Everyone's favorite 6-second video making app Vine is receiving an update today that helps you create even better videos. The first new feature is called "Sessions," and its basically a drafts folder for videos. You can take portions or complete Vines, and save them for later, up to 10 at a time. You can access these Sessions with a tap on an icon in the bottom right of your capture window.
Next up is "Time Travel," a new way to edit the Vine you're currently working on. At any time in your creative process, you can tap the green progress bar and go back through your clips to rearrange them. While you may not use this often for basic editing, it'll be useful if you need to re-shoot any portion of a scene and put it in its proper place.
You can grab the latest version of Vine from the Play Store link at the top of this post.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures were little changed in light trading on Monday following a record closing high by the S&P 500 on Friday, as a week filled with economic data and key corporate earnings gets under way.
The S&P 500 closed at a record high to cap its biggest weekly gain in three months on stronger-than-expected earnings from companies, including Google and Morgan Stanley.
Shares of Dow component McDonald's fell 1.9 percent in light premarket trading after posting earnings. Other companies expected to report results on Monday include Netflix and Texas Instruments .
"With no fresh themes emerging this morning, market participants will continue to look towards earnings for direction - and earnings have delivered," said Andre Bakhos, managing director at Janlyn Capital LLC in Bernardsville, New Jersey.
"It will primarily be an earnings and economic data driven market," he said.
The National Association of Realtors releases existing-home sales for September at 10 a.m. (1400 GMT). Economists in a Reuters survey forecast a 5.30 million units at an annual rate versus 5.48 million in August.
S&P 500 futures rose a point and were little changed in terms of fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 3 points and Nasdaq 100 futures added 6 points.
Financial stocks could be in focus after JPMorgan Chase & Co reached a tentative $13 billion deal with the U.S. government to settle investigations into bad mortgage loans sold to investors by JPMorgan and the banks it bought during the financial crisis.
"A settlement of this size brings closure for many and it allows them to put the episode behind," Bakhos said.
Shares of Tellabs Inc rose 5.5 percent in premarket trading after the network services provider agreed to be bought by Marlin Equity Partners for $891 million.
Japan's exports rose but were well short of expectations in September, a sign that slowing demand in Asia is taking the shine off Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's stimulus policies and clouding the outlook for a budding economic recovery.
(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Kenneth Barry)
Contact: Bernard McCoy bmccoy2@unl.edu 402-472-3047 University of Nebraska-Lincoln
More than 90 percent admit they play with their digital devices in class
The typical college student plays with his or her digital device an average of 11 times a day while in class, according to a new study by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln associate professor.
More than 80 percent admit that their use of smart phones, tablets and laptops can interfere with their learning. More than a fourth say their grades suffer as a result.
Barney McCoy, an associate professor of broadcasting, embarked upon his study after launching his teaching career seven years ago and noticing the instructional challenges presented by students' digital devices.
From the front of his classroom on multimedia, he often saw the smart phones creeping out.
The view from the back of a classroom while a colleague taught Mass Media Principles was equally telling.
"They've got their laptops open, but they're not always taking notes," McCoy said. "Some might have two screens open -- Facebook and their notes."
Rather than rely on anecdotal evidence, McCoy decided to try to quantify how often college students tune out their instructors in favor of tweets and texts. During fall 2012, he surveyed 777 students at six universities in five states about their classroom use of digital devices for non-instructional purposes. He also asked the students how often they are distracted by others using digital devices and for their perspective on how digital devices should be policed.
"I don't think students necessarily think it's problematic," McCoy said. "They think it's part of their lives."
The students, from UNL and the University of Nebraska at Omaha in Nebraska, Morningside College in Iowa, the University of North Carolina, the University of Kansas and the University of Mississippi, were recruited for the computer survey by classroom instructors via email and personal contact. Respondents were not asked to reveal their name or institution, though colleges were identified through Internet Protocol addresses associated with the survey responses.
Here's how often respondents said they used their digital devices for non-classroom purposes during a typical day (percentages equal more than 100 percent because of rounding):
1 to 3 times per day: 35 percent
4 to 10 times per day: 27 percent
11 to 30 times per day: 16 percent
More than 30 times per day: 15 percent
Never: less than 8 percent.
Nearly 86 percent said they were texting, 68 percent reported they were checking email, 66 percent said they using social networks, 38 percent said they were surfing the Web and 8 percent said they were playing a game.
McCoy said he was surprised by one response: 79 percent of the students said they used their digital device to check the time.
"That's a generational thing to me -- a lot of young people don't wear watches," he said.
The top advantages of using digital devices for non-class purposes, according to students, are staying connected (70 percent), fighting boredom (55 percent) and doing related classwork (49 percent). The most commonly cited disadvantages were that they don't pay attention (90 percent), miss instruction (80 percent), or get called out by their instructor (32 percent). More than a fourth said they lose grade points because of their digital habits.
