LONDON — At 17, he’s a tech whiz, he’s rich — and he can even offer some advice on how to raise your kids.

Teenage programmer Nick D’Aloisio‘s (pictured) decision to sell his news application Summly to Yahoo for what’s rumored to be a massive payout has turned him into a media sensation. The sale caps a short but successful career at Apple Inc.’s vast app store, where hundreds of thousands of pieces of software compete for the attention of smartphone and tablet users.

SEE ALSO: Alabama Airport Sign Falls On Vacationing Family, Kills 10-Year-Old Boy

In an interview with the Associated Press on Tuesday, D’Aloisio said his computer skills were self-taught, explaining that he started by mastering movie-making software before tackling programming languages.

He said his parents were “very enthusiastic and supportive.” Asked what advice he’d give couples hoping to raise their own wunderkinds, he urged them to let their children explore their own paths – be it computer science or drama.

“If there’s a natural curiosity, that’ll lead to, eventually, some success,” the teenager said.

Summly is one of several apps that D’Aloisio has designed. It uses complex algorithms to automatically condense online news content into attractive little blocks of text that are useful for the small screens of smartphones.

D’Aloisio said he was thrilled to be working for a “classic Internet company” – Yahoo! Inc. is older than he is – and he laughingly dismissed a reporter’s suggestion that his friends might be jealous.

“All my friends have been very supportive,” he said.

He noted that the publicity over Summly had been building for more than a year, meaning he and those close to him had had time to adjust to the outside attention.

As with its other recent acquisitions, Yahoo didn’t disclose how much it is paying for Summly, although British newspapers suggested the deal’s value at several million dollars. D’Aloisio had already received investment from several sources, including venture capitalist backer Li Ka-Shing.

Asked what he’ll do with the payout, he responded with serious answers unbefitting of an adolescent. He said the money was being kept in a trust until he turns 18, and he didn’t seem interested in talking about what he’d buy for himself for his next birthday.

“I’d like to keep it safe. Bank it …. If I was to do anything it’d be angel investing,” said D’Aloisio, who is slim with dark brown hair and bears a passing resemblance to Josh Radnor, the actor who plays main character “Ted” in the TV sitcom “How I Met Your Mother.”

The teen app expert said he was interested in automated technologies that could anticipate users’ needs before they even reached for their smartphones – such as an app that downloads the day’s news stories just before a user steps in to a subway.

D’Aloisio said there were no copyright concerns about Summly, which works by running a statistical analysis of the text to guess which bits are the most relevant to cut the content down. Media companies such as New York-based News Corp. have collaborated on making their content more Summly-friendly, he said, arguing that shortening software would ultimately be a win-win for content providers.

“We’re introducing their content to a new, younger demographic,” he said. “You like the summary, you read the whole story; it increases publisher viewership.”

The technology isn’t foolproof: He said the app sometimes has trouble shortening long-form or highbrow pieces, but he noted that humans, too, have trouble summarizing sprawling stories.

The deal announced Monday is Yahoo’s fifth small acquisition in the past five months. All have been part of CEO Marissa Mayer‘s effort to attract more engineers with expertise in building services for smartphones and tablet computers, an increasingly important area of technology that she believes the Internet company had been neglecting.

Although the Yahoo acquisition won’t close until later this spring, D’Aloisio said the Summly App will no longer be available. Its technology will return in other Yahoo products.

D’Aloisio will work for Yahoo in its London office – in part so that he can complete his high school exams. Two other Summly workers will join Yahoo at its Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters. He said he eventually wants to attend university, perhaps to study philosophy.

“I haven’t decided yet,” he said.

As many aspiring entrepreneurs know, it can be really hard to stay motivated especially when you haven’t quit your day-job or are still in the funding process. That’s why the folks over at Incubate in conjunction with DJ B-Hen came up with the ultimate entrepreneur mix-tape. Yes, a mix-tape! Black folks make everything cool.  I love this idea, and the mix is hot. Take a listen and get inspired!

Incubate Mix-Tape

for inspiration, check out these three cool start up ideas:

Oculus Rift – Virtual reality headset. Palmer Luckey is the original founder and designer of the Oculus Virtual Reality headset. If your feeling it, you can pre-order your set right here. Personally, I’ve been waiting for something like this for a long time. It seems to be a size that I can handle, and the technology has really come a long way. There are games out right now that I’d love to play with this hardware. Can you imagine Call of Duty on this? The design is fresh and modern as well so you won’t look to crazy with it on.

Kapture - This new iPhone app gives rewards to users who share images of their favorite brands. Honestly, I think it’s one of those apps where you think to yourself “why didn’t I think of that before?” We are already sharing our experiences at our favorite stores, restaurants  and parks. Why not get rewarded for it? Users get rewarded with possible discounts and even physical items. These items can even be gifted to others.

Read the rest at www.TheManly-Man.com

PHOTO CREDIT: SALON.COM

Have you ever wondered why when you search for Black-related news using Google, several ads selling access to criminal history and arrest records pop up? According to Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney, that happens more often than we think and may expose society’s racial bias.

BBC reports:

Prof Sweeney’s investigation suggests that names linked with black people – as defined by a previous study into racial discrimination in the workplace – were 25% more likely to have results that prompted the searcher to click on a link to search criminal record history.
Continue reading the main story

She found that names like Leroy, Kareem and Keisha would yield advertisements that read “Arrested?”, with a link to a website which could perform criminal record checks.

Searches for names such as Brad, Luke and Katie would not – instead more likely to offer websites that can provide general contact details.

“There is discrimination in the delivery of these ads,” concluded Prof Sweeney, adding that there was a less than 1% chance that the findings could be based on chance.

“Alongside news stories about high school athletes and children can be ads bearing the child’s name and suggesting arrest. This seems concerning on many levels.”

However, she was reluctant to pinpoint a cause for the discrepancies, saying that to do so required “further information about the inner workings of Google AdSense”.

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Google denies in racial bias in their ad placement and released the following statement to the BBC:

“We also have an ‘anti’ and violence policy which states that we will not allow ads that advocate against an organisation, person or group of people.”

“It is up to individual advertisers to decide which keywords they want to choose to trigger their ads,” the search giant said.

This could mean that user habits lead to an increase in the appearance of the ads — or it could mean that because the ads appear more, based on entered keywords, that they are clicked more, subsequently increasing the frequency that the ads appears — perpetuating the myth of the Black criminal.

In other words: Which came first, the racist chicken or the racist egg?

SEE ALSO:

Malcolm X’s Grandson Reported Arrested En Route To Iran

California Preschool Closing After Alleged Sexual Activity Between 4- And 5-Year-Olds [VIDEO]

FILE – In this Sept. 14, 2010 file photo, Twitter CEO Evan Williams makes a presentation about changes to the social network at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, In the latest online attack, Twitter says hackers may have gained access to information on 250,000 of its more than 200 million active users, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The social media giant Twitter acknowledged that it has become the latest victim in a number of cyber-attacks against media companies, saying hackers may have gained access to information on 250,000 of its more than 200 million active users.

The company said a blog post on Friday it detected attempts to gain access to its user data earlier in the week. It shut down one attack moments after it was detected.

But Twitter discovered that the attackers may have stolen user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords belonging to 250,000 users they describe as `a very small percentage of our users.”

Nonetheless, the company reset the pilfered passwords and sent emails advising the affected users.

The online attack comes on the heels of recent hacks into the computer systems of U.S. media and technology companies, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Both American newspapers reported this week that their computer systems had been infiltrated by China-based hackers, likely to monitor media coverage the Chinese government deems important.

