Microsoft said it improved Kinect on the Xbox One, and now a leaked setup manual indicates how little space it requires to operate. The PDF NeoGAF spotted notes that a minimum 1.4 meters (just over 4.5-feet) between the user and Microsoft’s new do-all sensor is all that’s required. For those of us …
(Credit: Gifpop)
Unhappy leaving animated GIFs relegated to the Internet, a duo from Brooklyn, N.Y., wants to turn them into coaster-sized cards that play when you angle them back and forth.
You might have seen something similar on souvenir postcards or movie posters, but designers Rachel Binx and Sha Hwang who launched a new Kickstarter project called Gifpop!, see the 70-some-odd-year-old lenticular film technology as a business opportunity.
The project, which has already raised more than twice its minimum goal of $5,000, aims to turn GIFs as well as videos from Vine and Instag… [Read more]
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By David Morgan and Mark Felsenthal
WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (Reuters) – The contractors for the government’s troubled healthcare website sought to deflect blame on Wednesday as more Democrats voiced concerns about the implementation of President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy.
Administration officials, in damage-control mode for nearly a week, held a closed-door briefing for Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and a private session with insurance company executives, who said they would assist in efforts to fix the Healthcare.gov website.
Websites are the primary vehicle for consumers to shop for insurance through exchanges set up under the healthcare program.
With the rocky launch of the “Obamacare” insurance exchanges entering its fourth week, additional Democrats came forward, some urging the president to extend the open-enrollment period for buying health insurance through the program beyond the existing March 31 deadline.
One Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, said he would join a Republican effort to delay the so-called “individual mandate,” that requires people to buy insurance or face a tax penalty.
Manchin, in a Fox News interview on the “The O’Reilly Factor,” called for a transition year with no fines. “Let’s work through the problems. We’ve got a lot of problems, they have been identified. I think everybody has recognized them. Let’s fix it. Let’s get together and fix things,” he said.
White House officials said on Wednesday that enrollment requirements were being changed so that consumers could sign up for health insurance right up to the March 31 deadline and avoid penalties. Some people previously needed to be signed around Feb. 15 to meet the end of March deadline.
A White House official said that pushing back the sign-up requirement was not related to glitches with Healthcare.gov, but was simply an effort to eliminate confusion over the two deadlines.
The comments from the handful of Democrats posed a new potential hazard for the White House and gave Republicans a chance to portray their efforts to derail the healthcare program as bipartisan.
Democratic Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas, who faces a tough re-election race next year, said he agreed with fellow Democrat Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire that the open enrollment period to sign up for insurance should be extended beyond March 31, 2014.
Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, the third-ranking House Democrat, criticized the website for forcing consumers to provide private information before deciding what kind of health insurance plan they want to buy.
“I’ve talked to too many people who tell me before they ever get around to figuring out what it is they want to buy, they’re having to answer questions that they don’t feel they should be answering,” Clyburn said.
CONTRACTOR TESTIMONY
Republicans said they would intensify their investigations into the launch of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, known as “Obamacare.”
“It is our job to hold them accountable, and when it comes to Obamacare clearly there is a lot to hold accountable,” House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner told reporters.
The Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday will hear from the top contractors responsible for the program. They included website developer CGI Federal, a unit of Canada’s CGI Group Inc, which said in prepared testimony that the software from another contractor designed to allow users to create an account led to early bottlenecks.
But the other contractor, United Health Group unit Quality Software Services Inc (QSSI), said in prepared testimony that some of its problems stemmed from a late decision by the administration to require consumers to register for an account before browsing for insurance products.
“This may have driven higher simultaneous usage of the registration system that wouldn’t have occurred if consumers could ‘window shop’ anonymously,” said QSSI.
The company’s software is now keeping pace with demand. Andrew Slavitt, executive vice president with QSSI’s parent, said the software has had “error rates close to zero” since Oct. 8.
Obama administration officials, including U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, met with the chief executives of 14 leading insurance companies, including Aetna Inc, WellPoint Inc and Humana Inc.
The executives agreed to form new technical teams with the administration to help fix the website, which provide online access to the marketplaces designed to be the main way for millions of uninsured Americans to research and buy health insurance plans under the law.
“We had a candid discussion on the challenges facing the exchange, and the plan that is being put in place to get the program on track,” Aetna Inc spokeswoman Cynthia Michener said.
The Oct. 1 debut of the exchanges was marred by technical glitches that have kept many from signing on and making purchases. Those unable to sign up online can call a toll-free telephone number as an alternative.
The administration has so far declined to disclose the number of enrollments, either online or by telephone.
‘WORKING HARD TO FIX THE PROBLEMS’
A prolonged delay in getting Healthcare.gov to work could jeopardize White House efforts to sign up as many as 7 million people in 2014, the first full year the law takes effect. The administration this week began what it called a “tech surge,” bringing in experts led by the administration’s top economic aide Jeffrey Zients to analyze and fix the problems.
“I think what we learned is they’re working hard to fix the problems,” Representative Sander Levin of Michigan, senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said after Wednesday’s briefing.
The U.S. Health and Human Services Department will begin regular news briefings on Thursday to provide updates on “the progress that’s being made and on the efforts that are being undertaken, both to address the technical problems and to make the whole experience for American consumers better,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
House Democrats said there was no discussion in the briefing about whether the problems should lead to a delay of the individual requirement that every American have insurance or pay a tax penalty. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated a delay would reduce enrollment significantly.
REPUBLICANS DEMAND DELAY
Republicans, who have fought the healthcare law as an unwarranted extension of the federal government, said the requirement should be delayed until the problems with the rollout are resolved.
