Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/fortunebrainstormtech/~3/mG40XajiEh8/
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Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Chatterbox: Tuesday
The place to talk about games and other things that matter
It's the first day of the Develop conference in not-so-sunny Brighton. Today I'll be talking to EA Sports senior VP of development, Andrew Wilson...
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2011/jul/19/chatterbox-tuesday
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Video: iCarly's 'Spencer' Has Nervous Breakdown Over Netflix Price Hike
Wonder what the angst over this week’s Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) price increase—60 percent for those who want both streaming and DVDS—would look like as a video? Dan Schneider, producer of iCarly, offers a glimpse in this brief encounter with Jerry Trainor, who plays Carly’s idiosyncratic brother Spencer on the popular Nickelodeon series. Yes, the show is part of the Viacom (NYSE: VIA) offerings on Netflix, streaming and DVD.
Source: http://feeds.paidcontent.org/~r/pcorg/~3/OR1nHzJaF1Q/
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Swedish File Sharers Get Religious About Stealing
Swedish File Sharers Get Religious About Stealing originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.switched.com/2011/04/11/missionary-church-kopimism-takes-file-sharing-religious/
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The proper way to use a scale
Most people assume that they should get on a scale every so often to check their weight, but it is better to do this in an organized fashion. Learn how to properly utilize your scale so that you can gauge your weight fluctuations accurately.
Source: http://www.wikihow.com/Use-a-Scale
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Sunday, July 17, 2011
T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide Review
In my possession I have HTC’s latest attempt at a slider. This here is the myTouch 4G Slide running over on T-Mobile with those super fast 4G speeds. It takes everything you liked about the myTouch 4G and adds those few features we liked in the 3G slide and poof — we have the myTouch [...]
Source: http://feeds.slashgear.com/~r/slashgear/~3/FipadROYbk4/
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DOD suffers millions of attempted hacks every day, unveils new cyber plan
The Department of Defense wants to be more like the private sector in matters of security: fast, dynamic, and robust
Source: http://feeds.betanews.com/~r/bn/~3/zu1qMEiDC84/1310682017
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Sorry Is The Hardest Word: Murdoch Issues Apology Ad In UK Newspapers
This is far from closure, but it is possibly a step in the right direction. News Corp.‘s CEO, Rupert Murdoch, has issued an apology that will be published as a full-page advertisement in several—but not all—national newspapers this weekend. Pointedly, at least one of the papers is not planning to give profits from the ad away to charity.
Source: http://feeds.paidcontent.org/~r/pcorg/~3/uJrQPiNqJt8/
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BlackBerry Bold 9900, 9930 Will Run BlackBerry OS 7
RIM kicked off its BlackBerry World event in Orlando, Florida by launching the not-so-secret BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930 models, also dubbed "Bold Touch."
While the devices don't noticeably stray from RIM's design choices from the past decade -- they're instantly recognizable as QWERTY keyboard BlackBerrys -- the 9900 and 9300 pack some impressive guts. While the 2.8-inch VGA touchscreens won't impress many in today's world of 4-inch screens, but the devices are RIM's thinnest yet at 10.5mm.
Continue reading BlackBerry Bold 9900, 9930 Will Run BlackBerry OS 7
BlackBerry Bold 9900, 9930 Will Run BlackBerry OS 7 originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 20 May 2011 11:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.switched.com/2011/05/20/blackberry-bold-9900-9930-will-run-blackberry-os-7/
A RIM Apple TV Competitor is the Worst Idea Ever
This past week, I was just surfing the web, looking at news stories, and came across what might be the most shocking report I?ve seen in a long time: Research In Motion is working on an Apple TV competitor. The product is apparently codenamed ?BlackBerry Cyclone? and could launch later this year. The device will [...]
Source: http://feeds.slashgear.com/~r/slashgear/~3/XVzWjm2gRcE/
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The metrics are the message: how analytics is shaping social games
Facebook and online game developers need to watch their players closely to ensure success. The result is a new generation of companies dedicated to social gaming analytics. This is what your favourite freemium game knows about you
Picture this. You're deeply engaged in one of the many free-to-play adventure games available online, when you decide to buy a bigger sword. It could be that you made the tactical decision to extend your armoury, or that you panicked when you spotted a gigantic dragon lumbering in your direction; you might not even know why you did it. You just fancied a bigger sword. But that action took you into the barely two percent of free-to-play gamers who actually pay for content ? and the game makers want to know why.
The freemium gaming business is expanding rapidly. We all know about the Facebook behemoth Zynga, which now claims over 250 million monthly players, and is valued at anywhere between $5-10bn. But online, there are dozens of global companies hawking a range of in-depth gaming experiences. There is the German publisher and portal operator, Bigpoint, which runs massively-multiplayer browser games like Legend: Legacy of the Dragons and Battlestar Galactica Online and claims over 150 million subscribers. There is Korean veteran Webzen, with its long-running fantasy role-player Mu Online, which alone boasts 56 million users. Beyond these giants, there are dozens of new freemium social, browser and smartphone games starting up every month, looking to gain a foothold in the densely crowded market.
