Show Notes October 21st, 2013

Andrew Fitzgerald: Adventures in Twitter fiction

http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_fitzgerald_adventures_in_twitter_fiction.html

(Duration: ~12:00.)

Mena Trott: Meet the founder of the blog revolution

http://www.ted.com/talks/mena_trott_tours_her_blog_world.html

A founding mother of the blog revolution, Movable Type’s Mena Trott talks about the early days of blogging, when she realized that giving regular people the power to share our lives online is the way to build a friendlier, more connected world. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, California. Duration: 16:58.)

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DC Comics and Vertigo graphic novels arrive on Google Play, Sandman and all 100+ If you’ve looked up to Google Play and DC Comics and shouted “save us money” without hearing any whispered responses, there’s a reason: they were waiting. Today, DC Entertainment announced that it’s brought a whole slew of its comics and Vertigo graphic novels to Google’s online storefront in the form of collected editions. This “extensive lineup” is available now and includes
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Amazon takes on PayPal, now offering Amazon login and pay service to online business 500+ Amazon, having extended far beyond the realm of book selling into the world of tablets and online marketplaces, is reaching ever further in its latest effort: “Login and Pay with Amazon.” The new service does exactly what it sounds like, allowing online businesses to implement a login/pay system using existing Amazon accounts. For Amazon, that means a (unknown) cut in the sales margin b
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New York City, meet your new official taxi: the Nissan NV200 300+ Back in May, Nissan unveiled its NV200 van as New York City’s “Taxi of Tomorrow” in a joint press conference with Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Today, NYC’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) made the pact official, signing regulations that will replace the city’s iconic line of Crown Victorias (and myriad other cabs) with the NV200 beginning in October 2013. As Nissan puts it, today’s sign
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Acer details Haswell-based C720 Chromebook, begins pre-orders at $250 400+ Acer was only willing to tease its Haswell-powered Chromebook at last month’s Intel Developer Forum, but it’s ready to spill the beans today. Now called the C720, the 11.6-inch system revolves around a more efficient 1.4GHz Celeron processor that (along with 4GB of low-power RAM) allows a healthy 8.5 hours of claimed battery life. The PC also ditches the hard drive of its ancestor; there’s now a
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BBC releases rediscovered Doctor Who episodes as iTunes exclusives 500+ There are a few things that make Doctor Who fans wince in pain, none more so than mentioning the BBC’s policy of deleting its archives of early ’60s episodes. However, enterprising fans have scoured the globe looking for film canisters, and all but 106 had been found — until now. Nine new episodes, including parts 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 of The Enemy Of The World as well as episodes 2, 4, 5 and 6 of Th
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If you use Google services, you could become an ad next month 1K Google users, you’re about to become shills. A major update to the company’s Terms of Service agreement today could have some users’ profiles showing up in ads across the web. These “shared endorsements,” as Google is calling them, leverage any reviews, comments, +1s, follows or stars a user may have given to a business or brand by effectively placing that user’s name, photo and any rel
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Snapchat has passed ‘about a dozen’ unopened messages to law enforcement under search warrant 400+ Think those unopened self-destructing Snaps disappear forever unseen, too? Guess again. After detailing the timeline for how and when user messages are deleted in the spring, Snapchat says that it has given law enforcement “about a dozen” unopened Snaps at the request of law enforcement search warrants since May 2013. In a blog post, trust and safety head Micah Schaffer says that the me
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NSA collecting email and messaging contacts worldwide, Yahoo moves to encrypt webmail by default 200+ Don’t think that the NSA’s bulk communication data collection is focused solely on the communications themselves. The Washington Post has published more Edward Snowden documents which reveal that the agency collects large volumes of contact lists from email and instant messaging users around the world. While the NSA gathers the information on foreign soil, its method reportedly prevents it from a
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Fitbug Orb fitness tracker priced at $50, can go up to six months between charges 97 The Fitbug Orb seems like a veritable shot across Fitbit’s bow. This latest fitness wearable is priced at $50 and can go six months between charges, matching the Fitbit Zip’s longevity and undercutting its price by $10. You aren’t tied to wearing it on your wrist either, as you can place the Orb just about anywhere on your person if the white, pink or black color options don’t gel with your wardr
