reason Nokia doesn't want to launch this particular phone in the U.S.--a lack of confidence in its operating system. The company has already announced plans to move toward the MeeGo operating system on future smartphones.

The Symbian 3 software is an update to an operating system that has been a part of Nokia's cell phone family for years. Unlike its competitors, Nokia has resisted embracing other mobile operating systems, such as the fast growing Android.

Instead, the company announced last summer a strategy to use a completely different operating system called MeeGo for advanced smartphones and other devices. MeeGo was born in 2010 from the combination of two other Linux efforts: Nokia's Maemo effort and Intel's Moblin. The MeeGo OS is expected to power a range of devices, including pocketable mobile computers, Netbooks, tablets, connected TVs, and in-vehicle infotainment systems.

But development of the software has been delayed. Initially, Nokia hinted that the software would be available in 2010. But in October, Elop suggested on an earnings call that MeeGo wouldn't be available until 2011.

While Nokia has said it will also keep developing for and including Symbian on certain devices, the operating system does appear to be fading from importance. Even other companies using the Symbian OS seem to phasing it out of new products in lieu of Android.

Sony Ericsson is the only major cell phone maker using Symbian other than Nokia. And like its cell phone competitors, such as Motorola, HTC, LG, and Samsung, Sony Ericsson is starting to use Android on its newest smartphones. In fact, the company's Xperia X10 runs Android, and it's expected the new Sony Ericsson PlayStation phone will also run Android.

What does all this mean for Nokia and its decision to not launch the Symbian-based X7 in the U.S. on AT&T? It's very likely the company is reassessing its U.S. smartphone strategy. Perhaps the company is reevaluating whether it should spend the effort and money to market a product that is using a somewhat outdated platform.

Elop has only been at Nokia's helm a few short months, and he has yet to detail his plans for the U.S. market. The Wall Street Journal suggests Nokia might divulge more of its U.S. smartphone strategy on its upcoming quarterly conference call scheduled for January 27. So stay tuned for more on this story as Nokia makes its plans public.



Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20028968-266.html#ixzz1BZPSyUvk

Read More

IPad hackers face criminal charges

have filed charges against two people accused of hacking AT&T's website and harvesting the e-mail addresses of 120,000 iPad owners.

Andrew Auernheimer, 25, of Fayetteville, Ark., and Daniel Spitler, 26, of San Francisco were taken into custody Tuesday morning by the FBI. Both men were charged with an alleged conspiracy to hack AT&T's (T, Fortune 500) servers and for possession of personal information obtained from the servers.

43Email Print Auernheimer was arrested in Fayetteville while appearing in Arkansas state court on unrelated drug charges. Spitler surrendered to FBI agents in Newark, N.J., where the case is being pursued.

The charges stemmed from an exploit that took place seven months ago. In June, about one month after the iPad 3G went on sale, AT&T announced that it had fixed a security hole that inadvertently exposed the e-mail addresses of thousands of iPad 3G owners.

The company's announcement came shortly after tech blog Valleywag posted an expose of the breach. In the Valleywag article, hacker group Goatse Security said it had exploited a vulnerability on AT&T's website to harvest the e-mail addresses iPad buyers provided to activate their devices.

The list of affected users was star-studded, including major political figures, military officials, media executives and top politicians. The e-mail addresses the hackers grabbed included those of of former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The attack: The federal complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, cast the intrusion as a "brute force" attack on AT&T's servers perpetrated "for the express purpose of causing monetary and reputational damage to AT&T."

But what the accused hackers actually did is fairly low-tech and exploited a hole that AT&T left wide open.

Apple is the new hacker bullseye
Auernheimer and Spitler discovered that plugging an iPad ICC-ID -- a unique identification number for each device -- into a publicly available script on AT&T's website would return the e-mail address associated with the ID. They created a script that randomly guessed at ID numbers. When it hit a correct one, it would retrieve the associated e-mail address.

That approach netted them a list of more than 120,000 e-mail addresses.

"This hack was very simple, but major in its significance," said Hemanshu Nigam, founder of cybersecurity consulting firm SSP Blue.


0:00 /2:37Public Wi-Fi: A gateway for hackers
Auernheimer and Spitler didn't try to profit from their hack. They say their goal was simply to draw attention to the vulnerability.