China has been accused of mounting a widespread, aggressive cyber-spying campaign for several years, trying to steal classified information and corporate secrets and to intimidate critics. The Chinese foreign ministry could not be reached for comment Saturday, but the Chinese government has said those accusations are baseless and that China itself is a victim of cyber-attacks.

“Chinese law forbids hacking and any other actions that damage Internet security,” the Chinese Defense Ministry recently said. “The Chinese military has never supported any hacking activities.”

Although Bob Lord, Twitter’s director of information security said in the blog that the attack “was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident.”

“The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked,” Lord said. “For that reason we felt that it was important to publicize this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the Internet safer for all users.”

One expert said that the Twitter hack probably happened after an employee’s home or work computer was compromised through vulnerabilities in Java, a commonly used computing language whose weaknesses have been well publicized.

Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy and security researcher, said such a move would give attackers “a toehold” in Twitter’s internal network, potentially allowing them either to sniff out user information as it traveled across the company’s system or break into specific areas, such as the authentication servers that process users’ passwords.

In a telephone interview Friday, Soltani said that the relatively small number of users affected suggested either that attackers weren’t on the network long or that they were only able to compromise a subset of the company’s servers.

Twitter is generally used to broadcast messages to the public, so the hacking might not immediately have yielded any important secrets. But the stolen credentials could be used to eavesdrop on private messages or track which Internet address a user is posting from.

That might be useful, for example, for an authoritarian regime trying to keep tabs on a journalist’s movements.

“More realistically, someone could use that as an entry point into another service,” Soltani said, noting that since few people bother using different passwords for different services, a password stolen from Twitter might be just as handy for reading a journalist’s emails.

If you’re like me, then you’re always looking at start-ups lamenting about how you came up with the idea for the mp3 player back in high-school and someone stole your idea. We have tons of ideas, but don’t quite know how to bring them forth into reality – be it funds, or drive, or whatever stands in the way of a good idea’s fruition. Well keep reading because I have good news for you.

I spent some time with Brian Shields, Co-Founder of Incubate NYC. Incubate is a program developed by Brian and Marcus Mayo, both Morehouse graduates, to help those of us with brilliant ideas to take said idea and give birth to it in reality. It’s a start-up   program specifically designed for first time entrepreneurs. When I spoke with Marcus, he told me what makes the program unique is the support system that comes along with being in the program. Being in the fox hole so-to-speak with others can be profoundly helpful. Seeing how someone else solves a problem can be helpful to you or vice-avers. He also mentioned that three main keys to the success of a particular project are getting started, knowing what to focus on, and sticking with it.

The program is a 5 week “Bootcamp” – which is basically workshop to refine your business ideas and concepts. However, what’s cool is that the program doesn’t stop there. Once the bootcamp is finished, graduates still have access to the Incubate NYC resources and community. It seemed quite unique to me, and I’ll update you guys once I’ve gone through it.

You can follow them @incubatenyc or check them out at www.incubatenyc.com

More technology and reviews at www.TheManly-Man.com

Talk about a hands-on experience!

New developments in technology are paving the way for motion-controlled software so that pornography watchers can have a more interactive experience.

“Nobody wants to use their keyboard or mouse anymore — why not just a flick of the hand,” Jeff Dillon, a vice president at GameLink, told HuffPost Weird News.

“Porn is eventually going the way of Minority Report … or a hologram thing like Tupac at Coachella.”

SEE ALSO: Cleveland Stripper Falls 15-Feet To Her Death During Lap Dance

Huffington Post reports:

GameLink, a porn site and on-demand adult video company, is holding a contest to see who can best integrate its video catalog with a motion control device similar to the Kinect technology on an Xbox 360.

Leap Motion will be able to “sense the user’s hand and finger movements for direct 3D interaction with the screen,” according to GameLink’s press release.

[...]

The winner of the contest, which begins on Jan. 15, will get a development contract with GameLink.

“Porn is eventually going the way of Minority Report … or a hologram thing like Tupac at Coachella.”

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GameLink is not the first company to try to integrate gaming with pornography. In 2010, sex simulation gaming company ThriXXX released a demo showing how Microsoft Kinect can be used for interactive pornography experience, but the cyber giant balked at its gaming system being used for simulating sex, reported ABC News.

“This isn’t the first example of a technology being used in ways not intended by its manufacturer, and it won’t be the last. Microsoft did not authorize or license its technology for this use. Xbox is a family friendly games and entertainment console and does not allow Adults Only (AO) content to be certified for use on its platform, and would not condone this type of game for Kinect.”

Dillon and GameLink are moving full-speed ahead soliciting technology proposals for their video catalog. Fleshlight, a sex-toy that syncs up with the video playing in front of you, seems to so far be the winner. If you have an idea, Jeff Dillon can be contacted at jeff@gamelink.com.

SEE ALSO:

Are Blacks To Blame For Negative Portrayals Of African Americans On Reality TV?

Police Discover Heroin Syringes Inside Woman’s Vagina

Top Social Networking Sites Start Gallery

We got a chance to review the new HTC 8X with Windows Phone 8. I got the navy blue phone which was really nice. No doubt you’re asking the question: How is it different than any other phones, and any other Windows Phone 8 devices. Well keep reading to find out. As usual, I’ve divided the review into two main portions. The stuff I liked and the stuff I didn’t.

What I liked:

Size:

The screen is 4.3 inches which isn’t the largest display out there, but it definitely gives you plenty of room to see what’s going on. The dimensions end up making it long (132.35 x 66.2 x 10.12 mm) but it really fits the Windows Phone motif where you have to scroll forever to get to what you want. It’s also really slender so it’s comfortable to hold on to.

Screen:

It has an HD 720p screen and it certainly looks like it. The screen is beautiful to look at and all the colors are really vibrant. The black background wasn’t as nice as Nokia’s “true black” which apparently kills all light around anything being displayed for a richer black background, but the 8X screen really isn’t too bad.

Speed:

Everything was snappy and I really think this was due to both the processor and the nature of the OS. Windows Phone 8 doesn’t have a lot going on so it’s gestures are really simple and the results are a really simple and smooth experience. I never get any stutter of any kind when scrolling around. CPU is a Qualcomm® S4 1.5 GHz, Dual-core processor which doesn’t slouch around. Add that to Verizon’s LTE speed online and I didn’t have to wait for anything. Downloading was zippy, watching video was fast. This was really a pleasant experience. Whenever I wanted to do something – I didn’t really have to wait any real length of time to get going.

Camera:

The camera took really nice pictures as you can see below. Many of which weren’t in the best of lighting conditions. I’m not photographer, but I was impressed and think it will get the job done for those of us who just need to snap a quickie on the go with a significant other, or with family and friends. Skype worked really well with the front facing camera except that movement seemed a little blurred when I moved around too much. The front facing camera is 2.1 MP which is really competitive in the phone market these days.

OS:

Microsoft wasn’t lying. This OS really was tailored to the user. It’s all about displaying my personal and relevant information without really having to delve too deeply to find it. All of my emails (and we’ll talk about this later) are a tap away and I can see how many I’ve missed while my phone was in my pocket. I can see messages, and items ready for download. It’s like I’ve got an assistant with all of the information for my day ready for me which is really cool. I do however miss widgets though, but the live tiles try to fill that gap. If your coming from Android, you will probably miss them. Yet there is definitely something to be gained from the simplistic approach.

