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DC5m United States IT in english 44 articles, created at 2016-12-07 12:01 articles set mostly positive rate 2.5

1 2.1 Twitter CEO feelings on Trump tweets: "Complicated" Jack Dorsey says president-elect's maverick use of Twitter is unprecedented. 2016-12-07 00:23 2KB rssfeeds.usatoday.com (2.06/3)

2 3.4 Donald Trump to meet with Silicon Valley tech leaders – Silicon Valley

(1.03/3) President-elect Donald Trump has invited tech-industry leaders, including from Cisco and Oracle, to meet at a “technology roundtable” in New York on Dec. 14. 2016-12-07 01:26 3KB www.siliconvalley.com

3 0.4 CEOs of AT&T, Time Warner to Sell Merger to Skeptical Senate (1.02/3) The CEOs of AT&T and Time Warner are heading to Capitol Hill in a bid to convince senators that a merger of their two companies will mean innovative new experiences for consumers. They can expect a skeptical audience. The CEOs, Randall Stephenson of AT&T and... 2016-12-07 12:01 4KB abcnews.go.com

4 6.2 Best iPad apps 2016: Download these essential apps now

(1.02/3) Spend cash on these apps for your iPad 2016-12-07 05:08 34KB www.techradar.com

5 0.0 Google's upcoming drone delivery service derailed by an unlikely foe (1.02/3) Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has an ambitious plan for a marketplace where customers could order anything from coffee to toilet paper and have it within minutes. The drone-delivery service was slated for a 2017 launch after getting the go-ahead from the FAA to begin testing... 2016-12-07 01:25 2KB feedproxy.google.com

6 1.3 Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft join forces to tackle extremist content (1.02/3) The collaboration comes amid calls for Google to investigate far right manipulation of its search results. 2016-12-07 00:00 3KB www.pcauthority.com.au

7 5.0 Trump: Softbank to invest $50bn in US businesses President-elect Donald Trump says Japanese tech firm Softbank will invest $50bn in (1.02/3) US businesses. 2016-12-07 03:24 1KB www.bbc.co.uk 8 0.3 The Latest: Survivor Says Quake Terrifying, Fled to Hill The Latest on a magnitude-6.5 earthquake in Indonesia's Aceh province (all times local): 12:10 p.m. A woman in the worst-hit district near the epicenter of Indonesia's (1.00/3) earthquake says she fled with her husband and children to a nearby hill... 2016-12-07 12:01 2KB abcnews.go.com

9 1.9 Cooler Master adds gaming bling to the MasterCase Make 5t

The 't' is for bargain... no, wait, it's actually for tempered glass. 2016-12-07 00:00 2KB www.pcauthority.com.au

10 2.4 Regional Australia is crying out for equitable access to broadband

Is satellite enough fro rural Australian families? 2016-12-07 00:00 5KB www.pcauthority.com.au

11 1.3 China fines Medtronic $17 million on anti-monopoly charges The Chinese unit of medical device maker Medtronic has been fined $17 million by anti- monopoly regulators in the latest effort by Beijing to force down what it sees as unreasonably high prices. 2016-12-07 08:34 1KB www.washingtontimes.com

12 1.2 Can bird feeders do more harm than good? Many bird lovers put out feeders full of seed for their feathered friends—but those feeders may also attract predators that eat eggs and nestlings. The researchers behind a new study in The Condor: Ornithological Applications tried to untangle these relationships through a four-year study of songbird nests... 2016-12-07 00:00 3KB phys.org

13 1.6 Migrating birds pile up along Great Lakes' shores Birds prefer to migrate at night—so much so that if day breaks while they're over water, they'll turn back toward the nearest shore rather than pressing on. That's the key finding of a new study in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, which used weather... 2016-12-07 00:00 3KB phys.org

14 1.8 Foraging differences let closely related seabirds coexist How do seabirds share habitat when food is limited? In the case of frigatebirds, size differences drive them to seek different prey. A study in The Auk: Ornithological Advances uses new technology to explore how closely related Great and Lesser frigatebirds manage to coexist at shared... 2016-12-07 00:00 3KB phys.org 15 0.0 Pandora Premium wants to take on Spotify when it launches in early 2017

Another $10/month contender 2016-12-07 04:02 1KB www.techradar.com

16 0.5 Apple says iPhone 6 battery fires in China likely caused by external factors Apple Inc said external factors were the likely cause of iPhone 6 battery fires detailed in a Chinese consumer protection report that featured widely in state media earlier this week and created a buzz on social media. 2016-12-06 22:57 3KB feeds.reuters.com

17 1.7 Malicious online ads expose millions to possible hack Since October, millions of internet users have been exposed to malicious code served from the pixels in tainted banner ads meant to install other forms of malware, according to security firm ESET. 2016-12-06 18:49 2KB www.pcworld.com

18 5.6 ANU to host Australia's first cyber-security simulation game Government and business sectors combine in cybergame responses to future cybercrime cyberthreats. 2016-12-07 00:00 2KB www.pcauthority.com.au

19 0.0 Buying from overseas retailers Investigator : Anthony Caruana explains the laws, pitfalls and your rights. 2016-12-07 00:00 4KB www.pcauthority.com.au

20 4.8 72 gift ideas for every kind of dad and every budget Buying a gift for your dad or someone else's? We've got you covered. 2016-12-06 21:01 1KB rssfeeds.usatoday.com

21 0.0 Accountant not needed: ATO virtual assistant doles out free Australian tax advice

Meet Alex - Australia’s hardest-working public servant 2016-12-07 01:52 2KB www.techradar.com

22 2.7 Download This: Islands - Non places Investigate tiny worlds of everyday banality that turn out to be anything but ordinary in this mesmerising, filmic app. 2016-12-07 00:00 3KB www.pcauthority.com.au

23 0.0 Script exploited in WordPress theme, bypasses security, sends spam Hackers, flying beneath the radar, have been using script that's part of a WordPress theme to send spam. 2016-12-07 00:00 1KB www.pcauthority.com.au 24 2.9 Why are marketing automation platforms getting so much VC funding? Software that aims to automate specific touch-points of the customer acquisition and retention processes have evolved into ubiquitous enterprise tools employed by marketing departments of virtually every size and industry. 2016-12-06 17:32 5KB www.itnews.com

25 2.0 New TD Ameritrade CEO Hockey to boost tech spend by 25 percent TD Ameritrade Holding Corp is boosting its technology spending by around 25 percent in an effort to increase the speed and scope of technological innovation at the No. 1 online broker by trading volume, its chief executive officer said on Tuesday. 2016-12-06 20:27 4KB feeds.reuters.com

26 5.0 Review: Sennheiser's PC 373D 7.1 headphones deliver amazing sound

As pricey as they are tasty 2016-12-07 11:25 2KB www.pcauthority.com.au

27 0.9 London tech leaders propose post-Brexit plan to British government London's standing as Europe's leading destination for tech start-ups is at risk if the British government does not clarify how it plans to keep the best technical talent, entrepreneurs and investors have warned. 2016-12-06 20:20 5KB feeds.reuters.com

28 2.4 Discounts, advertising spur brisk Apple Watch sales Apple Watch sales appear to have rebounded for the holidays from mid-year doldrums on a redesign, price cuts and strong promotions, but analysts say long-term demand has yet to be proven. 2016-12-06 20:15 4KB feeds.reuters.com

29 0.0 Can Amazon fix the grocery game? Others have tried, and often failed, to make food shopping easier. 2016-12-06 20:14 7KB rssfeeds.usatoday.com

30 7.1 Uber opens AI lab to help power future of self- driving cars Uber creates its own AI research division following Geometric Intelligence acquisition. 2016-12-07 00:00 3KB www.pcauthority.com.au

31 0.0 Netflix video previews make reading descriptions so last century

Netflix adds TL;DR function 2016-12-07 01:05 1KB www.techradar.com 32 0.0 Nvidia's GeForce 376.19 WHQL drivers out now New drivers optimise virtual reality performance for Oculus Touch titles. 2016-12-07 00:00 1KB www.pcauthority.com.au

33 0.0 Looking for a nearby place to eat or shop? Just tweet Google an emoji

Find local stops with just a single pictogram 2016-12-07 00:47 1KB www.techradar.com

34 35.7 Review: Dead Rising 4 does it all again Re-fleshing a classic. 2016-12-07 10:28 5KB www.pcauthority.com.au

35 1.9 Meizu Band is a Chinese-made wearable taking the fight to Fitbit

Tracking tech that’s half the price - and just as fancy. 2016-12-07 00:00 2KB www.pcauthority.com.au

36 0.0 Iperius Backup 4.7.0 adds incremental cloud backup Iperius Backup 4.7.0 has shipped with support for incremental and differential backups to Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, OneDrive and Azure. 2016-12-07 00:00 2KB www.pcauthority.com.au

37 0.7 Return of House Calls — Renee Dua, Heal and the Uberization of Medicine – InsideSources The changing economics of medicine made doctors’ house calls obsolete decades ago. Now, using digital technology, a California company called Heal is bring 2016-12-07 00:16 4KB www.insidesources.com

38 1.4 Blow for Australian banks in Apple dispute Australia's big banks might not be granted leave to collectively bargain with and boycott Apple over its Apple Pay service. 2016-12-07 00:15 3KB www.computerweekly.com

39 2.3 Internet of things gains momentum in Southeast Asia IoT has been much hyped in Southeast Asia, and organisations in the region are testing the technology's potential. 2016-12-07 00:15 2KB www.computerweekly.com

40 0.4 Apple Pays $450,000 for Alleged Hazardous Waste Violations Apple is paying $450,000 to settle allegations that the iPhone maker operated and closed two hazardous-waste processing plants without submitting the proper paperwork to California environmental regulators. The agreement announced Tuesday involves a now-closed plant near Apple's Cupertino,... 2016-12-06 19:07 2KB abcnews.go.com 41 0.8 China shuts thousands of illegal live streaming accounts: Xinhua Beijing-based live streaming websites have shut down thousands of illegal accounts after new regulations by Chinese internet authorities guarding against violent and obscene content came into effect, the official Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday. 2016-12-06 19:13 2KB www.reuters.com

42 1.2 DailyMotion breached, 85 million accounts made off with One of the internet's foremost video hosting platforms has been breached and hackers have made off with tens of millions of account details. 2016-12-07 00:00 2KB www.pcauthority.com.au

43 0.0 List of highest-paid YouTube stars proves we're all in the wrong business Last year the top 12 YouTuber's earned a combined $70.5 million from playing games, providing commentary, singing, rapping, or telling jokes. 2016-12-07 00:11 2KB feedproxy.google.com

44 0.0 Acquisitions of LinkedIn, Virgin America get closer to conclusion – Silicon Valley The acquisitions of LinkedIn and Virgin America edge closer to their final completions. Also, a lot went on with Apple and Theranos still can’t seem to shoot straight. 2016-12-07 00:09 4KB www.siliconvalley.com Articles

DC5m United States IT in english 44 articles, created at 2016-12-07 12:01

1 /44 2.1 Twitter CEO feelings on Trump tweets: "Complicated"

(2.06/3) SAN FRANCISCO — How does Jack Dorsey feel about president-elect Donald Trump communicating with the world in 140 characters or less?

"Complicated," the Twitter CEO said at Recode's Code Commerce conference on Tuesday evening.

Trump waged the presidential campaign on Twitter and now, as the incoming commander-in- chief, he's using that digital bully pulpit to push his agenda, making claims about millions of illegal votes, hinting he may ban flag burning and criticizing Boeing over the high cost of a new Air Force One.

"What does this mean to have a direct line to how he's thinking in real time? I'm not sure," Dorsey said. "We certainly play a big part in distributing news and opinions and what people think about what's going on in the world. And you know we have a role and a responsibility to make sure people are seeing what they need to see and they can have easy conversations and really get to the truth. And that's complicated. We are learning as quickly as we can. "

Dorsey, who was one of the co-founders of the social media service, said Trump's maverick use of Twitter is unprecedented. And that has put the spotlight on Twitter — and has clearly prompted some introspection.

"I think it’s an important time for the company and the service and having the president-elect on our service using it as a direct line of communication allows everyone to see what’s on his mind, in the moment, I think that’s interesting," he said.

"I haven't seen that before. We are definitely entering a new world where everything is on the surface and we can all see it in real time and have conversations about it. Where does that go? I'm not really sure. But it's definitely been fascinating to learn from. "

But when asked if he feels responsible for Trump being elected president, he replied: "America is responsible for Donald Trump being president. "

Follow USA TODAY senior technology writer Jessica Guynn @jguynn

Jack Dorsey says Twitter is Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey not responsible for Trump's finds Trump’s incessant election, but it's tweeting “fascinating” 'complicated' digitaltrends.com cnbc.com 2016-12-07 00:23 Jessica Guynn rssfeeds.usatoday.com

2 /44 3.4 Donald Trump to meet with Silicon Valley tech leaders – Silicon Valley (1.03/3) President-elect Donald Trump is known for making headlines with his social media posts, but apparently when it comes to meeting tech leaders, he still prefers communicating the old-fashioned way: in person.

The Republican politician reached out to tech leaders to attend a “roundtable” in New York on Dec.14. Reince Priebus, the incoming White House chief of staff; Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law; and Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor who’s part of his transition team, signed the invite, according to USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. An agenda for the meeting hasn’t been released.

San Jose tech firm Cisco confirmed to this newspaper on Tuesday that its Chief Executive Officer Chuck Robbins has been invited and plans to attend.

Oracle confirmed that its Co-CEO Safra Catz will be there, too.

Intel and LinkedIn declined to comment. Other tech firms such as Facebook, Alphabet’s Google, Tesla Motors and Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump’s press office also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Many Silicon Valley tech moguls supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during the presidential election, fueling tension between Trump and some of the world’s largest tech firms.

Robbins, who is a Republican, told CNN in March that he wanted a leader who could bring people together and was leaning toward backing Clinton.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg also has publicly said she supported Clinton.

Trump, however, has been critical of Silicon Valley tech companies as well.

After Apple refused to help federal law-enforcement authorities unlock the iPhone used by a shooter in the 2015 San Bernardino attacks, Trump called for a boycott of all Apple products.

During the election, Trump also accused Twitter, Google and Facebook of burying news about the investigation into Clinton’s private email server, calling them “very dishonest media” in a tweet.

Meanwhile, there are fears that Trump’s administration will crack down on H-1B visas, threatening the foreign workforce on which many Bay Area companies rely, and that he will oppose net neutrality.

But if Trump increases defense spending, that could benefit Bay Area tech firms that supply hardware or software used by the military, said the UCLA Anderson Forecast report, released Tuesday .

Last week, Trump also announced the creation of a business advisory council called the “President’s Strategic and Policy Forum” that will be chaired by Stephen Schwarzman , CEO of investment firm Blackstone Group. IBM, the Walt Disney Company, General Motors and other major companies were part of the forum, but Silicon Valley tech firms were not included in the list of partners.

Trade groups that represent tech firms have been reaching out to Trump after he won the presidential election.

In November, the Consumer Technology Association, the Internet Association, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and other trade organizations sent a letter to Trump asking him to consider principles that they say will foster growth and innovation nationwide. That included investing in more jobs, tax reform and regulations to spur the growth of startups.

“As leaders of organizations representing the world’s most dynamic technology companies, we are committed to moving the country forward toward a brighter economic future,” the letter said.

Donald Trump Summons Google’s green achievement Tech Leaders to a Round- attacked by group closely Table Meeting linked to Donald Trump – nytimes.com Silicon Valley siliconvalley.com

2016-12-07 01:26 By www.siliconvalley.com

3 /44 0.4 CEOs of AT&T, Time Warner to Sell Merger to Skeptical Senate (1.02/3) The CEOs of AT&T and Time Warner are heading to Capitol Hill in a bid to convince senators that a merger of their two companies will mean innovative new experiences for consumers.

They can expect a skeptical audience.