A rep for Goatse Security, a loose hacker collective Auernheimer and Spitler participated in, said in an e-mail that the charges would not make the group reconsider any future actions.

"Goatse Security will continue to release its research in an ethical manner," the rep wrote. "[We] still holds the position that no criminal act was committed. Spitler and Auernheimer acted entirely within the law, and entirely for the interests of public security."

One day after the breach was came to light, Goatse posted a scathing entry on its blog accusing AT&T and Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) of not taking security seriously.

The iPad hack took "just over a single hour of labor total," they wrote.

More recently, they've expressed shock at the vehemence of the law enforcement crackdown against them.

"None of us made any money off of this disclosure. We did it in public interests," they wrote in a June blog post after the FBI began investigating.

What's next: Spitler appeared in court in New Jersey on Tuesday, where he was banned from using the Internet outside of work. Spitler is employed as a security guard at a Borders bookstore.

Spitler was required to surrender his passport, and he is permitted to travel only to California and New Jersey. He waived his right to a preliminary hearing, and he will appear in court again March 7.

Apple said it had no comment. An AT&T spokesman said in an written statement that the company "take[s] our customers' privacy very seriously and we cooperate with law enforcement whenever necessary to protect it."

Read More

1.78 million Facebook users may die in 2011

According to data from digital-legacy planning firm Entrustet, a big portion of these users will soon no longer be considered "active," by any reasonable measure.

The company compared Facebook usership data with average death rates from the Center for Disease Control, and discovered that this year, around 480,000 Facebook users may pass away in the U.S., and 1.78 million worldwide.

These figures are only likely to grow year to year, especially as Facebook expands pass the 600 million user mark.

So many profiles now fall out of the range of an "active" user. Beyond the deceased, there are endless duplicate accounts -- Entrustet found that 150% of 20- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. are on Facebook -- not exactly a plausible tally.

Fast Company: The Facebooks of China

What's more, a recent Gartner report estimated that in the coming years, roughly one in every ten of your friends on Facebook and other social networks will be nonhuman, meaning they'll be "social bots," automated profiles created by brands and organizations to engage consumers.

With profiles of the departed presumably being left untouched, with social bots soon to be plaguing the network, and with duplicate accounts running amok, how can Facebook ever provide an accurate "active" usership count?

For the deceased, Facebook has created a system of "memorializing" accounts, which adjusts a profile's privacy settings to be seen only by confirmed family and friends. Immediate family members may also request the removal of a loved one's account.

But the onus is on the deceased's relatives -- if the "memorializing" feature is not activated, Facebook will continue to assume the profile still represents an active user. The same assumption goes for duplicate accounts as well -- Facebook relies on users to merge accounts and report fake profiles.

To address this issue, Facebook has defined an "active" user as one who has logged in within the last 30 days. Thus, a month after a user passes away, that user is no longer considered "active," appropriately.

For organizations and businesses registered for the social network, Facebook distinguishes their accounts as "profiles" rather than "user pages," and does not count them as active users.

Fast Company: A graphic guide to Facebook portraits

But for duplicate and fake accounts, keeping them accountable is more difficult, as users might be willing to log in to multiple accounts.

Read More

Starbucks starts accepting mobile payments nationwide

Customers using the Starbucks Card Mobile app on their iPhone, iPod touch or BlackBerry will now be able to use those devices as tender.

The nationwide rollout marks the official launch of the Starbucks Card Mobile payment program, which has been piloted at Target stores and select San Francisco, Seattle and New York Starbucks locations.

Starbucks Card Mobile lets users add their Starbucks Cards, track rewards and reload cards as needed via PayPal or credit card. To pay with their phone, app users simply select "touch to pay" and hold up the barcode on their mobile device screen to the 2-D scanner at the register.

An Android application is also said to be in the works, but the company has yet to disclose a release date.

Starbucks is using its own custom-built technology to enable the 2-D mobile barcode scans. The coffee retailer opted for barcode scanning over near field communication technology -- which Google is exploring -- because of its limited availability.

The coffee retailer was reluctant to wait for a NFC ecosystem to develop when its customers have expressed interest in mobile payments now, according to Chuck Davidson, the category manager of innovation on the Starbucks Card team.