“With so many unanswered questions and the problems arising around this rollout, it doesn’t make any sense to impose this one percent mandate tax on the American people,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told reporters on Wednesday.
Republicans have repeatedly tried to derail or delay the healthcare law since taking control of the House in the 2010 elections. They demanded more answers on Wednesday about the scope of the problems.
Three committees in the Republican-controlled House have announced investigations of the law’s rollout, which Cantor described as “nothing short of a debacle.”
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More on Barack Obama
The 3D printing industry has been catching public attention in growing strides lately, and as the technology is refined, more uses for the technology has surfaced. HP has been long-involved in the printing industry as a whole, and as such it only makes sense that the company will be jumping aboard the 3D printing market […]
While 4K resolutions have yet to become the standard format and used widely everywhere, we guess it’s got to start somewhere, right? Well if you’re looking for a camera that can shoot 4K videos, you do have some options out there but word on the street has it that Panasonic is currently preparing a micro four-thirds camera with 4K video recording capabilities that will be making its debut in 2014. The device will be known as the GH4, presumably the successor to last year’s Panasonic GH3 camera.
According to the rumors, the GH4 apart from having 4K video recording capabilities, will also feature a 16MP sensor, 1/8000 shutter speed, a 1 million dot LCD display, a 21mm OLED viewfinder, time coding, and is expected to retail for a whopping $3,800. We’re not sure if this price tag is because of its 4K video capabilities or if there are other features that justifies its asking price. Either way take it with a grain of salt for now, but we’ll definitely be keeping our eyes peeled for more information about this camera and update you guys accordingly.
Panasonic GH4 Micro Four-Thirds Camera Rumored For 2014 original content from Ubergizmo. 
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— Doctors now have convincing evidence that they put HIV into remission, hopefully for good, in a Mississippi baby born with the AIDS virus — a medical first that is prompting a new look at how hard and fast such cases should be treated.
The case was reported earlier this year but some doctors were skeptical that the baby was really infected rather than testing positive because of exposure to virus in the mom’s blood.
Camera companies such as Nikon and Canon have released both full-frame and non-full frame cameras in the past, although with the focus starting to shift towards more compact cameras with full-frame sensors, such as Sony’s recently announced A7 and A7r cameras, and with the rumours suggesting that Nikon could be exploring a similar device as well, we guess it’s not too surprising that Nikon Germany has announced that they will start to focus on full-frame cameras and will be launching a dedicated website soon.
According to the press release, “Nikon puts in Germany the full-frame imaging in the focus and concentrates trade and communication activities on its strong portfolio of powerful FX cameras. Driven by the demand of an ever wider audience has increased significantly over the past year, the share of FX full-frame segment in the overall market for digital SLR cameras. The company wants to exploit the existing growth potential in this segment even more and increase the fascination for the full-frame imaging on.” We’re not sure why Nikon’s Germany operations was chosen for this role given that Nikon operates globally, but it will be interesting to see the fruits of their efforts.
Nikon Germany To Focus On Full-Frame Nikon Products original content from Ubergizmo. 
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BOSTON — BOSTON (AP) — The surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect, who faces a potential death penalty, is fighting to get access to investigative records that implicate his dead older brother in a triple slaying in 2011.
In a filing this week in federal court, prosecutors say they have alerted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (joh-HAHR’ tsahr-NEYE’-ehv) that a friend alleges that Tsarnaev’s older brother, Tamerlan, participated in the killings.
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More on Boston Marathon Bombing
Just yesterday we reported that Nokia’s upcoming Lumia 1520 would be making its way to the US as an AT&T exclusive, and while that might be a bummer for customers not from AT&T’s network, well it looks like it might not be all that for AT&T subscribers either. It seems that AT&T’s version of the Lumia 1520 will only pack 16GB of onboard storage by default, versus the 32GB option that was announced by Nokia. This was confirmed at both the official Windows Phone website as well as Nokia’s US website. To top things off, the Lumia 1520 for AT&T will be dropping the built-in Qi wireless charging as well.
However it should be noted that the Lumia 1520 does support microSD cards so you can expand the 16GB by inserting a microSD. At the same time we imagine that there are some users out there who would rather not pay extra for a microSD card, and that they would much prefer if the storage was native and built into the phone already, but we guess these are some of the sacrifices you might have to make if you want to get the phone from AT&T!
AT&T’s Lumia 1520 Will Only Come With 16GB Of Storage By Default original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Opponents of the coup that toppled Egypt’s elected president Mohamed Morsi in July warned Wednesday the country was headed towards civil war and urged the international community to pay attention.
“The present regime since the coup is pushing Egypt towards civil war,” journalist and former chief editor of the Al-Shorouk newspaper, Wael Kandil, told reporters in Geneva.
He warned the security forces’ crackdown on supporters of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, which has resulted in more than 1,000 people being killed and more than 2,000 arrested nationwide, was ripping the country apart.
Kandil was in Geneva to help launch a new loose coalition of coup opponents from diverse political backgrounds, based inside the country and abroad.
Calling themselves the “Anti-coup Egyptian delegation of public diplomacy,” the group said it was visiting UN agencies and diplomatic missions to press its case that the military had hijacked the 2011 revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak.
Hatem Azzam, vice president of the moderate Islamist Al-Wasat Party and a member of the now disbanded 2012 parliament, compared Morsi’s overthrow with the 1973 coup in Chile, when socialist President Salvador Allende was ousted by a military junta.
Eslam Lotfy, a lawyer at Egypt’s High Court of Appeals and member of the leftist Third Square Movement, said while had been against Morsi, he was “also against the coup”.
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