The CEOs, Randall Stephenson of AT&T and Jeffrey Bewkes of Time Warner, are due to appear Wednesday before a Senate antitrust panel whose Republican chairman and senior Democrat have said the proposed $85.4 billion merger of the communications giants would potentially raise significant antitrust issues.

Other critics range from industry analysts and public-interest groups to President-elect Donald Trump, who promised on the campaign trail that he'd kill the deal because it concentrates too much "power in the hands of too few. " Stephenson, however, said Tuesday he is confident the deal will be approved despite Trump's public opposition.

The deal, which must win approval from federal regulators, would be one of the biggest media mergers to date. It would tie up the second-largest U. S. telecommunications company with a media and entertainment conglomerate whose stable includes CNN, HBO, the "Harry Potter" franchise and pro basketball. It's a big-time bet on synergy between a company that distributes information and entertainment to consumers and one that produces it.

The Justice Department , and possibly also the Federal Communications Commission in the incoming Trump administration will give the merger close scrutiny. Even assuming the deal is approved, some experts believe the regulators might saddle the combined company with so many conditions that the deal would no longer make sense.

The Senate Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust doesn't have authority to rule on the merger, but members are likely to use their platform to ask questions such as whether the companies would not share Time Warner content with other cable companies or online video providers.

Time Warner makes TV shows and movies, while AT&T gets that video to customers' computers, phones and TVs. The concern is that AT&T might try to make its broadband service stand out by tying it to Time Warner's programs and films, hurting consumers.

Because of Time Warner's shows and movies — including "Game of Thrones" and the "Harry Potter" films — and AT&T's ability to gather information about its tens of millions of customers, AT&T thinks it could do a better job tailoring ads and video to user preferences. It could then create more attractive subscription packages suited for phones, where people are increasingly watching video.

But many consumers already consider ads that know everything about them creepy or invasive, and digital-rights groups complain that any preferential deal AT&T could offer with, say, HBO would hurt competition.

Billionaire sports and media mogul Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks , is expected to join the CEOs at Wednesday's hearing. He has said the merger would enhance competition and also is expected to testify in favor.

——

AP Technology Writer Tali Arbel in New York contributed to this report. CEOs of AT&T, Time Warner to sell merger to skeptical Senate washingtontimes.com

2016-12-07 12:01 By abcnews.go.com

4 /44 6.2 Best iPad apps 2016: Download these essential apps now (1.02/3) If you've got yourself a shiny new iPad Air 2 or iPad mini 4, you'll want to start downloading the best iPad apps straight away. And if you already have an iPad Air or older iPad, you might want to update it with some new apps.

It's the apps that really set iOS apart from other platforms - there are more and higher quality apps available on the App Store for the iPad than any other tablet. So which ones are worth your cash? And which are the best free apps?

Luckily for you we've tested thousands of the best iPad apps so that you don't have to. So read on for our list of the best iPad apps - the definitive list of what applications you need to download for your iPad now.

If you are looking for games, then head over to Best iPad games - where we showcase the greatest games around for your iOS device. Or if you're rocking an iPhone 6S head over to our best iPhone apps list.

Whether you need a few minutes of peace or help to fall asleep after hours of stress, Flowing offers meditative splashy reflection. Choose from six scenes, plonk headphones on and then just sit and listen to gorgeous 3D audio recordings of streams, waterfalls and rivers.

Should you feel the need, noodle about with the parallax photo - although that’s frankly the least interesting bit of the app.

There is room for screen interaction though - the slider button gives you access to a mixer, to trigger ambient soundtracks by composer David Bawiec, and add birdsong and rain; while the Flowing icon houses guided meditations by Lua Lisa. There’s also a timer, so you can fall asleep to a gently meandering brook without it then burbling away all night. In all, even if you don’t make use of every feature, Flowing is an effective, polished relaxation aid.

Another example of a book designed for kids that adults will sneak a peek at when no-one's watching, Namoo teaches about the wonders of plant life. Eschewing the kind of realistic photography or illustration you typically see in such virtual tomes, Namoo is wildly stylised, using an arresting low-poly art style for its interactive 3D simulations.

Each of these is married with succinct text, giving your brain something to chew on as you ping the components of a plant's cells (which emit pleasingly playful - if obviously not terribly realistic - sounds and musical notes) or explore the life cycle of an apple.

On the desktop, Scrivener is widely acclaimed as the writer's tool of choice. The feature-rich app provides all kinds of ways to write, even incorporating research documents directly into projects. Everything's always within reach, and your work can constantly be rethought, reorganised, and reworked.

On iPad, Scrivener is, astonishingly, almost identical to its desktop cousin. Bar some simplification regarding view and export options, it's essentially the same app. You get a powerful 'binder' sidebar for organizing notes and documents, while the main view area enables you to write and structure text, or to work with index cards on a cork board.

There's even an internal 'Split View', for simultaneously smashing out a screenplay while peering at research. With Dropbox sync to access existing projects, Scrivener is a no-brainer for existing users; and for newcomers, it's the most capable rich text/scriptwriting app on iPad.

Calling Editorial a text editor does it a disservice. That's not to say Editorial isn't any good as a text editor, because it very much is. You get top-notch Markdown editing, with an inline preview, and also a TaskPaper mode for plain text to-do lists.

But what really sets Editorial apart is the sheer wealth of customisation options. You get themes and custom snippets, but also workflows, which can automate hugely complex tasks. You get the sense some of these arrived from the frustrations at how slow it is to perform certain actions on an iPad; but a few hours with Editorial and you'll wish the app was available for your Mac or PC too.

Although Apple introduced iCloud Keychain in iOS 7, designed to securely store passwords and payment information, 1Password is a more powerful system. It can also hold identities, secure notes, network information and app licence details. Your stored data can then be accessed on more than just Apple's platforms. The core app is free, but you'll need to pay $14.99 to get access to all its features.

The iPad has given new life to comics, providing the perfect digital home for them with its big, sharp, colourful screen and Madefire Comics makes the most of it by stocking motion comics. As the name suggests these include movement rather than just static panels and often feature music and sound effects too, bringing you into the story like never before. With big names and an ever growing library Madefire is essential for comic fans.

Even the most expensive iPads in Apple's line-up don't have a massive amount of storage, and space is rapidly eaten up if you keep videos on the device. Air Video HD acts as an alternative: stream movies from a PC or Mac, auto-encoding on-the-fly as necessary. There's also full support for offline viewing, soft subtitles and AirPlay to an Apple TV.

We could all use a bit of brain training from time to time and Elevate is a great way to do it. It aims to improve your writing, reading, speaking, listening and maths skills through a variety of daily challenges, which keep your brain active and test you in entertaining ways. A beautiful interface makes it a joy to use and the core app is free, but extra features can be added with a subscription.

ABC iview brings together the national broadcaster's best programming for on demand consumption. A pioneer in Australia's streaming services, iview offers hundreds of hours of viewing for Aussies of all ages, as well as live streaming of the 24 hour news channel and ABC1, plus custom shows created especially for the digital platform.

Word processing is something the iPad fares remarkably well at — if you have the right app. Byword is a no-nonsense distraction-free editor that just lets you get on with writing. There's Markdown support, helped along by a custom keyboard row, and also a live word/character count. For anyone publishing to the web, a single $7.99 IAP provides integration with the likes of WordPress and Tumblr.

Comic Life provides a creative way to tell a story or present some of your favourite photographs. The many templates provide a starting point and theme, and you can then import photos, add captions, and design special effects. Comics can be sent to friends in a variety of formats, or to your Mac or PC to carry on working in the desktop version of the app.

Journalling is one of those things that people always think will fall out of fashion, but it never quite does. Day One has plenty of advantages over a paper-based diary, though; wrapped up in a beautiful interface is the means to add images, weather data and music info, along with formatted text. Individual entries can be 'published' to share with people, and of course everything you create is fully searchable.

Panic's Coda is a hugely popular Mac app for coding websites, and the iPad app is no slouch either. Coda provides a touch-optimised means of editing files, which can either be done live on the remote server or by downloading them locally first. Syntax highlighting, clips and a built-in Terminal make this a great app for any web designer on the go.

Drum machines are always a lot of fun, but many of those available for iOS are rather throwaway, their options exhausted within minutes. DM1 is pretty much the exact opposite, packed with a huge number of drum kits, a step sequencer, a song composer and a mixer. Inter- App audio, Audiobus and MIDI support also ensure what you create doesn't end up in a percussion-rich silo.

Dropbox is a great service for syncing documents across multiple devices. The iPad client works like the iPhone one (hardly surprising, since this is a universal app), enabling you to preview many file types and store those marked as favourites locally.

If you love our sunburnt country, you'll know that the best way to explore the wonders Australia has to offer is generally off the beaten track. Wikicamps is a user-generated database of Australia's best camping areas, with useful information (like mobile coverage) all rated by fellow travellers. If you want to hit the great outdoors, make sure you download this app and take it with you.

Like Dropbox, Evernote (a free online service for saving ideas – text documents, images and web clips – that you can then access from multiple devices) works the same way on the iPad as it does on the iPhone. It benefits from the iPad's larger screen, which enables you to see and navigate your stored snippets more easily, but it's handy knowing you'll be able to access all your notes on any other device, or any future device you might buy, like the iPhone 7.

Apple's own Calendar app is fiddly and irritating, and so the existence of Fantastical is very welcome. In a single screen, you get a week view, a month calendar and a scrolling list of events. There's also support for reminders, and all data syncs with iCloud, making Fantastical compatible with Calendar (formerly iCal) for OS X. The best bit, though, is Fantastical's natural- language input, where you can type an event and watch it build as you add details, such as times and locations.

Initially, Flipboard looked like a gimmick, trying desperately to make online content resemble a magazine. But now it can integrate Flickr and other networks, beautifully laying out their articles, Flipboard's muscled into the 'essential' category – and it's still free.

Airbnb makes travel affordable and social, as rather than staying in a hotel you can stay in someone's house. Options range from crashing on someone's sofa to renting a private island, or if you have a spare room you could even rent your own space out. The iPad app is one of the best ways to browse it too, letting you search and book using an attractive image-heavy interface.

Apple's GarageBand turns your iPad into a recording studio. It includes a range of smart instruments, MIDI editing and song arrangement so you can make music anywhere. It's not free any more, but you get access to all of its instruments and sounds for one fairly low fee.

GoodReader is the iPad's best PDF reader. You can annotate documents, extract text, and now also rearrange, split and combine documents. The app previews various other files as well, can create and extract ZIP archives, and is capable of connecting to a wide range of online services. Alongside Dropbox, it makes a great surrogate Finder/Preview combination — a must-have for iPad power users.

Going head-to-head with Kindle, iBooks is a decent ebook reader, backed by the iBookstore. As you'd expect from Apple, the interface is polished and usable, with handy cross-device bookmark syncing, highlighting, and various display options. It's also a capable PDF reader, for your digital magazine collection.

Although the iPad enables a certain amount of basic multi-tasking, anyone who constantly juggles a number of instant messaging services will soon be tired of leaping between apps. IM+ is a good solution, enabling you to run a number of IM services in a single app, and there's also a built-in web browser for checking out links.

You're not going to make the next Hollywood hit on your iPad, but iMovie 's more than capable of dealing with home movies. The interface resembles its desktop cousin and is easy to get to grips with. Clips can be browsed, arranged and cut, and you can then add titles, transitions and music. For the added professional touch, there are 'trailer templates' to base your movie on, rather than starting from scratch.

After a stint on the iPhone, Kickstarter has now arrived on Apple's slates and it's the perfect fit for it, giving you a big window into thousands of projects which you can back with a tap. Browse by categories and sub-categories, select how to sort projects or just search for a specific one. Just be careful. Last time we launched the app we emerged six hours later and hundreds of pounds poorer. We eagerly await delivery of our smart socks.

There's something fascinating about animation, and iStopMotion is a powerful and usable app for unleashing your inner Aardman, enabling you to create frame-by-frame stories. There's also time-lapse functionality built-in, and the means to use the free iStopMotion Remote Camera with an iPhone on the same network.

If you're still convinced the iPad is only a device for staring brain-dead at TV shows and not a practical tool for education, check out iTunes U. The app enables you to access many thousands of free lectures and courses taught by universities and colleges, thereby learning far more than what bizarre schemes current soap characters are hatching.

Graphic design can get pretty complex, with the best designers spending years honing their skills. For the rest of us who can't seem to manage putting text and photos in the same space without it looking terrible, there's Canva. An incredibly simple and intuitive app, Canva offers a wide array of templates for almost any situation, with low-cost stock photography available as an in-app purchase.

Amazon's Kindle iPad app for reading myriad books available at the Kindle Store is a little workmanlike, and doesn't match the coherence of iBooks (you buy titles in Safari and 'sync' purchases via Kindle). However, Kindle's fine for reading, and you get options to optimise your experience (including the ability to kill the naff page-turn animation and amend the page background to a pleasant sepia tone).

Korg Gadget bills itself as the "ultimate mobile synth collection on your iPad" and it's hard to argue. You get 15 varied synths in all, ranging from drum machines through to ear-splitting electro monsters, and an intuitive piano roll for laying down notes. A scene/loop arranger enables you to craft entire compositions in the app, which can then be shared via the Soundcloud-powered GadgetCloud or sent to Dropbox. This is a more expensive app than most, but if you're a keen electronic-music-oriented songwriter with an iPad, it's hard to find a product that's better value.

The idea behind Launch Center Pro is to take certain complex actions and turn them into tappable items — a kind of speed-dial for tasks such as adding items to Clear, opening a URL in 1Password, or opening a specific view in Google Maps. Although the list of supported apps isn't huge, it's full of popular productivity apps; and should you use any of them on a regular basis, Launch Center Pro will be a massive time-saver and is well worth the outlay.

It was a very long time in coming, and there were fears Microsoft would make a half-hearted effort to get Word on to the iPad. In the end, we actually got a surprisingly powerful, touch- optimised, high-quality word processor and layout app. The subset of tools you get from the PC version is more than sufficient, and for free you can use the app as a viewer. For editing, you'll need an Office 365 subscription (from $12.99 monthly), and this will also give you access to Excel and Powerpoint , along with office apps on other platforms.

One for film buffs, Movies figures out where you are and tells you what's showing in your local cinemas – or you can pick a film and it'll tell you where and when it's on. The app is functionally identical on iPad and iPhone, but again the extra screen space improves the experience.

There are loads of note-taking apps for the iPad, but Notability hits that sweet spot of being usable and feature-rich. The basic notepad view is responsive, but also enables you to zoom and add fine details. Elsewhere, you can type, import documents, and record audio. Notes can be searched and, crucially, backed up to various cloud-based web services.

We mention Microsoft's iPad efforts elsewhere, but if you don't fancy paying for a subscription and yet need some spreadsheet-editing joy on your iPad, Numbers is an excellent alternative. Specially optimised for Apple's tablet, Numbers makes great use of custom keyboards, smart zooming, and forms that enable you to rapidly enter data. Presentation app Keynote and page- layout app Pages are also worth a look.

There's a certain train of thought that apps shouldn't ape real-world items, but we dismiss such talk. They just shouldn't ape real-world items badly! Paper by FiftyThree gets this right, with beautiful sketchbooks in which you can scribble, then share across the web. Books and the pen tool are free, and other tools are available via In-App Purchase.

PCalc Lite 's existence means the lack of a built-in iPad calculator doesn't bother us (in fact, we'd love to replace the iPhone Calculator app with PCalc Lite as well). This app is usable and feature-rich – and if you end up wanting more, in-app purchases enable you to bolt on extras from the full PCalc.

If you haven't binge watched Jessica Jones yet, you should probably download the Netflix app for your iPad, subscribe to the streaming service and fix that. The top dog when it comes to video streaming services around the world, Netflix is made for watching on any screen, but is particularly good on an iPad.

Pocket and Instapaper have long battled it out for 'article scraper' king, but Pocket trumps its rival in appealing to iPad-owning cheapskates. Instapaper requires a purchase for iPad goodness, but Pocket is free. It's also very fast, offers tagging, includes a great original article/plain-text toggle, and has a vaguely Flipboard-like visual grid-based index.