And what the big players have learned is that coming up with a great game concept is only the beginning. A successful free-to-play game is all about inspection and iteration; it is about launching quietly, testing and fine-tuning the experience constantly, watching how players react, listening to feedback and re-building. This is how the likes of Popcap and Playfish arrived at super-addictive titles like Fifa Superstars and Plants vs Zombies. And now a whole new business is emerging to help developers understand their players.
Alan Miller has been in the games business for over 30 years. He was one of the first programmers to join Atari's home console business, and he later co-founded Activision, currently the world's largest third-party games publisher. For the last decade, though, he's been working in the online sector, including a stint working on advergames with fellow Atari legend David Crane. Earlier this year he joined GamesAnalytics, a new UK-based company specialising in the data-mining and monetisation of online games. It's a real-time service that continually monitors every player in any virtual world it's commissioned to work on. It's like CCTV constantly monitored by psychologists and statisticians.
"Our objective generally is to increase monetisation and improve player satisfaction," he explains. "Usually, the publisher's objectives have to do with increasing revenues, but not always. Sometimes they want to increase the virality, the number of invites and notifications sent out from a game. Then we look at their data and we identify behaviour patterns. It allows the publisher to learn a lot more about their game than they thought they knew.
In his experience, it's rarely great big design errors that trip up growing freemium games ? it's tiny, often over-looked alterations. "We're working with a big MMO at the moment. We studied the last five years of their operations and we noticed that there was a huge change in just one month in the retention rate of new players. It turned out the publisher had made just one change that caused the game to be less appealing for newcomers - they didn't even notice it; this is one of their worlds! So now they're trying to digest that information and work out what they did wrong."
The key message behind freemium analytics is that free-to-play game construction is similar to web design ? the publisher needs to understand, and subtly guide, every aspect of the user journey through the experience. Whereas traditional games are about creating big macro-environments for player exploration, freemium is about micro-managing every step the player takes toward actually buying something.
"A developer can build 'funnels' that depict the player actions leading to a financial conversion like purchasing extra content or virtual merchandize," says Justin Johnson, CTO of Playmetrix, another British company specialising in game analytics. "It's then down to the developer to use this analysis to improve conversion by removing obstructions and bottlenecks that may be inherent in the design. For example, aspects of the game may be unclear or too difficult for newcomers, leading to early high attrition, which means they never reach the purchase step. Our system also tracks the amount of money that a player spends giving metrics called ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) and LTV (Lifetime Value). Simply put, the LTV of a player must exceed their cost of acquisition for the game to be profitable."
It's a strange business. In the free-to-play universe, every player action is a potential metric in a revenue model. In-game behaviour is an algorithm that needs to be unraveled and de-coded. Developers have to operate like a sort of secret police agency, effectively bugging players ? the Playmetrix software allows them to embed 'call backs' into their game code that trigger when players do something of interest. This is all visualised via graphics and charts so activities become infographics. It sounds kind of sinister, but understanding every intricate player activity is what makes a game in this sector successful. With no financial outlay at the beginning, players have much less impetus to keep playing; hence, 'funnel analysis' ? tracking a player from the moment they register, though their actions in the game, to their first purchase. At any moment along this journey they may quit out. Understanding this is the key to lowering the dreaded 'attrition rate' ? the numbers of people leaving the game.
Another key element in the maths of social gaming is the DAU/MAU ratio. As Johnson explains, "most games have the base behaviours of attendance and engagement. For that, we track daily active uniques (DAU) and monthly active uniques (MAU). By taking a ratio using the two (DAU/MAU) we can determine the percentage of monthly users that play each day and also derive churn." Last year, Lisa Marino of Rockyou, gave a GDC talk entitled Monetizing Social Games in which she identified the minimum threshold for a successful DAU/MAU ratio as '.2'. That's game design reduced to a single figure.
But it's not just about data mining and statistics. Miller argues that good freemium analysts have to know about traditional game design too. "Let's say that in a certain MMO there are ten common behaviour patterns that ultimately result in players becoming paying customers. Clearly, our identification of these patterns won't account for every player, but they'll account for significant groups of players that went through the process. And we might discover that along the chain of events that lead to monetisation, the player has to, say, kill a dragon. Well, we can identify bottlenecks and say well maybe 89% of the players who tried to kill that dragon failed. Then we would advise the publisher to reduce the threshold. That's a combination of using the analytical tools coupled with our experience of game design to improve the situation for both the publishers and the players."
In short, the dragon fight might not necessarily have to be removed, or even made easier, but it needs to be sign-posted. Miller says the GamesAnalytics software can deliver in-game messages to players, such as hints, challenges, free goods or offers ? all designed to motivate that individual to move along that pipeline to satisfaction and ? in theory ? revenue.