However, students downplayed the distraction caused by digital devices. Fewer than 5 percent considered it a "big" or "very big" distraction when classmates used digital devices and fewer than 5 percent considered their own use of a digital device to be a "big" or "very big" distraction. However, more than half the students said they were "a little" distracted when other students pulled out their devices and nearly 46 percent said they were "a little" distracted by their own use of digital devices.
Less than 17 percent said the use of digital devices was not a distraction.
Students do not want to leave their smartphones at home, however. More than 91 percent said they opposed a classroom ban on digital devices. Their preferred policy (72 percent) for dealing with digital distraction is for the instructor to speak to the offender. They also preferred a first-offense warning, followed by penalties (65 percent) for those caught using devices for non-classroom purposes.
McCoy said digital distraction is a challenge with which instructors will continue to wrestle. A 2012 study showed that two-thirds of students age 18-29 own a smartphone, which gives them mobile access to the Internet as well as texting and email capabilities. A 2013 study by Experian Marketing Services showed that 18- to 24-year-olds send and receive an average of 3,853 text messages per month.
"It's become automatic behavior on the part of so many people -- they do it without even thinking about it," McCoy said.
He said he asks students to be aware that using their devices can distract others and to step outside the room if it's a true emergency and they need to be connected. He said he limits the length of his lectures and gives students periodic breaks so they can update Facebook or send a tweet. He said he also tries to get them to use their phones as part of their classroom activities -- asking them to look up information, for example.
"I can guarantee you even when I do those things, it's still not going to keep students from having a text conversation," he said. "They'll multi-task while they're doing it."
###
McCoy's study was published online last week in the Journal of Media Education and is available at http://go.unl.edu/fbov.
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Study: Students text, a lot, during class
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
23-Oct-2013
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Contact: Bernard McCoy bmccoy2@unl.edu 402-472-3047 University of Nebraska-Lincoln
More than 90 percent admit they play with their digital devices in class
The typical college student plays with his or her digital device an average of 11 times a day while in class, according to a new study by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln associate professor.
More than 80 percent admit that their use of smart phones, tablets and laptops can interfere with their learning. More than a fourth say their grades suffer as a result.
Barney McCoy, an associate professor of broadcasting, embarked upon his study after launching his teaching career seven years ago and noticing the instructional challenges presented by students' digital devices.
From the front of his classroom on multimedia, he often saw the smart phones creeping out.
The view from the back of a classroom while a colleague taught Mass Media Principles was equally telling.
"They've got their laptops open, but they're not always taking notes," McCoy said. "Some might have two screens open -- Facebook and their notes."
Rather than rely on anecdotal evidence, McCoy decided to try to quantify how often college students tune out their instructors in favor of tweets and texts. During fall 2012, he surveyed 777 students at six universities in five states about their classroom use of digital devices for non-instructional purposes. He also asked the students how often they are distracted by others using digital devices and for their perspective on how digital devices should be policed.
"I don't think students necessarily think it's problematic," McCoy said. "They think it's part of their lives."
The students, from UNL and the University of Nebraska at Omaha in Nebraska, Morningside College in Iowa, the University of North Carolina, the University of Kansas and the University of Mississippi, were recruited for the computer survey by classroom instructors via email and personal contact. Respondents were not asked to reveal their name or institution, though colleges were identified through Internet Protocol addresses associated with the survey responses.
Here's how often respondents said they used their digital devices for non-classroom purposes during a typical day (percentages equal more than 100 percent because of rounding):
1 to 3 times per day: 35 percent
4 to 10 times per day: 27 percent
11 to 30 times per day: 16 percent
More than 30 times per day: 15 percent
Never: less than 8 percent.
Nearly 86 percent said they were texting, 68 percent reported they were checking email, 66 percent said they using social networks, 38 percent said they were surfing the Web and 8 percent said they were playing a game.
McCoy said he was surprised by one response: 79 percent of the students said they used their digital device to check the time.
"That's a generational thing to me -- a lot of young people don't wear watches," he said.
The top advantages of using digital devices for non-class purposes, according to students, are staying connected (70 percent), fighting boredom (55 percent) and doing related classwork (49 percent). The most commonly cited disadvantages were that they don't pay attention (90 percent), miss instruction (80 percent), or get called out by their instructor (32 percent). More than a fourth said they lose grade points because of their digital habits.
However, students downplayed the distraction caused by digital devices. Fewer than 5 percent considered it a "big" or "very big" distraction when classmates used digital devices and fewer than 5 percent considered their own use of a digital device to be a "big" or "very big" distraction. However, more than half the students said they were "a little" distracted when other students pulled out their devices and nearly 46 percent said they were "a little" distracted by their own use of digital devices.
Less than 17 percent said the use of digital devices was not a distraction.
Students do not want to leave their smartphones at home, however. More than 91 percent said they opposed a classroom ban on digital devices. Their preferred policy (72 percent) for dealing with digital distraction is for the instructor to speak to the offender. They also preferred a first-offense warning, followed by penalties (65 percent) for those caught using devices for non-classroom purposes.
McCoy said digital distraction is a challenge with which instructors will continue to wrestle. A 2012 study showed that two-thirds of students age 18-29 own a smartphone, which gives them mobile access to the Internet as well as texting and email capabilities. A 2013 study by Experian Marketing Services showed that 18- to 24-year-olds send and receive an average of 3,853 text messages per month.