We've elsewhere mentioned Comics, but Sequential has a slightly different take on the medium. It's an altogether more upmarket affair, aimed at graphic novels and collections of sequential art that are supposed to be taken seriously. Therefore, this isn't so much everything but the kitchen sink, but a repository for a carefully curated selection of some of the best comics ever created.

We tend to quickly shift children from finger-painting to using much finer tools, but the iPad shows there's plenty of power in your digits — if you're using the right app. Autodesk SketchBook provides all the tools you need for digital sketching, from basic doodles through to intricate and painterly masterpieces; and if you're wanting to share your technique, you can even time-lapse record to save drawing sessions to your camera roll. The core app is free, but it will cost you $5.99 to unlock the pro features.

Augmented reality is still in its early days, but Sky Guide shows off the potential of merging the virtual with the real. Using your iPad, you can search the heavens in real-time, the app providing live details of constellations and satellites within your field of view. Away from the outdoors, Sky Guide doubles as a kind of reference book, offering further insight into distant stars, and the means to view the sky at different points in history.

In theory, we should be cheerleading for FaceTime, what with it being built into iOS devices, but it's still an Apple-only system. Skype , however, is enjoyed by myriad users who haven't been bitten by the Apple bug, and it works very nicely on the iPad, including over 3G.

Skyscanner 's website is pretty good, but the iPad app's another great example of how an app's focus can really help you speed through a task. You use the app to search over a thousand airlines, and it provides straightforward competitive journey lists and comparison graphs. If you're planning a flight, it's an indispensable download.

Apple's Photos app has editing capabilities, but they're not terribly exciting — especially when compared to Snapseed. Here, you select from a number of effect types and proceed to pinch and swipe your way to a transformed image. It's a fun tool, but there's plenty of control for anyone determined to get their photos just so.

Soulver is more or less the love child of a spreadsheet and the kind of calculations you do on the back of an envelope. You write figures in context, and Souvler extracts the maths bits and tots up totals; each line's results can be used as a token in subsequent lines, enabling live updating of complex calculations. Drafts can be saved, exported to HTML, and also synced via Dropbox or iCloud.

TED describes itself as "riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world". The app pretty much does as you'd expect – you get quick access to dozens of inspiring videos. However, it goes the extra mile in enabling you to save any talk for offline viewing, and also for providing hints on what to watch next if you've enjoyed a particular talk.

Need to make a newsletter, invitation, or report? Then you need Adobe Slate. The app lets you combine text and images into a visual story that flows like the best digital magazines. It's simple to use, letting you effortlessly create a professional story and it's easy to share too, giving you a link which allows your readers to open it on phones, tablets and computers.

Apple's iDevices have always been a little limited when it comes to video file formats. Infuse Pro makes all those concerns go away. With support for playback of pretty much any video file format, Infuse Pro really stands out in its ability to decode Dolby audio in-app, unlike many other video playback apps. With its sleek interface and automatic metadata collation, it's an essential purchase for anyone wanting to avoid iTunes.

Output your iPad's audio to an amp or a set of portable speakers, fire up TuneIn Radio , select a station and you've a set-up to beat any DAB radio. Along with inevitable social sharing, the app also provides an alarm, AirPlay support, pause and rewind, and a 'shake to switch station' feature - handy if the current DJ's annoying and you feel the need to vent.

The Wikipedia website works fine in Safari for iPad, but dedicated apps make navigating the site simpler and faster. Wikipanion is an excellent free app, with a sleek iOS 7-style design, an efficient two-pane landscape view, and excellent bookmarking and history access.

While Netflix and Stan arguably have much more polished apps, Presto stands out for its impressive lineup of unique premium programming. For a start, it's the only place you'll be able to stream HBO content, while its partnership with both Channel 7 and Foxtel means it has a wide, varied selection of locally produced content.

When the YouTube app presumably became a victim of the ongoing and increasingly tedious Apple/Google spat, there were concerns Google wouldn't respond. Those turned out to be unfounded, because here's yet another bespoke, nicely designed Google-created app for iOS. The interface is specifically tuned for the iPad, and AirPlay enables you to fire videos at an Apple TV.

Australia's Streaming Video on Demand market has exploded in 2015, with Aussie service Stan going head to head with the might of Netflix. The Stan app is polished, responsive and has an abundance of excellent content to watch, with a monthly subscription fee of $10 which can be purchased via in-app purchase.

Mind-mapping is one of those things that's usually associated with dull business things, much like huge whiteboards and the kind of lengthy meetings that make you hope the ground will swallow you up. But really they're perfect whenever you want to get thoughts out of your head and then organise them.

On paper, this process can be quite messy, and so MindNode is a boon. You can quickly and easily add and edit nodes, your iPad automatically positioning them neatly. Photos, stickers and notes can add further context, and your finished document can be shared publicly or privately using a number of services.

When you're told you can control the forces of nature with your fingertips that probably puts you more in mind of a game than a book. And, in a sense, Earth Primer does gamify learning about our planet. You get a series of engaging and interactive explanatory pages, and a free-for-all sandbox that cleverly only unlocks its full riches when you've read the rest of the book.

Although ultimately designed for children, it's a treat for all ages, likely to plaster a grin across the face of anyone from 9 to 90 when a volcano erupts from their fingertips.

For most guitarists, sound is the most important thing of all. It's all very well having a massive rig of pedals and amps, but only if what you get out of it blows away anyone who's listening. For our money, BIAS FX is definitely the best-sounding guitar amp and effects processor on the iPad, with a rich and engaging collection of gear.

Fortunately, given the price-tag, BIAS FX doesn't skimp on set-up opportunities either. A splitter enables complex dual-signal paths; and sharing functionality enables you to upload your creations and check out what others have done with the app.

We love our iPads, but during the day tend to spend our time glued to glowing laptop and desktop displays. There's always the sense the iPad could be doing something. With Status Board that something is acting as a status display for you or your business. You drag and drop customisable panels, including clocks, weather forecasts, calendar details and website feeds, thereby giving you constant glanceable updates for important info.

A one-off IAP ($14.99) unlocks further options that are mostly perhaps more suited to business environments (graphs, tables, HTML, photos, countdowns and text); and in either case support for HD displays enables you to present your status board really large, should you feel the need.

With visible pixels essentially eradicated from modern mobile device screens, it's amusing to see pixel art stubbornly refusing to go away. Chunky pixels are, though, a very pleasing aesthetic, perhaps in part because you know effort and thought has gone into the placement of every single dot. For our money, Pixaki is the only app worth considering for iPad-related pixel art.

It's simple and elegant, with straightforward tools, an extremely responsive canvas, global and document-specific palettes, and multiple brush sizes. Extra points, too, for the opacity slider's handle being a Pac-Man ghost.

We're big fans of the Foldify apps, which enable people to fashion and customise little 3D characters on an iPad, before printing them out and making them for real. This mix of digital painting, sharing (models can be browsed, uploaded and rated) and crafting a physical object is exciting in a world where people spend so much time glued to virtual content on screens.

But it's Foldify Dinosaurs that makes this list because, well, dinosaurs. Who wouldn't be thrilled at the prospect of making a magenta T-Rex with a natty moustache? Should that person exist, we don't want to meet them.

The internet is the world's greatest cookbook these days, although with so many sites dedicated to recipes, it can be hard to find the exact one you want for any given meal. That's what makes Basil so great – it allows you to collect recipes from anywhere on the internet, and easily import them to the app for offline viewing.

Despite the fact that it's a ridiculous bubble, real estate values in this country is still growing. If you want to buy a house, or looking for a new place to rent, or just want to see what you could get if you sold your three-bedroom house on the outskirts of Sydney, the Domain app will give you everything you need with a user-friendly touch interface.

There are quite a few scanners available for iOS, but Scanbot is the one you should keep on your iPad, primarily because it does a whole lot more than just scanning. That's not to say it doesn't do that bit well, because it does; scans are crisp, clear, optionally automatically cropped and straightened, and shareable to a wide range of services.

But pay the IAP and you gain access to smart file-naming, the means to add new pages to existing scans, and text recognition. This not only enables searches of filed scans, but also the automated extraction of key information- phone numbers; URLs; email addresses- into a smartly conceived actions menu.

Illustration tools are typically complex. Sit someone in front of Adobe Photoshop and they'll figure out enough of it in fairly short order. Adobe Illustrator? No chance. Assembly attempts to get around such roadblocks by turning graphic design into the modern-day touchscreen equivalent of working with felt shapes — albeit very powerful felt shapes that can shift beneath your fingers.

At the foot of the screen are loads of design elements, and you drag them to the canvas. Using menus and gestures, shapes can be resized, coloured, duplicated and transformed. Given enough time and imagination, you can create abstract masterpieces, cartoonish geometric robots, and beautiful flowing landscapes. It's intuitive enough for anyone, but we suspect pro designers will enjoy Assembly too, perhaps even using it for sketching out ideas. And when you're done, you can output your creations to PNG or SVG.

There's a miniature revolution taking place in digital comics. Echoing the music industry some years ago, more publishers are cottoning on to readers very much liking DRM-free content. With that in mind, you now need a decent iPad reader for your PDFs and CBRs, rather than whatever iffy reading experience is welded to a storefront.

Chunky is the best comic-reader on iPad. The interface is simple but customisable. If you want rid of transitions, they're gone. Tinted pages can be brightened. And smart upscaling makes low- res comics look good. Paying the one-off 'pro' IAP enables you to connect to Mac or Windows shared folders or FTP. Downloading comics then takes seconds, and the app will happily bring over folders full of images and convert them on-the-fly into readable digital publications.

You're probably dead inside if you sit down with Metamorphabet and it doesn't raise a smile — doubly so if you use it alongside a tiny human. The app takes you through all the letters of the alphabet, which contort and animate into all kinds of shapes. It suitably starts with A, which when prodded grows antlers, transforms into an arch, and then goes for an amble. It's adorable.

The app's surreal, playful nature never lets up, and any doubts you might have regarding certain scenes — such as floaty clouds representing 'daydream' in a manner that doesn't really work — evaporate when you see tiny fingers and thumbs carefully pawing at the iPad's glass while young eyes remain utterly transfixed.

It's been a long time coming, but finally Tweetbot gets a full-fledged modern-day update for iPad. And it's a good one, too. While the official Twitter app's turned into a 'blown-up iPhone app' monstrosity on Apple's tablet, Tweetbot makes use of the extra space by way of a handy extra column in which you can stash mentions, lists, and various other bits and bobs.

Elsewhere, this latest release might lack a few toys Twitter selfishly keeps for itself, but it wins out in terms of multitasking support, granular mute settings, superb usability, and an interesting Activity view if you're the kind of Twitter user desperate to know who's retweeting all your tiny missives.

This music app is inspired by layered composition techniques used in some classical music. You tap out notes on a piano roll, and can then have up to four playheads simultaneously interpret your notes, each using unique speeds, directions and transpositions. For the amateur, Fugue Machine is intuitive and mesmerising, not least because of how easy it is to create something that sounds gorgeous.

For pros, it's a must-have, not least due to MIDI output support for driving external software. It took us mere seconds to have Fugue Machine working with Animoog's voices, and the result ruined our productivity for an entire morning. (Unless you count composing beautiful music when you should be doing something else as 'being productive'. In which case, we salute you.)

While the likes of iMovie have gone a long way in making video editing a simple task on the iPad, the fact remains that it's still a lot of work. Replay goes ahead and takes the bulk of that work and does it for you, giving you creative films that can be done in minutes.

Pulling photos and videos from your cameras roll, and applying filters, cuts and effects to the final product, Replay is an amazing free app, although you'll need to spring $12.99 as an in-app purchase to get all the available themes. If you want to make memories from your photos and videos though, this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to do it, and is worth every cent.

Even though the iPad is an immensely powerful mobile device, there's no getting away from it sometimes being fiddly for performing complex tasks; this is all the more frustrating if said tasks are something you must do regularly. Fortunately, Workflow is here to help.

It includes over 200 actions that work with built-in and third-party apps, enabling you to fashion complex automation that's subsequently activated at the touch of a button. To help you get started, the gallery houses dozens of pre-built workflows, and for added flexibility, you can access those you create or install from inside the app, via the Today widget, or by way of a custom Home screen app-like shortcut.

Typography is something that doesn't come naturally to everyone. And so while there are excellent apps for adding text to images, you might want more help, rather than spending hours fine-tuning a bunch of misbehaving letters. That's where Retype comes in. You load a photo or a piece of built-in stock art, and type some text. Then it's just a case of selecting a style.

The type's design updates whenever you edit your text, and variations can be accessed by repeatedly prodding the relevant style's button. Basic but smart filter, blur, opacity and fade commands should cement Retype's place on your iPad.

So you want to learn to code for iOS? Then you're going to need to understand Swift, Apple's programming language. Fortunately, Swifty exists to help you on your coding journey. Simple, accessible and with over 200 interactive tutorials to help you learn the language behind the apps you use, Swifty is a great starting point for anyone getting started in iOS development.

Small business owners know that one of the worst parts of running a business is having to deal with the paperwork at the end of the day. Aussie app Invoice2Go takes the pain out of the process, allowing businesses to send invoices immediately without needing to open up Excel, as well as tracking payments, chasing down overdue Invoices and keeping tabs of business performance over time. You'll need to pay a yearly subscription to get the full benefit of the app, but for the convenience and benefit, you won't regret the cost.

Apple and Square announce new payments partnership cnbc.com

2016-12-07 05:08 Stephen Lambrechts www.techradar.com

5 /44 0.0 Google's upcoming drone delivery service derailed by an unlikely foe (1.02/3) Alphabet , Google’s parent company, has an ambitious plan for a marketplace where customers could order anything from coffee to toilet paper and have it within minutes. The drone- delivery service was slated for a 2017 launch after getting the go-ahead from the FAA to begin testing the unmanned aerial vehicles in the United States.

Back in September , Alphabet delivered its first burrito, from Chipotle, to a student at Virginia Tech. Since, Alphabet began performing tests with Starbucks and a handful of others — like Whole Foods Market and Domino’s Pizza — as part of its ‘Wing Marketplace.’ Starbucks pulled out of negotiations shortly after, citing disagreements over access to customer data, according to Bloomberg . A new report from The Wall Street Journal shows the moonshot from Alphabet’s ‘X’ division, could experience more turbulence in the coming months. According to an unnamed former X employee, the hold-up for a wider launch appears to be the technology itself. The former employee said the goal was to complete 1,000 flights without incident, but the company could never make it past 300.

Among the problems faced by the autonomous flyer, dubbed ‘hummingbird,’ were repeated power failures, multiple crashes, wandering off, or trying to land in trees.

X though, is Alphabet’s moonshot division, so problems are part of the status quo. As the former employee put it, though, Alphabet is “a software company — not an airplane company.”