What I didn’t like:

Power Button Position:

On some Samsung devices – the power button is on the side so you can wake/sleep your phone the the tap of your thumb. That would be nice with this phone because it’s so tall. I found myself having to adjust my grip just to get my pointer finger in a position to hit the power button which was a little annoying. Also, the button is not really raised so I couldn’t tell if I had hit the button or not. On several occasions I had not hit the button, but had been pressing on the space between the button and the right edge of the phone.

Google Sync Not Active:

So apparently Google and Microsoft  are not playing nice and the user is beginning to feel it. Google has disabled it’s exchange active sync. What that means is you won’t automatically get your Google Calendar appointments or contacts transferred over to your shiny new Windows Phone. I did notice this when I was testing the HTC 8X. None of my Google Calendar events were in my Windows Calendar. None of my contacts either. To add fuel to the fire, I wasn’t able to use Google maps either, however, I hear that’s being fixed. That issue wasn’t too bad since I actually like Windows Maps. It has cool features like available wifi hotspots which can be handy, and places to eat and check out based on your location.

Build:

The Phone build wasn’t bad. I really liked the soft material on the back, but I didn’t like that there was no option to remove or replace the battery. I also didn’t feel like the phone was a really expensive device. I’m getting spoiled by Nokia and Apple and their superb build quality. Now, even when a phone has no real defects – if it doesn’t feel like a work of art, I’m not too impressed.

Summary:

All in all – I do recommend this phone, especially to those who would like to upgrade from their present Windows device. It’s a solid phone that really performs well. I have no complaints in terms of negative experiences besides the Active Sync issue with Google which is not to be overlooked. If you feel like you are immersed in the Google ecosystem and can’t do without your Google contacts and calendar then you may have a problem. This will definitely effect a large amount of people who will switch back to Android or for fear of losing data will stick with Android and not get the chance to check Windows Phone 8 out. It’s a shame really because I love testing new devices and seeing what else other companies are coming up with. Google’s move reeks of “sheep herding” and I don’t know about you, but I’m no sheep.

More reviews at www.themanly-man.com

I had the chance to spend time with Chief Extraction Architect Steve Chao about the new technology that Detron is developing. He’s working on high-level encryption for the masses. This stuff is not connect the dots to open a file. We’re talking serious encryption that apparently is extremely difficult to break. It’s called QDK or Quantum Direct Key. It’s so secure that the claim is it hasn’t been broken yet…AT ALL. If you’d like to give it a try you can find the Code Challenge here.

I loved speaking with Steve, and what I got was that he is extremely passionate about the technology and extremely confident in it to boot. He explained that the encryption works with two keys. One public and one private. The private key is generated by some machine (Key Management Center) that is in some deserted place Mars somewhere in the boonies, and is never online. No one knows where it is while the other key is generated by the phone itself. Mr. Chao divulged in the interview below that a random number is used as a key and is generated by “thermal noise on the chip“which is then used to open up an encrypted file. However, that number was encrypted as well so you would need to decrypt one key to decrypt the real key to decrypt the file! This sounds pretty tough to get around to me and should stop lower skilled baddies from even trying.

This technology will be fitted to the Defense phone that Detron is developing. It has a 4.3″ Sharp qHD screen, an aluminum frame, and a dual-core ARMv7 Cortex A9 1GHz CPU with 1Ghz of RAM. There will be a 16G and 32G option. With that said, I want one, and I want one NOW! The possibilities for secure transactions of all sorts via the cell phone or whatever medium file transfers exist is seemingly endless. I would definitely feel more secure using this technology while making online purchases, or reviewing sensitive documents online. This has huge implications for in-app purchases or apps like Square which allow credit card transactions via the cell phone or tablet. Once we get more time to review the phone we’ll have that up for you. In the mean-time check out the interview on themanly-man.com with Steve Chao below:

More Tech Reviews at www.TheManly-Man.com

The NY Games Conference held by Digital Media Wire took place earlier in September, and I had a chance to chat with a few folks and look at emerging technologies at the conference.

Three items really stood out to me and I’ll talk about them briefly here. I’ve also included some video of my conversations with them.

Image Metrics (3D Technology Company):

I spoke with Robert Gehorsam who is the CEO of the company. They have a few products, some of which they couldn’t show us yet, because they were unreleased, that were really fascinating. I was extremely impressed with the performance of the technology that he showed me and you can take a look at the video below. In a nutshell, what sets the company apart is the fact that they can drive 3D renders of either avatars, or a 3D version of yourself extremely acurately, with almost any camera, on a mobile device.They’ve done work on such films as the Wolfman and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Starz Game:

I also caught up with David Katz, VP of Starz Digital Media as he talks about the gaming initiatives the company has undertaken surrounding their popular shows. Of course Starz has some compelling content, and to keep customers engaged, they’ve turned to some interesting sources such as gaming. Check out the conversation below.

You can read the rest at www.TheManlyMan.com

Entering a partnership with Datalogix, Mark Zuckerberg‘s brainchild will now be able to track whether your purchases at CVS Pharmacy and other businesses are influenced by ad placements on Facebook and share that information with the various corporations.

CNN reports:

Datalogix has purchasing data from about 70m American households largely drawn from loyalty cards and programmes at more than 1,000 retailers, including grocers and drug stores. By matching email addresses or other identifying information associated with those cards against emails or information used to establish Facebook accounts, Datalogix can track whether people bought a product in a store after seeing an ad on Facebook.

The emails and other identifying information are made anonymous and collected into groups of people who saw an ad and people who did not. Datalogix compiles a report for Facebook and its advertisers to measure which creative approaches and demographic targeting persuade people to buy specific products offline.

Facebook said it is paying Datalogix for the data-matching. So far, the two companies have measured 45 campaigns and in 70 per cent of cases, for every dollar a marketer spent on Facebook it earned an additional $3 in incremental sales, said Brad Smallwood, Facebook’s head of measurement and insights.

According to the Atlanta Wire, to opt out of having your information shared almost takes an act of congress:

First, you have to find the help center, which involves first clicking help, under the home tab. Then, that will give the option to go to the help center. After clicking through to Ads and Business solutions, then to Ads and Sponsored Stories, then to Interacting with Ads, you will finally see a list of questions about ads as it effects you. Way down at the very bottom (pictured below), where it says “learn more about the partners and choices they offer” is a link to Datalogix, which leads to this page, where about half-way down under “choice” there is an opt-out link. That is a lot of clicking. To avoid all that, you can just click here to get to that Datalogix page, or here to opt-out.

Weigh in, NewsOne Fam!

Samsung launched it’s latest ten inch tablet yesterday. It looks like the company is  trying to enter an area spurned by Apple in emphasizing pen input. There is a reason many tablet makers are leaving that space alone – read on to find out whether or not Samsung has got the right formula.

At the press event, there were a few guests who lauded the tablet for it’s different approach to creativity and functionality. Baz Luhrmann the Australian Director of films like Moulin Rouge and Australia talked about how it was a “creative toolbox” that helped him to share in real time while Zac Posen, the designer talked about how the tablet facilitated his creativity. Both have upcoming projects, so I think that didn’t hurt either, but I had a hard time fully digesting everything they were saying as it really did seem too good to be true.

Test driving the device was a different experience. Below are a few key elements about the tablet.