"It's become automatic behavior on the part of so many people -- they do it without even thinking about it," McCoy said.
He said he asks students to be aware that using their devices can distract others and to step outside the room if it's a true emergency and they need to be connected. He said he limits the length of his lectures and gives students periodic breaks so they can update Facebook or send a tweet. He said he also tries to get them to use their phones as part of their classroom activities -- asking them to look up information, for example.
"I can guarantee you even when I do those things, it's still not going to keep students from having a text conversation," he said. "They'll multi-task while they're doing it."
###
McCoy's study was published online last week in the Journal of Media Education and is available at http://go.unl.edu/fbov.
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]New Jersey became the 14th state to allow same-sex marriage Monday when gay couples began marrying just after midnight. A state judge forced the state to recognize same-sex marriages. Initially, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appealed that ruling. But he dropped that appeal Monday, saying the New Jersey Supreme Court had already made clear how it would rule.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NprProgramsATC/~3/RwPe3Ux1nCo/story.php Similar Articles: Kwame KilpatrickKrokodilchrissy teigenJulie ChenChristopher Lane
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Activist investor Carl Icahn may be putting more pressure on Apple CEO Tim Cook to get more aggressive about boosting the iPhone maker's stock price.
Icahn posted on his Twitter account Wednesday that he had sent Cook a letter in the afternoon. He said he would share the letter Thursday on a new website called "Shareholders' Square Table."
The missive follows up on a Sept. 30 dinner with Cook that Icahn hosted at his New York apartment. During that get-together, Icahn said he lobbied Cook to spend $150 billion buying back Apple Inc.'s own stock. That's more than double the amount that the Cupertino, Calif., company has committed to spend.
Icahn, whose wealth is estimated at $20 billion by Forbes magazine, has said his fund has invested about $2 billion in Apple. At that amount, Icahn would own less than a 1 percent stake in Apple.
Icahn, 77, has a long history of buying significant stakes in companies with a slumping stock price and then pressing the corporate leaders to pursue plans that he thinks would make the shares more valuable.
While Apple's market value of about $477 billion is more than any other publicly traded company, its stock prices has fallen about 25 percent from a peak 13 months ago. Investors have been worried about tougher competition facing Apple in the smartphone and table market, as well as the lack of a breakthrough product since the death of its chief visionary, Steve Jobs, two years ago. Those worries didn't dissipate with unveiling of Apple's latest iPads on Tuesday.
Apple's stock rose $5.09 Wednesday to close at $524.96.
Icahn believes Apple could lift its stock by taking advantage of low interest rates to borrow money to finance its proposed stock buybacks. The buybacks would fuel demand for Apple's stock and increase the company's earnings per share by reducing the amount of stock. Higher earnings per share usually lift a company's stock price.
Neither Apple nor Icahn responded to requests for comment on Wednesday.
In some instances, Icahn has threatened to try to oust corporate boards that don't follow his wishes. Icahn hasn't yet said whether he might pursue a shake-up at Apple if the company rebuffs him.
Icahn sent his letter to Cook the day after disclosing he had sold more than half his stake in one of his biggest successes, an investment in Internet movie service Netflix Inc.
In that instance, Icahn did little but give Netflix CEO Reed Hastings a vote of confidence at a time when the company had fallen out of favor. After accumulating a nearly 10 percent stake in Netflix while the stock was trading below $60 last year, Icahn reaped a pre-tax gain of nearly $800 million by selling 3 million shares at prices ranging from $304.23 to $341.44 earlier this month.
Icahn still owns nearly 2.7 million Netflix shares, leaving him with a 4.5 percent stake in the Los Gatos, Calif., company.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — A Malaysian university is facing public criticism for awarding an honorary doctorate in economics to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The privately run HELP University said a "simple ceremony" to mark the conferment was held in early October at North Korea's embassy in Kuala Lumpur.
The event initially went unnoticed in this Southeast Asian nation but was reported briefly by North Korea's official news agency, KCNA. It attracted criticism on social networks in Malaysia this week after the U.S.-based Foreign Policy magazine posted a blog article that expressed surprise about the decision.
The university's president, Paul Chan, said in an undated statement released this week that the decision was about "building a bridge to reach the people."
Chan's office said he was not available for further comments Thursday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A White House national security official was fired after it was discovered that he was behind an anonymous Twitter account that criticized the Obama administration.
Jofi Joseph was nonproliferation director on the National Security Council and was involved in nuclear negotiations with Iran.
His postings on the @NatSecWonk account, which no longer is available on Twitter, often took shots at administration policy and figures, including Secretary of State John Kerry, and members of Congress.
One tweet said: "More people should be asking why John Kerry installed two former aides, both with ZERO foreign policy experience, into top posts at State."
Another tweet said: "That Obama only called Kerry/Hagel AFTER he made decision with his WH aides on going to Hill underscores how all foreign policy is WH-based." The post referred to Obama's surprise decision in late August to seek congressional authorization for military strikes against Syria as punishment for a chemical weapons attack in August.