Silicon Valley Stumbles in World Beyond Software on The Wall Street Journal

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Despite its drones ‘trying to land in trees,’ Google insists it’s committed to delivery project digitaltrends.com

2016-12-07 01:25 Bryan Clark feedproxy.google.com

6 /44 1.3 Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft join forces to tackle extremist content (1.02/3) The collaboration comes amid calls for Google to investigate far right manipulation of its search results. Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Google’s YouTube have announced a new collaborative effort to combat extremist material on their platforms, involving a shared database of information about prohibited content. The leading internet companies will create a common log of unique digital fingerprints assigned to videos and images – known as “hashes” – for content that is deemed to promote terrorism. According to a , this could include terrorist recruitment videos or violent terrorist imagery. The shared database will mean that when one platform flags and remove content – described as “the most extreme and egregious terrorist images and videos we have removed from our services” – the others can use its hash to identify and eradicate the content on their own system, dependent on how it fits against their respective policies. “Each company will continue to apply its own policies and definitions of terrorist content when deciding whether to remove content when a match to a shared hash is found,” the statement explains. “And each company will continue to apply its practice of transparency and review for any government requests, as well as retain its own appeal process for removal decisions and grievances.” The announcement of the collaboration comes in the wake of a demand on Sunday from the European Commission, that Facebook, Twitter, Google's YouTube and Microsoft do more to tackle hate speech on their platforms. "If Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft want to convince me and the ministers that the non-legislative approach can work, they will have to act quickly and make a strong effort in the coming months," EU justice commissioner Vêra Jourová told the. Elsewhere, academics have called on Google to urgently address its search rankings, because of evidence that it is being “manipulated and controlled” by far right-wing propagandists. The follows a report in , which found a range of connections between top search results and far right propaganda. For example, nine out of the ten top search results for “are jews” linked to antisemitic hate sites, and Google offered the search suggestion “are jews evil”. In response, Google removed some of the search results reported by. “Our search results are a reflection of the content across the web,” a spokesperson for the company said. “This means that sometimes, unpleasant portrayals of sensitive subject matter online can affect what search results appear for a given query.” Julia Powles, a researcher in law and technology at the University of Cambridge, told that Google’s reaction was “the classic PR response”, and that the issue raises serious concerns about how Google presents itself as a neutral entity. “They keep using this analogy that they’re like a card catalogue, but they’re really more like a card shark that can be gamed,” said Powles. “It raises deeply disturbing issues about the democratic distribution of information.”

Facebook, Google, & Twitter team up to take down terrorism rssfeeds.usatoday.com

2016-12-07 00:00 Thomas McMullan www.pcauthority.com.au

7 /44 5.0 Trump: Softbank to invest $50bn in US businesses

(1.02/3) Shares of Japanese technology firm Softbank have soared to their highest level on more than one year in Tokyo trade, jumping 5% at the open.

That is on news Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said he will invest $50bn (£39.3bn) in US businesses. But details are lacking on where the money will go and how it will benefit American businesses.

Mr Son made the announcement after meeting US President-elect Donald Trump in New York.

Mr Trump shared the news about the Softbank investment on social media, via his Twitter page.

Donald Trump's four-year term as US president will start following his inauguration on 20 January.

Softbank is one of the world's biggest technology companies and is run by its founder, Japanese entrepreneur Masayoshi Son.

It has previously acquired Vodafone's Japanese operations and the US telecoms company Sprint. The $20bn deal was the biggest foreign acquisition by a Japanese firm at the time.

Mr Son is known to have an eye for potentially transformative industries and trends. He was an early investor in Alibaba and saw the potential in e-commerce before anyone else did.

Softbank acquired UK technology firm ARM Holdings in July, for $32bn. The Cambridge-based firm designs microchips used in many smartphones, including those of Apple and South Korea's Samsung.

Trump: SoftBank to add $50B, 50K jobs in U.S. rssfeeds.usatoday.com

2016-12-07 03:24 www.bbc.co.uk

8 /44 0.3 The Latest: Survivor Says Quake Terrifying, Fled to Hill

(1.00/3) The Latest on a magnitude-6.5 earthquake in Indonesia's Aceh province (all times local):

12:10 p.m.

A woman in the worst-hit district near the epicenter of Indonesia's earthquake says she fled with her husband and children to a nearby hill after the quake jolted the family awake early Wednesday. They stayed there for several hours until authorities reassured them there was no tsunami risk. Seaside resident Fitri Abidin in Pidie Jaya district says: "It terrified me. I was having difficulty breathing or walking. "

She says her husband grabbed hold of her and carried her out of the house as their children were crying.

She says: "We ran to a nearby hill, because our house is near a beach. We were afraid a tsunami can come at any time. "

The family's house didn't collapse but the homes of some neighbors did. Abidin is traumatized because she believes three friends were buried in building collapses.

———

10:50 a.m.

The chief of the district nearest the epicenter of a shallow 6.4-magnitude earthquake that struck Indonesia's Aceh province early Wednesday says 25 people have been killed in that district alone.

Pidie Jaya district chief Aiyub Abbas also says hundreds of people in the district have been injured and dozens of buildings collapsed.

Abbas says there is an urgent need for excavation equipment to move heavy debris and emergency supplies.

————

10:40 a.m.

A strong undersea earthquake that rocked Indonesia's Aceh province early Wednesday has killed at least 20 people and collapsed buildings.

Indonesia's TVOne station, citing the acting governor of Aceh, Soedarmo, says 20 people have died.

A frantic rescue effort is underway for survivors in districts nearest the epicenter.

The U. S. Geological Survey says the shallow 6.4-magnitude earthquake that struck at 5:03 a.m. Wednesday was centered about 10 kilometers (6 miles) north off Reuleut, a town in northern Aceh, at a depth of 17 kilometers (11 miles).

There was no risk of a tsunami, according to Indonesian authorities.

The Latest: Death Toll in Quake Rises to 25 in 1 District abcnews.go.com 2016-12-07 12:01 By abcnews.go.com

9 /44 1.9 Cooler Master adds gaming bling to the MasterCase Make 5t The 't' is for bargain... no, wait, it's actually for tempered glass. Cooler Master has added a new case to its modular MasterCase lineup. The Maker 5t features aggressive red highlights on the external chassis, and a bold all-red interior - beautifully shown off by a tempered glass side panel. Lake the rest of the Maker line, the case it built for modular expansion. Every panel is designed to be removed and replaced, thought the stock build is rather striking, complete with a rubber-coated carry-handle and built-in red LEDs. Inside, depending on how you configure the internals, there's room for six fans and an impressive ten HDDs, and an included graphics card holder can handle even the largest and heaviest of cards. There's also a fan controller, a bracket for liquid cooling, and a light controller. There are seven expansion slots, two 5.25in drive bays - a rarity these days - and out of the box two 3.5in bays, and two plus two 2.5in bays. Connectivity is via an impressive four USB3 ports (making this a great case for VR), and HD audio ports, while stock cooling is handled by two 140mm fans in the front panel and a single rear 140mm exhaust. Clearance is pretty impressive, too - there's room for a 190mm CPU cooler, a 200mm PSU, and graphics cards up to 412mm (if you move the HDD cage). It's 296mm with the cage at stock. The Cooler Master MasterCase Maker 5t is available now for $289 - expensive, but it certainly looks worth it.

2016-12-07 00:00 David Hollingworth www.pcauthority.com.au

10 /44 2.4 Regional Australia is crying out for equitable access to broadband Is satellite enough fro rural Australian families? Internet and broadband connectivity are the foundation of the. But to ensure the benefits of the networked economy are evenly distributed, the Australian government needs to ensure access to the internet to encourage and support innovation. A recent report from SGS Economics and Planning highlights a between the economic workhorses of Sydney and Melbourne and regional Australia. All of the key sectors experiencing growth depend upon the networked economy. The emerging economic environment is leveraging the rapid rise in real-time connectivity between people, businesses, devices and systems. The result is the digitisation of many transactions and growing importance of data. The Productivity Commission’s draft report on data use and availability highlights the need for clear thinking to make this transformation. When the telephone network was rolled out, this was enshrined in the Universal Service Obligation ( ), a framework to provide a basic level of connectivity. A key question is whether the USO principle of connectivity is sufficient for the emerging Australian networked economy. The answer is very clearly “yes”. But urgent attention is required to deliver fair, equitable and cost- effective access to broadband and internet connectivity to enable economic development in the cities and the regions. To be digitally inclusive, Australia needs to overcome the digital divide. There is a significant divergence in the nature and availability of communication and internet services for regional Australia. nbn co’s clearly highlights the widening gap between metropolitan areas and regional areas not serviced by an NBN plan. The reaction from regional Australia has been very clear. A new between the Australian Customer Action Network ( ), the , the of NSW, the and is advocating for better access in five key areas. This sentiment is supported by Internet Australia’s. The group, which includes the , argues for important changes to ensure connectivity. So, what is being advocated? Australians need a new provision that incorporates both voice and data connectivity to ensure internet access is guaranteed to all citizens. This will address digital cohesion and ensure everyone can participate in the growing networked economy. nbn co should be allowed to provide retail services to customers where there is only one commercial provider to encourage competition and access. As broadband deployment and uptake increase, service offerings need to provide better and more transparent guarantees to customers. The network should have better reliability measures and offer services with certain quality of customer experience. Countries such as the UK already provide a to make ISPs accountable for their performance. This includes the speed of connection customers can expect to receive during peak hours. Such requirements support competition by focusing service providers on differentiation while lifting performance. This creates incentives for investing in resources to address emerging issues such as the effect of backhaul networks on broadband performance. Mobile network technology is critical for the economic activities of regional Australia. Ensuring that network coverage is expanded to everyone also promotes social cohesion. Regional Australia needs network coverage to take advantage of emerging opportunities from technologies such as the. This will enable significant productivity gains in industry sectors such as mining and resources, agriculture and food processing, as well as professional services. A to mobile network coverage is a key step to guarantee such investments and make it attractive for network operators to build the network. nbn co’s satellite services (the second satellite will be available in 2017) and its fixed wireless services will face significant demand, which presents issues for fair and equitable access. This will create difficulties in matching the needs of different stakeholders across regional Australia. On the one hand, new services such as internet access on ( and ) flights could potentially add congestion to satellite services, depending on the access and allocation of resources. Alternatively, new business opportunities enabled by the internet of things and the digital economy might demand low-latency connectivity, which a satellite service cannot provide in regional Australia. Therefore, to realise the potential gains, nbn co needs to support investment in development and adoption of new broadband technologies that can provide greater bandwidth, or lower latency, services cost-effectively to regional Australia. Through the government’s digital transformation agenda, it is imperative to ensure regional Australia is empowered through programs focused on digital capacity building. This should include skills development, assistance to access new technologies and support for businesses and consumers. As the data becomes a key economic enabler, data skills and platforms for regional Australia will also become a major priority. While the case for lifting the economic and social participation of regional Australia in the emerging networked economy is very strong, will the policy framework evolve to make it a priority? The bush is crying out for equitable access to broadband.

2016-12-07 00:00 Thas Ampalavanapillai www.pcauthority.com.au

11 /44 1.3 China fines Medtronic $17 million on anti-monopoly charges BEIJING (AP) - The Chinese unit of medical device maker Medtronic has been fined $17 million by anti-monopoly regulators in the latest effort by Beijing to force down what it sees as unreasonably high prices.

The Cabinet’s planning agency said Wednesday the company, which supplies cardiovascular, restorative, and diabetes-related medical devices, improperly suppressed competition through agreements with distributors that set minimum prices.

Chinese regulators have imposed similar penalties on foreign automakers, milk suppliers and other companies. Setting minimum retail prices is a common tactic in other markets but lawyers say Beijing appears to see them as a barrier to competition.

Wednesday’s government statement said minimum price agreements for medical devices hurt patients.

2016-12-07 08:34 By www.washingtontimes.com

12 /44 1.2 Can bird feeders do more harm than good? Feeders may attract more predators to an area, but the food can also satiate predators so that they're less likely to target nests. To learn more, Jennifer Malpass of The Ohio State University and her colleagues tracked the relationships between the success of American Robin and Northern Cardinal nests, the presence of potential nest predators like squirrels, domestic cats, and other birds, and the presence of bird feeders in the area. Relationships among feeders, predators and nest survival were complex —areas with lots of feeders had more cowbirds and crows, birds that are known to prey on songbird nests, but that didn't generally affect the success of the nests the researchers monitored.

"One key message of our work is that there may be species-specific responses to anthropogenic foods," says Malpass. Robins did experience increased nest predation in one specific set of circumstances, when neighborhoods contained both high numbers of bird feeders and large concentrations of crows. Human-dominated environments, it turns out, are complicated and variable, not lending themselves to simple generalizations.

To collect their data, Malpass and her colleagues spent four years monitoring songbird nests and conducting surveys for potential nest predators in seven residential neighborhoods in Columbus, Ohio. "One of the challenges of conducting research in the suburban matrix is gaining access to private property," says Malpass. "In our experience, most of the residents in our focal neighborhoods were willing to allow access to their yards and had a positive experience being part of the project. "

"Even with over 50 million Americans feeding wild birds and other wildlife around their homes, our scientific understanding of the practice continues to lag," according to Millikin University's David Horn, an expert on wild bird feeding who was not involved with the study. "The study by Malpass, Rodewald, and Matthews increases our understanding of how the provision of supplemental food may influence predator abundance and nest survival of two common songbird species. "

Explore further: Electronic tracking of song birds shows roads and urban features influence their choice of gardens

More information:

"Species-dependent effects of bird feeders on nest predators and nest survival of urban American Robins and Northern Cardinals" December 7, 2016, americanornithologypubs.org/doi/full/10.1650/CONDOR-16-72.1

2016-12-07 00:00 phys.org

13 /44 1.6 Migrating birds pile up along Great Lakes' shores Kevin Archibald and Jeff Buler of the University of Delaware and their colleagues turned the U. S.'s powerful network of weather surveillance radar stations on birds heading north across the Great Lakes during their spring migration. As dawn approaches, their data show, birds caught over water increase their elevation and often turn back. This leads to a pileup of birds in near-shore stopover habitat—the density of birds taking off from the southern shores of the Great Lakes on subsequent spring evenings was 48% higher than on the northern shores.

Birds presumably increase their altitude at dawn to try to see how much farther they have to go; if they decide it's too far, they go back to try again the next night, leading to higher concentrations of migrants on near shores. When birds are migrating south in the fall, these pile- ups would happen on the north side of the lakes rather than the south. "Our study justifies the high value of shoreline habitats for conservation of migratory bird populations in the Great Lakes region," says Buler. "It also emphasizes that the extent of stopover use in shoreline habitats is context-dependent. We hope professionals charged with managing stopover habitats recognize that shoreline areas can receive high migrant use by virtue of the proximity to a lake and how many migrants are aloft at dawn from day to day, rather than [just] by the presence of abundant food sources in these habitats. "

The data used in the study came from radar stations in Cleveland, Ohio; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Green Bay, Wisconsin, collected in spring 2010-2013. Cleveland was the only station that did not observe birds increasing their elevation at dawn, possibly because Lake Erie is narrow enough for them to see across without an increase in altitude.

"Nearshore areas of the Great Lakes are important to migrating landbirds. Archibald, Buler, and their colleagues further investigate this distributional pattern by analyzing the interaction between spring migratory flight behavior and the migrant exodus at nearshore stopover sites using NEXRAD radar," according to The Nature Conservancy's Dave Ewert. "Their research supports earlier work that migrants concentrate near Great Lakes shorelines, but with new perspectives. "

Explore further: Migrating birds speed up in spring

More information:

"Migrating birds reorient toward land at dawn over the Great Lakes, USA" December 7, 2016, americanornithologypubs.org/doi/full/10.1642/AUK-16-123.1

2016-12-07 00:00 phys.org

14 /44 1.8 Foraging differences let closely related seabirds coexist Past studies have suggested that Great and Lesser frigatebirds have very similar foraging habits, but ecology's "competitive exclusion principle" suggests that they must not be going after exactly the same food , or one would eventually outcompete the other. New advances in GPS tracking and chemical analysis of birds' tissues allowed Rowan Mott of Australia's Monash University and his colleagues to tease out some of the subtle differences that let these species coexist, and they found that the smaller Lesser Frigatebirds were eating prey items from lower on the food chain than their larger relatives, allowing the two species to subsist on the same resource base.

"As I began reading about frigatebirds, it seemed as if Great Frigatebirds and Lesser Frigatebirds share a remarkably similar foraging strategy. This didn't sit well with my understanding of the competitive exclusion principle and niche partitioning theory," says Mott. "It turns out that the two species of frigatebirds seem to have slight differences in their diet that are related to body size. The larger-bodied Great Frigatebird eats more prey from higher levels of the food chain than the smaller-bodied Lesser Frigatebird, and this relationship is particularly strong when comparing the diet of females with the male diet, because females are considerably larger than males. "

Mott and his colleagues carried out their research on an island in the Timor Sea, where they captured birds on their nests during the breeding season, fitting them with GPS devices and collecting feathers and blood for isotope analysis. By analyzing the ratios of nitrogen and carbon isotopes in the birds' tissues, the researchers could glean insights into the types of food they had been eating—for example, predatory fish have higher proportion of a certain nitrogen isotope in their bodies, allowing the researchers to make inferences about prey type.

