Hasta La Gadget!

A trial of Google’s attempts to avoid European Union censure around anti-competitive search behaviors looks set to struggle to gain necessary agreement from rivals, with the concessions in testing insufficient to satisfy the complaints. The EC announced yesterday that it would begin a month-long test of Google’s proposed methods to dilute the over-dominance of the European search market that it has been accused of, including giving three rival services positions on its results page right next to its own. However, the concessions are already failing to win over critics.

First out the gate is European consumer association the BEUC, which took issue with Google’s offer to flag up – with a border or some other method – results that had been prioritized from its own services, such as Google Shopping. “We do not think [Google’s] proposals can credible achieve these targets” the agency says, pointing out that the highlighting system might perversely work in Google’s favor.

“Labelling results will do little or indeed nothing to prevent Google from manipulating search results and discriminating against competing services” the BEUC argues. “It may even shepherd consumers towards clicking on Google services now highlighted in a frame.”

“Infringements of competition rules call for strong and rigorous structural remedies where needed, going beyond the halfway house of consumer information. Labelling an infringement of competition law doesn’t prevent it being an infringement” BEUC

Meanwhile, Fairsearch Europe – a group made up of Microsoft, Nokia, Trip Advisor, and others – has also weighed in, similarly unimpressed, and promising “empirical evidence” as to why Google’s proposed salves simple won’t do.

We have always said that the best remedy for consumers and innovation would be to require Google to apply the same policy to search results for its own products as it does to all others. “Google’s proposed commitments appear to fall short of ending the preferential treatment at the heart of the Commission’s case based on formal complaints from 17 companies” Fairsearch argues, and alleges that in fact Google is still demanding preferential treatment.

“Google’s own screen shots in its proposal shows it seeks approval to continue preferential treatment for its own products” Fairsearch Europe

The BEUC also takes issue with the idea of Google self-governing its modifications, a route which it claims will lead only to another type of dominance in European search. “The proposal to display links to three rival specialised services raises the natural question of who decides the promotional criteria” BEUC points out. “If that is Google, it leaves too much discretion in their lap while most importantly, not solving the problem of non-discriminatory choices for consumers.”

The EC had proposed installing an “independent Monitoring Trustee” if the month-long trial went well, who would be responsible for making sure Google stuck to its agreements for the full length of the five-year concessions.

However, the BEUC has more stringent suggestions [pdf link] for how the matter should be resolved, including Google giving no highlighted placement to any of its own products, and instead “crawl, index, and rank its own services in exactly the same way it does everybody else.” The organization also wants tougher penalties should Google not comply, though the EC can currently fine the company up to 10-percent of its global revenues under existing rules.

[via Guardian]

Google’s Euro search concessions already facing rival rejection is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox – codenamed Durango but unofficially known as the “Xbox 720” – will hit shelves in early November but not be accompanied by a cheaper entertainment-only model, new leaks claim today. One previous plan to launch two next-gen Xbox variants, one of which (codenamed “Yuma”) would be more akin to a set-top box and deliver Kinect-controlled streaming content but not full gameplay, has been ditched, well-connected Paul Thurrott claims, though Microsoft is supposedly planning two pricing models that would in effect subsidize the Xbox 720.

Normally, the new console will be priced at $499, so Thurrott’s sources inform him, when goes on sale in early November 2013. However, Microsoft is apparently also expected to offer a $299 subsidized version, which – like a smartphone offered on agreement with a carrier – will cost less upfront but require a two year commitment to Xbox LIVE Gold, at what’s believed to be $10 per month.

That would work out to $539 over the course of the two year contract, of course. Microsoft has already experimented with such pricing schemes with the Xbox 360, offering the console for $99 if gamers sign up to two years of Xbox LIVE Gold service.

However, even with the “Xbox 720″ on the scene, that’s not to say the 360 will be retired. In fact, a third-gen version is expected sometime in 2013, it’s suggested, that will be “significantly less expensive” than the current model. Codenamed “Stingray”, it’s unconfirmed whether this is Microsoft’s workaround to rumors that the next-gen Xbox will not be backward-compatible, or simply an attempt to use older hardware to occupy a far lower MRSP point.