Joseph could not be reached Wednesday for comment. No one answered the telephone at a number believed to be his.
In a statement to Politico, Joseph said he took "complete responsibility" for the Twitter feed, saying it started as a "parody account." He apologized to those he insulted.
A White House official confirmed that Joseph no longer works for the administration, but declined further comment on personnel matters. It was not immediately clear how officials determined that Joseph was behind the Twitter account.
Joseph began working at the State Department in 2009. Deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said he was assigned to the National Security Council in 2011 and became an NSC employee last August.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday he had no additional information to provide.
Carney said White House staffers cannot access social media sites like Twitter from the White House unless they have an official, authorized account. Carney and many other senior administration officials have official Twitter accounts and they often send several messages a day.
Audie Cornish talks to Brian Stelter, media reporter for The New York Times, about the success of Netflix and how the video streaming company has turned itself around.
We have a few more numbers for you now from a superstar tech company that stumbled painfully and publicly back in 2011 but appears to be on solid footing again. I'm talking about Netflix. Now, remember when the company changed its prices and divided its DVD rental and streaming services, and then quickly reversed course when customers howled?
Well, yesterday, Netflix released its third-quarter earnings. In just the past year, the company's stock price has more than tripled. For the first time in the U.S., its streaming service has reached and passed the 30 million subscriber mark. And it earned 14 Emmy nominations for its original programs, including "House of Cards" starring Kevin Spacey.
(SOUNDBITE OF SERIES, "HOUSE OF CARDS")
KEVIN SPACEY: (as Francis) As for me, I'm just a lowly House majority whip. I keep things moving in a Congress choked by pettiness and lassitude. My job is to clear the pipes and keep the sludge moving. But I won't have to be a plumber much longer. I've done my time. I've backed the right man.
CORNISH: For more on the rise and fall and rise again of Netflix, I'm joined by Brian Stelter of the New York Times. Hey there, Brian.
BRIAN STELTER: Hi there.
CORNISH: So, I'm going to start in the middle back in 2011. What did Netflix and its then embattled CEO, Reed Hastings, do to get the company back on track after what were, you know, basically an embarrassing and damaging couple of months?
STELTER: I think the answer might be embedded in your introduction, when you were talking about how Netflix reversed course once it heard from its customers. Netflix listened to its customers and has continued to listen to its customers ever since. And that might be part of the secret to its success.
CORNISH: And he didn't just listen, he apologized, right? I remember that.
STELTER: That's right. A rather unusual public apology from a chief executive of a big company. Sometimes that's rather refreshing for people to see. But Netflix is quite good at knowing what its customers want and quite good at pleasing its customers by giving them more of what they want. Lately, its original programming strategy is evidence of this. By having original shows like "House of Cards" and "Orange is the New Black," Netflix is giving customers a reason to come back. And that sort of customer-centered strategy is probably partly the answer to what got them back on track.
CORNISH: Now, Brian, you write about an interesting challenge for Netflix, one that they're still trying to overcome. You call it the TV two-step. What is that and what are they doing about it?
STELTER: You know, it's every time you go from watching cable to watching something on Netflix. You have to pick up the remote control, change the input on your television, hope that the other box you've hooked up to your TV actually works. That's the two-step that many people know how to do, but many people don't know how to do. And what Netflix would like someday is to have a button on your normal remote control that pulls up Netflix automatically.
It'd like to be accessible through the cable set top box experience that most people are used to. It'll be nice for Netflix to show up on the on-screen guide right next to NBC and Fox News. Now, that's probably a long ways off, but Netflix is now talking to cable operators about making that happen, and it'll probably happen someday.
CORNISH: We've learned it's dangerous, frankly, to predict the future of a company like Netflix. I mean, a lot of people wrote them off two years ago. Do you see any warning signs now that this resurgence itself is fragile?
STELTER: The more bearish analysts that cover Netflix say that the concern for the company going forward is that it is spending an enormous amount of money on programming, mostly by licensing shows that have already been on television elsewhere. For example, "New Girl" and "Breaking Bad," you know, these sort of catch-up shows that are on Netflix. But it's also spending a lot on original programming like "House of Cards" and "Orange is the New Black." And these more bearish analysts say that Netflix is going to have to walk a tight wire of sorts to make sure it can afford all of the promises it's made basically to pay for this programming while it continues to gain subscribers. They say it's going to be a challenge for Netflix to keep its balance sheet in a comfortable place.
CORNISH: That's Brian Stelter, a reporter for the New York Times. Brian, thank you so much.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
For the first time since 1999, the two teams with the best record in baseball will meet in the World Series. The Boston Red Sox host the St. Louis Cardinals at Fenway Park tonight.
Enough said, let's bring in NPR's Mike Pesca. Hey, Mike.
MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: Hi.
GREENE: You're going to be at the game.
PESCA: Yes.
GREENE: So we have the two teams with the two best records. That has to tell us something about his World Series. Or maybe in this crazy world of sports it tells us nothing.