"Ecologists argue that coexistence of similar species can only persist if populations have more resources than they need or if they use different subsets of resources," according to Acadia University's Dave Shutler, a seabird ecologist not involved in the study. "In the latter case, identifying where and how species partition resources can be challenging for mobile species such as birds; using tracking devices and chemical signatures in tissues, Mott and his collaborators have evaluated differences in diets and spatial use of two species of frigatebirds. "

Explore further: Live tracking of vulnerable South Atlantic seabirds

More information:

"Resource partitioning between species and sexes in Great Frigatebirds and Lesser Frigatebirds" December 7, 2016, americanornithologypubs.org/doi/full/10.1642/AUK-16-184.1

2016-12-07 00:00 phys.org

15 /44 0.0 Pandora Premium wants to take on Spotify when it launches in early 2017 The curtain has finally lifted on Pandora Premium, the venerable music service's answer to Spotify Premium, Apple Music and just about any other on-demand offering you use that costs 10 big ones a month.

Pandora Premium is the new top tier of Pandora, joining the $4.99/month Pandora Plus and the free version (you know, the one with the ads).

Premium comes sans adverts, giving users access to a catalogue stuffed with millions of songs, according to The Verge. Tunes will also be available for offline enjoyment, and all that can be yours for $9.99/month (about £8, AU$14).

Pandora tells us Premium will roll out in Q1 2017, though we're awaiting word on whether it will launch outside the US.

If you're wondering what Pandora Premium does differently than Spotify, it's in allowing users to easily add songs to a particular playlist by simply pressing a button, The Verge reports. There's personalized search results based on your listening habits as well as a browsing section unique to you. You'll also see shades of Rdio, parts of which Pandora scooped up when the former filed for bankruptcy last year, in the app, too.

Radio stations and the thumbs up are part of the Premium package, and the service even includes a station comprised of every single song that's ever gotten your approval. We cringe to think of some of our choices from years gone by.

Pandora Premium has some other intriguing bells and whistles, but whether it's enough to sway you away from Spotify or Apple Music - or to start paying for Pandora if you don't mind the ads - is a big question mark.

2016-12-07 04:02 Michelle Fitzsimmons www.techradar.com

16 /44 0.5 Apple says iPhone 6 battery fires in China likely caused by external factors The Shanghai Consumer Council released a report on Friday detailing battery fires in eight iPhone 6 handsets. It also detailed iPhone 6 handsets powering down before their batteries are depleted - handsets outside of a global iPhone 6 recall range that Apple announced on Nov. 20 to address the issue.

"The units we've analyzed so far have clearly shown that external physical damage happened to them which led to the thermal event," an Apple spokeswoman said in an emailed statement to Reuters late on Tuesday. She also said Apple was widening its investigation into the power-down issue.

The U. S. tech firm has seen Chinese sales fall over the past three quarters as domestic smartphone makers compete with high-spec handsets at low price points. It is hoping to bounce back in the first quarter of next year with its iPhone 7.

But domestic handset makers also likely received a boost after South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd recalled 2.5 million Note 7 handsets globally following a series of battery fires, raising distrust of foreign smartphone brands, according to users, analysts and consumer groups.

The Shanghai Consumer Council in its report said that during Samsung's recall in October- November, complaints involving Apple products jumped, accounting for almost half the year-to- date total of 2763 - itself a nearly two-fold increase from 2015.

"The Samsung case did make (Chinese smartphone users) start to think an international brand doesn't necessarily equal a safe product," said Nicole Peng, Asia-Pacific director at researcher Canalys. State media outlets featuring the Shanghai council's report on Monday garnered tens of thousands of comments on social media. While many doubted the iPhone 6 was at fault, top- ranking comments expressed frustration that foreign brands could set high prices and yet not guarantee safety.

"I still worry about the iPhone in case there is indeed a problem, but it's not investigated," said Mr. Liu, a 21-year-old student in Beijing.

"The news did make me change my Apple habits," he told Reuters. "For example, I don't dare play with the phone in bed and if it heats up I quickly throw it aside. "

(Reporting by Cate Cadell; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

2016-12-06 22:57 Reuters Editorial feeds.reuters.com

17 /44 1.7 Malicious online ads expose millions to possible hack Since October, millions of internet users have been exposed to malicious code served from the pixels in tainted banner ads meant to install Trojans and spyware, according to security firm ESET.

The attack campaign, called Stegano, has been spreading from malicious ads in a “number of reputable news websites,” ESET said in a Tuesday blog post. It’s been preying on Internet Explorer users by scanning for vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash and then exploiting them.

The attack is designed to infect victims with malware that can steal email password credentials through its keylogging and screenshot grabbing features, among others.

The attack is also hard to detect. To infect their victims, the hackers were essentially poisoning the pixels used in the tainted banner ads, ESET said in a separate post.

The malicious banner ad.

The hackers concealed their malicious coding in the parameters controlling the pixels’ transparency on the banner ad. This allowed their attack to go unnoticed by the legitimate advertising networks.

Victims will typically see a banner ad for a product called “Browser Defense” or “Broxu.” But in reality, the ad is also designed to run some Javascript that will secretly open a new browser window to a malicious website designed to exploit vulnerabilities in Flash that will help carry out the rest of the attack.

Hackers have used similar so-called malvertising tactics to secretly serve malicious coding over legitimate online advertising networks. It’s an attack method that has proven to be a successfu l at quickly spreading malware to potentially millions.

The makers behind the Stegano attack were also careful to create safeguards to prevent detection, ESET said. For instance, the banner ads will alternate between serving a malicious version or a clean version, depending on the settings run on the victim’s computer. It will also check for any security products or virtualization software on the machine before proceeding with the attack.

ESET declined to name the news websites that were found unknowingly displaying the malicious ads, but cautioned that the attack was widespread, and could have been hosted through other popular sites as well.

The security firm is advising that users upgrade their computers and software to the latest security patches, to avoid becoming victims.

2016-12-06 18:49 Michael Kan www.pcworld.com

18 /44 5.6 ANU to host Australia's first cyber-security simulation game Government and business sectors combine in cybergame responses to future cybercrime cyberthreats. I'm going to be using the word cyber a lot in this piece - it sadly remains the buzzword de jour in government circles. And those circles are about to take part in Australia's first ever cyber security game. Basically, it's like a war game, but for cyberattacks and cybercrime. The Australian National University will be hosting the game tomorrow, in conjunction with the RAND Corporation, and it will simulate two scenarios based around a theoretical 2022 environment. The project will be coordinated by Michelle Price of the ANU National Security College, and will involve both the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Cyber Security Dan Tehan and Shadow Assistant Minister for Cyber Security Gai Brodtmann. That's a lot of cybers. But online security and preparedness is a big challenge. “Australia is losing up to $17 billion off our bottom line each year through malicious cyber activity,” Price said in today's announcement. “It largely goes off-shore after being stolen by cyber criminals. " “We also have to take into account the loss of productivity. Any time a malicious compromise happens, people’s efforts have to be redirected. There can also be cash costs involved in remediating malicious incidents, the value depending on how severe the incident is. " Other participants include Google, Cisco, the ABC, the Australian Securities Exchange, and KPMG.

2016-12-07 00:00 David Hollingworth www.pcauthority.com.au

19 /44 0.0 Buying from overseas retailers : Anthony Caruana explains the laws, pitfalls and your rights. There are lots of attractions to buying online, particularly from overseas retailers. Service is good and you can check ratings and online feedback easily, the range of products is broader than local stores and prices are often better even when you take into account shipping and exchange rates. But it’s not always smooth sailing and the government is making moves to level the playing field, insisting overseas retailers will need to add and collect GST for the government. Also, while the majority of transactions go through smoothly there are occasions when a product needs to be returned for a refund or replaced while under warranty. Let’s start with the government’s changes to the rules around GST. Businesses in Australia with revenues in excess of $75,000 must register for GST. They must add 10% to the price of whatever they are selling and send that money to government when they complete their Business Activity Statement (BAS). Overseas businesses that generate more that $75,000 of revenue in Australia will need to do the same. How will this be enforced? The expectation is large companies like Amazon will fall into line quickly as they are resourced to do this and they already do enough business here to justify the overhead. For others, the Treasury says the Government will ask the businesses to comply. If they don’t, they will fall back on treaty arrangements and international law to force them to comply. Failing that, as a last resort the Government will try to block the retailer’s website.

How this will actually play out is still unknown. In reality, if you buy from a smaller, reputable retailer you’ll avoid the GST in any case and I suspect the government will have a lot trouble determining whether a business has the right level of revenue to force them to register for GST. Returns and refund policies are a very tricky issue. Under Australian consumer law, retailers are required to comply with the consumer protection laws of their own country. But they may also have their own refunds and returns policy with additional rights. In other words caveat emptor, or buyer beware, applies. Our suggestion is to specifically look into who pays for the postage on returns, how much time you have to make a return and what conditions are acceptable for returns. For example, GearBest recently updated its policy to cover return postage for defective products but only if the product is found to be defective within three days of the receipt. So, while these sorts of arrangements are not illegal, they aren’t buyer-friendly.

You might think you are powerless in these transactions. However, you may be protected by your credit card company, through their own insurance, by online markets if you’ve used eBay or similar, or other payment systems such as PayPal. is a US initiative for reporting online shopping issues, fraud, and scams. They’ve been running for about 15 years and have 36 member countries who contribute to their database of online malfeasance. Although its focus is on cross-border cooperation to counter online crime, it provides a way for law enforcement to identify scammers who intentionally distribute dodgy products. When it comes to buying from individuals who are selling items privately, it’s important to realise they are not subject to Australian Consumer Law. Although they may offer returns and refunds they aren’t obligated legally. That’s where the online dispute resolution processes for eBay, Etsy and other online markets are useful.

2016-12-07 00:00 Anthony Caruana www.pcauthority.com.au

20 /44 4.8 72 gift ideas for every kind of dad and every budget Of all the people I have to buy gifts for every year, my dad is the hardest. The guy just buys whatever he wants, so it's impossible to think of something he might love that he doesn't already have.

If you're in the same boat, then we've got over 30 ideas that should appeal to every kind of dad out there. So whether your dad is the outdoors type, loves to golf, or is just a big ol' nerd, we've got an idea that should work.

If you're planning on going all-out for dad this year, these gifts are sure to please. They're expensive, but if your dad has been an especially good dad this year, these gifts will steal the show.

2016-12-06 21:01 TJ Donegan rssfeeds.usatoday.com

21 /44 0.0 Accountant not needed: ATO virtual assistant doles out free Australian tax advice The Australian Tax Office employed Alex in September last year, and since then she’s done 24-hour shifts and answered thousands of customer queries. But the ATO’s most-productive employee isn’t a real person — she’s an AI-powered virtual assistant and now she’s getting a voice, just like Siri and Cortana.

The ATO has recently teamed up with Nuance Communications to implement the US software giant’s own virtual assistant tech into the government organisation’s website, which will enable existing-assistant Alex to vocally address customer queries.

The new voice enhancements will be launched today, and are seen as the next step in the tax organisation’s bid to improve online customer service by enabling customers to self-serve.

Since starting work at the ATO last year, Alex has had more than 950,000 conversations, most of them during the July through to October period, when most Australians are scrambling to submit their tax returns. And she will continue to evolve as more people interact with her on a daily basis, using advanced resolution technologies and an understanding of language and dialogue. Robert Schwarz, managing director for Nuance Enterprise, Australia and New Zealand, said the company was “thrilled to provide the ATO with the next phase of intelligent automation technology”.

He also listed out the pros of using this technology, adding, “Once it is taught something, it never forgets, it’s always polite and it’s available 24/7. And because we capture the essence of the conversation in text format, the ATO can analyse the information at a more granular level.”

Nuance is perhaps best-known for the Swype software keyboard on iOS and Android, as well as the Dragon NaturallySpeaking dictation software. It also provides the ATO with biometric technology for its call centre and mobile application.

2016-12-07 01:52 Sharmishta Sarkar www.techradar.com

22 /44 2.7 Download This: Islands - Non places Investigate tiny worlds of everyday banality that turn out to be anything but ordinary in this mesmerising, filmic app. Described by its creator as a “surreal trip through the mundane”, Islands is an app of contrasts. It’s an exploration of the ordinary, but also a showcase for how the juxtaposition of unrelated objects that are typically ignored or taken for granted can create something disarmingly beautiful - or alien and disturbing. Each scene begins as a solid slab of colour, against which sits a minimalist diorama you can spin about a circular axis. The pared-back, fog- shrouded imagery doesn’t so much hinder recognition as encourage exploration, providing a space for the imagination to play in. And then you start interacting with the scene, and it all goes a bit weird. Early on, you’re faced with a bus station sitting in blue-grey gloom, traffic noise rumbling in the distance. Tap a flashing advertising hoarding and a bus dutifully pulls up, its brakes squealing. Rather than the hubbub of chatting people, you instead immediately notice what sounds like an entire aviary of birds squawking inside the bus. Tap the door and it opens, and levitating eggs eerily float out in single file. The birds sound increasingly agitated as their ovoid offspring carefully line up in the shelter, before the ground swallows up the bus and the screen turns a violent red. The bus shelter has become… an incubator? A microwave? As your brain flips, trying to grasp what’s just happened, the scene fades – and it’s on to the next. Islands continues with this set-up throughout, and it never gets old. Nothing you see in isolation is out of the ordinary, and yet little behaves quite as it should. There are moments of delight, underlying hints of menace and unease, and playfulness as what you’re seeing continually confounds your expectations. You’ll watch palm trees ride an escalator, as though that’s perfectly normal. The chattering at a seating area is suddenly pierced by a discordant alarm, whereupon tables and chairs must be raised to avoid an abrupt flood. And a scene with a cash machine proves one of the strangest yet most delightful things you’ll see on an iPad. There’s no rhyme nor reason for anything that happens in Islands – everything just is. You may conjure up explanations: industrial machines recreating human worlds; an alien take on human banality; hazy substance- fuelled city memories; or nightmarish dreamworlds of the objects themselves. But everything is left intentionally vague. At times, Islands is reminiscent of Simon Stalenhag’s paintings, in the sense of twisting the world in ways that cannot be real, and yet feel convincing at the time. The only disappointment is the experience is brief (an hour or so) – and it’s worth noting this is more interactive surreal animation than game, despite its App Store categorisation. But these non- spaces are worth revisiting many times even when you know their secrets, on account of their bewitching nature. Islands is available for , and also on.

2016-12-07 00:00 Craig Grannell www.pcauthority.com.au

23 /44 0.0 Script exploited in WordPress theme, bypasses security, sends spam Hackers, flying beneath the radar, have been using script that's part of a WordPress theme to send spam. During what was called a routine cleanup investigation, researchers at Sucuri found that hackers were exploiting a PHP script in a premium WordPress theme to send spam. “While many themes include email functionality, this particular one was troublesome because the script was written without any security checks or direct access prevention,” Sucuri Remediation Team Lead Rodrigo Escobar . “Without the proper security functions in place, this script can easily be exploited to abuse features and send mass email spam.” The script, which uses data from POST parameters to send email and is designed to work within the theme, can stand alone as well, “bypassing all security checks in other theme files,” Escobar said. He added that the issue had been exploited by attackers “for quite a while” and were able “to send as many emails as they would like, only limited by the server's configurations.”

2016-12-07 00:00 Teri Robinson www.pcauthority.com.au

24 /44 2.9 Why are marketing automation platforms getting so much VC funding? With Optimove 's recent $20 million raise from Israel Growth Partners, industry experts are asking what it is about marketing automation platforms that makes them such magnets for VC funding.

Since HubSpot's founding in 2006, marketing automation platforms — software that aims to automate specific touch-points of the customer acquisition and retention processes — have evolved into ubiquitous enterprise tools, employed by marketing departments of virtually every size and industry.