As for what’s inside the new console, previous chatter of Blu-ray gets another mention, and the whole thing is supposedly running on the Windows 8 Core, improving cross-platform support for games on PC and Xbox. That fits in with talk of AMD-developed processors; Microsoft will supposedly reveal the developer platform itself at BUILD 2013 in late June.

Talk of the new Xbox has increased over the past weeks, as we approach E3 2013 and the console’s expected debut. Other sources have claimed Microsoft will show off “a handful” of games, though Therrott describes it as “the launch lineup” being detailed.

Other rumors have included a requirement for a constant internet connection, which could be used for a more draconian activation policy that would insist on games being installed to the internal hard-drive first. Kinect is also expected to be mandatory, with a newly-refined sensor system that would be able to track people at higher resolution.

New Xbox 720 tipped for November with LIVE Gold subsidy option is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Canon‘s PowerShot N may not have the heft of a DSLR, but it’s arguably more interesting: small enough to be wearable, with Instagram-style filters that can be automatically added, and an unusual control system that puts shutter and zoom around the lens itself. Having been unveiled at CES back in January, we finally got a chance to see what sort of images the PowerShot N could take when we caught up with Canon in – of all places – an abandoned London tube station.

You can tell the PowerShot N is an unusual little shooter from the start, with its 78.6 x 60.2 x 29.3 mm body almost square face-on, and a hinged rear 2.8-inch touchscreen that folds up 90-degrees. Turn the camera over, so the screen is facing down, and you can hold it over your head and still frame shots; the picture flips 180-degrees automatically. Unfortunately, the LCD doesn’t fold up all the way, so you can’t use it to frame images from the front; that seems a missed opportunity, given Canon’s target audience of the photo-addicted.

While the touchscreen does most of the work, Canon hasn’t skimped on manual controls where they make more sense. To get in close, you twist the ring around the 8x optical zoom lens; pressing down on the ring – from any direction – fires off a shot. It takes a little getting used to initially, though you soon get comfortable with the system. Touch-focus can be used, or face-detection. On the sides, meanwhile, there are some physical switches and buttons: a key to power the PowerShot N on, one for image/video playback, and one to quickly connect with WiFi (b/g/n)to push images to a phone, tablet, or elsewhere. A switch on the other side puts the camera into Creative Shot mode, which automatically applies a range of effects to the original image.

Image quality is solid for a compact camera, with the 12.1-megapixel CMOS sensor feeding shots through Canon’s DIGIC 5 processor. The company claims macro images down to a centimeter are possible, though we had a few issues with focusing when dealing with close-up subjects; there’s also lens-shift image stabilization, though you still need a pretty steady hand since the PowerShot N’s relatively light 195g weight and compact body makes it easy to move during shooting. The fact that you need to push the lens-ring sideways to take a picture can exacerbate that.

The Creative Shot system is a mixed bag. Canon uses a combination of different effects as well as cropping to muster up five alternative versions of your original photo (which is also saved), a little like Instagram but without manual control over what gets applied. Sometimes the results are quite pleasing, but other times the cropping is too obituary and the filters too heavy-handed.

Where the PowerShot N could be particularly interesting is in its potential for life-logging. Canon recognizes some may want to wear it round their neck, and so will offer a choice of neckstraps which clip onto the Frankenstein’s Monster-style silver lugs on either side of the camera. Unfortunately there’s no option to set up timed shutter release, so you’ll have to tap the button manually, but with a little work – perhaps a remote control smartphone app; Canon’s CameraWindow can be used to copy images off the camera to your iPhone or Android device, as well as GPS tag them, but not actually control it – it could end up a mass-market alternative to something like Kickstarter-funded Memoto.

Not all is good, however. The battery is good for around 200 shots (280 in Eco Mode) only, and obviously less if you take advantage of the integrated WiFi. It’s also not cheap: $299 or £269, when it begins shipping in the next few days. Still, if you’re looking for a reason to carry both your smartphone and a standalone camera, the PowerShot N makes a great party shooter and drops neatly into a pocket or purse.