Johnson agrees that it's sometimes very slight in-game elements that can add to player churn. "The biggest mistakes are sometimes the most simple ones to make. For example it's easy to over complicate, over engineer or omit to tell the player what they're supposed to do next. Instructions may not be clear or a sense of progress, reward or player gratification may not come soon enough. It may be that a game's intro sequence is slightly too long which means a large number of new players get bored and turn to another game as a result. It's important to get the psychology and balance right so that the decision a player has to make in order to purchase is based on perception of value. If a game is confusing, incorrectly paced and doesn't have a clear sense of value in its monetisation plan then it's not going to do well."
Of course, GamesAnalytics and Playmetrix are not the only companies operating on this emerging sector ? Kontagent is an analytics platform that provides data on social applications, including games, and Adobe's Omniture helps with tracking acquisitions. The big question, though, is why these companies exist at all. With player retention proving to be such a key role in social and online game design, shouldn't the publishers have their own analysts in-house?
Zynga certainly does ? its dedicated team makes use of what is apparently the largest data warehouse in the world to track the behaviour patterns of its players. Sometimes it simply learns from how its users communicate. At this year's SXSW festival in Austin, the company's chief designer Brian Reynolds told how a tutorial level for the Frontiervillegame involved finding a sheep; when players achieved it, they had the option to post a cartoon image of a girl milking a ewe ? except many players were amused that the crude image made it look as though the some sort of inter-species sex act was going on. The amount of chat it generated turned out to be a brilliant viral marketing tool, so Zynga went ahead and loaded the game's FaceBook messages with innuendo, such as 'Bob has some serious sacks' and 'Margaret needs a few good screws'. It was enormously popular. So there is science, there is data-mining, and there is the knowledge that middle-aged gamers like dirty jokes.
Popcap, the hugely successful developer of Bejeweled and Zuma, has its own system. As Bart Barden, the company's director of online business explains, "we have an analytics team in-house that studies player data from three perspectives. First we look at actual gameplay, which includes things like number of games played, average score, highest score and number of moves. Second, we analyse the social activity tied to the game, which includes how many times they share a score or power up on Facebook. And finally we look at monetisation, how people like to transact.
"Recently, in Bejeweled Blitz, we increased the frequency of players being able to get and receive special gems (like the Cat's Eye or Phoenix Prism) based on some data we saw surrounding sharing. We found that players were much more likely to share a special gem with their friends than any other event in the game so we responded to that. This change has resulted in better engagement, which is a win-win for both the player and PopCap."
Indeed, the company's mastery of the social gaming market has just led to its purchase by Electronic Arts for a whopping $750m.
So why isn't this sort of analysis part of every social or online game? Johnson reckons it's down to cost and time. "Some developers have rolled their own solution but they are generally ad-hoc and fairly crude. Producing meaningful analysis capabilities isn't trivial - segmentation, funnels and cohort analysis requires a lot of thought and before you know it you're dealing with scalability, uptime commitments and a whole host of technical and operational issues that are far removed from creatively delivering a game." He likens the use of third-party analytics software to licensing a 3D engine like Unreal ? it's about freeing up time and resources within the development process.
It remains an esoteric, slightly sinister area for traditional gamers, though. Indeed, old skool publishers such as Activision and EA have found it just as challenging to evolve their thinking from the retail model into the freemium arena. Which is why EA bought Playfish in a deal worth up to $400m and Disney laid out $760m on Playdom ? it's just easier to buy that expertise in. It's going to become more important though. With more and more games adopting the freemium model, actually understanding what hooks gamers into patterns of playing, sharing and buying will be a vital element. Barden reckons that, right now, third ?party analytics systems are most clearly optimised for social titles based around resource management, but says their use will become more common, especially for small and medium-sized developers.
"Additionally," he says, "as more social game platforms emerge, third-party analytical toolsets become more valuable to consolidate and aggregate data across multiple social networks and products. The overall importance and focus on analytics will continue to grow over the next two or three years but how individual companies choose to act on that intelligence may vary."
The important thing to think about is that, in the free-to-play era, marketing and game design are indivisible ? they're essentially the same thing. Players have to be on-brand and on-message, they have to be active agents in the game world and the advertising of that world. And everyone has to be watched. Although, all the industry people we spoke to were keen to point out that brilliant design is still the leading factor. As Miller puts it, "It's important to realise, we're not selling accountancy software. You're creating an emotional experience, it's an art form, individual style is tremendously important."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2011/jul/14/social-gaming-metrics
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Acer outs the TravelMate 8481 notebook in the UK
Acer has a gob of notebooks and netbooks that it sells all around the world. Sometimes the new rigs land in the US first and other times they hit Europe to start. Today a new notebook has debuted for the ultra mobile user in the UK called the Acer TravelMate 8481. The machine will use [...]
