Technology

Writer and novelist Neil Gaiman and Amber Benson of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame have teamed up to star in a new vampire movie called, Blood Kiss. Kickstarted by ST:TNG and Emmy-winning writer Michael Reaves, Blood Kiss is a film noir vampire movie set in Golden Age Hollywood. Of his acting debut Gaiman says, "I'm willing to pretend that the prospect of acting doesn't terrify me in order to help Michael Reaves make his film." The trio have agreed to take a break from the blood and answer any questions you have about the new project or their past work. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Writer and novelist Neil Gaiman and Amber Benson of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame have teamed up to star in a new vampire movie called, Blood Kiss. Kickstarted by ST:TNG and Emmy-winning writer Michael Reaves, Blood Kiss is a film noir vampire movie set in Golden Age Hollywood. Of his acting debut Gaiman says, "I'm willing to pretend that the prospect of acting doesn't terrify me in order to help Michael Reaves make his film." The trio have agreed to take a break from the blood and answer any questions you have about the new project or their past work. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Writer and novelist Neil Gaiman and Amber Benson of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame have teamed up to star in a new vampire movie called, Blood Kiss. Kickstarted by ST:TNG and Emmy-winning writer Michael Reaves, Blood Kiss is a film noir vampire movie set in Golden Age Hollywood. Of his acting debut Gaiman says, "I'm willing to pretend that the prospect of acting doesn't terrify me in order to help Michael Reaves make his film." The trio have agreed to take a break from the blood and answer any questions you have about the new project or their past work. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Writer and novelist Neil Gaiman and Amber Benson of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame have teamed up to star in a new vampire movie called, Blood Kiss. Kickstarted by ST:TNG and Emmy-winning writer Michael Reaves, Blood Kiss is a film noir vampire movie set in Golden Age Hollywood. Of his acting debut Gaiman says, "I'm willing to pretend that the prospect of acting doesn't terrify me in order to help Michael Reaves make his film." The trio have agreed to take a break from the blood and answer any questions you have about the new project or their past work. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Writer and novelist Neil Gaiman and Amber Benson of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame have teamed up to star in a new vampire movie called, Blood Kiss. Kickstarted by ST:TNG and Emmy-winning writer Michael Reaves, Blood Kiss is a film noir vampire movie set in Golden Age Hollywood. Of his acting debut Gaiman says, "I'm willing to pretend that the prospect of acting doesn't terrify me in order to help Michael Reaves make his film." The trio have agreed to take a break from the blood and answer any questions you have about the new project or their past work. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Writer and novelist Neil Gaiman and Amber Benson of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame have teamed up to star in a new vampire movie called, Blood Kiss. Kickstarted by ST:TNG and Emmy-winning writer Michael Reaves, Blood Kiss is a film noir vampire movie set in Golden Age Hollywood. Of his acting debut Gaiman says, "I'm willing to pretend that the prospect of acting doesn't terrify me in order to help Michael Reaves make his film." The trio have agreed to take a break from the blood and answer any questions you have about the new project or their past work. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Writer and novelist Neil Gaiman and Amber Benson of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame have teamed up to star in a new vampire movie called, Blood Kiss. Kickstarted by ST:TNG and Emmy-winning writer Michael Reaves, Blood Kiss is a film noir vampire movie set in Golden Age Hollywood. Of his acting debut Gaiman says, "I'm willing to pretend that the prospect of acting doesn't terrify me in order to help Michael Reaves make his film." The trio have agreed to take a break from the blood and answer any questions you have about the new project or their past work. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Writer and novelist Neil Gaiman and Amber Benson of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame have teamed up to star in a new vampire movie called, Blood Kiss. Kickstarted by ST:TNG and Emmy-winning writer Michael Reaves, Blood Kiss is a film noir vampire movie set in Golden Age Hollywood. Of his acting debut Gaiman says, "I'm willing to pretend that the prospect of acting doesn't terrify me in order to help Michael Reaves make his film." The trio have agreed to take a break from the blood and answer any questions you have about the new project or their past work. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Writer and novelist Neil Gaiman and Amber Benson of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame have teamed up to star in a new vampire movie called, Blood Kiss. Kickstarted by ST:TNG and Emmy-winning writer Michael Reaves, Blood Kiss is a film noir vampire movie set in Golden Age Hollywood. Of his acting debut Gaiman says, "I'm willing to pretend that the prospect of acting doesn't terrify me in order to help Michael Reaves make his film." The trio have agreed to take a break from the blood and answer any questions you have about the new project or their past work. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Writer and novelist Neil Gaiman and Amber Benson of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame have teamed up to star in a new vampire movie called, Blood Kiss. Kickstarted by ST:TNG and Emmy-winning writer Michael Reaves, Blood Kiss is a film noir vampire movie set in Golden Age Hollywood. Of his acting debut Gaiman says, "I'm willing to pretend that the prospect of acting doesn't terrify me in order to help Michael Reaves make his film." The trio have agreed to take a break from the blood and answer any questions you have about the new project or their past work. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A week after Google sent Microsoft a cease and desist letter to remove its YouTube Windows Phone app, Microsoft makes a public response.