Specs:

GENERAL
• Android™ 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich
• Processor: WiFi®, 1.4GHz quad-core
• Memory: 2GB RAM & 16GB On-Board Memory
• microSD™ Card Slot (Up to 32GB)
• Display Screen: 10.1″
• Display Resolution: WXGA (1280 x 800)
• Display Type: TFT
• Battery Type: Li-Polymer
• Battery Capacity: 7,000mAh
• Color: White
• WiFi®: 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Camera 5MP AF + 1.9MP FF
• Flash (Power LED)
• GPS
• Bluetooth 4.0 (LE)
• Supports USB 2.0 Connectivity (with an adapter sold separately)
• Audio: Built-in Front Dual Speakers
• Built-in Infrared Blaster (Smart Remote)
• Speaker (Stereo)
• Antenna (Integrated)
• Ear Jack: 3.5mm (Line-in Mic)
• IF Connector: 30Pin
• Multiscreen
• Video Pop Up Play
• Drag and Drop
• Dropbox
• Handwriting Recognition
• Enhanced Customizable Keyboard
• Built-in S Pen

Key Differentiators:

What makes this tablet different from it’s predecessors is – mainly – the pen input. The success of the Galaxy Note seems to have prompted this device. It comes with a built in “S-Pen”. They were careful not to call it a stylus because it has a few more tricks up it’s sleeve. For one, it is pressure sensitive so your strokes look different depending on how hard or softly you write. Second is that i works with “electromagnetic response” which allows for more accurate positioning.

Major Tech Announcements

Samsung has a slew of proprietary programs that come bundled with the device like S-Note, Pop-up Play, and its partnership with Adobe for Photoshop Touch. They had some artists sketching attendees. See my sketch below. Click here for the rest.

We managed to snag us a Sony Xperia Ion and played with it for a bit this week. The phone came out on AT&T the end of June and many people are wondering how it stacks up with some of the other devices in AT&T’s stable. Read on to find out!

As usual, I’ll be breaking down the review on the points I liked and the issues I didn’t feel comfortable with or wish could be changed.

Likes:

• Form Factor

As soon as I pulled this puppy from my pocket, no less than two people around me approached me to ask me what type of phone I had. I gladly told them what it was and what I was doing with it. I was really surprised, because I don’t usually get that strong of a reaction when I’m holding a phone. Granted, it could have been dumb luck, but I can definitely see why someone might be intrigued with this device. It really does have a sleek, elegant beauty to it – yet you can tell it’s functional. Sony has a way of making electronic devices look and feel really high-grade and the Ion is no different. there is nothing flimsy about this phone which I find really important if I’m going to spend a couple hundred on any piece of equipment.

Sony Xperia PLay Review

There is the standard 3.5mm headphone jack at the top, and your volume rocker as well as power-button and dedicated camera button which I’ll talk about in a bit. Nothing but a mic on the bottom, and the HDMI, and Micro USB on the left.

• Camera

• Speed

Dislikes:

• Operating System

• Little Thick

Summary:

All-in-all, I enjoyed the device. I will warn you though, there isn’t a specific date announced as to when the device will get an ice-cream sandwich update. A rep told me “later this year”, but that’s all I got. And then when it does, it will only be behind by one update. Other than that, I really can’t find too many other glaring issues with the device. It has a solid build, and a great camera with decent specs.

Find More Reviews on www.TheManly-Man.com

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June has turned out to be one of the most exciting months for technology consumers with huge announcements from Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Personally I’m excited about all of the announcements and consider them all good news. When you have Tech Titans like these behemoths fighting for my attention – I win no matter which way I turn. I’ll briefly touch on some of the highlights here.

Apple:

• Macbook Pro with Retina Display
• iOS 6

To be honest, a lot of people were waiting for the iPhone 5 announcement – but Apple did the right thing in my opinion. I love tuning in to Apple events because if nothing else is true, every time they are ready to make an announcement about a new product or feature, it will be ready for the consumer almost immediately. Not the next year, and most times, not even the coming months. It’s a sure bet that you will be able to get your hands on at least one of the items announced almost immediately. If the next iPhone wasn’t ready, then I’d rather they didn’t announce it. I’ve had a chance to compare strategies and I don’t really like Microsoft’s. They are constantly telling you more and more about the coolest new feature or hardware that you can’t buy yet because it’s due to drop at some unknown time. By the time it’s ready, the excitement has died out and you aren’t as excited about it anymore.

Apple Refresh Worth It?

What Apple did announce was what I consider to be yet another game-changer. I am by no means an Apple fan-boy, but they continue to crush the competition in-terms of desirability. The Macbook pro line was already arguably the most coveted power laptop, but they went ahead and went bananas on the display. Even if they didn’t do anything under the hood, it would be tough to hold in check the desire to at least see what 2880×1800 looks like. The other iOs 6 announcements were sort of exciting, but necessities if they were going to continue to stay competitive with Android. Turn by turn navigation was a must in light of Google’s magnificent Maps App. Deeper Siri integration was to be expected, and passbook was a welcome addition to iOS’s functionality.

Microsoft:

• Microsoft Surface
• Windows 8 / Windows Mobile 8

As I mentioned above – the excitement around Windows 8, in my opinion, was waning a bit due to the fact that it has literally been talked about for around a year or so now. You can download a preview, but I’m not interested in previews. I’m interested in a new product…And Microsoft delivered. Enter stage left: The Microsoft Surface. This product announcement totally took me by surprise. We all know that Microsoft is fully capable of serious hardware, but they’ve been leaving it up to their hardware partners to deliver the goods, and lets just say – some of the products have much to be desired. I suppose Mr. Ballmer had to show’em how it’s done. The Surface is elegant, yet clever, and if it performs, I believe this tablet will be the answer to many people’s desires. It will be for those who want a little higher level of functionality than they can get from the iPad.

Windows Mobile 8 was the next logical step, but it is mildly exciting in the mobile space. What would be more exciting is if they pulled a “Surface” and debuted more hardware, but I doubt Microsoft will ruffle their hardware partner’s feathers too much.

Nokia Lumia 710 Review

Google:

• Nexus 7
• Project Glass
• Nexus Q

Google’s most recent I|O Conference has to have been one of the best keynotes in recent memory. Though I wasn’t there, I was totally wrapped up in the parachuting moment, and the scaling the building moment, and the biking moment! You can see the video here. I think the perspective the images and video gleaned from that vantage point, though not new, will be quite fascinating to look at once Project Glass is released. What’s new is the form factor and ease of use. Google has managed to make that kind of imaging equipment almost apart of you. I’m quite excited to get my hands on that technology. What’s also of note is not just the “look at what I did” but the “look at what I’m doing right now” effect this eye-ware will bring about.

Google also debuted the Nexus 7 which I believe will do quite well. When compared to the Kindle Fire, it’s really no competition. Also Amazon doesn’t seem to have much else, tablet-wise, under it’s sleeve. I’m sure a next generation Kindle Fire is under way set to drop sometime soon, but I doubt it will have as much fire-power as the Nexus 7. Google understood that the real desire of many people who found the Kindle Fire intriguing but not enough to purchase, and that was the desire to have a “sleeper”. You know, an all purpose ride that’s affordable and simple enough, but a beast under the hood. The Kindle Fire was all of that, without the “Beast” part. So I bought one for my mom while I patiently waited. The Nexus 7 will probably be my next gadget purchase simply because of just how powerful and inexpensive this little bad boy is.

The Nexus Q is interesting in that it allows you to control and stream content from the cloud through a Nexus device. But I have to say – at $300 bucks, I’ll probably only get one if it’s a birthday gift or something.

Best Announcement:

Read the rest at www.TheManly-Man.com

Yesterday, Apple confirmed quite a few things that many people were speculating up to that point. However, not all the rumors were true. There was no iPhone 5 announcement – which I was disappointed to find out. However, there was definitely enough to chew on. Catch the entire thing here as the keynote is now online.