Source: http://feeds.slashgear.com/~r/slashgear/~3/h2grn-WpMdY/
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Saturday, July 16, 2011
Chatterbox: Tuesday
The place to talk about games and other things that matter.
Tuesday morning, here we come.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2011/jul/12/chatterbox-tuesday
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Man Goes to Prison for Threatening Eric Cantor on YouTube
A man named Norman LeBoon is headed to prison after making threats to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a video posted to YouTube. In the clip, the 38-year-old LeBoon called the Republican "a liar" and "a Lucifer," and promised to shoot him. LeBoon pleaded guilty to the charges in November, and, on Thursday, was sentenced to two years in prison, along with an additional three years of supervised release.Man Goes to Prison for Threatening Eric Cantor on YouTube originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.switched.com/2011/04/08/norman-lebook-prison-for-eric-cantor-threats-on-youtube/
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What does Hollywood want with old arcade games?
Movies based on Space Invaders and Asteroids may soon be assaulting our multiplex screens. For God's sake why?
For the past decade Hollywood has very much enjoyed raiding our eighties childhoods, scrabbling about for marketable franchises and then emerging a year or so later with some nostalgia-packed summer flick of almost morbid uselessness. They have covered TV via the risible Dukes of Hazzard, A-Team and Charlie's Angels films, and they have scorched through toys via GI Joe and Michael Bay's Transformers, not to mention the forthcoming Cabbage Patch Kids and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles re-visits. Now they are turning their jaded sadistic eyes to early eighties arcade games.
Recently, the Hollywood Reporter revealed that producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Gigi Pritzker have 'optioned the rights' (Hollywood parlance for, 'found some cash and proffered it at some bemused but delighted rights holders') to coin-op classic Space Invaders. Released in 1978 this early shooter pitted the player against waves of iconic alien craft; it became the most successful arcade game of the era and its huge popularity was widely credited with causing a coin shortage in Japan.
But none of this adequately explains how on Earth this simple game will inspire a 90 minute movie. Not that the producers are letting such a minor point get in the way of the idea. Indeed, it turns out this is all in a day's work for di Bonaventura. The eighties-loving exec also produced the GI Joe and Transformers movies and is overseeing the development of a film based on monochrome space shooter, Asteroids ? bought by Universal way back in 2009 (after, would you believe it, a bidding war with three other studios).
"With Space Invaders, the producers are facing an interesting challenge," the Hollywood reporter tactfully puts it. "The video game doesn't have a built-in mythology, so on one hand a film won't risk offending game fans. Conversely, coming up with a captivating universe, especially for video game adaptations, is no easy task."
They're right. Translating games into movies is hard enough when the source material does come with a cogent story and recognisable characters ? just look at what they did to Super Mario Bros, Street Fighter, Silent Hill and Hitman (on second thoughts ? don't. Ever. Look. At. Them). Space Invaders has no plot and no lead role; the aliens are constructed out of barely animated sprites, which won't give modern special effects experts much to work with. Sure, the sound effects are iconic, but that's not going to see us much beyond the title sequence.
Apparently, the game's designer Tomohiro Nishikado was influenced by Star Wars and War of the Worlds, so that does at least provide a useful starting point for any writers unlucky enough to be placed on the project. Sadly, what we can probably expect, is another Skyline or Battlefield Los Angeles, just with blockier aliens, who slowly advance towards Earth in a predictable rectangular formation. It doesn't really matter, of course, because marketing, nostalgia and plenty of cool retro merchandise will ensure a healthy opening box-office, which should probably be enough to turn a profit and fund the next landgrab on seventies and eighties brands. Hollywood, you are mad.
Four early '80s coin-ops that would make 'great' movies
As the movie industry is clearly struggling here, I've provided four more early eighties arcade classics ripe for movie conversion. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments section!
Centipede (1980, Atari)
A beleaguered smallholder finds his best efforts to cultivate an organic mushroom crop thwarted by a monstrous arthropod. Driven to the very limits of sanity, he attacks the beast with a laser gun. Possibly to be directed by Judd Apatow in the style of classic man vs nature comedy, Caddy Shack.
Frogger (Konami, 1981)
John Lasseter directs this magical story of an amphibian hero who just wants to find his way home. Thrill as he dodges busy traffic in the exciting freeway sequence; become confused as he loses a life for drowning in the river, despite belonging to a species that practises cutaneous respiration; leave the cinema when it becomes clear that the film re-starts the moment you eventually make it to the other side...
Moon Patrol (Irem, 1982)
On the dramatic lunar surface, many miles from Earth, a Nasa research team comes under attack from a deadly alien force. Their only hope of escape is an incredibly slow moon buggy, fitted with what appears to be a roof-mounted pea-shooter. Vin Diesel stars as a top science driver who has come out of retirement to pilot one last buggy mission. Can he outrun the extraterrestrial menace while also hitting the jump button to avoid deadly moon holes? Paul WS Andrerson to direct.