According to marketing research firm Asend2, a full 42 percent of firms now use such tools. And while the majority of those have adopted platforms that are household names (at least to CMOs) such as HubSpot, Eloqua, and Marketo, the rest of the market comprises a panoply of offerings often differentiating themselves through targeting specific niches within the marketing software market. As a recent review of the marketing automation software illustrates, although certain functions remain core to the marketing automation toolkit (these include fine-tuning landing pages and email marketing campaigns), other martech offerings include features that straddle the divide between CRM systems, or incorporate functions from entire separate areas such as web analytics and even project management.

The result is a surprisingly fragmented landscape of competitors competing under a rubric that is still far from standardization.

Despite this preponderance of systems, however, one thing is clear.

Whether through typical feature-bloat or the sheer unwieldiness created by a well-intentioned effort to merge various enterprise silos into one 'do it all' software package, the majority of systems are fundamentally failing to provide the solution that marketers are seeking when turning to these tools.

According to industry expert David Raab , a full 70 percent of marketers are either dissatisfied or only marginally happy with their present marketing automation package. Worse, and to the undoubted displeasure of the accounting department, only 7 percent are seeing tangible ROI from their use of the systems.

Today's marketing automation softwares have successfully bulked up with features — but users report the bulk to be cumbersome. Tomorrow's generation of solutions will focus instead on instead predictive modeling and set delivering a sleeker, more powerful, solution to the user as their top priority.

Given the above, it is perhaps understandable how a search within the marketing automation category of Angel.co turns up over 200,000 users following the space, 18,000 investors listed as investing in it, and affords an average valuation of $4.3 million to its startups.

Marketing automation platforms are, by nature, almost entirely-cloud based. The journey from the server-room to the cloud is still ongoing, and VCs realize that the ongoing state of flux in enterprise IT will continue to have ramifications across all major business units.

Although data from cloud solutions provider RightScale showed that 93 percent of U. S. businesses are now using the cloud in some form, an equally turbulent second wave of cloud adoption involving transitioning mission-critical data to the systems is expected to be just as disruptive as the first.

This will mean retrospectively-focused efforts to coordinate the cloud IT stack across the organization. Such a review will likely have knock-on effects for less business-critical systems already deployed — such as marketing and sales tools. Given the evidently unmatched demand from marketers for an intuitive but powerful platform capable of automating all levels of the marketing stack, it is not surprising that martech startups managed to raise $17 billion last year — and marketing automation software continues to rank among the top business models in the category.

Personalized messaging remains key to effective marketing. Given the tendency for larger revenue businesses to more proactively seek out high-tech solutions, scalability, through automation, will not diminish as a prime concern for purchasers.

In an industry expected to be worth $5.5 billion within three years , there is much business at play.

Despite what, at first glance, looks like a rapidly saturating market, too much enterprise spend on these technologies has evidently been directed at keeping up with the Jones’.

A new crop of forward-thinking, leaner tools will emerge in the coming years.

This could significantly displace some of the market share that the current crop of titans enjoy.

The door remains open for new entrants to the marketing automation space. VCs realize this and are continuing to invest in the game-changers of tomorrow.

2016-12-06 17:32 Philip Kushmaro www.itnews.com

25 /44 2.0 New TD Ameritrade CEO Hockey to boost tech spend by 25 percent The move comes as "fintech" firms attempt to shake up the financial services sector through new technologies like blockchain, cloud computing and robo- advisers, offering cheaper alternatives to traditional money management.

"We were the original fintechs," Tim Hockey, CEO of TD Ameritrade, said in an interview, referring to discount brokerages in general, as well as the company's development of an online investment adviser, Amerivest, in 2004, well ahead of the current crop of robo- advisers.

Hockey, who took over as CEO on Oct. 1, said one of his top goals was to "speed up the metabolism of the place. "

That task could be complicated by Omaha-based TD Ameritrade's deal to buy smaller rival Scottrade for $2.7 billion, potentially giving it a combined $1 trillion in assets and 10 million client accounts with around 600,000 trades executed per day. The deal, announced last month, was already in motion before Hockey took over as boss.

Hockey is hoping the takeover will not distract too much from his technology plans. In addition to the budget increase, he has cut out layers of management and has raised the bar on what projects will be approved. The aim is for the technology team's output to double in 2017 compared with this year.

TD Ameritrade does not disclose its technology budget.

Hockey said he has been working since mid-summer to find existing funds within the firm to allocate to his technology team to do things like create new interfaces that allow investors to use TD Ameritrade more seamlessly. "Part of my task will be to literally get the organization back on our front foot when it comes to investment in cutting-edge technology," he said.

For instance, the company plans to announce next week a new feature available on Amazon.com's voice-controlled Echo home assistant Alexa that gives users market updates from TD Ameritrade.

Hockey said he has been using the prototype, typically asking Alexa to tell him the news in the morning when he returns to his Lower Manhattan apartment from the gym. In the future, he said he could envision asking Alexa what trades he might make to take advantage of the latest news and then making trades through TD Ameritrade on the device at any time in the day.

To pay for the increased technology spending, departments across the firm were asked to scrap ongoing projects that were not proving to be successful. It turned out there were plenty.

One was a program related to robo-adviser unit Amerivest that rebated some fees for new clients whose portfolios performed poorly. Although the promotion was expected to attract new investors, it didn't move the needle, Hockey said.

"But we kept it on life support and were paying out millions of dollars, so I said, 'Ok, let's just swallow hard and we'll stop it,' and life didn't end," he said.

Some other projects being looked at include adding voice recognition to TD Ameritrade's online platforms, moving data to a private internet-based cloud, and developing blockchain functions, which allow users to conduct transactions more effortlessly, to cut administration costs.

"We've got not just great opportunities to invest for client innovation, but frankly, great opportunities to invest for our own cost savings," said Hockey, a former Toronto-Dominion Bank executive.

(Reporting by John McCrank; Editing by Carmel Crimmins and Leslie Adler)

2016-12-06 20:27 John McCrank feeds.reuters.com

26 /44 5.0 Review: Sennheiser's PC 373D 7.1 headphones deliver amazing sound As pricey as they are tasty What other headphone manufacturer would hand-pick lamb’s wool for its headband and ear cups other than Sennheiser? There’s a reason these headphones are so expensive, and that’s just one of them. Still, if you’re looking for the ultimate in audio quality, without blowing over a grand, these are a fine set of headphones to listen to your games with. It’s obvious that Sennheiser has intended these for gamers. Firstly the USB connection means they’ll only work with a PC – a real shame as the sound quality is so good we’d love to use them with our smartphones and media players. Then there’s the Dolby Virtual 7.1 surround support, and it’s one of the better versions we’ve used. In the heat of a Battlefield battle, this virtual surround sound technology made it easy to pin-point exactly where each shot and grenade was coming from; it’s far superior to the cheaper solutions offered elsewhere. Sennheiser has designed these to be worn all day, using an all-plastic design to make them ultra-light. Yet it’s strong enough to handle a beating, hence the two-year warranty. The extra-large open ear cups mean even the biggest ears will fit with ease, while there’s plenty of airflow to keep sweat at bay – just don’t expect your sleeping partner to appreciate the open ear design. But where these shine most is their incredible sound quality. No matter the volume, or the deepest explosion, or whiniest bullet crack, the 373Ds deliver unshakeable audio without issue. Sennheiser’s gone for a balanced audio sound field, neither favouring the highs or lows, just the way we like it. There’s also a crystal clear fold-down microphone on one side, with volume controls also integrated into the ear cup. Our only concern is the price – for a little less, you can get headphones that sound almost as good but are much more versatile. Sennheiser really should have equipped these cans with a 3.5mm minijack to get the most out of them.

2016-12-07 11:25 Bennett Ring www.pcauthority.com.au

27 /44 0.9 London tech leaders propose post-Brexit plan to British government In an open letter to Prime Minister Theresa May, nine leading UK- based technology entrepreneurs and investors, including Skype co- founder Niklas Zennstrom, pressed the government to act to ensure a continued flow of skilled migrants after Britain leaves the European Union. It also called on the government to address EU market access and other issues.

"The No. 1 concern for entrepreneurs post-Brexit is access to talent, in particular technical talent," they said in the letter. It was dated Dec. 6 and timed to coincide with the annual TechCrunch Disrupt London conference for start-ups and investors.

"Quotas on specific skills could severely limit the ability of new tech companies to grow," they said.

Signatories of the letter also included Balderton Capital partner Bernard Liautaud, the now London-based founder of French software firm Business Objects, as well as Brent Hoberman of Founders Forum and Sonali De Rycker, partner at Accel Partners.

The letter calls on the government to campaign for access to the European Union's digital single market and to ensure a simple and competitive framework for companies, labor, tax, stock options and bankruptcy protection.

"London is (still) the best place in Europe to launch a global tech company," said Zennstrom, who created pioneering messaging service Skype, then venture firm Atomico, which is best known for backing Finnish video games firm Supercell.

"What the UK government needs to make sure is that technology companies still have access to the best talent in the world. If (that happens) without a lot of red tape, we are going to be fine," Zennstrom said at TechCrunch on Monday.

Paris and Berlin are vying to displace London's lead in the European start-up scene, while other cities including Dublin, Amsterdam and Frankfurt are also promoting themselves as alternative tech hubs in the face of Brexit uncertainties.

In fintech, a sector where London ranks as a global leader, funding for UK firms has slowed since Britain's vote in June to leave the EU. Germany's rival fintech scene has captured 35 percent more venture capital funding than Britain in the last two quarters, according to a report by KMPG and CBInsights.

The British government has put forward a number of initiatives to support the tech sector, such as providing funding for more fiber-optic broadband and committing to boost investment through the British Business Bank to replace potentially lost EU funding.

It has touted plans by U. S. tech giants Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple to build new offices in London and hire thousands more staff as a measure of confidence in the UK market. But it has so far avoided making commitments to ensure a continued flow of technically skilled migrants into Britain.

"I think we are in 'deer-in-the-headlights' mode, candidly. We do not have a clue what's happening," Accel's De Rycker said during a venture capital panel discussion at TechCrunch.

European firms considering moving to London to expand quickly as global businesses now worry whether they can count on hiring the technical talent in Britain they will need to grow over the next three years, De Rycker said.

"If you want to add 100 engineers over the next two years, we are pausing on that," she said of her company's recent investment decisions. "(UK tech firms) are thinking, 'Do I need to get a second center of gravity (outside Britain)?'"

Forty percent of Accel's last 11 European investments have been in France while it has pared back on new UK firms for now, she said. (Additional reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Susan Fenton)

2016-12-06 20:20 Eric Auchard feeds.reuters.com

28 /44 2.4 Discounts, advertising spur brisk Apple Watch sales The Watch is Apple Inc's ( AAPL. O ) first new product under Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and is seen as a barometer of whether the company can find new sources of revenue to boost sales which now largely depend on the iPhone.

Cook told Reuters on Monday that Watch sell-through - a measure of how many units are sold to consumers, rather than simply stocked on retailers' shelves - reached a new high during the first week of holiday shopping. Cook's comments followed a report on Monday from technology research firm IDC that painted a more alarming picture, estimating Watch sales fell 71 percent in the third quarter of 2016.

The sharp change in seasonal demand, also revealed in separate data from market research firm Slice Intelligence, amplifies some analysts' concerns that the Apple Watch may not be a formidable hit on the order of the iPhone or iPad.

"Let’s see if the demand carries through to the next quarter," said analyst Colin Gillis of BGC Partners.

Data from Slice Intelligence shows sales were tepid in July and August and then jumped in September, when the watch was updated.

Slice reported that sales faded somewhat in October and strengthened again in November. Average selling prices of the watch fell to $353.19 in November from $393.39 in October, according to Slice.

Apple Watch prices experienced a similar dip last year, hitting $321.63 in December 2015, although the drop this year is notable because it comes in the wake of a product update.

Apple, which declined to comment on the Slice data, has cut the retail price of the entry level watch over the last year. The original Apple Watch debuted in 2015 with a starting price of $349, but Apple trimmed the price to $299 in March 2016. It dropped it again to $269 in September, when a new generation of watches was released.

Apple also raised the profile of the Watch this holiday season. That effort included a promotional deal with Nike ( NKE. N ) and aggressive advertising. Researcher Market Track said that promotions of Apple watches in retailer circulars have risen to 14 percent of the wearables market this year from 6 percent last year. Apple may also be getting a boost from sales of the original Watch. It no longer sells solely in its own stores, but some third-party retailers, such as Target ( TGT. N ) and Best Buy ( BBY. N ) offer it, often with deep discounts for older models. Some of those same retailers, and Apple itself, offered gift-card based discounts on the newer watches as well on Black Friday.

"Whether Apple can sustain this strength will be the key question and at what impact to margins," Wells Fargo analyst Maynard Um wrote in a note to investors.

While Apple has cut retail prices, it has cut costs as well. This year's entry-level 38-millimeter watch cost about $92.78 to make, compared with $98.79 for last year's model, according to an analysis by IHS, a technology research firm. Analyst Kevin Keller said that the difference between retail price and production price still left Apple with a "substantial amount of money. "

(Reporting by Julia Love and Stephen Nellis; additional reporting by Deborah Todd and Nandita Bose. Editing by Peter Henderson and Bernard Orr)

2016-12-06 20:15 Julia Love feeds.reuters.com

29 /44 0.0 Can Amazon fix the grocery game? SAN FRANCISCO — In Amazon Go's world , shoppers walk into a supermarket, grab an item, and walk out. No scanning. No card swiping.

Sounds fantastic. But will it work?

Retailers and tech companies have long tried to fix what we hate most about grocery shopping — time wasted in long lines, tedious barcode scanning and waiting around for receipts. They’ve tried everything from self-checkouts to home delivery, to mobile pay and even fridges that order for you.

For all the hope and fanfare these solutions heralded, grocery shopping has yet to hit the express lane.

Some fixes have worked (kind of) and some have been massive fails. Here's a list of the six that have been part of the grocery checkout mix for the past decade or so.

This was supposed to be the killer application that made grocery shopping easy. Sadly, it didn't quite happen that way. Too often shoppers ran into problems scanning or otherwise getting the systems to work. While the lanes still remain in many stores, others are beginning to pull them out. The parent company of Albertsons, Vons and Pavilions said last month it is taking self- checkout lanes from 96 stores of 352 it has in southern California, according to the Orange County Register. As of 2016, 41% of shoppers in North America have used them, according to Nielsen. Once upon a time, all grocery stores delivered. You called down in the morning, put in your order and later that afternoon the delivery boy would come by with food to make dinner. The rise of supermarkets and car ownership ended that for the most part. But the concept has come back several times, though not always successfully.

In the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, Webvan was the poster child for online grocery delivery. It offered grocery delivery in ten U. S. markets, launching in 1996 and going bankrupt in 2001 after losing millions of dollars. Other dot-com grocery delivery businesses that launched at the time included Peapod, HomeGrocer.com and Kozmo.com. Only Peapod remains, though much diminished from its heyday.

Delivery of groceries ordered online began to gather steam again a few years later. Large supermarket chains such as Safeway and Vons began offering online shopping with delivery. Companies like Fresh Direct, InstaCart and Amazon Fresh, as well variants tied to local stores, began to offer the convenience of ordering online and having the items delivered within a given window of time.

While the services offer ease and convenience, they also come with drawbacks, which could account for the fact that just 2.4% of total U. S. grocery sales in 2015 were online, according to Internet Retailer.

Finding a window to have the items delivered is often difficult in today’s over-scheduled world. Orders don’t always come exactly as they were placed. Sometimes items are unavailable, but online ordering makes the kind of on-the-fly substitution possible standing in the grocery aisle impossible. Finally, U. S. consumers remain somewhat leery of having someone else pick out their fruit, vegetables and meat.

In Europe, Diebold Nixdorf, which makes cash registers, has launched a TPiSHOP app. This allows shoppers to avoid checkout lines by scanning each item they want to buy with their phone or with a hand-held scanner they carry with them as they walk through a store. The system is currently only is available in Europe, said Dave Kuchenski, director of design and new technology incubation, but the company hopes to introduce it into the United States.