The Major Changes of interest are as follows:
-iOS 6

• iOS 6 brings a ton of changes and perhaps most notably “Maps”. Maps really does look quite nice and it really needed to happen. Since Google was withholding the goods (i.e. turn by turn navigation) for so long Apple decided to move forward without that partnership. In “Flyover” mode, you see 3D models of all the buildings in a particular city as if you were really looking at the city from the sky. Google unveiled a similar product last Wednesday so there will definitely be company in the 3D mapping space.
• Passbook was another goodie that came up – with the ability to have all of your passes at your fingertips digitally. This includes your Starbucks card, plane ticket, and even movie pass. What’s really neat is the fact that your iOS 6 enabled device will know where you are and pull up the correct pass as you near your destination so you won’t have to fumble through your apps to find it.
• Guided Access is fairly intriguing though I doubt I would have much use for it – though many people with kids – especially those with special needs – may find it handy. It gives you the ability to restrict certain areas of the phone so that the user stays focused on the task at hand.

New Macbook Pro

• The newest computer in the MacBook family is now the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. This puppy is on sale right now (though you’ll have to wait between 2-3 weeks for it to be shipped since demand is so high). The display has literally 5.1 million pixels.
• It’s almost as thin as the Mac Air. I’ts .71 inches thin and weighs 4.45lbs. To achieve this they did get rid of the disc drive and flattened the Magsafe port.

Macbook Pro Refresh

• Apple has also refreshed their entire MacBook lineup with a slew of new features like a new HD Facetime Camera and all new Thunderbolt ports. The processors of each line has been upgraded with i5 or i7 processors. You can check out comparisons here.
• The 17 inch MacBook Pro has been axed. Apple always tries to keep it fresh so I suppose it was bound to happen.

For a cool $2,199 smackers the new retina display MacBook Pro can be yours. The regular MacBook Pro of similar size starts at $1799. Do you think the new Mac is worth the extra $400?

For more tech articles and reviews check out www.themanly-man.com

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At least 40 school districts nationwide have approved social media policies. Schools in New York City and Florida have disciplined teachers for Facebook activity, and Missouri legislators recently acquiesced to teachers’ objections to a strict statewide policy.

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In the New York cases, one teacher friended several female students and wrote comments including “this is sexy” under their photos, investigators said. A substitute teacher sent a message to a student saying that her boyfriend did not “deserve a beautiful girl like you.”

Such behavior clearly oversteps boundaries, but some teachers say social media – in particular Facebook – can be a vital educational resource if used appropriately, especially because it’s a primary means of communication for today’s youngsters.

“Email is becoming a dinosaur,” said David Roush, who teaches media communications and television production at a Bronx high school. “Letters home are becoming a dinosaur. The old methods of engaging our students and our parents are starting to die.”

New York Chancellor Dennis Walcott plans to release social media guidelines this month, saying recently that teachers “don’t want to be put in a situation that could either compromise them or be misinterpreted.”

Roush does not accept students as friends on his personal Facebook page but has created a separate profile to communicate with them – something that runs afoul of Facebook rules restricting users to a single profile. He used the page to get the word out quickly about a summer internship on a cable-access show, and a student who learned about it from the Facebook post won it.

“If I would have emailed him, if I had tried calling him, he never would have got it,” Roush said.

Nkomo Morris, who teaches English and journalism at a high school in Brooklyn, said she has about 50 current and former students as Facebook friends. That could be a problem if the new rules instruct teachers not to friend students.

In that event, “I’d send out a massive message, and I would unfriend them,” Morris said.

In the meantime, Morris manages her privacy settings so neither current nor former students see her personal information but do see posts about current events. She also lets students know whether something on their Facebook pages raises a red flag, such as sexual content.

“They’re not always as savvy as I am,” Morris said. “They haven’t really grasped the level of formality out in the real world.”

Efforts like New York’s have been subject to legal wrangling and resistance from teachers and their advocates.

Missouri legislators last year passed a law that barred teachers from using websites that allow “exclusive access” with students 18 years old or younger. Teachers complained that they would be banned from Facebook and Twitter.

A judge granted an injunction, declaring that the law “would have a chilling effect” on free-speech rights. The legislature then repealed the restrictions and passed a new law directing school districts to develop their own policies.

Some districts adopted a model policy by the Missouri School Boards Association, decreeing that staff members must use district-approved devices when communicating electronically with students. The guidelines are intended to make it easier for supervisors to monitor teacher-student interactions.

The Missouri State Teachers Association believes some of the local policies are too restrictive. Spokesman Todd Fuller said the association will support its members if they are disciplined under those new rules.

“We’re prepared to deal with the first issue where a teacher’s rights are being infringed,” he said.

In New York City, a United Federation of Teachers spokesman said the union would not comment without seeing the district’s new guidelines.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said she hopes the new policy considers First Amendment rights as well as “the enormous potential for benefiting students’ education that is represented by technology.”

Musical theater teacher Charles Willis was suspended in 2010 from Braden River High School in Florida for friending more than 100 students on Facebook and for allegedly posting sexually suggestive images and acronyms for profane words. He is now in a non-classroom job at another school, said John Bowen, a school board attorney.

Willis’ lawyer did not return a call from The Associated Press. In comments to the Bradenton Herald in March, Willis noted that students aren’t innocents.

“For anyone who says that a teacher shouldn’t curse in front of students, I say they haven’t been on a football field or in the dugout in a baseball game,” he told the newspaper. “If you could go incognito in those settings and somehow gather audio, you might be surprised at what is said.”

Doctoral research at the University of Southern California found 41 districts nationwide that have approved social media policies.

Under a policy approved by the school board in Muscogee County, Ga., in November, school employees are “strongly discouraged” from allowing students access to personal websites. Districts in Tampa, Fla., and Norton, Mass., also have wrestled with the issue.

Nancy Willard, author of “Cyber Savvy: Embracing Digital Safety and Civility,” believes school districts should set up their own online environments and use tools like Gaggle.net and ePals.com, which have been designed for educational purposes. There is also Edmodo, a Facebook-like network for teachers and students.

The problem with Facebook, she said, is that it was set up for socializing.

“On Facebook, flirting is encouraged,” she said. “You are encouraged to post your relationship status and your relationship interests. That’s not appropriate for a relationship between teachers and students.”

James Giordano, a guidance counselor at a Bronx high school, said that he makes a habit of waiting about four years after a student has graduated to friend one and that he’s glad the district is discussing the issue.

“I hope that they distinguish between personal Facebook pages and pages that are professional,” he said. “It would be a shame if Facebook altogether was banned from use by educators, because it’s a valuable resource.”

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We took a look at Nokia’s first Windows Phone 7 Phone the Nokia Lumia 710. Wary about this new relationship? See below to find out if it’s all a hype or the real deal.

Likes

• Form Factor

The Nokia Lumia 710 is a very handsome phone. It’s not oozing sexiness, but it’s close. I love the clear black display that Nokia has going on – it makes everything on the screen pop. The shape is simple and elegant. As a phone that won’t break the bank, one certainly won’t feel ashamed to pull it out in public.