PESCA: Or in the crazy sport of baseball, actually you're right, it kind of doesn't. I mean you mentioned 1999, that was a stinker of a World Series. The Yankees swept the Braves. The Braves had a much better record even than the Yankees did. And then you go back to some recent series were teams that were wildcards and, quote-unquote, "snuck in" like in 2002. The Angel/Giants that went seven - that was a great World Series. So yes, there's not a whole lot of correlation.
In general the correlation between the regular season and the postseason often becomes tenuous. We see things like great players through the regular season slump. We see nobodies delivering the clutch. And that's because the baseball season is so long, it gives us a false sense of how good or bad anyone could be on a given day.
I mean if a guy is a 300 hitter that says what? Oh, that guy can hit. But if you take any seven-game snapshot may be he's a 180 hitter over that snapshot. You know, it's more likely he'll be a 320 hitter or a 300 hitter but there's far from a guarantee in the sport of baseball.
GREENE: So we'll watch to see who the heroes that will emerge.
PESCA: I'm being paid to, yes.
(LAUGHTER)
GREENE: Well, let's start with the St. Louis Cardinals. I mean a franchise that just a stays right towards the top. What makes them so good?
PESCA: That's it, steady efficiency. I mean they have a great farm system. They have so many good pitchers that they have Shelby Miller, a young 15-game-winner. He's like the sixth guy on their staff. They're very good from top to bottom. They have few weaknesses. They have the Cardinal Way which has been derided a little bit for its arrogance. I don't know if the players themselves buy into it, as much some of the very proud fans do.
But they do have an ethic of success and culture in getting things done. And they are a model organization in this sport.
GREENE: Well, besides the beards that the Boston Red Sox players have grown to bond together, what gives them the chance to come on top of the Cardinals?
PESCA: I think looseness. I think, you know, sheer talent from top to bottom. I think their strategy of hitting crucial game-winning grand slams in the last series, if they could light upon that strategy again...
GREENE: That would work, two of them and the American League championships series.
PESCA: Yes. And it has this great study in contrasts because you know Boston, which is this real loose team which is a team with a lot of characters who embraces them. And you have the Cardinals, a team that, you know, Adam Wainwright - starter in Game 1 - set up one of his last opponents, Adrian Gonzalez, was behaving in a Mickey Mouse fashion by being too enthusiastic. Some Cardinals players also criticized the Yasiel Puig for perhaps over-celebrating, and not knowing how the game should be played.
So, you know, you have this contrast between those who criticize others for being Mickey Mouse, and the Red Sox who are just plain goofy.
(LAUGHTER)
GREENE: Goofy and slow, right? I mean one thing we know about this we know about this World Series with the Red Sox involved, we're going to have some long games.
PESCA: They are pretty fast on the bases but, man, do they take their time. Clay Buchholtz, even with no one on base, their pitcher takes between like 18 and 26 seconds to deliver a pitch, one-nothing games going almost four hours. The Red Sox do take up a lot of your patience. But then, I guess, they deliver the big dramatic hits when it counts. Still, could we do that here in three and a half hours, guys? Is that too much to ask?
(LAUGHTER)
GREENE: The journalists who are going to be at Fenway tonight, you guys grow beards or something to bond over this whole thing?
PESCA: I can't help it. I got a five o'clock shadow at two.
GREENE: Nice, can't wait to see it. NPR's Mike Pesca, who will be at tonight's game at Fenway Park Game 1 of the World Series. Mike, thanks.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Creating a single telecoms market in Europe and cutting the cost of doing business over the Internet could boost the region's economy by 4 percent by 2020, the European Commission will tell EU leaders this week.
The push from the European Union's executive, when EU leaders meet on October 24-25, comes as Neelie Kroes, the EU's telecoms commissioner, makes a fresh attempt to overhaul the bloc's telecoms sector.
Following Brussels' success in curbing the cost of using mobile phone use, she now wants to cap the price of cross-border fixed-line calls in Europe, where the commission says technology and telecommunications make a smaller contribution to the economy than in the United States or China.
Kroes also wants EU veto power over national auctions of mobile spectrum, and to make it easier for operators to charge companies such as Google more for carrying heavy loads of data at high speeds.
But her blueprint needs the blessing of 28 EU governments before it can become law. Time is running out because lawmakers in the European Parliament, who also need to sign off on the law, break up in April for elections in May.
In a letter late last month to EU leaders, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso spelt out his priorities in the sector.
"Digital services and telecommunications are crucial drivers of growth and productivity across all sectors of our economies,"
he wrote.
"However, we are not yet getting the most out of the potential for our single market in telecommunications and online and in these industries the EU is losing ground to our international competitors."
In a report that will be presented to EU leaders, the Commission will outline the potential benefits.
"By 2020, Europe could add 4 percent to its GDP by stimulating the fast development of the digital single market," officials write in the report, seen by Reuters.
Public authorities could cut costs by 15-20 percent by moving to e-government, they add.