"Once there are more users, we will adapt," he says.

In testing, Starbucks assessed the mobile payment option by measuring application speed, transaction speed and total customer wait time, says Brady Brewer, vice president of Starbucks Card and brand loyalty. In all instances, Starbucks Card Mobile was the fastest way for customers to pay.

Starbucks is investing in mobile payments, an investment Davidson describes as modest in relation to expectations, because customers have requested the option and have shown a propensity to not only pay with Starbucks Cards -- one in five transactions are made using a Starbucks Card -- but frequently use their smartphones while waiting in line.

The company also believes that its customers carry their mobile phones more often than a wallet or purse, and sees Starbucks Card Mobile and the mobile payment program as an opportunity to reach these consumers and build stronger relationships.

Starbucks seems confident that its customers will appreciate the new, faster way to pay. Both Davidson and Brewer believe that adoption will spread as customers tell their friends about the new mobile payment option.

Read More

I know what you did online last summer ...

There was firsthand sharing -- whatever your friend revealed in person or over the phone (or on a postcard or something, I guess). There were newspapers and media outlets, should said person of interest be a big deal. And there was the grapevine, gossipy bits passed from person to person.

So, comparatively, there was little confusion about whether you were "supposed" to know a personal fact or tale.

Nowadays, thanks to the internet, we have the ability to pick up all sorts of details about people without active, firsthand telling. And no one's quite sure how to deal with that.

In a sense, we've set up a paradox: We want others to lap up our online presence, but we feel slightly skeeved out when they indicate that they do.

An example: You had a gaffe-filled date with the clarinet player in that subway jug band and wrote about it in hilarious detail on your Tumblr. A few days later, you're boozing with a friend and you start to tell him the tale.

You're thinking, "Shoot, this has got to be completely boring for him if he's already read it, but I'll sound like an egomaniac if I pause to ask, 'Wait, did you read this on my blog?' "

Your friend, who has indeed read this on your blog, is nodding enthusiastically whilst thinking, "Snooze, I already know the big-twist ending, but I can't cut in to say that because I'll sound like a creeper who stays up late every night hitting refresh on her homepage in the hopes she's posted something new."

Yeah. Awkward.

Admittedly, there are few hard and fast rules for revealing your knowledge of web-sourced intel.

At the extremes, you shouldn't tell your boss you read about his 1984 brush with larceny charges, and you can always talk to a close friend about something he said online. It's the in-between that's a murky morass -- the new bud who might be disturbed by your careful examination of his Twitter feed, the co-worker who may not realize you regularly read her relationship blog.

So. Do you confess or keep mum about personal stuff you read on the internet? Here are a few things to keep in mind as you make yours up. (Consider this your daily dose of overanalysis.)

People put things on Facebook and Twitter and their blogs and so on because they want you to see them.

Has the internet turned us all into vainglorious exhibitionists? It's a popular debate, one the 40+ crowd often answers in the affirmative. (Add this to the duh files: A study from TKTK revealed that narcissistic Facebook users spend more time on the site than less self-obsessed individuals)

So it really doesn't make much sense for modern denizens of the internet to feel shocked, creeped out or intruded upon when something they've posted publicly is later remarked upon -- because let's face it, eyeballs are exactly what they want. (Hence the crack-like appeal of real-time view counters.)

So go on, admit that you care enough to keep tabs on a friend. You can avoid later in-person awkwardness by communicating, promptly, on the same site as the original nugget: tweeting back, liking a Facebook status, leaving a comment on a blog post and so on.

The medium on which you spotted a personal tidbit affects whether you look like a stalker.

Anyone with a shred of self-awareness strives to come across as Not A Creep in interactions.

The stalker factor of mentioning something you read online ("I saw you were in Chicago recently!") depends on two variables: How well you know the person and how hard you worked to uncover said information.

Of course, the better you know someone, the less weird it is to bring up a sound bite from their blog.

As for effort involved:

If you saw the news on Twitter, you're very free to bring it up -- as long as you follow the user. Since Twitter gives all your followees equal billing, it doesn't seem creepy that you read a particular tweet.