• Metro

Windows Phone’s new Metro stylings go surprisingly well with the elegant physical form of the device. It’s got beauty and smarts too. The best of both worlds. The UI is super slick and extremely fluid. I rarely stuttered or lagged at all and the minimalist design of the apps underscores the brilliant display. The screen is only 3.7″, but you don’t feel cheated. The UI is also very intuitive. I haven’t used Windows Phone 7.5 a great deal, but I never felt confused or out of step at all. I also love linking the multiple numbers and email address I have for the same person together. Microsoft really paid attention to those little details which really made the experience refreshing. I was also able to sync my contacts from my old phone via Bluetooth in less than 2 minutes. Linked my Facebook and twitter accounts and it was off to the races!

Samsung Fascinate Review

• Ease of Use

Simply put, this phone was just a pleasure to use. There may not be as many Windows Phone 7 apps as there are iPhone apps, but there was definitely something for most people to enjoy. Nokia also adds to the party with select apps of their own like Nokia Maps, Nokia Drive and Contacts Transfer to name a few. I was also quite impressed with the Office Suite – especially Outlook. I usually hate to check my emails via phone because it can get quite confusing and annoying, but it was a dream on the Lumia 710. I could carry on full blown conversations while out of the office which I will classify as a good thing in this write-up, and a bad thing for my social life.

Read the rest at TheManly-Man.com

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Dubbed the Homeless Hotspots Project, the gist is that you can pay a small fee to one of the homeless persons from the Front Steps Shelter who are carrying 4G-to-WiFi devices. Then you can sit near one of them and access the Internet.

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The effort has already received a fair amount of criticism with some wondering why the T-shirts don’t say, “I Manage a 4G Hotspot” instead of the current “I Am a 4G Hotspot.” The latter seems more than a bit dehumanizing, or as a writer on the New York Times SXSW Tumblr put it:

“It is a neat idea on a practical level, but also a little dystopian. When the infrastructure fails us… we turn human beings into infrastructure?”

But BBH asserts that the effort merely piggybacks on the tradition of the street newspaper. But instead of homeless people hawking printed material for money, this initiative, BBH claims, is a way to modernize that model so that passersby can fork over money for access to online content.

The approach is explained on the homepage:

“Homeless Hotspots is a charitable innovation initiative by BBH New York. It attempts to modernize the Street Newspaper model employed to support homeless populations. As digital media proliferates, these newspapers face increased pressure. Our hope is to create a modern version of this successful model, offering homeless individuals an opportunity to sell a digital service instead of a material commodity. SxSW Interactive attendees can pay what they like to access 4G networks carried by our homeless collaborators. This service is intended to deliver on the demand for better transit connectivity during the conference.”

So if you’re in Austin, Tex., attending SXSW and you’re looking to check your e-mail, you can introduce yourself to one of projects’ participants and pay whatever you like with cash or via PayPal link on the Homeless Hotspots website.

The agency tracks the donation and the money goes directly to the homeless person who helped make the web connection.

Let us know in the comments.

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Brett Johnson is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based writer and the founder of the music and culture blog VeryArtistical.com.

Lincoln 2012 MKZ Hybrid

I got a chance to test drive Lincoln’s all new MKZ Hybrid Luxury Vehicle all around New York City. To be honest, I’ve never driven a Lincoln before and I always thought the brand was for, how do I say it, the generation ahead of mine. I will say, the style and perks with the all new MKZ were a pleasant surprise. See my thoughts below.

Likes:

Body

I was very intrigued by the style of the MKZ. It is slightly aggressive, yet refined. It also has “the car next door” look to it which means it is slightly unassuming. I think the style fits quite nicely because you don’t reek of pretentiousness after you open the car door to step out. One is also pleasantly surprised when he takes a peek inside to find leather seats and a smartly laid out dash.
“Smart Gauge”

This really came in handy as I drove around. It’s almost like an app for making sure you are being as fuel efficient as possible at all times. It literally delivers real time information on how much electricity vs fuel you are using. I could take a quick glance at the dashboard and make certain decisions based on that information to help ease the pain the next time I went to the gas station.

Fuel Efficiency

41 MPG! I didn’t try my luck and drive all the gas out – but I believe that number. After driving for a while I never felt anxious about how much fuel was left. If anything, I started to get maniacal about checking how much energy I was saving over on the battery meter on the Smart Gauge. This is a huge factor and can’t be understated especially with gas hitting around 4 bucks a gallon.

Sync

Not a huge amount to say here other than the fact that I really liked how simple it was to sync my mobile device to the car. I also synced my music and contacts to the car’s onboard memory and I could immediately call the last person who called me or who I had called. I could dial anyone I needed to or command my playlists – all via voice control.

Read the rest at www.themanly-man.com

Mark Post a scientist from the Netherlands is planning on growing small lab grown pieces of meat and developing them into a hamburger.

The Huffington Post reports:

Brown began his work several years ago when he decided to focus the rest of his life upon solving the challenge of weaning the world off of animal farming. He described such animal farming as an “inefficient technology millennia old” that also represents “by far the biggest environmental catastrophe” during a press conference held at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver on Feb. 19.

“We can do more good by taking on the simple task of figuring out how to convert cheap, abundant sustainable plant materials into nutrient-dense, protein-rich foods that people deliberately choose to eat based on taste and value,” Brown said, “[Rather] than by coming up with imagining sustainable, renewable energy sources or a car that can run for a thousand miles per gallon.”

Read More At The Huffington Post

Darren Burton

SEE ALSO: What’s Wrong With Online Dating?

A resident of Cardiff, Wales in the United Kingdom, Burton is one of many people who use social media as a tool to anonymously spew hatred, knowing that physical retaliation or legal consequence is improbable.

In an episode that aired Monday night, the BBC revealed various posts made by Burton on random Facebook RIP pages, ranging from “Rot in Piss” to “Rot in Piss you filthy n*gger.”

BBC’s Declan Lawn, attempted to tap into Burton’s sense of decency, but met with extreme callousness and disrespect. When asked by the investigative reporter did he ever feel remorse or take the feelings of those individuals whom may be hurt by his offensive words into consideration,  Burton answered with the cocksure demeanor of a 5th grade bully:

“Yeah,” he said with a shrug,”F*** ‘em.”

Burton remained defensive — yet confident — throughout the entire interview, saying that everything he wrote on Facebook was a matter of free speech:

“Facebook is an open forum,” he insisted. If he does face legal ramifications for hate speech, he casually referenced a previous case during which his time served was minimal:

“Nine weeks? Nine weeks in jail? What’s that?”

Facebook — though notorious for border-line violating the privacy options of its users — has not made much of an effort to expose blatantly disrespectful users who harrass and diminish the FB experience for other individuals. CNET.com reports on a Holocaust denial page as an example of Facebook’s unwillingness to sacrifice freedom of expression to censure hate speech:

“The bottom line is that, of course, we abhor Nazi ideals and find Holocaust denial repulsive and ignorant. However, we believe people have a right to discuss these ideas and we want Facebook to be a place where ideas, even controversial ideas, can be discussed.”

Though the Burtons of the world may be safe for the moment, Facebook marketing director, Randi Zuckerberg, hopes to see that change in the near future:

“I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away,” she said during a Marie Claire panel discussion last September. “People behave a lot better when they have their real names down. … I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors.”

While freedom of speech is definitely a right that should be protected at all costs, the consequences of such freedom should not be mitigated by anonymity. Maybe it’s time that the Burtons of the world realize that if they want to call someone a “n*gger, they need to be bold enough to say it without hiding safely behind a computer screen.

Accountability is the only way that these “trolls” will get the message, even though they probably wouldn’t “Like” the outcome.