Barroso's drive may be greeted with skepticism. Kroes has been criticized by national regulators who are concerned about losing power to Brussels, and companies have also been lukewarm.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by John O'Donnell, John Stonestreet)
Keeping up with the ever-changing nature of business intelligence, MicroStrategy has revamped and expanded its line of BI software to incorporate big-data analytics and desktop visualization.
"We're delivering a substantial new set of functionality," said Kevin Spurway, MicroStrategy's vice president of industry and mobile marketing.
The company has rebranded and upgraded its flagship BI application, now called the MicroStrategy Analytics Platform, and has introduced a new desktop application designed to allow business analysts to easily parse large data sets from different sources.
MicroStrategy Analytics Enterprise 9.4, a significant upgrade from MicroStrategy 9.3.1, includes a new capability the company calls data blending, which allows users to combine data from more than one source; the software stores the data in working memory without the need for a separate data integration product.
"Previously, we were able to combine data from different sources, but it required work from IT. Now any business user can grab data from different sources and bring them together with only a few clicks," Spurway said.
Also new: The dashboard panel has been upgraded. It now can update data in real time and can display multimedia files such as videos.
The new platform comes with a range of connectors for various types of big-data repositories. It can connect with the MongoDB NoSQL data store as well as Hadoop distributions from Hortonworks, Intel and Pivotal.
Analytics Enterprise now comes with the R statistical programming language, increasingly used for statistical analysis. Geographic Information System (GIS) software and service vendor Esri have provided a set of map skins and cartographic markers that can be used for geographic renditions of data sets.
MicroStrategy also has improved the performance of the software. The application can now fit 10 times as much data in memory as the previous version could, and the self-service querying now runs up to 40 percent faster.
In addition to updating its core enterprise software, MicroStrategy has also released a free tool to help business analysts fetch data from various sources and copy it directly to their desktops.
With the newly released MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop, users can grab data from relational databases, multidimensional databases, cloud-based applications and Hadoop deployments. Once on the desktop, the data can then be compiled into visualizations, such as basic pie charts, maps, graphs and various matrices.
The software can also provide a dashboard for users, allowing them to watch changes within data sets. Users can also export their charts and metrics as an image file or PDF document. The software runs on Microsoft Windows and does not require MicroStrategy Analytics Enterprise to operate. To work with larger data sets, a user should have 2GB or more of working memory on the computer, Spurway said.
The new desktop software was designed to compete with other increasingly popular self-serve, data-discovery desktop visualization tools offered by Tableau and others, Spurway said.
MicroStrategy is hoping that, over time, organizations that use the free product will see the need for the advanced capabilities found in MicroStrategy Analytics Enterprise, such as predictive analytics, the ability to maintain data consistency across all analysis tools, and the ability to get real-time updates of data, Spurway said.
Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's email address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com.
Aereo is now available for Android! At least, it is if you're running 4.2 and live in New York City, Boston, Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, or Salt Lake City.
Audio for this story from Morning Edition will be available at approximately 9:00 a.m. ET.
Copy machines can be found in every office, and most of us take them for granted. But 75 years ago, the technology that underpins the modern photocopier was used for the first time in a small apartment in Queens.
Inventor Chester Carlson used static electricity created with a handkerchief, light and dry powder to make the first copy on Oct. 22, 1938.
The copier didn't get on to the market until 1959, more than 20 years later. When it did, the Xerox machine prompted a dramatic change in the workplace.
The first commercial model, the Xerox 914, was bulky and cumbersome. It weighed nearly 650 pounds. It was the size of about two washing machines and was prone to spontaneous combustion.
But even literally going up in flames wasn't enough to kill the product. In fact, it was in high demand.
"There was a distinct need for simple copying like this, and it just took off," says Ray Brewer, historical archivist for Xerox Corp. "We sold thousands of these machines, and the demand was such that we were manufacturing them in large quantities."
Brewer says the popularity of Xerox technology abroad inspired more clandestine uses for the copier. Some machines actually had miniature cameras built into them during the Cold War for the purpose of spying on other countries.
Back at home, the copier was proving to be a godsend for secretaries. One Xerox commercial features a female secretary saying:
"I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing a button. Anything he can see I can copy in black and white on ordinary paper. I can make seven copies a minute. ... Sometimes my boss asks me which is the original, and sometimes, I don't know."
Author and historian Lynn Peril says the machines had to have been "fabulously liberating."
"Oh my god, you didn't have to work with all the lousy carbon paper," she says. "You could just take it and put it on this glass surface, and press a button and you've got as many copies as you wanted."
The beauty of the technology, Peril says, was that it saved time for office workers without making their workplace role obsolete.
Angele Boyd is a business analyst at the International Data Corp. She says copier technology created a more democratic information system.
"Until then, you needed to go to a press or you needed to go to a third party external print shop to produce that kind of quality output," she says.
The core technology in the copier, later transferred to printers and scanners, has remained the same since the 1930s.