But it’s not something all shopper readily embrace, said Stu Lipoff, a fellow with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a partner with the consulting firm IP Action Partners.

“There’s something really artificial and uncomfortable of picking up a scanner and carrying it around when you’re in a store,” he said.

In an effort to make ordering groceries online effortless, Amazon in 2015 launched the Dash button. These small lozenge-shaped devices have their own WiFi and come branded with different grocery items such as Tide detergent or Huggies diapers. Customers stick them to their washing machine or inside a cupboard, then click the button to reorder when they notice they’re running low on something. The Dash is synced to a user's Amazon account. The buttons are now available preset for more than 100 items. However it's unclear how whether consumers are really embracing the idea. Slice Intelligence said in March that only half the people who've bought one have actually used it.

Smart appliances are the coming trend, but the actual follow-through is still being worked out.

Samsung has focused heavily on this, with a line of refrigerators with built-in touch-screens that can keep track of food in the fridge and provide recipes that match the inventory. The Family Hub refrigerator , announced at CES in 2016, comes with a smart screen that is pre-loaded with a MasterCard grocery purchase and delivery app. It integrated with grocery partners FreshDirect, ShopRite and MyWebGrocer. The refrigerator also works with Amazon’s Alexa voice-control platform, allowing consumers to speak their grocery list and have it automatically ordered.

An Internet-connected fridge is not the same thing as a smart phone. Customers who bought early Samsung smart refrigerators reported running into trouble when Google changed how its Calendar program, which appears on the Family Hub screen. There was no way for customers to upgrade their refrigerator to accommodate the new program upgrade, leaving them with a fridge with a useless screen.

It’s been a few years since consumers have had the ability to turn the smartphones in their pockets or even the watches on their wrist into mobile wallets capable of paying for stuff at retail (and online), most notably through the likes of Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay.

The regular use of mobile payments remains flat at 19%, according to a recent consumer survey by Accenture.

Significant hurdles remain across the entire mobile payments industry. Only relatively new smartphones are compatible with the various mobile payments methods, and some consumers are still concerned about security, though most mobile payment approaches are in fact more secure than handing a credit card to a clerk.

Aside from Star Trek-style replicators —which even Amazon hasn’t worked out yet — the Holy Grail of all online delivery right now is drones. Deutsche Bank estimates drones could deliver for half of what trains, planes or automobiles cost. But while Amazon’s got a full drone lab up and running outside of Cambridge, England, so far no one’s quite got the mechanics and the regulatory issues worked out.

Until then, the only one who can provide that kind of speedy, pin-point service is, you guessed it, Santa Claus.

2016-12-06 20:14 Sean Rossman rssfeeds.usatoday.com

30 /44 7.1 Uber opens AI lab to help power future of self-driving cars Uber creates its own AI research division following Geometric Intelligence acquisition. Ride- sharing service Uber has created its own AI division, which it hopes will help push the firm towards the roll out of self-driving cars. will be staffed by 15 researchers from the newly acquired New York-based AI startup Geometric Intelligence, purchased by Uber for an undisclosed sum. Its CEO, Gary Marcus, who first founded Geometric Intelligence in 2014, will head the new division as director. Uber hopes that AI will initially improve services including UberEATS and UberPOOL, by providing optimal routes and better predicting when and where services will be needed. Further development should help deliver a wider fleet of self-driving cars, which have already been piloted in Pittsburg with a select number of customers since September. "With all of its complexity and uncertainty, negotiating the real world is a high-order intelligence problem," said Uber chief product officer Jeff Holden. "It extends to teaching a self-driven machine to safely and autonomously navigate the world, whether a car on the roads or an aircraft through busy airspace or new types of robotic devices. " "In spite of notable wins with machine learning in recent years, we are still very much in the early innings of machine intelligence," added Holden. "The formation of Uber AI Labs represents Uber's commitment to advancing the state of the art, driven by our vision that moving people and things in the physical world can be radically faster, safer and accessible to all. " Proponents of AI, such as Facebook and Google, have invested heavily in the field of "deep learning", the process of teaching computers to recognise objects and images using huge amounts of data. Speaking to the , Marcus argued this solution falls short for a service like Uber, saying: "Deep learning is not all that it's cracked up to be. It's very good for certain problems, but it doesn't allow us to do the kind of inferences that people often do. We need next generation techniques. " The new division will instead develop systems that rely on the teaching of rule-sets so that computer learning can be done without the need for specific data input. Marcus believes flying cars will be "something that is practical" in the not-too-distant future, allowing "people to take long commutes at 75 or 150 mph where you'd otherwise get stuck in traffic. " Geometric Intelligence is the latest acquisition in Uber's push for AI development, following a deal made in August to take over self- driving trucking firm Otto. The adoption of AI driven vehicles will eventually remove the need for human drivers, putting hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk globally.

2016-12-07 00:00 Comment Now www.pcauthority.com.au

31 /44 0.0 Netflix video previews make reading descriptions so last century We all know what it’s like to spend more time endlessly scrolling through Netflix ’s content library than actually picking something and watching it. There are many theories as to why we do this, but perhaps the most pertinent of all, is that it can be difficult to gauge a TV show or film’s quality based on an image and description alone.

But what if instead of an out-of- context screenshot to a piece of content we know almost nothing about, we had a video preview that gave us some idea of what the show we’re looking at is actually like? That’s exactly what Netflix is rolling out to its TV interface over the next few weeks.

Rather than simply presenting a video trailer for each show or movie, Netflix has taken the concept a step further, creating “specially designed video synopses that help members make faster and more confident decisions by quickly highlighting the story, characters and tone of a title,” stated an official Netflix blog post on the new feature.

Why did Netflix decide to introduce this new way of browsing? According to the statement, the streaming company’s internal testing showed that “people watched more of a story, demonstrating these previews helped them browse less and watch more. "

Video game consoles and Roku devices will be the first to receive Netflix’s new video previews, with smart TVs and others receiving the update in the coming months. The video below gives an idea of what the new browsing method will look like.

2016-12-07 01:05 Stephen Lambrechts www.techradar.com

32 /44 0.0 Nvidia's GeForce 376.19 WHQL drivers out now New drivers optimise virtual reality performance for Oculus Touch titles. Nvidia's latest driver release comes on the back of Oculus Touch controllers launching, and the new Nvidia GeForce 376.19 WHQL release optimises VR for the new controllers. On top of that, there are new 3D Vision profiles for Dead Rising 4, Mars 2030, Serious Sam, and SuperHot. The drivers also deal with texture corruption in No Man's Sky's Foundation update on Windows 10, and a couple of G-Sync notebook issues.

2016-12-07 00:00 David Hollingworth www.pcauthority.com.au

33 /44 0.0 Looking for a nearby place to eat or shop? Just tweet Google an emoji Be it baked into Google Home or built around the company's digital assistant , Google loves to cram its web-searching ability into just about any platform it can.

Its next destination? Twitter. However, not only does the Big G now let users search nearby establishments on the 140-character network - it can do it in a single emoji.

By mentioning Google in a tweet (@Google, natch) alongside a emoji, the search powerhouse now links you to results for locations in your area that best match that emoji's intent. For example, tweeting a shoe can bring up local shoestores while a ramen symbol brings up nearby ramen stands, should you be hungry and already browsing your news feed.

We speak emoji. Let’s talk. #KnowNearby pic.twitter.com/HjIMs3KPKe December 6, 2016

While novel, the system isn't exact robust. Only a fraction of the 700+ emojis turn back a result. Google is also using the hashtag #KnowNearby to keep users focused, since the system needs to logically match emojis to local businesses.

Despite its limitations, Google's latest skill teases what the company's technology can bring to third-party platforms like Twitter. If nothing else, it's a fun little trick using everyone's favorite smileys.

Oh, and since we know what you're wondering - tweeting the poop emoji at Google turns up results for nearby flower shops, along with a caption saying you may "need a breath of fresh air. "

2016-12-07 00:47 Parker Wilhelm www.techradar.com

34 /44 35.7 Review: Dead Rising 4 does it all again Re-fleshing a classic. Dead Rising 4 is a bloody marvel. In my first few hours, it gleefully told me I'd managed to snuff out the (after)lives of more than 750 zombies, spilling 1,800 litres of blood across Willamette's polished town floors in the process. It's no coincidence these gruesome statistics regularly flash up onscreen: this is a game that constantly reminds you of the carnage you're causing. Capcom isn’t looking to trigger any pangs of guilt, though. This is a theme park of annihilation, where you're just as likely to pierce your foe's skull with the start from the top of a Christmas tree as by gunning them down with an assault rifle. A deep and dark attempt at survival horror in the Resident Evil mould? Jog on, Grandad - Frank West ain't got time for that. The freelance photo-journalist extraordinaire (he's covered wars, don't you know?) takes the lead once more, returning to the zombie-infested town of Willamette, Colorado expose another conspiracy - and get very, very bloody. It's Christmas, y'see - and blood just looks that little bit redder on fresh white snow. A faster-spreading, more deadly version of the zombie virus, created from experiments on human test subjects might sound pretty dark, but Dead Rising 4 is really an attempt to hark back to the original, now decade-old, game. So yeah, rather than spectate from the sidelines, cataloguing the outbreak for the purposes a “great story”, Frank is almost immediately slaying zombies with lawnmowers, fire extinguishers and anything else you can get your hands on, as carving a bloody, dismembered path through the city’s brand new shopping mall. These vast open world sections, where clearing a path through the masses of zombies to reach your next goal is left largely to your discretion, give way to more linear sectors focused on investigation. There are also bases and safe zones, which typically have to be cleared of the undead before they can be inhabited. They'll keep you free from zombie-related death, and let you buy items or equipment for more efficient carnage. From the food you regularly need to snack on in order to survive out in the wild, to a change of outfit to make the whole affair a little more stylish, it's all out there for the taking. After all, what's a little looting when the world's going to hell in a handbasket? Frank's still got a job to do, mind. Your camera comes in handy when unearthing hidden story clues, but also earns experience points by snapping the crudest, most crass shots of blood and gore out on the battlefield. The more action- packed the shot, the bigger your total, with snaps featuring hacked-up bodies of the dead, or fights between any survivors and the spectres out for their blood being the most sought after. Nothing shows off Dead Rising 4's fine balance between horror and hilarity than whipping Frank’s camera out in the middle of a brawl, and watching as he casually takes a selfie with a ghoul attempting to sink its teeth into his neck. Frank is a constant font of frivolity in the middle of Dead Rising 4‘s festival of flesh, cracking off one-liners and, if you so choose, darting around in nothing more than his boxers in the middle of the mayhem. Feel like running amok as the blood of your victims drips down Frank's chest hair? You got it. You're not in a rush anymore, either, so you can take your time and experiment. Long-standing Dead Rising fans might miss the original game's punishing timer system, but it definitely makes things less stressful for series newcomers. There's nothing else out there quite like Dead Rising - apart from the previous three series entries, of course. Beyond upgraded visuals and a boat-load more zombies on screen at once, it's tough to see just where things have progressed in ten years. Sure, there are a few new zombie types, now, but nothing we haven't seen before in that other classic zombie game, Left 4 Dead. That doesn't mean it's not still the ultimate playground of barbarity, of course. The eclectic mix of weapons on offer, and the ability to combine them to create a weird and wonderful arsenal, is a toy box or terror begging to be played with. Firing off arrows from a crossbow laden with fireworks and watching as the inevitable explosion sends zombie limbs flying is unashamedly entertaining. Most of your zombie slaying will be at close quarters, where Dead Rising 4 is easily at its strongest. Nothing tops running straight into a pack of bloodthirsty once- shoppers and smashing your way back out again. Success means mixing things up a bit, though. Beyond short range weapons (which range from tyre irons to sledgehammers), you can also wield aerial items (basically anything you can chuck - think snow globes, grenades and Molotov cocktails) and use long-range guns. In the heat of battle, though, picking the right weapon at the right time is easier said than done. Moments like these are Dead Rising 4 distilled down to the bare bones. On the plus side, there’s no denying smashing zombies to smithereens never really gets old - it’s brutality at its most beautiful. This has been true of every game in the series, though; it's hard to find one definable area were Capcom’s latest makes any great strides forward. It all means Dead Rising 4 it a bit like one of its own zombies - lumbering around in the middle ground. It's not quite a franchise taking a dying breath, but if a fifth instalment is forthcoming, Capcom will need to ensure it pumps a little more ressurection juice into its veins next time around.

2016-12-07 10:28 Keith Andrew www.pcauthority.com.au

35 /44 35 /44 1.9 Meizu Band is a Chinese-made wearable taking the fight to Fitbit Tracking tech that’s half the price - and just as fancy. Sure, the Band looks suspiciously like a Sony SmartBand, has the features of a Fitbit Flex and costs the same as a Jawbone Up Move - but this tracker is anything but a copycat. Made by Meizu - a Chinese smartphone giant - it’s all about taking active tech to the masses. No other tracker to date can offer a touch-sensitive OLED display, heart rate monitoring and notification alerts for US$33. Oh, and it’s waterproof, too - with an IP67 rating - so you don’t have to take it off for the shower. It’ll do the usual duty of step counts, as well as tracking sleep and offering movement reminders for the couch-happy. The Band also monitors heart rate responsively, logging static beats throughout the day and taking real-time readings when you get sweatier. And as much as Meizu would doubtless love buyers to pick up one of its iPhone rivals, it’s smart enough to know that most users will be playing with iOS or Android - so the Band is compatible with both. The Band has a partner app, though there's no word on whether it’ll be possible to export data to HealthKit or other fitness apps. We haven’t touched one in the TPU flesh, but the stainless steel buckle certainly suggests toughness - which is good because you’ll probably wear it a lot: the Meizu Band weighs just 20g and, even with HRM enabled, has a battery life of seven days. Meizu's Band will hit Chinese shelves on 8 December - but there’s no word yet on whether it’ll be made available elsewhere, how you might be able to import one. Still, you can always try and decipher the Chinese.

2016-12-07 00:00 Chris Rowlands www.pcauthority.com.au

36 /44 0.0 Iperius Backup 4.7.0 adds incremental cloud backup Iperius Backup 4.7.0 has shipped with support for incremental and differential backups to Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, OneDrive and Azure. That’s the commercial builds, anyway– as with previous editions, Iperius Backup Free 4.7.0 doesn’t support cloud backups. There’s a new cloud synchronisation tool, and optional concurrent uploads may increase backup speeds. Extended support for virtual environments sees faster connection speeds to VMware ESXi hosts, compatibility with ESXi 6.5, and improved backup of Hyper-V VMs. Handy tweaks include an option to automatically eject removable media, and the ability to apply your proxy settings to local and cloud backups. The program is available in six commercial editions. Iperius Desktop ($31) delivers all the core local and cloud backup features most users need; Iperius Essential ($74) adds Windows Server backup; Iperius Adv. Database ($156) is the Essential build plus database backups; Iperius Adv. VM ($156) is the Essential build plus VM support; Iperius Adv. Tape ($156) is the Essential build plus tape backups; and if you can’t choose, Iperius Full ($288) does absolutely everything. Alternatively, if you’re on a budget and can live without the cloud backup, Iperius Desktop Free delivers plenty of local backup functionality with no licensing or other artificial restrictions. is available now for Windows XP and later.

2016-12-07 00:00 Mike Williams www.pcauthority.com.au

37 /44 0.7 Return of House Calls — Renee Dua, Heal and the Uberization of Medicine – InsideSources The changing economics of medicine made doctors’ house calls obsolete decades ago. Now, using digital technology, a California company called Heal is bringing them back.

A medical patient logs on to Heal’s app, enters an address, credit card number, and symptoms, and a physician shows up at the patient’s home (or elsewhere) within two hours. A Heal visit costs $99 — similar to an out-of-pocket payment for a standard office visit. All PPO and EPO insurers in California now cover Heal visits, so patients pay only the same co-pays they would pay to an ordinary practice.