But yes, you need to click follow, as just checking someone's public Twitter feed is creepy. This means you should have a Twitter account from which to follow people, even if you never plan to write anything yourself. If you're like Sleigh Bells, you can even garner 10,000+ followers without saying a damn thing.

Finding facts about someone on Facebook is slightly more intense. Yes, your newsfeed appears to be a stream of various and sundry FB friends, but it's actually the product of a complex algorithm that keeps track of whom you care about (sending the most-stalked folks straight to your home page).

So tread lightly. If you clicked through an acquaintance's 113 Costa Rican vacation photos, it might be perceived as fishy.

As for intel gathered from a personal website or blog, you probably had to actively type in a URL to get there, so yeah, mentioning that you really enjoyed that post from last Thursday will be weird if the blogger doesn't already know you're a follower.

Exception: If the writer's hoping the blog will go viral, flatter away. And pass along some self-promotion tips in the process.

Read More

Your mobile phone is becoming your wallet

For years, tech companies have demoed flashy prototypes of systems that let customers use their mobile phones in place of cash or credit cards. This year, those systems are heading out of the labs and into the real world.

10Email Print CommentThe result: A gold rush on the next e-commerce frontier.

"There's a lot of money at stake if it's done right," says Omar Green, director of strategic mobile initiatives at Intuit (INTU).

Starting Wednesday at Starbucks (SBUX, Fortune 500) stores throughout the U.S., the cashier can now scan your phone to deduct payment for your latté from the balance on your pre-loaded Starbucks card. Splitting the dinner bill with a friend? Download Bump, and you can beam over the cash from your PayPal account.

Those transactions are small sliver of a global mobile payments market analysts estimate at $69 billion in 2009, the latest year for which data is available, according to research firm Generator Research.

But by 2014, it expects mobile payments to reach $633 billion annually, with 490 million customers using their phones to move cash around.

The battlefield: The mobile payments space right now is a primordial soup. Both new and entrenched players are battling about fundamental aspects of how the market will work.

Issue number one: How many middlemen will there be?

PayPal created an empire for itself by making it easy for consumers to send money online to friends and merchants. Rivals like Google Checkout and Revolution Money never gained much traction.

The company is determined to extend its dominion. "We are already the leader in mobile payments," says Laura Chambers, senior director of PayPal Mobile. "We're going to continue to innovate, and we're getting very aggressive about mobile payments in the next two years."

PayPal, a unit of eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500), processed $700 million in mobile payments in 2010, according to Chambers. While that's a small fraction of the more than $70 billion a year PayPal handles, it's an increase of almost 500% increase over the prior year's $141 million mobile total. PayPal's platform is an easy one for developers to build on top of, and the company has been actively striking integration deals.

But PayPal sits in the commerce market's shaky middle ground. It doesn't control the financial network payments run through -- that's in the hands of companies like Visa (V, Fortune 500) and MasterCard (MA, Fortune 500) -- and it doesn't control the devices consumers use, or the data networks their transactions happen on.

The companies that do control those things are determined to get their piece of the action.

Three of the nation's biggest wireless carriers -- Verizon Wireless, AT&T (T, Fortune 500) and T-Mobile -- teamed up in November to create Isis, a new mobile commerce network the carriers hope to have up and running within 18 months. Working around the Visa/MasterCard duopoly, they picked Discover Financial Services (DFS, Fortune 500) as their financial services partner.

Banking giants Visa, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo have also been testing technologies that would transform a smartphone into a wallet.

What happens next: The looming game-changer in mobile payments is a technology called "Near Field Communication" (NFC), which swaps data over very short distances.

Put a NFC chip -- for example, one built into in your smartphone -- near an NFC reader and you don't need to awkwardly scan a bar code on your phone or send a text message to transfer money.

Key mobile players are on board. Just months ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that the next version of Google's Android would include tap-and-pay functionality and "could replace credit cards." Apple recently hired an NFC product-development veteran to lead its mobile commerce efforts.

"The lifecycle of a phone is fast: 18 months. If some of the big players -- like Apple, RIM, Google and Motorola -- all get going with NFC, it could be a standard within two years," says VeriFone CEO Doug Bergeron.