Paperboy (Atari, 1984)
'Delivering' fast-paced excitement and 'first class' entertainment, this nostalgic movie will remind film-goers what life was like when work meant clambering on to a BMX bike and throwing newspapers straight through the windows of badly drawn houses. And if runaway lawnmowers and savage dogs aren't enough to contend with, our novice paperboy hero (I'm thinking Justin Bieber, naturally) must prepare for a confrontation with the Grim Reaper himself! Something to do with a dead letter office? We'll patch those details in later.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2011/jul/12/space-invaders-movie
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How to Get Spotify
Recently made available to select US listeners under an invite-only private beta version,[1] Spotify is an online music streaming service that offers DRM (Digital Rights Management) protected music from a number of independent and major record labels including Warner Music Group, Universal, The Orchard, EMI, and Sony. The service is accessible on several platforms including Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile. This article will walk you through the process of getting Spotify on the platform of your choice.
Note: See "Tips" for US users of Spotify.
Note: See "Tips" for US users of Spotify.
How to Improve Your Parkour Balancing Skills
Balance is an important part of parkour and an element that needs to be incorporated into your parkour training from the outset. Balance can be improved by the means suggested in this article.
Source: http://www.wikihow.com/Improve-Your-Parkour-Balancing-Skills
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T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide Review
In my possession I have HTC’s latest attempt at a slider. This here is the myTouch 4G Slide running over on T-Mobile with those super fast 4G speeds. It takes everything you liked about the myTouch 4G and adds those few features we liked in the 3G slide and poof — we have the myTouch [...]
Source: http://feeds.slashgear.com/~r/slashgear/~3/FipadROYbk4/
Space Shuttle crew gets midnight wakeup over computer failure
Of the wake-up calls you might want to get while on the Space Shuttle, an equipment failure alarm is probably not high on the list. Unfortunately that’s just what happened to the Atlantis crew earlier today, when a General Purpose Computer failed and roused them from their slumbers with its needy alarm. Happily backup systems [...]
Source: http://feeds.slashgear.com/~r/slashgear/~3/c3Udvh2_8JE/
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'Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars' Is More Retro Than Risque
Self-professed "dot matrix dominatrix" Anna Anthropy (a.k.a. Auntie Pixelante) has consistently wowed us in the past. Her latest game is the intriguingly titled 'Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars.' Modeled after the classic arcade game 'Wizard of Wor,' it perfectly recreates the feel of a greasy, soda-stained arcade cabinet. Simplistic yet addictive, 'Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars' is a brilliant example of retro gaming done right.
'Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars' Is More Retro Than Risque originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.switched.com/2011/04/08/lesbian-spider-queens-of-mars-is-more-retro-than-risque/
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Level Up Your MMORPG Character Using Developing Economies
These virtual goods are nothing to sniff at, with certain accounts laying out megabucks for whatever helms and chainmail they fancy. The report estimates that the largest Chinese suppliers of in-game "gold" net nearly $10 million, while other firms can make up to $1 million; the whole worldwide virtual market is nearly an $8 billion dollar industry. The good news is that, because there are no real supply costs, a large portion of the profits go into the hands of the worker, directly benefiting them instead of a corporation. The bad news is that, with Western gamers shelling out all of their money to buy better in-game goods, they'll never be able to save up money to move out of Mom's basement. Bad-um!
Level Up Your MMORPG Character Using Developing Economies originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.switched.com/2011/04/08/world-bank-reports-mmorpg-gold-mining/
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US debt ceiling: how big is it and how has it changed?
What is the US debt ceiling and how has it changed over time?
? Get the data
The US debt ceiling is in the news as Barack Obama warns the US risks "running out of time" to raise the limit on government borrowing. The warning comes as ratings agency Standard & Poor's threatens to strip the US of its AAA standing.
Obama and Republican leaders in Congress are arguing over terms for approving an increase in the US's $14.3 trillion (�8.9tn) debt ceiling by the 2 August deadline.
But what is the debt ceiling? Under US law, all government borrowing has to be approved by Congress, and they do this by limiting the amount that can be borrowed: this is the debt ceiling.
According to the US Treasury, Congress has acted 78 times since 1960 to
permanently raise, temporarily extend, or revise the definition of the debt limit ? 49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents
The last time it went up, in February 2010, the figure increased to $14.294 trillion. As of now, the debt is at that limit.
According to estimates from the last US budget, that debt is predicted to keep going up - to $20.8tn by the end of 2016. We've also looked at the size of the US national debt and the size of foreign holdings of US treasury bonds here.
We've extracted the full data from a mix of the White House OMB's historic budget tables, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis and the US Treasury to show how the ceiling has changed since 1940, and which party was in power at the time.
You can download the full data below. What can you do with it?
Data summary
Download the data
? DATA: download the full spreadsheet
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Can you do something with this data?