Heal’s technology is analogous to that of Uber, the ridesharing service. It includes the use of smartphone-, tablet- or laptop-based apps that identify the patient’s address and scans the vicinity for available Heal doctors. Once a doctor is assigned, the patient sees the doctor’s name, photograph, license number and biography. The information on the Heal patient is stored in the app — including a credit card number to cover fees. (Heal patients can request a specific doctor, though that can mean a longer wait.)

For now, Heal operates between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., giving patients longer hours to choose from than most standard practices offer. A patient doesn’t have to take time off from work to see a doctor. No need to drive to an office, park, drag children around, or find caretakers for them.

Heal visits can reap positive health benefits. Longer hours and greater convenience allow faster treatment of illness. No need to wait days or weeks for an appointment. No exposure to coughing, sneezing patients in a waiting room. Heal doctors aren’t restricted by the office-bound doctor’s time clock, so patients can get longer, more in-depth and more relaxed treatment. The doctors can see how patients live — an important advantage in dealing with long-term medical issues. Blood pressure readings and other metrics can be more accurate in the relaxed environment of the home.

A Heal doctor can provide any medical service that is available for anything a patient may require during a traditional office or urgent care visit. Services include annual physical exams, blood tests, specialist recommendations, flu shots, prescribe medication, family health assessments and so forth. Heal cannot provide emergency room services or surgery, so for those items the patient will have to go the traditional route and visit a doctor’s office or the ER.

Renee Dua, Heal’s chief medical officer, co-founded the company with her husband, Nick Desai, who is CEO. Late one night in 2014 their infant son was ill with a severe cold and needed to see a pediatrician right away. She and Nick waited nearly eight hours in an emergency room — an agonizing experience that led them to create Heal as a solution.

Their confidence in Heal as a business model came not only from their personal experience but also from national statistics. According to Dua, “the average wait time for a primary care doctor appointment exceeds 18 days, and 80 percent of Americans delay or forgo going to the doctor because of lack of time and work responsibilities.” The return of home visits, they felt, would help solve these problems.

There is also an intriguing medical labor market angle — familiar to observers of the larger sharing economy. Heal provides its doctors with flexibility uncommon in a traditional doctor’s office. Some doctors work full-time for Heal; others are moonlighters. A Heal doctor can adjust her work hours to fit her children’s schedules. She can stop taking calls when she is tired or sick or busy. She can take a week off unannounced. And for a doctor with a full-time job elsewhere, Heal offers the opportunity to supplement income whenever time permits.

The high-tech nature of the business makes Heal an attractive investment for outside funders. The company attracted a high-profile group of early investors, including singer Lionel Ritchie.

Ultimately, Heal doesn’t wish to be an evening-and-weekend substitute for other doctors. The company’s goal is to be its patients’ regular primary care provider. Dua is confident that Heal can improve medical outcomes, strengthen patient-doctor relationships and cut medical costs — in part through reduced need for referrals, medications and hospitalizations.

2016-12-07 00:16 Robert F www.insidesources.com

38 /44 1.4 Blow for Australian banks in Apple dispute Australia’s big banks have suffered a blow in their battle with Apple. A draft determination from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) suggests the banks will not be granted leave to collectively bargain with, and boycott, Apple for up to three years over its Apple Pay service. A final determination will not handed down before March.

But the four banks – Bendigo and Adelaide, Commonwealth Bank, NAB and Westpac – have said they will continue to work with the ACCC to get their arguments across. Of the majors, only ANZ currently offers its customers the Apple Pay service.

The other big banks’ core argument to the ACCC was that Australian iPhone users would only be able to use Apple Pay if they wanted a digital wallet service, which the banks said was anti- competitive.

However, Australian consumers already have a variety of digital wallet options. For example, Android phones with built-in near field communications (NFC) chips are now being widely used as a platform for contactless digital payments.

Lance Blockley, a payments industry consultant who has been working with the banks on their ACCC submission, said: “If the draft determination of the Australian competition regulator stands, effectively there will be no competition against Apple for mobile payments on the iPhone.

“The application has never been about preventing Apple Pay from coming to Australia or reducing competition between wallets. It has always been about providing consumer choice and innovation.”

ACCC chairman Rod Sims said: “This is currently a finely balanced decision. The ACCC is not currently satisfied that the likely benefits from the proposed conduct outweigh the likely detriments.”

Sims noted that the banks could still offer their digital wallets on other smartphones, or offer accessories that would allow iPhone users to use their bank’s rather than Apple’s contactless payment service, so competition had not been thwarted.

Apple said in a statement: “We are focused on offering the easiest, most secure and private payment experience possible, and millions of Apple Pay users from 3,500 banks in 12 countries enjoy that today.”

It said the ACCC draft decision was “great for Australians and we look forward to continuing to work with individual banks in Australia and around the world to bring Apple Pay to their customers”.

Meanwhile, Apple Pay is entering new areas. Cloud accounting software company Xero has announced that its users will be able to use Apple Pay and Stripe in combination to pay online invoices. Although theoretically this speeds up the transaction, it adds costs to the payment process, with both Stripe and Apple Pay collecting a transaction fee.

Despite its slow progress in Australia, demand for Apple Pay is rising internationally. Commenting on Apple’s full-year results, CEO Tim Cook said transaction volumes for the service had risen by 500% during the year – although that comes off a very small base a year ago.

In Australia, the battle lines with the big banks are still being contested, however......

2016-12-07 00:15 www.computerweekly.com

39 /44 2.3 Internet of things gains momentum in Southeast Asia The internet of things (IoT) promised to be one of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (Asean) IT highlights at the beginning of 2016, after the emerging technology peaked in the hype cycle the previous year. IoT spending in the region was forecast by Frost and Sullivan to grow in value by 35% from an estimated US$1.68bn in 2015, to reach US$7.53bn in 2020. This compares with a total Asia-Pacific (Apac) forecast of US$79bn by 2020.

Meanwhile, Gartner predicted that by 2020, there would be 20.8 billion devices worldwide connected to the internet, generating more than 20 zettabytes of data. By that time, global consumer and business spending on IoT endpoint hardware will total US$3tn. It is no wonder that experts predict the increasing take-up of IoT apps will have a huge impact on IT infrastructure in the region.

This year saw the countries in Asean in various stages of IoT deployment. While most are just starting to explore the technology or test out the components, countries such as Singapore and Malaysia have taken a lead, setting up centres of excellence to focus on developing the ecosystem and rolling out pilot projects.

Governments are examining their national IT strategies to make sure they do not lose out or fall behind the IoT bandwagon, with most likely to start small at first but poised to scale fast in the near future.

For example, Singapore considers IoT to be one of the essential elements to realise its vision of a Smart Nation.

“Without sensing capabilities, we cannot build context and intelligence, or Smart Nation applications to develop the smart services we envisage,” said Toh Chai Keong, former assistant CEO, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), which was recently restructured as part of the Infocommunications Media Development Authority (IMDA).

Meanwhile, Singapore Power is rolling out a more advanced digital platform to enable it to develop IoT-based services. The power supply company will connect an additional 200,000 residential electricity customers by further leveraging its existing mesh network platform.

Singapore Power’s extended Silver Spring multi-application IPv6 platform will serve more advanced metering customers and develop a digital data and IoT platform, supporting Singapore’s Smart Nation goal.

Silver Spring will also establish its Apac headquarters in Singapore and partner Singapore Power on product and market development, driving IoT innovation in Singapore’s commercial and academic institutions .

2016-12-07 00:15 John Tan www.computerweekly.com

40 /44 0.4 Apple Pays $450,000 for Alleged Hazardous Waste Violations Apple is paying $450,000 to settle allegations that the iPhone maker operated and closed two hazardous-waste processing plants without submitting the proper paperwork to California environmental regulators.

The agreement announced Tuesday involves a now-closed plant near Apple's Cupertino, California, headquarters and another one in nearby Sunnyvale.

California's Department of Toxic Substances Control alleged Apple opened, ran and then closed the Cupertino plant without regulators' knowledge. The plant processed about 1.1 million pounds of waste created by Apple's devices during a two-year period before closing in 2013 and moving the operations to Sunnyvale.

Regulators say Apple processed about 803,000 pounds of electronic waste in Sunnyvale before notifying the state about its activities there.

Apple described its conduct as "an oversight in paperwork" that didn't affect its health and safety standards.

2016-12-06 19:07 By abcnews.go.com

41 /44 0.8 China shuts thousands of illegal live streaming accounts: Xinhua The Cyber Administration of China (CAC) formalized controversial rules regulating the country's fast-growing live-streaming video industry in November, in a move that stripped out smaller competitors and placed hard-line surveillance measures on leading firms.

More than 4,500 accounts on Beijing-based websites had been closed and more than 3,100 live streaming programs had been shut, Xinhua reported the CAC as saying.

"Reports of violent, obscene and vulgar content on live- streaming websites abound," Xinhua said.

The new rules, which came into effect on Thursday, require streaming services to provide information on users who stream content the government deems a threat to national security or social order.

CAC officials said they would enhance regulations further and called on the public to engage in supervising the internet.

(Reporting by Engen Tham; Editing by Paul Tait)

2016-12-06 19:13 Reuters Editorial www.reuters.com

42 /44 1.2 DailyMotion breached, 85 million accounts made off with One of the internet's foremost video hosting platforms has been breached and hackers have made off with tens of millions of account details. Daily motion has been breached with the hackers making off with 85 million accounts. The video hosting service, and the 113th most popular site on the internet, was robbed of its users usernames, emails and, for many, hashed passwords. First reported by LeakedSource.com, the breach notification database, the breach was apparently carried out around the 20th October. While 85 million usernames and emails were taken, 18 million hashed passwords were also taken. , those passwords were hashed with bcrypt, a notably resilient level of encryption which will make them harder and slower to crack. Ilia Kolochenko, CEO of web security firm High-Tech Bridge told us that he suspects an insecure web application was at fault here: "By examining currently available information about the incident, we can suggest that an insecure web application was probably at the origins of the breach. " "The Gartner Hype Cycle for Application Security 2016 says that applications, not infrastructure, represent the main attack vector for data exfiltration. As we can see by this example, even the largest companies fail to properly protect their web applications, putting their users at great risk.” Kolochenko added that we should expect “mass spear-phishing attacks combined with password re-use, which will allow cyber-criminals to compromise many different accounts belonging to the victims. The main wave may come just before or during Christmas shopping – when people are stressed and less attentive, while attackers will have enough time to carefully prepare their campaigns. " DailyMotion did not respond for comment in time for publication.

2016-12-07 00:00 Max Metzger www.pcauthority.com.au

43 /44 0.0 List of highest-paid YouTube stars proves we're all in the wrong business If you’d told someone 20 years ago we’d one day have a man that makes $15 million a year playing video games and making dick jokes, you would have been laughed out of the room. In 2016, this isn’t just a reality, it just doesn’t seem like a stretch anymore.

In Forbes second annual ranking of the highest-paid YouTube stars , the man leading the list, PewDiePie, does just that: plays video games, overreacts to said video games, and drops the occasional joke. He also raked in $15 million last year, as part of a crop of YouTubers that saw collective income increase 23 percent from the same list last year. In fact, just the top 12 internet celebrities on the list earned a combined $70.5 million.

Number two on the list, Roman Atwood, uploaded his first YouTube clip ‘Epic Cooler Prank’ — in which he dumps a water cooler full of nothing on people walking the streets — just five years ago. Now, he’s a millionaire multiple times over with an estimated $8 million earned in 2016 alone. He also has a line of branded accessories, a handful of lucrative sponsorship deals, and both a book and feature film in the pipeline.

Comedian Lilly Singh, and her ingenious comedy raked third on the list and is said to have cleared $7.5 million this year.

In fact, the list is about as diverse as the average YouTuber’s earnings. Comedians, singers, gamers, rappers, advocates, makeup artists, and just about any niche imaginable are all pocketing truckloads of cash from on-demand video. Of course, the average YouTuber is making pennies, if anything, but as the internet continues to grow it’s clear that on-demand video, and YouTube in particular, are going to create more millionaires getting paid to do what they love than was ever possible previously.

One thing is clear: we’re all in the wrong business.

The Highest-Paid YouTube Stars 2016: PewDiePie Remains No. 1 With $15 Million on Forbes

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44 /44 0.0 Acquisitions of LinkedIn, Virgin America get closer to conclusion – Silicon Valley Top of the Order:

Dealing Done: Well, at least for the most part, anyway.

In the Bay Area, it seems like there is an acquisition of some kind that is either being announced, or completed, nearly every day. So, it should come as little surprise that a couple of notable acquisitions involving big-name local companies came closer to finalization Tuesday.

The European Union gave its blessing to Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, but with some conditions. In order to allay the EU’s antitrust concerns involving the marriage of the software giant with the business- social media network, Microsoft will allow LinkedIn rivals to have access to Microsoft’s Office add-in program. The move is seen as crucial for other LinkedIn-type companies to integrate their offerings with Microsoft’s Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and Excel programs. Computer makers will also get the ability to remove or install LinkedIn as part of the Windows operating system on their devices for the next five years.

The deal had already won regulatory approval in the U. S. and other regions.

Also getting closer to taking off was Alaska Air Group’s $2.6 billion acquisition of San Francisco- based Virgin America. That deal, which will create the No. 5 air carrier in the U. S., got the OK from the U. S. Department of Justice on Tuesday, but like Microsoft’s buy of LinkedIn, there are some conditions attached.

Specifically, Alaska agreed to scale down its code-sharing with American Airlines, so that neither Alaska, nor American will share route codes on routes where American competes with Virgin.

A benefit for Alaska is that it isn’t required to give up any of its airport gates in order to complete the deal.

Middle Innings:

An Apple a Day: Or, maybe two. Or three.

In case you missed all the Apple stuff on Tuesday:

— The U. S. Supreme Court overturned Apple’s win in a lower court’s $399 million judgment against Samsung in a case involving the iPhone patent violations.

–Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook touted Apple Watch sales over the Thanksgiving weekend, but research firm IDC reported a big year-over-year decline in Apple Watch shipments during the third quarter.

— Apple agreed to pay a state agency $450,000 to settle hazardous waste violations found at two waste-shredding facilities.

Really? $2 billion? The future of blood-testing technology company Theranos remains up in the air, as it remains tainted by a scandal involving the veracity of its equipment, highlighted by the company having to invalidate two-years-worth of data due to inaccurate results from its once- lauded Edison blood-testing machines.

But, there was once a time when Theranos thought so much of itself that it said it would earn $505 million and have sales of almost $2 billion this year. That was what Theranos told investors was on the horizon back in 2014 and 2015 as the company appealed to investors to cut some big checks to pay for Chief Executive Elizabeth Holmes plans for the company.

The Wall Street Journal said that it reviewed a copy of investor documents that highlighted Theranos’ expectations as it sought new outside funding. The Journal said the documentation covered a financing round in which Theranos raised more than $632 million.

While Theranos’ may be in shambles right now, at least it can still send out an email correctly, and BCC people on an email list. No, wait, apparently, Theranos can’t even do that properly.

Bottom of the Lineup:

Here’s a look at how some leading Silicon Valley stocks did Tuesday: Movin’ on Up: Gains came from Harmonic, Advanced Micro Devices, Cavium, Lending Club and InvenSense.

In the Red: Decliners included Omnicell, SunPower, Impax Laboratories, Intuitive Surgical and Quotient Technology.

The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.5 percent to 5,333.

The blue chip Dow Jones industrial average edged up by 0.2 percent to 19,251.78.

And the broad-based Standard & Poor’s 500 Index added 0.3 percent to end the day at 2,212.23.

Quote of the Day: “I have to do that more often.” — Golden State Warriors guard Klay Thompson, who went off for 60 points in just 29 minutes of playing time to lead the Warriors to a 142-106 annihilation of the Indiana Pacers in Oakland Monday night.

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2016-12-07 00:09 By www.siliconvalley.com

Total 44 articles.

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Created at 2016-12-07 12:01