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FlyKly’s Smart Wheel snaps onto your bike for 20MPH pedal assist 500+ In retrospect, lower Manhattan probably wasn’t the safest place to try the Smart Wheel for the first time. Thankfully, the prototype wasn’t operating at top speed when I hopped on, for that very reason. The sensation’s a bit weird for those unaccustomed to riding with a pedal assist, kicking in only when you actually start pedaling and gradually reaching the speed you’ve entered in the app. In it
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Akamai: DDoS attacks increased since Q1 2013, Indonesia marked as biggest cyberbully 200+ The latest Akamai report on the state of the internet is out, and it looks like DDoS attacks have spiked since the last one. What’s more, China’s reign as the number one perpetrator was cut short by Indonesia, which almost doubled its first-quarter malicious traffic from 21 percent to 38 percent. China’s traffic dropped from 34 percent to 33 percent, but combined, the two countries still comprise
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Google Glass firmware teardown hints at a slew of intriguing new features 200+ Google Glass wearers were treated to some new features with this month’s XE10 update, but what’s hiding under the hood might be even more promising. Android Police posted their APK teardown earlier today, and their findings are nothing if not intriguing. Among the features that may be on the horizon are a handful of new commands hidden in the GlassVoice APK, like the ability to succinctly ask Gla
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Netflix will experiment with DVD-style extras for originals, Android app gets UI tweaks 200+ Netflix made a couple of interesting announcements today, the first of which should be most pertinent to the Android users amongst you. The streaming video company has updated its app for the Google mobile operating system with a revamped interface that promises snappier covers, smoother scrolling and new action and navigation bars. Chromecast users should especially take note, as apparently the
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A stable version of Ubuntu’s mobile OS is available now… if you own a Nexus 4 1K After a long period of developer (and enthusiast) previews, Ubuntu 13.10 for smartphones, as well as desktops, is finally available as a stable release. The gesture-heavy, Linux-based mobile OS still doesn’t have an official hardware home — if you’ll remember, Canonical’s Indiegogo bid for the Ubuntu Edge failed to meet its lofty goals — but there are a couple of devices that can run the OS. Go
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Hulu officially announces its new CEO, former Fox exec Mike Hopkins 42 Hulu has had a tumultuous 2013, as it lost founding CEO Jason Kilar in January, then went through the sale process, again, before sticking with its original owners, again. Confirming last week’s rumors from Bloomberg and Reuters, the new CEO is Mike Hopkins, most recently head of distribution for Fox. He replaces acting CEO Andy Forssell, who took the wheel in March after Kilar’s departure. In hi
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Lenovo reportedly considering a bid to buy BlackBerry 300+ According to the Wall Street Journal, Lenovo has supposedly signed a non-disclosure agreement with BlackBerry to take a look at the Canadian company’s books. Rumor has it that the Chinese manufacturer is considering a bid to buy the ailing BlackBerry, a move that isn’t entirely shocking considering the latter’s persistent financial troubles. While the WSJ’s sources are anonymous and spokespeople
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Google rakes in over $14 billion in revenue during Q2, increased ad revenue balances growing Moto losses 100+For the last several months Google’s stock price has been surging, getting increasingly close to the $1,000 mark. And when monstrous revenues like this keep rolling in, it’s easy to see why. In Q2 of 2013, the internet giant pulled in $14.11 billion in revenue, an increase of 19 percent year-over-year. Of that massive haul, almost all of it (93 percent) was generated directly by Google properties
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New York Takes Another Step to Curb Phone Theft New York State Senator Jeffrey D. Klein plans to introduce a bill today that would require businesses to obtain proof of ownership before buying used cell phones. According to the New York Times, flea markets, laundromats, and neighborhood stores often resell mobile devices that have been stolen. The law would make it illegal for any businesses in the state to sell devices unless they can prove th
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Lenovo introduces the A10, its first Android-powered convertible laptop 400+ Android has made its share of appearances on laptops before, but today Lenovo announced that it’s taking a crack at the idea with the A10, a 10.1-inch notebook with a fold-back touchscreen display. The 2.2-pound convertible, which you can use in laptop or tablet mode, comes with a 1.6GHz quad-core Rockchip RK3188 Cortex-A9 processor, a 1,366 x 768 display, Android 4.2, 2GB of RAM, 32GB internal s
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Google cracks open Project Loon’s antennas, explains balloon delivered internet 200+ Google has done an admirable job of demystifying Project Loon (that ambitious broadband-via-atmospheric-balloon initiative), but its latest video takes it a step further: tearing apart one of its blimp-tracking antennas and explaining how it works. Every unit houses a radio, what Google is calling “radiating elements” and a disc-shaped reflector. This reflector has to be circular to boo