5 ways to pay with your phone right now
Developers are currently kludging together workarounds. Startups like Blaze Mobile and Bling Nation are pushing stickers with embedded NFC chips. Slap one on your phone, and you can use it to pay at participating merchants that have installed compatible NFC readers.

That's where VeriFone (PAY) comes in. The 30-year-old company makes point-of-sale systems that are used by millions of U.S. merchants. VeriFone is experimenting with the pay-by-phone market, striking partnerships with many of the field's pioneers, including PayPal and Bling Nation.

"We're going to play the role of Switzerland," Bergeron says. "The more the merrier in our view."

The scramble: In a year or two, NFC technology will be more widespread. Isis will be closer to launching. The battle lines will harden.

But for the moment, it's anyone's game.

"There's no cut and dry 'this is how to do it' approach," says Nick Holland, a Yankee Group senior analyst. "In the U.S., it's going to be the Wild West, since anyone can play in this space."

Quick-moving startups are charging in. Last week, investors poured $27.5 million into Square, a venture launched in 2009 by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey. Square lets mobile merchants accept credit-card payments on their phones.


0:00 /2:33Twitter founder plugs in payments
Venmo is another startup the tech world is buzzing about. It allows users to text each other money -- and just like PayPal did a decade ago, it's actively cultivating a developer ecosystem of apps built on top of its platform.

Venmo raised about $1 million in seed funding last year and is currently in beta testing, with plans to officially launch by mid-2011. (CNNMoney readers can sign up and try it out by following this link.)

"There's a lot of time for these smaller players to make some noise," Intuit's Green says of the scrum.

Holland predicts there will be much noise before clear winners emerge: "There's going to be quite a lot of fragmentation."

We're still in the early days, and it'll be years before smartphones are ready to completely wipe out cash and credit cards.

Read More

U.S. approves Comcast-NBC merger

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice on Tuesday approved -- with several conditions -- a merger of the country's largest cable operator, Comcast, and broadcasting company NBC Universal.

The FCC voted 4-1 in favor of the deal.

264Email Print "After a thorough review, we have adopted strong and fair merger conditions to ensure this transaction serves the public interest," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement.

The FCC said the Comcast-NBC Universal combination will be required to take steps to increase competition in the video marketplace. In addition, Comcast (CMCSA, Fortune 500) has committed to expanding local news coverage, expand programs for Spanish-speaking viewers and offer Internet access to schools and libraries.

The lone dissenter, Commissioner Michael Copps, expressed concern that the merger will limit communications choices and drive up costs to consumers.

"At the end of the day, the public interest requires more -- much more -- than it is receiving," Copps said in a statement.

Comcast also agreed to cease its management of the News Corp., (NWS, Fortune 500) NBC Universal, and Disney (DIS, Fortune 500)-owned video sharing site Hulu - though Comcast and NBC Universal can still maintain a financial stake in the site.

Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney said the move was essential so that, "Comcast cannot use NBCU's partial ownership of Hulu to diminish its competitive significance."

Varney added that she's confident in the settlement. "The conditions imposed will maintain an open and fair marketplace while at the same time allow the innovative aspects of the transaction to go forward," she said in a statement.

Read More

New technology can be the best medicine

We all know that smartphones, tablet computers and big-screen TVs are transforming the workplace and home. But the newest gadgets could also be a tonic for medicine and health care.
Cellphones have already proven to be a potent medical instrument in improving patient outcomes. Diabetes patients who are sent videos on their cellphones and actually view them are more likely to check blood sugar levels and comply with their care regimens, said U.S. Army Col. Ron Poropatich, who spoke at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week.

And wounded veterans sent text messages via cellphone have better follow-up treatment routines and feel more connected to caregivers, said Poropatich, deputy director of the U.S. Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center at Fort Detrick, Md.

Several military-run treatment trials are testing the promise of cellphones and online apps in patient care. Poropatich foresees patients tracking their blood pressure and other measurements using computers and devices, and those findings being monitored remotely by caregivers. Similarly, cellphones and online video can connect care-intensive patients who want to remain in their homes with off-site doctors and families.

Both of Poropatich's parents are alive and "I would like to be able to log onto my Blackberry and see how they are doing," he said.

Already, commercial firms are making their own evolutionary strides in telemedicine and personal health monitoring.