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It was a stunning role reversal for a youthful company that prides itself in promoting unfettered expression, 140 characters at a time. Twitter insisted its commitment to free speech remains firm, and sought to explain the nuances of its policy, while critics – in a barrage of tweets – proposed a Twitter boycott and demanded that the censorship initiative be scrapped.

“This is very bad news,” tweeted Egyptian activist Mahmoud Salem, who operates under the name Sandmonkey. Later, he wrote, “Is it safe to say that (hash)Twitter is selling us out?”

In China, where activists have embraced Twitter even though it’s blocked inside the country, artist and activist Ai Weiwei tweeted in response to the news: “If Twitter censors, I’ll stop tweeting.”

One often-relayed tweet bore the headline of a Forbes magazine technology blog item: “Twitter Commits Social Suicide”

San Francisco-based Twitter, founded in 2006, depicted the new system as a step forward. Previously, when Twitter erased a tweet, it vanished throughout the world. Under the new policy, a tweet breaking a law in one country can be taken down there and still be seen elsewhere.

Twitter said it will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed and will post the removal requests it receives from governments, companies and individuals at the website chillingeffects.org.

The critics are jumping to the wrong conclusions, said Alexander Macgilliviray, Twitter’s general counsel.

“This is a good thing for freedom of expression, transparency and accountability,” he said. “This launch is about us keeping content up whenever we can and to be extremely transparent with the world when we don’t. I would hope people realize our philosophy hasn’t changed.”

Some defenders of Internet free expression came to Twitter’s defense.

“Twitter is being pilloried for being honest about something that all Internet platforms have to wrestle with,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “As long as this censorship happens in a secret way, we’re all losers.”

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland credited Twitter with being upfront about the potential for censorship and said some other companies are not as forthright.

As for whether the new policy would be harmful, Nuland said that wouldn’t be known until after it’s implemented.

Reporters Without Borders, which advocates globally for press freedom, sent a letter to Twitter’s executive chairman, Jack Dorsey, urging that the censorship policy be ditched immediately.

“By finally choosing to align itself with the censors, Twitter is depriving cyberdissidents in repressive countries of a crucial tool for information and organization,” the letter said. “Twitter’s position that freedom of expression is interpreted differently from country to country is unacceptable.”

Reporters Without Borders noted that Twitter was earning praise from free-speech advocates a year ago for enabling Egyptian dissidents to continue tweeting after the Internet was disconnected.

“We are very disappointed by this U-turn now,” it said.

Twitter said it has no plans to remove tweets unless it receives a request from government officials, companies or another outside party that believes the message is illegal. No message will be removed until an internal review determines there is a legal problem, according to Macgilliviray.

“It’s a thing of last resort,” he said. “The first thing we do is we try to make sure content doesn’t get withheld anywhere. But if we feel like we have to withhold it, then we are transparent and we will withhold it narrowly.”

Macgilliviray said the new policy has nothing to do with a recent $300 million investment by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Mac or any other financial contribution.

In its brief existence, Twitter has established itself as one of the world’s most powerful megaphones. Streams of tweets have played pivotal roles in political protests throughout the world, including the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States and the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia and Syria.

Indeed, many of the tweets calling for a boycott of Twitter on Saturday – using the hashtag (hash)TwitterBlackout – came from the Middle East.

“This decision is really worrying,” said Larbi Hilali, a pro-democracy blogger and tweeter from Morocco. “If it is applied, there will be a Twitter for democratic countries and a Twitter for the others.”

In Cuba, opposition blogger Yoani Sanchez said she would protest Saturday with a one-day personal boycott of Twitter.

“Twitter will remove messages at the request of governments,” she tweeted. “It is we citizens who will end up losing with these new rules … .”

In the wake of the announcement, cyberspace was abuzz with suggestions for how any future country-specific censorship could be circumvented. Some Twitter users said this could be done by employing tips from Twitter’s own help center to alter one’s “Country” setting. Other Twitter users were skeptical that this would work.

While Twitter has embraced its role as a catalyst for free speech, it also wants to expand its audience from about 100 million active users now to more than 1 billion. Doing so may require it to engage with more governments and possibly to face more pressure to censor tweets; if it defies a law in a country where it has employees, those people could be arrested.

Theoretically, such arrests could occur even in democracies – for example, if a tweet violated Britain’s strict libel laws or the prohibitions in France and Germany against certain pro-Nazi expressions.

“It’s a tough problem that a company faces once they branch out beyond one set of offices in California into that big bad world out there,” said Rebecca MacKinnon of Global Voices Online, an international network of bloggers and citizen journalists. “We’ll have to see how it plays out – how it is and isn’t used.”

MacKinnon said some other major social networks already employ geo-filtering along the lines of Twitter’s new policy – blocking content in a specific jurisdiction for legal reasons while making it available elsewhere.

Many of the critics assailing the new policy suggested that it was devised as part of a long-term plan for Twitter to enter China, where its service is currently blocked.

China’s Communist Party remains highly sensitive to any organized challenge to its rule and responded sharply to the Arab Spring, cracking down last year after calls for a “Jasmine Revolution” in China. Many Chinese nonetheless find ways around the so-called Great Firewall that has blocked social networking sites such as Facebook.

Google for several years agreed to censor its search results in China to gain better access to the country’s vast population, but stopped that practice two years after engaging in a high-profile showdown with Chain’s government. Google now routes its Chinese search results through Hong Kong, where the censorship rules are less restrictive.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt declined to comment on Twitter’s action and instead limited his comments to his own company.

“I can assure you we will apply our universally tough principles against censorship on all Google products,” he told reporters in Davos, Switzerland.

Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, said it was a matter of trying to adhere to different local laws.

“I think what they (Twitter officials) are wrestling with is what all of us wrestle with – and everyone wants to focus on China, but it is actually a global issue – which is laws in these different countries vary,” Drummond said.

“Americans tend to think copyright is a real bad problem, so we have to regulate that on the Internet. In France and Germany, they care about Nazis’ issues and so forth,” he added. “In China, there are other issues that we call censorship. And so how you respect all the laws or follow all the laws to the extent you think they should be followed while still allowing people to get the content elsewhere?”

Craig Newman, a New York lawyer and former journalist who has advised Internet companies on censorship issues, said Twitter’s new policy and the subsequent backlash are both understandable, given the difficult ethical issues at stake.

On one hand, he said, Twitter could put its employees in peril if it was deemed to be breaking local laws.

“On the other hand, Twitter has become this huge social force and people view it as some sort of digital town square, where people can say whatever they want,” he said. “Twitter could have taken a stand and refused to enter any countries with the most restrictive laws against free speech.”

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The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill expands the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Now before the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act. The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such…

You still may be saying “so what,” but here are a few real life issues you should think about. According to the act:

An Internet site is dedicated to theft of U.S. property’ if [a portion of the site is US-directed] and is used by users within the United States and is primarily designed or operated for the purpose of offering services in a manner that enables or facilitates [copyright violation or circumvention of copyright protection measures].

What this is means is that any site that that allow users to post content that could enable copyright infringement could be shut down. Here are a few examples that could effect your  everyday life: YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia and Gmail. The current proposal makes little distinction and leaves it open to almost any interpretation the government wants to take to determine almost any site is in violation.

What happens if you are accused of  copyright infringement under this new law? Again, I could paraphrase but this text explains it best. Section 201(b)(1) expands criminal copyright infringement to include:

…At least 10 copies or phonorecords, or of at least 10 public performances by means of digital transmission, of 1 or more copyrighted works, during any 180-day period, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500.

Now, the way that the value of a work can be computed in court is the very crude (value of the work times number of views).