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guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/15/us-debt-ceiling-historic
Friday, July 15, 2011
TED Global: Brilliant babies, electric grannies and bankers behaving badly
Speakers at TED Global on Thursday waxed lyrical about the creativity of toddlers, the role of grandmothers in spreading solar power in Sierra Leone, and bankers' brains
Can babies do maths?
They can, says Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist. Not only that, they can do really quite difficult maths: statistics, probability, Bayesian theory ... Gopnik has devised experiments showing that when it comes to designing and testing hypotheses, 18-month-old toddlers are better at it than adults.
Children, she says, are the "R&D department" of the human race. "They're the blue sky guys, and we are production and marketing." They're creative, open-minded, imaginative. Their brains are flooded with neurotransmitters that promote neuroplasticity. The closest you can come as an adult to achieving the flexible open-mindedness of a child, says Gopnik, is to fall in love, or go to a new place, while coffee can mimic the effect of those neurotransmitters.
"What's it like being a baby? It's like being in love in Paris after three double espressos."
Why do bankers who get huge bonuses sometimes behave badly?
Because they can't help it, says the neuroscientist Paul Zak. Or at least they can help it, but the chemicals released in their brains make it more difficult for them than other people. Zak has studied the effects of oxytocin and what he calls "the biology of trustworthiness". Increased oxytocin in the body increases empathy. "And it's empathy which makes us moral."
Giving money away, hugging, praying can all increase oxytocin. But testosterone inhibits it. And higher levels of social status are associated with higher levels of testosterone. Hence the problem of the bankers' bonuses. What's more, some people are simply wired differently. "Five per cent of the population don't release oxytocin on stimulus. We have a technical term for them in our lab," says Zak. "We call them 'bastards'."
Who make the best solar engineers? Men, women or grandmothers?
According to Bunker Roy, the founder of the Barefoot College in India, it's the grandmothers. "One lesson we learned," he told the TED audience on Thursday, "is that men are untrainable. Men are restless, they're ambitious, they're compulsively mobile and they want a certificate."
Roy's great belief is that the poor have all the skills they need to help themselves, and his organisation has had huge success in bringing education and services to the rural poor around the world. The problem with training men, he says, is that they tend to want to leave the villages, and take their skills with them.
His solution has been to train the grandmothers. In Sierra Leone right now, 150 grandmothers are being trained as solar engineers, who will be able to go and electrify theirs and others' villages. In a few months, he says, "they will know more about solar engineering than a graduate after five years."
What's the most underrated virtue?
Politeness. Or so says Alain de Botton. The latest subject to come under his scrutiny is religion. De Botton is proposing a "pick 'n' mix" approach to the world's religions: take the rituals, ignore the doctrine.
He proposes a strategy of "harmonious disagreement". "If somebody said that they prayed the other day, simply politely move on."
The problem with secularism, he says, is that it's badly organised. Artists, writers, thinkers, poets, psychotherapists ... they tend to work alone "and get a bit depressed". What they need is to learn the lessons of organised religion. "The Catholic church is collaborative, multinational, branded and highly disciplined ... whereas books written by lone individuals will not change anything."
How do you get children to like carrots?
Tell them they're from McDonalds. Paul Bloom, a psychologist from Yale who studies the pleasures of everyday life, says that humans "are natural born essentialists". We don't just respond to what we see, but also to what we think things really are. If we think a wine is expensive we enjoy it so much more than if we think it's cheap.
The brains of people were scanned while drinking what they thought was costly wine "and the pleasure and reward centres of their brains lit up like a Christmas tree".
The good news is that if you like something, it looks better to you. "Which is why people in happy marriages think their spouses are much better looking than other people think".
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/jul/15/ted-global-2011-ingenious-babies
Patch My PC Free: Easy updates for handful of apps
The best of the competition knows about hundreds of thousands of tools, so the 30 or so supported here won't get you very far. But it's a new project, and numbers will increase.
Source: http://feeds.betanews.com/~r/bn/~3/JRpXKDfDD1c/1310662569
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Former DJ Hero developers set sights on mobile with 8linQ
UK studio is preparing to release its first iPhone music game, armed with major label tracks
UK startup 8linQ is hoping to spearhead a new wave of music games for smartphones and tablets, with its first game Say What?! due to be released on 20 July for iPhone armed with a licensing deal with major label Sony Music Entertainment.
The company is a joint venture between three partners: Music In Colour, Reactify and Metropolis Group. The first of those is a music production company formed by former staff from FreestyleGames, which developed the DJ Hero console games, while the latter is one of the most prestigious recording studios in the world.
Based at the studio complex in London, 8linQ has been working on Say What?! for several months, culminating in its launch next week with playable tracks from artists including Calvin Harris, Scouting for Girls, the Zutons and The Nolans.
"The music business needs to capture a new audience," says joint managing director Chris Lee. "Rather than make a game then license the music, this is much more of a partnership. We think there is a great opportunity to leverage the mobile platform to build something that reaches a wider audience, and monetises music."