A look at some of the health and medical advances on display last week at CES:

•Homebound parents can stay connected online using VitalLink, a touch-screen based computer system that allows real-time video chatting using the phone line and webcam. The New Jersey-based company created online software that can be used with touchscreens, no mouse or keyboard required. "We're keeping it easy to use for the elderly who are computer-phobic and don't have the skills," says company president Rich Brown.

Photo galleries can also be uploaded for viewing. Chat and photo software features start at $4.99 monthly; touchscreens start at about $300 (vitallink.net).

In some assisted living and skilled nursing facilities, VitalLink is being tested with an additional activity monitor feature that lets caregivers and primary family members track the resident's involvement. "If they are not active, you can try and call or you can initiate a call from their end and see what's going on," Brown says.

•For elderly relatives who want to remain in their own homes, the My Guardian Angel service provides automated fall and wander detection, emergency readings and other behavioral and medical monitoring. Residents wear a wristwatch that tracks location, sends out fall alerts, records body temperature and can be upgraded to record pulse as well.

Additional health data from Bluetooth devices (blood pressure, glucose monitoring) can be captured by My Guardian, too. Base price for the system with watch, wireless Internet gateway, three wireless electrical plug-in routers and charging unit is under $1,000; $79.95 monthly service (atguardianangel.com).

The system is highly customizable. "My mom does not like to sleep with (the watch on) and she takes it off every night. If she doesn't have it on by 8 a.m. I get a text message to call my mom and tell to put it on," said CEO Ed Caracappa. "It's a very complete and fully functional system for those who wish to age in place."

•Data tracking can also help those who aim to get – and remain – physically fit. MapMyFitness records and tracks your workout progress using free iPhone apps and compatible devices such as hear monitors and GPS devices.

Runners and bicyclists can wirelessly input data from a heart rate sensor (made by Garmin, Wahoo, Adidas or Timex, for instance) to the iPhone or iPod Touch (also compatible with Blackberry and Android devices). " That gives you instant feedback," says MapMyFitness senior mobile development manager Chris Glode. "You can just look at your phone and know whether you are in your target zone or not."

Other data types that can be input include runner cadence and speed, power expenditure (good for cyclists) and weight ($130-up, www.mapmyfitness.com).

Beyond that, a Web-based subscription service lets you view workout charts and reports, as well as training plans (free to $100 annually). "More and more people are wanting to track every aspect of their life using more and more sophisticated types of sensors," Glode says. "The data you get, in addition to how you feel during the workout and how many calories you burned, is crucial to people."

•Workouts can tracked and more enjoyable by incorporating your big-screen TV. BodyMedia's Fit Armband BW ($249) tracks calories burned and consumed, physical activity, steps taken and sleep. The Bluetooth device lets you monitor activity on your iPhone or Android phone already, but starting in April Panasonic will let you access BodyMedia's software on its Viera HDTVs.

That will allow exercisers to watch their activity levels and calories burnt add up while they watch movies, TV shows or while playing video games. "Our partnership with Panasonic is on the cutting edge for adding important health and wellness information to everyday TV viewing," says BodyMedia chief information officer Steve Menke. "The integration of a body monitoring technology with the TV is enabling real-time health and wellness management."

The marrying of consumer electronics and medical technologies is going to be needed especially as baby boomers age, Poropatich says. "Electronic devices are going to hooked to the cloud. That's all happening

Read More

Bog bodies baffle scientists

Scholars have long tried to make sense out of one of the oddities of the archaeological world —bodies pulled from ignominious burials in cold water bogs everywhere from Ireland to Russia.
Hundreds of these bog bodies have been found over the past two centuries. But who were they and why were they dispatched to the great beyond in mucky swamps? The theories range from executed deserters, to witches to everyday people.

The Irish Countess of Moira back in 1783 launched scholarly explorations by suggesting that bog bodies were victims of Druid ceremonies. Others, citing the ancient Roman writerTacitus, quickly saw them most likely as executed deserters. Arguments over individual finds have continued ever since the first look that year by the Countess at the Northern Ireland "Drumkeeragh" bog body, a woman dressed in wool clothes.