1h
Netflix tops 40 million customers total, more paid US subscribers than HBO 500+ Netflix’s results for the third quarter have arrived and one of its most important numbers, the total amount of US subscribers (not including trial accounts), has reached 29.93 million, more than HBO’s last count of 28.7 million. Last year at this time it had notched 25.1 million US customers, and …
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When to Use Quickoffice vs Google Drive 27 Recently, Google released a revamped version of Quickoffice for free to the Play Store. Now the company has two office suites with nearly identical interfaces. Which one should you use? Productivity blog Make Tech Easier attempted to answer that question. The site compared the two services and found them to be comparable for the casual user, but if you’re going to do any real work, Quickoffice is
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Full Screen Mario: Making the Case For Shorter Copyrights 100+ barlevg writes “A college student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute spent nine months meticulously remaking Super Mario Bros. based on the latest web standards. His project is open source and the code freely available through Github. The site recently gained widespread media attention, which unfortunately brought it to the attention of Nintendo, which has requested that the site be taken do
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Top 9 Apps for Getting Through School 9 It’s the digital age we’re living in, and the amount of information the average person deals with daily is impressive. But it does not have to be difficult. Technology is here to help us climb these mountains of data! Computers and tablets, as well as other gadgets and devices, have become increasingly popular in education, researching and essay writing. It is not just students who try to make use
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Subway Car Sells Groceries For Commuters On The Move 100+ South Korean train carriage comes complete with refrigerated meat section.
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Grab Over 500 Free Programming Books from GitHub 1K Whether you’re learning to code or are already an experienced programmer, this GitHub repository is an incredible resource of free programming books. Victor Felder updated this Stack Overflow list with new and corrected links and shared it over on GitHub for collaborative updating. You’ll find books on professional development, specific platforms like Android and Oracle Server, and about 80 progra
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What’s New In Ubuntu 13.10 “Saucy Salamander,” for Desktop and Phones 200+ Ubuntu 13.10 is available now, and it brings a few small improvements to the desktop Linux OS—most notably a more comprehensive web search in the Dash called “Smart Scopes.” It’s also as Ubuntu Touch as the first stable release for phones. The desktop version doesn’t have a ton of new features this time around because Ubuntu is focusing on phone development, said Ubuntu Community Manager
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LightZone Is a Free, Awesome Photo Editor and Alternative to Lightroom 500+ Windows/Mac/Linux: Adobe Lightroom might be the professional photographer’s photo management tool of choice, but you can save $149 and download free and open source LightZone instead. The program lets you quickly manipulate a batch of photos, with great effects and styles and finely adjustable tools. Instead of layers (a la Adobe), color masks, and masks, LightZone divides an image into 16 “z
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How to Opt Out of Google Using Your Name and Face in Ads 1K Last week we mentioned that Google is updating its terms of service so it can use your name, face, reviews, and social networking activity (like +1s) in ads displayed to your friends or anyone else Google thinks would be influenced by your opinion. Good or bad, one thing is true: It’s easy to opt out. Here’s how. Just click here to go directly to the “Shared Endorsements” Google+ setting
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castAR Augmented Reality Opens Crowdfunding Campaign 13 castAR is a new crowdfunded augmented reality system built by Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson.Read more on MAKE
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NY Comic Con Takes Over Attendees’ Twitter Accounts To Praise Itself 37 Okian Warrior writes “Attendees to this year’s New York Comic Con convention were allowed to pre-register their RFID-enabled badges online and connect their social media profiles to their badges — something, the NYCC registration site explained, that would make the ‘NYCC experience 100x cooler! For realz.’ Most attendees didn’t expect “100x cooler” to translate into ‘we’ll post spam
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More Free Wi-Fi Coming To All Five Boroughs 100+ The city today announced the launch of several more Wi-Fi hotspots scattered throughout the boroughs (by which we mean Manhattan and Brooklyn, mostly.) [ more › ]