Say What?! takes a different approach to DJ Hero and other console music games like Guitar Hero. Lee says that 8linQ's key aim was to avoid any assumption that the game's players will be experienced gamers.
The game uses a scrolling collection of icons, which relate to individual highlighted words within the lyrics to the current song, which are displayed above. If the word 'I' is highlighted, the player might have to tap on an eye icon, for example, while 'down' might be the cue to tap on a downward-facing arrow.
At higher difficulty levels, the clues get more cryptic. "There will be puns left, right and centre that take you a good five seconds to crack what the icon is representing," explains Yuli Levtov, the game's designer, and founder of the third partner in the joint venture: generative music studio Reactify Music.
"It's almost a Generation Game mechanic: a simple layer that lives over the music," says Lee. "We're not trying to be cleverer than that. This is about something that appeals in its simplicity, and we're trying not to niche it. It should appeal as much to 8-13 year-old girls as it does to 30-40 year-old males."
Lee adds that Say What?! was inspired by iOS games like Cut the Rope and Trainyard. "They're cute, you're allowed to fail and it doesn't matter," he says. "Far too many games can fall into the trap of having a game mechanic based on failure, and the fear of failure driving you to do stuff. We don't think that's what the mobile audience wants."
Say What?! will be free to download with four included tracks: one from a big Sony Music artist, and three from emerging acts signed to Music In Colour. Tracks from Sony ? and ultimately other labels too ? will be sold via in-app payments of �1.19 per song.
It's the second example this month of a major label selling music within this kind of game, following EMI's deal with Facebook games publisher MXP4. Downloads within Say What will be chart-eligible too.
"It will be a great story if you can take a catalogue title ? a single that was released 20 or 30 years ago ? and see it get into the top 10 with 100,000 downloads because it's in a game," says Ian Brenchley, joint managing director of 8linQ and managing director at Metropolis Group. "This is the merging of music and software in a really nice evolutionary form, that monetises music in a different way."
Lee says that making games for iOS has been a fresh challenge for the team members who cut their teeth on DJ Hero and other console games.
"I love the immediacy of being able to create content," he says. "Development cycles are so much shorter, and you get that immediacy of feedback too, where you can watch how your consumer is playing, react and develop new features. We have designed this game so that if we get a song at 9am, we can have it for sale by 9am the next day."
Say What?! will also be the first game to be promoted using the Future Games Network, a service that is being launched by another UK developer, Future Games of London. The idea behind the network is to promote other developers' iOS games to FGOL's existing community of 18 million players.
It's a good example of the promotional networks that are springing up around apps and games, just as 8linQ is an example of the kind of partnerships that are emerging as companies from different creative industries target the apps market.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2011/jul/13/8linq-say-what-iphone-music-games
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Bad, but inevitable: The consumerization of IT is accelerating
Everyone, led by Vice President Whatshisname, wants to use their iPhone on the corporate network. Don't IT security people have enough problems? But the onslaught of unsecurable consumer devices in the enterprise is probably unstoppable.
Source: http://feeds.betanews.com/~r/bn/~3/LLV_ufJgtbA/1310656336
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App reviews: Tiny Tower, The Open Championship, Songify and more
Hands on with the best new smartphone and tablet apps
Thousands of new apps are released every day for smartphones and tablets, although the vast majority sink without trace. Here is our selection of reviews from apps released in the last fortnight that are worth checking out.
Tiny Tower
iPhone, iPad, free
Freemium game Tiny Tower comes from the same developer as iOS hit Pocket Frogs, and is even more addictive. The aim of the game is to build a skyscraper packed with apartments and businesses, making enough money from both to continue adding new floors. The pixel-art graphics are full of character, and there are bags of humorous touches to the gameplay ?�the fake Facebook status updates from your residents is a favourite. You can play happily for free, but in-app purchases of virtual currency can speed up your progress.
The Open Championship 2011
iPhone, Android, free
The R&A's iOS app was an excellent way to follow The Open last year, and this time round it's been joined by an Android version too. There are plenty of live statistics to keep you posted on the players' progress, with live video streaming during the tournament too. There are plenty of people surreptitiously checking the leaderboard on their work computers this week, but the app is well worth downloading for when you're away from your desk.
Foursquare for Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone 7, free
Social location service Foursquare is available on near enough every smartphone, and while most attention gets focused on its iPhone and Android incarnations, its recently revamped Windows Phone 7 app is perhaps the slickest of the lot. It fits well into Microsoft's WP design guidelines, as you swipe your way between check-ins and information on venues near your current location. There is plenty of data to explore, but assuming you're out with friends, its best feature is the ability to quickly check in without having to spend several anti-social minutes thumbing through menus.
Songify
iPhone, free
It's fair to say Songify counts as a novelty app: something to annoy and/or delight your friends with, rather than performing a hugely useful purpose. Not that this is a bad thing. The app gets you to speak into your iPhone's microphone, and then autotunes the living daylights out of whatever you said, setting it to backing music. The results can then be shared via email, Facebook and Twitter. The app comes with three backing tracks, but more can be purchased via in-app payment. Significantly more fun if friends are using it too, this could be a viral hit.