Virtual private networking is a great way to accomplish a number of things, including making sure that your secrets stay your own, protecting against malware attacks, and getting around the geoblocking of audio and video content from networks, labels and basically anyone who wants to restrict your sweet, sweet access. It’s understandable, then, that as computing increasingly goes mobile, VPN would get more popular on mobile, too.

Hotspot Shield, a free VPN from leading provider AnchorFree, has just announced that it has crossed 10 million total downloads on Android and iOS, with a growth rate of around 1.5 million new downloads per month. Hotspot Shield is a top productivity app on iOS, and on Android, it has already grown faster than its iOS counterpart in the Android ecosystem since its launch last year, and now around two-thirds of new users come from Android.

The growth has come on strong very recently, with the app seeing its active user base double between now and the beginning of 2013. The company says it has managed to prevent 28.6 billion malware threats since its debut, and has also saved over 102 million MB of data via its compression algorithms. For paranoid and thrifty travellers, it’s a way to both add an extra layer of security at open public Wi-Fi hotspots like those you’ll often find in airports, and conserve data on tight roaming plans, too.

What’s extra funny about the growth is that there’s a huge elephant in the room and AnchoFree is barely talking about it. In a release announcing the news, they offered this choice tidbit:

Hotspot Shield is also used by travelers to access US content while abroad.

Just that line, on its own, amid a sea of text emphasizing the data savings and security benefits of VPN. Which is probably because it’s unlikely content providers like thinking too much about the other, extremely useful benefit of VPNs: namely allowing you to sidestep geographic restrictions.

If you want Spotify and you live in a country where it isn’t available yet, for instance, you could use a VPN to make it appear as though you’re based in the U.S., no matter where you actually are. Using it if you’re a U.S. citizen travelling abroad rides the fair side of the line, but that’s not how most are employing that particular tech. Beyond U.S. borders, there’s a strong and pervasive appetite for U.S. film and video content, the likes of which you can find on Hulu, for example, but not once you exit U.S. territories.

AnchorFree isn’t playing up that angle, but I’ll bet it’s responsible for driving a fair amount of those 10 million downloads. So as long as some content is restricted in terms of where you can watch, it’s likely growth isn’t going to slow down anytime soon.

It's time for the next generation. A New Generation, so says Microsoft, and we can't wait to see it. We're guessing you can't either, and so you'll want to join us for the unveiling of this new-gen Xbox, a device that we're hoping we'll actually get to see in the flesh -- unlike a certain other unveiling from a few months back. Tune in right here at the time listed below for all the liveblog action!

May 21, 2013 1:00 PM EDT

Filed under: Gaming, Microsoft

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It’s Xbox day! Almost exactly 8 years after the announcement of the Xbox 360, Microsoft is back with another one.

We’re live on the ground at Microsoft’s Xbox campus in Redmond, where the company is about to show its next-generation console for the very first time. We’ll be bringing you the news as it breaks with our up-to-the-second liveblog. Join us, won’t you?

The event is scheduled to start at 10 am Pacific (1 pm Eastern), but be sure to tune in a bit early — lets say… 9:30 am? Connectivity allowing, we’ll be bringing you photos and commentary fresh from the scene..

We're all in tenterhooks over here at Engadget HQ waiting for the imminent arrival of the next Xbox. As we wait for the event to start though, Microsoft has unveiled a live stream where you can see the revealing for yourself. So once you've schooled yourself on all the rumors, come back at 1pm ET to watch the embedded stream below and keep an eye on our liveblog to see if any of them are proven right.