Time is ripe for fire detection satellite, say UC Berkeley scientists
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
21-Oct-2013
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Contact: Robert Sanders rlsanders@berkeley.edu 510-643-6998 University of California - Berkeley
Improved and cheaper sensors, faster analysis software make satellite feasible
As firefighters emerge from another record wildfire season in the Western United States, University of California, Berkeley, scientists say it's time to give them a 21st century tool: a fire-spotting satellite.
Such a satellite could view the Western states almost continuously, snapping pictures of the ground every few seconds in search of hot spots that could be newly ignited wildfires. Firefighting resources could then be directed to these spots in hopes of preventing the fires from growing out of control and threatening lives and property.
The UC Berkeley scientists have designed such a satellite using state-of-the-art sensors, written analysis software to minimize false alarms, and even given it a name the Fire Urgency Estimator in Geosynchronous Orbit (FUEGO). They're hopeful it can be built for several hundred million dollars, either by government or private entities.
"If we had information on the location of fires when they were smaller, then we could take appropriate actions quicker and more easily, including preparing for evacuation," said fire expert Scott Stephens, a UC Berkeley associate professor of environmental science, policy and management. "Wildfires would be smaller in scale if you could detect them before they got too big, like less than an acre."
Stephens, physicist Carl Pennypacker, remote sensing expert Maggi Kelly and their colleagues describe the satellite in an article published online Oct. 17 by the journal Remote Sensing.
"With a satellite like this, we will have a good chance of seeing something from orbit before it becomes an Oakland fire," said Pennypacker, a research associate at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory and scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, referring to the devastating 1991 fire that destroyed more than 3,000 homes in Berkeley and Oakland. "It could pay for itself in one firefighting season."
With global warming, Stephens said, wildfires are expected to become more frequent and more extensive. This year alone, California's firefighting arm, CAL FIRE, has responded to over 6,000 wildfires, 1,600 more than average, according to tweets by the department's information officer Daniel Berlant. Wildfire-prone areas stretching from Spain to Russia could also benefit from their own dedicated satellites.
Updating an outmoded system
Fire detection today is much like it was 200 years ago, Stephens said, relying primarily on spotters in fire towers or on the ground and on reports from members of the public. This information is augmented by aerial reconnaissance and lightning detectors that steer firefighters to ground strikes, which are one of the most common wildfire sparks.
"Even today, most fires are detected, in some way or another, by people," he said. "Even the Rim Fire near Yosemite National Park this past summer was detected by someone who saw a smoke column."
But satellite technology, remote sensing and computing have advanced to the stage where it's now possible to orbit a geostationary satellite that can reliably distinguish small, but spreading, wildfires with few false alarms. Pennypacker estimates that the satellite, which could be built and operated by the federal government, like the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES); as a partnership between government and the private sector, like the Landsat satellite program; or by a private company alone, would cost several hundred million dollars a fraction of the nation's $2.5 billion yearly firefighting budget.
The idea of a fire detection satellite has been floated before, but until recently, detectors have been prohibitively expensive, and the difficulty of discriminating a small burning area from other bright hotspots, such as sunlight glinting off a mirror or windshield, made the likelihood of false alarms high. Today, computers are faster, detectors cheaper and more sensitive, and analysis software far more advanced, making false alarms much less likely, according to researchers.
"Simply put, we believe we have shown that this kind of rapid, sensitive fire detection of areas bigger than 10 feet on a side is probably feasible from space, and we have evidence that the false alarm rate will not be crazy," said Pennypacker, who has designed sensitive satellite-borne detectors for 40 years. "Our work requires further testing, which we are eager to do."
The approach is similar to what Pennypacker and colleague Saul Perlmutter used 20 years ago to search for exploding stars to study the expansion of the universe. In that case, they created an automated system to compare consecutive images of the night sky to look for new points of light that could be supernovas. Perlmutter, UC Berkeley professor of physics, shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work, which proved that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
How it works
"In concept, this is a simple system: a telephoto camera, an infrared filter and a recording device. We are just looking for something bright compared to the surroundings or changing over time," Kelly said. "Then, we do these rapid calculations to determine if one image is different from the next."
Pennypacker and graduate student Marek K. Jakubowski developed a computer analysis technique, or algorithm, to detect these differences in space and time and to distinguish them from bright lights that might look like fires. This involves several billion calculations per second on images taken every few seconds, covering the entire West every few minutes. The new paper reports on tests of this algorithm using existing imagery from real fires, but the team hopes to get funding to test the system on a fire that is starting, such as a prescribed burn.
"The point is, satellites like Landsat and GOES provide great information after a fire starts; they can focus and monitor a fire by looking at smoke plumes, fire spread, hot spots at the edges, etc.," Kelly said. "FUEGO is designed for early detection of smaller fires. Right now, we lose a lot of time because fires are already big by the time we see them."
###
The FUEGO design, for which UC Berkeley has filed a patent, was developed with funds from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research.
Other authors of the paper are Michael Lampton, a research physicist at the Space Sciences Laboratory; Robert Tripp, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of physics; and Christopher Schmidt of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Pennypacker, Lampton and Tripp are also members of the Physics Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Time is ripe for fire detection satellite, say UC Berkeley scientists
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
21-Oct-2013
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Contact: Robert Sanders rlsanders@berkeley.edu 510-643-6998 University of California - Berkeley
Improved and cheaper sensors, faster analysis software make satellite feasible
As firefighters emerge from another record wildfire season in the Western United States, University of California, Berkeley, scientists say it's time to give them a 21st century tool: a fire-spotting satellite.