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15 Things The Internet and Technology Killed Off 500+ Ah, the Internet. Over the years, the Internet and technology has brought many great benefits into our lives. Today, we no longer need to step out of our houses every morning to fetch the daily paper. We no longer need to visit the bank to find out how much money we have. We don’t even need to remember trivial information like phone numbers or how to spell properly. Technology does it all for us.
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Google & Yahoo Reveal the Most Searched For Halloween Costumes of 2013 100+ Thinking of dressing up as a Minion for Halloween this year? Judging by recent searches, you aren’t the only one. Both Google and Yahoo agree that Minion costumes – from the “Despicable Me” movies – are the top trending costumes of 2013.
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10 Great Spooky Vintage Cartoons to Watch This Halloween 200+ They really don’t make spooky cartoons like they used to. And when I say “spooky,” I don’t mean the sort of thing that will make you hide under the covers; old cartoons just have this way of looking and sounding ominous, even if you’re watching one that features an iconic character singing and dancing with goblins and ghouls, or remakes of old literary classics. Click through for ten classics that
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Cost of Healthcare.gov: $634 Million — So Far 500+ First time accepted submitter Saethan writes “Healthcare.gov, the site to be used by people in 36 states to get insurance as part of the Affordable Care Act, has apparently cost the U.S. Government $634 million. Not only is this more than Facebook spent during its first 6 years in operation, it is also over $500 million above what the original estimate was: $93.7 million. Why, in a country wi
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Xanadu theme from another dimension where ELO made chiptunes 100+ I understand that that mine is a sensationalist headline, both on the ELO front and the chiptune front. But I love Sexy Synthesizer’s arcadey, bleepy cover of Olivia Newton-John’s theme song from Xanadu all the same, and so will you.
11d
Fitbit Force fitness and sleep tracking watch officially announced, launching soon for $130 500+ Well, Fitbit had a little trouble keeping the wraps on its Force activity tracking watch. But the company is ready to officially unveil its latest wearable and plans to launch it in the coming weeks for $129.95. The Force borrows heavily from the aesthetic successes of the Flex, with its clean rubberized design and small dark display. That display, though, is where it sets itself apart from its m
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Russia’s other army Olga Khazan writes about her experiences with the army of commenters who turn up whenever she covers Russia: “It’s of course impossible to tell whose vitriol is genuine and whose is being bankrolled, but at least some anti-Western comments appear to come from staffers the Russian government pays to sit in a room, surf the Internet, and leave sometimes hundreds of postings a day that criticize
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Amazon’s music download site is cheaper than iTunes 78% of the time 61 The Apple iPod, introduced in 2001, may be the device most responsible for sparking the digital music era. And now, over a decade later, consumers have access to a wide variety of digital music made available by download through a variety of sources. However, three vendors in particular — Apple’s…
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Hack Your Nook Simple Touch Into a Super E-Reader in Three Easy Steps 20 Modifying the Nook Simple Touch allows it to play games, browse, read RSS and more. However, even rooted, E Ink technology causes jarring page turns and pretty awful performance. Fortunately, a hack can turn a rooted Nook into a full-fledged, game-playing tablet. The modification enables multi-touch, full-motion display, Android 2.1 Éclair and more. You may have read about other methods for modify
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Microsoft finally confirms Office for iPad is in the works 14 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has finally confirmed that a version of Office is in the works for the iPad. During a speaking engagement at a Gartner event in Florida, Ballmer said support for the iPad would be picked up once there is a touch first user interface which likely means,…
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TabletRocket Compares Tablet Specs and Benchmarks Side by Side 24 If you’re in the market for a new tablet, you have a lot of information to sift through. Benchmarks, specs, software versions, supported apps, there’s a ton of data. TabletRocket makes it a little easier by putting any two tablets side-by-side so you can compare them directly. Just start typing in the name of the tablet you’re interested in, and a drop-down menu will pre-populate with suggestions
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FiLIP is an electronic leash for your kids’ wrists and it’s coming to AT&T 500+ Electronic leashes for the 21st century kid? You knew this sort of thing was inevitable. FiLIP, a smartwatch and ‘locator’ for kids that takes helicopter parenting to an excessive level, is heading to AT&T’s lineup as an exclusive. As you’d expect from a device targeted to tagging kids, the FiLIP doesn’t come close to the functionality of something more grown-up like the Galaxy Gear. It’s mai
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