Filed under: Microsoft

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Source: Xbox Reveal

Clueful, the mobile privacy app Apple booted from its App Store for being too revealing — or possibly because of its own behavior – is staging a comeback. This time around, Clueful’s maker Bitdefender is targeting Android users instead, with plans to reveal what the apps on your phone are doing, and how your privacy may be compromised in the process.

Bitdefender, a company that makes a variety of anti-virus, anti-theft, and other security applications for web and mobile, first launched Clueful a year ago as a $4 iOS app that detailed how the apps on users’ phones handle – or mishandle, as the case may be – personal data. The app launched in the wake of a number of high-profile security events, like address book-gate and locationgate, for example. (And you know they’re bad when there’s a “gate” attached, right?)

For “unknown reasons,” Apple removed Clueful from its App Store shortly after its debut. The company spins this as “we revealed too much!” of course, but the more informed answer points to the fact that, to work, the app itself had to pull a list of apps from a user’s device, send them to Clueful’s servers and then cross-reference those with the apps it had in its database. Apple might not have cared for this process, especially considering the end result may have discouraged app downloads. Clueful later returned in a watered down web version.

Apple mobile device users, of course, don’t have much to fear in terms of malware because of how Apple tests and approves apps ahead of making them publicly accessible in its iTunes App Store. However, Clueful still plays on the sometimes misguided fears some have, who believe that software makers are always purposely and maliciously trying to track your location, acquire your personal or financial data, spam you or your friends with unwanted messages or emails, and more.

Often, apps accused of doing some or all of these things are more the result of a rush to launch or shoddy coding, more so than malicious intent. And sometimes, they’re just early stage startups, making mistakes. Then there’s the fact that some apps are designed to work with this “sensitive” data in ways that help you – an app that wants to help you find nearby events or set geo-fenced reminders, for instance, needs to know where you are.

Yes, there are malicious, virus-laden apps as well as those over-reaching in terms of what they need to function, but many operate in a gray area. So to the uninformed, being told that some app is “tracking you” can perhaps cause concern when little to none is warranted.

To Bitdefender’s credit then, at least the Android version of the application now ranks applications as low, medium or high risk, based on their “danger levels.” And you can also filter to just see those with “intrusive ads” that “send unencrypted data,” or “are viruses,” for example, which could be useful if you’re not prone to being careful with your installs or are worried you have a problem app on your hands.

On Android, Clueful is available for free, with an option to upgrade for added security, including a real-time web scanner, on-install and on-demand app scanner, and more. This is provided by the company’s anti-virus app, which costs  $9.95 per year. That undercuts competitor Lookout’s Premium option, but it also lacks Lookout’s more comprehensive feature set which also includes remote wipe, lock, signal flare, locating lost phones, backup and restore, cross-platform support, and more. (Some of these options are available through Bitdefender’s other freemium apps, but not all.)

Clueful may find better footing on Android, though, where users do have to be more cautious because apps are not vetted ahead of launch. Plus, a good chunk of Android’s user base are those upgrading from feature phones to a low-cost smartphone, and are still technically unsophisticated when it comes to sorting the good apps from the bad.

The new version of Clueful is available here in Google Play.

The patent wars have grown long and tiresome for many, but Twitter's among the first to take meaningful action to stop them with its Innovator's Patent Agreement. Today, the company launched version 1.0 of the IPA and is using it for the first time. Patent number 8,448,084, which claims a method for refreshing a scrollable list of content (aka pull-to-refresh) is the first to get the IPA treatment, which means that Twitter has pledged to use this patent for defensive purposes only.

What's that mean? Well, under this version of the IPA, Twitter can assert claims against anyone who has filed, threatened or participated in a patent infringement suit against Twitter or any of its users, affiliates, customers, suppliers or distributors. It can also assert the patent to "deter a patent litigation threat" against Twitter and its peoples. If you're thinking that such a broad definition of "defensive purposes" means Twitter can pretty much use its IPA'd patents how it chooses, you're pretty much right. Still, we applaud Twitter's effort to pre-empt future patent litigation, but we'll have to wait and see if it accomplishes its goal of having companies spending their money on innovation instead of litigation.