…Total retail value may be shown by evidence of the total retail price that persons receiving the reproductions, distributions, or public performances constituting the offense would have paid to receive such reproductions, distributions, or public performances lawfully.

This means, for example, if you upload a video to YouTube of you singing a popular song, and that song might sell for $1, and your video gets 2,500 views, you are guilty of felony copyright infringement. Furthermore, you can tack on “willful infringement for commercial gain or valued at more than $1,000.”

This would make you a felon, and if a copyright holder were to bring a suit against you, would give you a criminal record that would make it virtually impossible to gain future employment, and may subject you to up to three years in prison for singing a song. You don’t have to receive any money. You don’t have to gain anything from your video. Simply receiving 2,500 views on a song you sung, which happens to have copyright held by someone else, makes you a felon.

Now do you see why you should be concerned? This is why many sites were “blacked out” yesterday in protest because this poorly written law could impact how we use the Internet today.

So we should stay close to this issue and show our voice by reaching out to our local congressman and letting them know that you don’t want any bills that limit how you can use the internet because the internet offers a great platform of expression for us.

We got a chance to check out the Xperia PLAY 4G for the last few weeks and I’ve definitely got some opinions on the phone. Read further to find out what they are!

Samsung Infuse Review

Likes:

• Design

When looking at the phone, it honestly looks like a business device. The chrome and shiny back really look sleek. The 4″ screen doesn’t look over-sized and it’s not a device you would be ashamed to pull out on the train or around others. You really can’t tell that this device is meant for gaming until you slide out the game pad.

• Software Tweaks

Sony has skinned Android Gingerbread (Ice Cream Sandwich’s predecessor) and overall its pretty nice. It’s mostly visual tweaks like widgets and the way you get around the app-tray. None of these tweaks are groundbreaking but they add some extra pizzazz.

• Games

This is what you’re waiting for no doubt. I really like the fact that there are games specifically designed for this device. They also have great titles. I’ve been playing Sims for the last week. The graphics for playing games like Asphalt 6 were great and the phone rarely stuttered in those high-speed moments. This phone really takes you away from the lower quality games and makes you want to spend money investing in decent games because you can play them better with a direction pad, touch pad and physical buttons.

Read the rest at www.themanly-man.com

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The cars, which are smaller than Smart Cars, are battery-electric, so they don’t cause tailpipe emissions. They also weigh less than a 1,000 pounds and are intended to “meet the demand for enclosed personal mobility.”

The two-passenger vehicle will be available for use around different cities and allow drivers to pick up and drop off the vehicles at different locations. According to MIT, the car will be available in a city somewhere in Asia as a pilot program within the next five years.

Check out Lark’s car below:

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What To Watch On TV This Winter

Gaming:

PS3 Move Bundle – Under $300.00

Xbox360 Kinect bundle -  $339.00

I had the XBox360 for quite some time, however, there were a few things I was missing from the repertoire. Namely, another system. Having procured both major systems ensures that I will have access to the top games for both platforms at my whim. I can also choose which online community I want to interact with. If the person your thinking of purchasing for has one system and loves it chances are they will enjoy another game system as well unless they are just rabid fan-boys of a particular platform. That said, getting a bundle will provide the most “bang” for your buck. You can get a game as well as the cool features that come along with the motion controllers for the PS3 or the XBox360. They also don’t have to go out and purchase those items later. You would do well to note that both platforms support apps like Netflix and music/movie downloads however Xbox Live costs about $60.00 per year while the Playstation Network is free.

Gadgets:

iPad2 – from 499.00

Kindle Fire: 199.99

Asus Transformer Prime:  from 499.00

You can read our brief write-up on these tablets here. The iPad 2 is the most prestigious of the bunch and comes with the most apps tailored for the tablet experience. However, if the iPad doesn’t quite satisfy the pallet, you can choose from other tablets most of which run some derivative of Android’s operating system. The Kindle Fire has a completely tricked-out user interface and is centered around its Amazon store. You can purchase reading material  and store your purchases in the cloud. The Asus Transformer Prime will be the first Quad Core Tegra 3 device. It will also be upgraded to Google’s latest flavored OS called Ice-Cream Sandwich.

More at www.themanly-man.com

The poll also showed that 40 percent of people surveyed would have no problem breaking up with someone via electronic communication.

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The New York Daily News reports:

The survey may not have been scientific, but it provided a peek into how the Internet is changing people’s love lives — and making the always painful breakup conversation impersonal and in many ways less messy.

Those questioned in the poll were all over the age of 18. Among the respondents, about 41% were single, 24% were in a relationship and 24% said they were married.

Read More At The New York Daily News

It’s not often I feel moved to get on board and start blogging about a company’s services. But then I guess it is not often that you come across this kind of package. So without further ado, a rundown of the services I’m talking about:

Comcast internet digital TV and telephone services can be combined or bought separately. The telephone service works like your own personal VoIP and lets you do three way calling, has call waiting and will supply caller ID where you caller has not disabled the function. Roll the telephone service together with everything else (TV and internet) and you end up with one low monthly bill and three great services.

Comcast is the company that made waves with an introduction of an internet initiative to help out families struggling on the digital poverty line (you’ll sometimes hear that referred to as the digital divide” – a theoretical threshold below which families don’t have access to the web because the equipment and connections cost too much). The company has continued its mission to supply low cost broadband services with its normal domestic packages – telephony, TV and net in one.

Comcast’s TV packages are designed to make the most of the digital source the programming comes from. Every package is supplied with a Parental Controls option, which ensures that your kids don’t end up watching stuff you don’t want them to. You also get an easy to use intuitive program guide, which means you can set up recording schedules as well as flicking straight off to your favourite shows.

Comcast internet all in one packages also have an HDTV option – using semi-fibre optic transmission for crystal clear pictures every time and no distortion or delay. The same goes for the digital voice packages, which are not hampered by any distortion either.

Comcast claims that its high speed internet connection can supply downloads of up to 100 times the speed of a regular dial up. On average what you are really looking at (in modern day terms) is a download speed of maybe 8 MBps, which is of course insanely fast for an affordable domestic linkup. With this kind of breakneck speed involved you can keep a whole house full of net users happy all at the same time – even if every member of the family is using a different device in a different room!

That’s where the packages score for us, of course, With our techie household, we have more computing equipment than we do people. The beauty of the Comcast internet system is that this does not matter anymore. Now I can work on presentations late into the night while my son devours online games and my twin daughters get all mushy over their latest musical crushes. And my wife doesn’t complain because she’s got the sharpest HDTV on the street. Ideal!

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According to findings from a recent study by University of Southern California Professor Dmitri Williams, only 10 percent of characters in video games are Black, and even then most are depicted as gangsters or athletes.

Some would argue that while so many African Americans religiously play video games, they cannot see themselves getting into an industry that is predominately white. Others point to institutional bias and inequality of opportunity in the gaming and tech industries.

Read more at the Grio.

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Founders Tre Barker and Lawrence Watkins will launch the website in December.

Drawing from the meaning of Ujamaa, “cooperative economics,” Barker and Watkins want to use their startup to make it easy to buy black, support black job creation, and decrease the wealth gap.

Read more at TheLoop21.com

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Founders Tre Barker and Lawrence Watkins will launch the website in December.

Drawing from the meaning of Ujamaa, “cooperative economics,” Barker and Watkins want to use their startup to make it easy to buy black, support black job creation, and decrease the wealth gap.

Read more at TheLoop21.com

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Rocawear Pulls Jay-Z “Occupy” Line After Criticism Over Profits