Such a satellite could view the Western states almost continuously, snapping pictures of the ground every few seconds in search of hot spots that could be newly ignited wildfires. Firefighting resources could then be directed to these spots in hopes of preventing the fires from growing out of control and threatening lives and property.
The UC Berkeley scientists have designed such a satellite using state-of-the-art sensors, written analysis software to minimize false alarms, and even given it a name the Fire Urgency Estimator in Geosynchronous Orbit (FUEGO). They're hopeful it can be built for several hundred million dollars, either by government or private entities.
"If we had information on the location of fires when they were smaller, then we could take appropriate actions quicker and more easily, including preparing for evacuation," said fire expert Scott Stephens, a UC Berkeley associate professor of environmental science, policy and management. "Wildfires would be smaller in scale if you could detect them before they got too big, like less than an acre."
Stephens, physicist Carl Pennypacker, remote sensing expert Maggi Kelly and their colleagues describe the satellite in an article published online Oct. 17 by the journal Remote Sensing.
"With a satellite like this, we will have a good chance of seeing something from orbit before it becomes an Oakland fire," said Pennypacker, a research associate at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory and scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, referring to the devastating 1991 fire that destroyed more than 3,000 homes in Berkeley and Oakland. "It could pay for itself in one firefighting season."
With global warming, Stephens said, wildfires are expected to become more frequent and more extensive. This year alone, California's firefighting arm, CAL FIRE, has responded to over 6,000 wildfires, 1,600 more than average, according to tweets by the department's information officer Daniel Berlant. Wildfire-prone areas stretching from Spain to Russia could also benefit from their own dedicated satellites.
Updating an outmoded system
Fire detection today is much like it was 200 years ago, Stephens said, relying primarily on spotters in fire towers or on the ground and on reports from members of the public. This information is augmented by aerial reconnaissance and lightning detectors that steer firefighters to ground strikes, which are one of the most common wildfire sparks.
"Even today, most fires are detected, in some way or another, by people," he said. "Even the Rim Fire near Yosemite National Park this past summer was detected by someone who saw a smoke column."
But satellite technology, remote sensing and computing have advanced to the stage where it's now possible to orbit a geostationary satellite that can reliably distinguish small, but spreading, wildfires with few false alarms. Pennypacker estimates that the satellite, which could be built and operated by the federal government, like the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES); as a partnership between government and the private sector, like the Landsat satellite program; or by a private company alone, would cost several hundred million dollars a fraction of the nation's $2.5 billion yearly firefighting budget.
The idea of a fire detection satellite has been floated before, but until recently, detectors have been prohibitively expensive, and the difficulty of discriminating a small burning area from other bright hotspots, such as sunlight glinting off a mirror or windshield, made the likelihood of false alarms high. Today, computers are faster, detectors cheaper and more sensitive, and analysis software far more advanced, making false alarms much less likely, according to researchers.
"Simply put, we believe we have shown that this kind of rapid, sensitive fire detection of areas bigger than 10 feet on a side is probably feasible from space, and we have evidence that the false alarm rate will not be crazy," said Pennypacker, who has designed sensitive satellite-borne detectors for 40 years. "Our work requires further testing, which we are eager to do."
The approach is similar to what Pennypacker and colleague Saul Perlmutter used 20 years ago to search for exploding stars to study the expansion of the universe. In that case, they created an automated system to compare consecutive images of the night sky to look for new points of light that could be supernovas. Perlmutter, UC Berkeley professor of physics, shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work, which proved that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
How it works
"In concept, this is a simple system: a telephoto camera, an infrared filter and a recording device. We are just looking for something bright compared to the surroundings or changing over time," Kelly said. "Then, we do these rapid calculations to determine if one image is different from the next."
Pennypacker and graduate student Marek K. Jakubowski developed a computer analysis technique, or algorithm, to detect these differences in space and time and to distinguish them from bright lights that might look like fires. This involves several billion calculations per second on images taken every few seconds, covering the entire West every few minutes. The new paper reports on tests of this algorithm using existing imagery from real fires, but the team hopes to get funding to test the system on a fire that is starting, such as a prescribed burn.
"The point is, satellites like Landsat and GOES provide great information after a fire starts; they can focus and monitor a fire by looking at smoke plumes, fire spread, hot spots at the edges, etc.," Kelly said. "FUEGO is designed for early detection of smaller fires. Right now, we lose a lot of time because fires are already big by the time we see them."
###
The FUEGO design, for which UC Berkeley has filed a patent, was developed with funds from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research.
Other authors of the paper are Michael Lampton, a research physicist at the Space Sciences Laboratory; Robert Tripp, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of physics; and Christopher Schmidt of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Pennypacker, Lampton and Tripp are also members of the Physics Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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