Filed under: Software

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Source: Official Twitter blog

dcblogs writes "The Senate's immigration bill may force the large offshore outsourcing firms to reduce their use of H-1B visa-holding staff, forcing them to hire more local workers and raising their costs. But one large Indian firm, Infosys, will try to offset cost increases with software robotics. Infosys recently announced a partnership with IPsoft, a New York-based provider of autonomic IT services. With IPsoft's tools, work that is now done by human beings, mostly Level 1 support, could be done by a software machine. Infosys says that IPsoft tools can 'reduce human intervention.' More colorfully, Chandrashekar Kakal, global head of Infosys's business IT services, told the Times of India, that 'what robotics did for the auto assembly line, we are now doing for the IT engineering line.' James Slaby, a research director of HFS Research who has been following the use of autonomics closely, wrote in a recent report that the IPsoft partnership may help Infosys 'reap fatter margins by augmenting and replacing expensive, human IT support engineers with cheaper, more accurate, efficient automated processes,' and by improving service delivery."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We are updating this blog during the live congressional testimony of Apple CEO Tim Cook. More details will be added soon.

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook came out firing during his Congressional grilling, declaring, “we pay all of the taxes we owe, every single dollar.” A blistering Senate investigation accused Apple of shady tax dodging, helping it avoid $13.8 billion in taxes.

In his opening testimony, Cook affirmed Apple’s position that “we don’t rely on tax gimmicks” to avoid paying any taxes (for a review of how Apple stashes cash oversees, see our previous post).

Cook had supporters on the panel, especially Senators Claire McCaskill and Rand Paul, a known libertarian who favors dramatically lowering the corporate tax rate.

Paul wigged out on his fellow senators, accusing them of vilifying a great American company for fulfilling their responsibility to maximize shareholder value.

Instead of doing the right thing we drag businessmen and women in here to berate them for trying to maximize their profits for shareholders.

—
Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) May 21, 2013

It's absurd for Congress to vilify businesses like Apple for wanting to minimize their tax code just like every other American rightly does.

—
Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) May 21, 2013

McCaskill admonished Paul for his accusations against his Senate colleagues, but made sure to note that “I. Love. Apple…I harassed my husband until he converted to a MacBook.”

Cook, for his part, lobbied for a simpler U.S. tax code, which he said should be “revenue neutral, eliminate all corporate tax expenditures, a reasonable tax rate on moving foreign cash back to the U.S. We make this recommendation with eyes open, knowing it would probably raise our own tax payouts.”

Cook admitted his tax recommendation, “fully recognizing that this would result in an increase in Apple’s U.S. taxes.”

Last year, Twitter announced something it called the Innovator’s Patent Agreement (IPA), which would keep patents in the hands of the designers and engineers that came up with the technology behind them. What this agreement serves as is a promise to only act on a patent for “defensive purposes.” Anything outside of that scope would need to be signed off on the creator of the patent itself.

Here’s how Twitter defines “defensive purposes”: “Defensive purposes means that you can defend yourself should another party try to initiate patent litigation against you or your customers or users. Under the IPA, it also means that you can use these patents against anyone who has sued others offensively in the past (up to ten years).”

The first patent to get the IPA treatment is Loren Brichter’s pull to refresh user interface interaction, which was built into Tweetie, the Twitter app that was acquired by the company and adopted as the official client.

Basically, Twitter is saying it’s not going to go after companies that are using pull to refresh, or other parts of Brichter’s patent, within their app. If someone were to claim to have created the functionality first, only then would Twitter defend itself.

Twitter has also announced that two other companies, Biz Stone’s Jelly and the Lift task tracking app, will also be adopting the Innovator’s Patent Agreement. With so many ideas running around, there should be no reason why the first person to successfully file a patent should hold the power to make everyone’s lives miserable. At the end of the day, all companies benefitted from Brichter’s work, and it’s been nice to see Twitter not going after anyone else for replicating parts of it.

When the IPA was announced last year, Twitter VP of Engineering Adam Messinger had this to say:

This is a significant departure from the current state of affairs in the industry. Typically, engineers and designers sign an agreement with their company that irrevocably gives that company any patents filed related to the employee’s work. The company then has control over the patents and can use them however they want, which may include selling them to others who can also use them however they want. With the IPA, employees can be assured that their patents will be used only as a shield rather than as a weapon.

Using patents as a shield will hopefully slow down the rampant patent trolling that has plagued the technology space for the past ten years. Twitter, Jelly and Lift promise not to be trolls, and that’s a good thing.

You can read the full IPA draft here to see if it’s something your company would want to adopt.

[Photo credit: Flickr]