CoPilot Live Premium
iPhone, iPad, Android, �14.99
It's surprising how quickly the price of GPS satellite navigation apps has fallen since they were first available for smartphones. 15 quid might be a promotional price for CoPilot's new app, but even when it goes up, the app will represent good value for money. The UK and Ireland edition stores maps on your handset for offline access ?�good when your mobile connection is patchy ? and makes it quick and easy to generate routes and find local points of interest. For an extra �9.99 via in-app subscription, you can add a feature called ActiveTraffic, which provides live traffic data to help you avoid jams.
Toca Robot Lab
iPhone, iPad, �0.69
Children (and their parents) who loved previous Toca Boca apps like Toca Hair Salon and Paint My Wings will be rushing to download the developer's latest effort. As its name makes clear, building robots is what this app is about, choosing from different parts to create a virtual robot. Once that's done, you get to fly them around a testing area, picking up balls and blocks. The developer calls its apps "digital toys" rather than games, and that shows here: with no goals, the pressure is off, and children can focus simply on creativity. We sense this app will be getting used by parents after their kids have gone to bed too, though.
9mm
iPhone, iPad, �4.99
Gameloft's cop-thriller game 9mm is currently iOS-only, but an Android version is in the works too. It sees you playing as the wincingly-named John "Loose" Kannon, taking down a gangster kingpin. The game looks marvellous, especially on an iPad 2, where its graphics have been beefed up to take advantage of Apple's A5 processor. The controls are easy to get to grips with, and once you've exhausted the solo mode, there are 12-player online deathmatches to refine your skills. The phase "console-quality" is overused and abused by the mobile gaming industry, but 9mm genuinely merits it.
ITV Player
iPhone, iPad, Android, free
ITV's catch-up TV app has joined that of the BBC on the iOS and Android app stores, and does not suffer in the comparison. It requires a Wi-Fi connection to watch shows ? no 3G streaming as with its rivals ? offering shows from all four ITV channels from the last seven days. Programmes can be searched for alphabetically, while the app also offers recommendations based on what's hot. Will there ever be one catch-up TV app covering all the British broadcasters? It's some way off, but for now the ITV Player does a good job alongside the BBC iPlayer.
Grimm's Red Riding Hood
iPhone, iPad, �2.49
Irish startup Ideal Binary made waves with its pop-up book-apps based on Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin. Now it's giving the same treatment to Little Red Riding Hood. It combines text with double-page scenes that can be interacted with by tapping and swiping. It feels high quality throughout, thanks to the characterful animations and the impressively classy soundtrack. iPad owners in particular are spoiled for choice when it comes to excellent children's book-apps, but Grimm's Red Riding Hood is a valued addition to their number.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2011/jul/15/app-reviews-open-golf-itv-9mm
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Time Cloaking: Physicists create a hole in time
Science is creating all sorts of awesome things today. Not long ago, I mentioned an acoustic cloak that hid the noise made by things like submarines from prying ears. There is also a lot of work on invisibility cloaks too that make things invisible to the naked eye. Physicists have now trumped the awesome of [...]
Source: http://feeds.slashgear.com/~r/slashgear/~3/dC3bbYMNnOM/
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James And Rupert Murdoch Cave In, Will Appear Before MPs After All
You know it’s a big deal when the Murdochs change their plans. Just moments ago, News Corp confirmed to paidContent that Rupert, the CEO of News Corp (NSDQ: NWS). and his son James, the deputy COO and head of international, would be appearing before the Commons Committee on Culture, Media and Sport. The news comes after a morning in which both had sent letters to the members of parliament saying they would be unable to attend to answer questions around the many allegations of illegal activities that have hit the company’s UK publishing arm, News International.
Source: http://feeds.paidcontent.org/~r/pcorg/~3/cDxoNKrzMaY/
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Thursday, July 14, 2011
Nuance Dragon Go voice search app launches for iPhone
When you are driving and need to find something on your iPhone looking down at the screen is never a good idea. There are a number of features like Voice Control that can help minimize that and Nuance has a new app for the iPhone called Dragon Go that is for voice search. Nuance has [...]
Source: http://feeds.slashgear.com/~r/slashgear/~3/6dWF-9saef0/
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Pandora Shares Fall Sharply, Then Recover, As Spotify Hits the U.S.
Pandora (NYSE: P) may have gone public just in the nick of time. With rival Spotify’s long-awaited U.S. arrival finally at hand, Pandora shares took a hit on Thursday, plunging six percent right out of the gate before recovering. Spotify’s debut escalates competition in the digital music market and knocks Pandora from its perch as the hottest streaming service on the internet.
Source: http://feeds.paidcontent.org/~r/pcorg/~3/G1CQyO3e1fw/
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