"Unfortunately the focus has been almost exclusively on the most spectacular finds, the mummified bodies," says archaeologist Moten Ravn of Denmark's Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, writing in the current Acta Archaeologica journal. Rather than arguing from just one body, Ravn suggests a survey of all the bodies might offer better clues to how they ended up buried in bogs.

What is a bog and how does it preserve anything? Cold-weather swamps, basically, where mosses turn waters brown. Roughly 560 bog bodies have turned up in Denmark alone, Ravn notes, usually discovered when farmers try to turn wetlands into farmland. His survey focuses on 145 bog bodies dating to the early Iron and late Bronze Age, roughly 500 BC to 100 BC, the pre-Roman era in northern Europe.

Acids found in bog waters have mummified some of the bodies, or more accurately tanned them into leather. Mosses release chemicals that leach calcium from the bodies, "which means that the bones of the bog bodies take on the consistency of rubber," Ravn writes. Other bogs rich in lime have preserved other bodies only as bones.

Scholars have raced up and down the human pecking order in ascribing identities to the bodies. The historian Niels Petersen in 1835 decided that the "Haraldskaer" woman's body found at the site of a copper factory belonged to the Norwegian Queen Gunhilde, drowned by King Harald Blatund (Bluetooth) in the Ninth Century. By 1907, archaeologist Johanna Mestorf became convinced they were all executed criminals, noting many of the bodies were bound and naked.

Shades ofRaiders of the Lost Ark, Nazi archaeologists dominated bog body research starting in the 1930's until the end of the Third Reich, Ravn notes, "interested in proving that the so-called Nordic race were direct descendants of the proto-Germanic race," dating back to the Bronze Age.

All of these ideas have problems, starting with Queen Gunhilde, who was unlikely to have been buried in leather scraps, as she was found. Also a 2004 Journal of Archaeological Science study notes that carbon dating finds the "Haraldskaer" bog body was actually 2,500 years old, not in King Bluetooth's reign.

As for executed criminals, Ravn notes there are only 21 Danish cases where the bodies have demonstrably been restrained, which, "may be a general protection against ghosts and not something reserved for criminals," he writes. About 34% of the Bronze and Iron Age bodies in his sample are clothed, and clothing may not endure in bogs as well as flesh does, explaining its absence. A 2009 study, also in the Journal of Archaeological Science led by Ulla Mannering of the University of Copenhagen, reports 44 instances of bog bodies found with clothes in Denmark, most dating to the Roman era.

The Nazi theory is just crackers, of course, with even their own archaeologists pointing out bog bodies turned up in Ireland and elsewhere, even as far south as Crete, far outside any "proto-Germanic" home.

Instead, "most archaeologists today support the sacrifice theory," Ravn writes. Proposed in the 1950's, the basic idea is that bog bodies were mostly offerings to the Nordic gods Odin or Nerthus ("Mother Earth"), with the rest either murder or accident victims. People were mostly cremated in the era, a point which suggests a bog burial must have been a special event.

An alternative is the idea proposed in 2002 by historian Allen Lund that the bog bodies belonged to witches. Ancient people knew about the preserving nature of bogs and sought to suspend their supernatural foes in a state between life and death to forestall being haunted by them.

Ravn proposes a new theory to explain some of the bog bodies — maybe they were just people who died of natural causes and were sent to their burial in the bogs by their relatives. There is nothing special about the range of 145 people in his survey, men, women, young and old. Some were clearly placed in excavated holes lined with bark and cotton, buried with glass beads or gold jewelry in their mouths, a Roman custom. In Celtic myths, bogs and lakes were places of healing, Ravn suggests. "Is it possible that there was a wish to pass on these healing characteristics of the bog to a person who died a natural death so that the deceased could arrive healthy in the realm of the dead," he asks.

Overall, bog bodies are "not so easy to explain," Ravn says. The oldest one, the Koelbjerg woman, dates to 10,000 years ago. Others date to modern times, such as Johann Spieker, a hawker (person who used trained falcons to hunt), who died in 1828. "The reason that people were given their final resting place in the bog was not because of any one single tradition or one single ritual," Ravn concludes. "Some were due to accidents and others to murder. Some may have been sacrificed and others may have died of natural causes and were buried in the bog."

Read More

Apple net income soars 78% in holiday quarter

CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) — Apple said Tuesday that its net income for the most recent quarter rose 78% as holiday shoppers snapped up more iPads than analysts predicted.
The results sent shares climbing in after-hours trading. Earlier, shares slipped more than 2% in regular trading as investors focused on news that CEO Steve Jobs will take another medical leave of absence. Jobs has survived a rare form of pancreatic cancer and had a liver transplant in 2009.


STOCK: Apple falls; does Jobs' leave merit a pounding?
INTERIM CEO: Apple again turns to Cook in Jobs' absence
STEPPING AWAY: Apple CEO will take medical leave

Net income for Apple's fiscal first quarter rose to $6 billion, or $6.43 per share, up from $3.4 billion, or $3.67 per share, in the same period a year earlier.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet forecast $5.41 per share for the quarter, which ended Dec. 25.

Revenue climbed 71% to $26.7 billion, more than the $24.3 billion analysts expected. It was $15.7 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

Apple sold 7.3 million iPads during the quarter, about a million more than analysts were expecting. The iPad, a touch-screen tablet computer with no keyboard, first went on sale in April and was one of the hottest gifts over the holidays.

Apple sold 16.2 million iPhones, an 86% increase from a year ago. Sales of Mac computers rose 23% to 4.13 million laptops and desktops.

Apple sold 19.5 million iPods, a 7% drop from a year earlier. However, people spent more on average on the devices — revenue from iPods edged up 1%.

The Cupertino, California-based company said 62% of its revenue came from outside the U.S. In the Asia-Pacific segment, which includes China, Apple said revenue almost tripled. Apple said its four stores in China had, on average, highest traffic and highest revenue out of its 321 worldwide stores

Read More

What we know about Steve Jobs' medical journey

Apple mogul Steve Jobs’ latest medical leave set off more questions about the world’s most famous tech CEO’s health issues.

In typical, tight-lipped fashion, Jobs, 55, released little detail in a three-paragraph letter to Apple employees.

For years, Jobs’ health has been the subject of speculation and worry due to how directly the company's success appears to be tied to Jobs.

So far, no information been released about his current medical issue.

Doctors who are not affiliated with Jobs’ care said two of the major issues for patients who’ve had pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant are recurrence of cancer and rejection of the organ. But without any additional details, the cause of his medical leave could be anything.

In 2009, Jobs received a liver transplant. Transplant recipients have to take immune-suppressing drugs to help their bodies accept the new organs. These drugs also weaken their immune systems, which could make them more vulnerable to infections or a recurrence of cancer.

“It’s a fine balancing act,” said Dr. Amit D. Tevar, director of liver transplant surgery at the University of Cincinnati. “If you give too much [immunosuppressant], they could get early recurrence (of cancer). If you give too little, you could have rejection of the new liver.”

Tevar said a patient could have organ rejection anytime after a liver transplant.

In general, 70% of people who receive liver transplants survive five years or longer, but that depends heavily on the health problem that initially required the transplant.

In 2004, Jobs underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer, removing a treatable form of the disease– a neuroendocrine tumor, according to the Wall Street Journal. Speculation about his health resurfaced in 2008 after he appeared at press conferences having lost considerable weight.

He initially blamed a “hormone imbalance," but later announced a leave of absence, which lasted 6 months. During that time, he received a liver transplant. His operation was kept a secret until the Wall Street Journal reported that Jobs had received the transplant at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis, Tennessee.

It was unclear whether his liver transplant was related to his previous cancer fight. But pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor tends to spread to the liver, said Dr. Benjamin Philosophe, chief of the division of transplantation at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.

It is a persistent cancer because once it has spread to the liver, the cancers have a more than 50 percent chance of returning.

“In general, people with transplants are more likely to develop certain cancers such as lymphomas and skins cancer,” Philosophe said, citing the body's the suppressed immune system. “Almost every type of cancer has increased incidence in people who’ve had transplants.”

Philosophe said organ rejection tends to occur soon after the surgery, but it can still occur years later. Chronic rejection occurs in less than 5% of the cases. In these cases, the liver is slowly destroyed, leading to organ failure.

“For the most part, if someone is taking a medical leave, it sounds like they’re starting a battle with something that’s a tough battle,” Philosophe said. “It’s something planned.”

Read More