Canon PowerShot N sample shots: Lifelogger or Instagimmick? is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The book titled “The New Digital Age” for short, written by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen of Google fame, has begun to spill is many angles on the future of our increasingly connected world into the public. In one section of the book titled “The Future of Terrorism”, Schmidt and Cohen speak both of the possibilities of an extremist (and/or terrorist) group infiltrating groups of mobile device users and of an actual happening which involved a global extremist group using Motorola mobile-phone businesses in Pakistan to “bombard” the country’s national newspaper editors with propaganda.

As in much of the writings included in the book, the bits included in this Future of Terrorism section do not offer many answers for the questions they raise. Schmidt and Cohen here – and several times throughout the book – speak of the dangers that exist in our modern interconnected world both in prospect and in reality – it could happen, and it could happen again.

In this case, warning about the “importance of digital marketing for future terrorists”, Schmidt and Cohen note that they’re expecting groups to be jumping in with mobile and Internet companies en masse. Schmidt and Cohen give an example account spoken of by a man named Maajid Nawaz, he being a former leader in the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT). He speaks of the group’s movements around mobile-phone companies, specifically Motorola in Pakistan.

“‘We pitched propaganda stalls outside the Motorola offices in Pakistan, then we recruited some Motorola staff, who proceeded to leak the numbers of Pakistan’s national newspaper editors,’ he said. Members of the HT would bombard these editors with text messages full of propaganda, talking points, and event threats.” – Eric Schmidt, Jared Cohen, The New Digital Age

This same contact with the HT group mentioned the fact that these mobile phone carrier employees would also provide members of the group with concealed identities when they themselves signed up for phone service. Schmidt and Cohen suggest that this is only one of a number of situations in which the mobile connectivity we have here in the present will become a potential problem in the hands of extremist political groups in the near future.

They speak also of the idea that groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas might seek to gain influence over citizens with apps that provide services everyday users might find valuable. The book notes how groups such as these gain community support by providing services the larger state will not or cannot provide.

Responding to the obvious counter-point to being able to create apps and sent them to the public without opposition from the government or those that might control the software that appears on smart devices, Cohen and Schmidt suggest the simplest of work-arounds.

“Even if the Apple store blocked their applications under order from the U.S. government, or the U.N. took similar actions, it would be possible to build apps without any official tie to Hamas then promote them through word of mouth.” – Eric Schmidt, Jared Cohen, The New Digital Age

These points connect with chats and keynotes made by Eric Schmidt over the past several years, especially most recently in a transcribed conversation with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. It’s there that Schmidt, Assange, and Cohen collect several hours of material in hopes of including relevant topics in the book. This book is, of course, available digitally starting this week.

Eric Schmidt speaks of extremist infiltration of digital marketing in new book is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week a new report has been published on the possibilities surrounding antimatter using clues provided by the Large Hadron Collider* at CERN. Within LHCb, one of seven such particle physics detector experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, decays of Bs mesons have been observed for the first time in history showing more matter particles than antimatter. This is significant because it may, eventually, lead science to understand the reason for our universe preferring matter as dominant over antimatter here in our present-day post-big-bang environment.

The LHCb experiment is, again, one of several being run at CERN with the Large Hadron Collider. If you do a simple search for Large Hadron Collider in the SlashGear archives, you’ll find more information on CERN and the running of this machine than you could possibly know what to do with. Today’s subject surrounds Antimatter specifically.

There are now four different major studies being run around the world regarding antimatter relating to the findings being reported this week. The first of these comes from the LHCb once again and sees quarks (fundamental to our universe) turning up excess amounts of matter in what’s called CP violation. Another experiment at the LHCb that’s since been questioned as mistaken showed some of the earliest hints of this CP violation situation in the particles known as D0 mesons all the way back in 2011.

A third set of experiments – also working with mesons, have shown CP violation in two of the four meson types that exist with no electric charge. The fourth is, again this newest showing with Bs mesons. Spokesperson for the UK contingent of the LHCb collaboration Chris Parkes of the University of Manchester spoke this week to the BBC to let it be known how significant this experiment truly is.

“If one decays more often to this final state… than the other one, then it shows a fundamental difference between matter and antimatter. That’s what we’ve seen – a difference of about one in four of these decays.

However, the amount that we see is still compatible with the amount inside the Standard Model picture of particle physics, and this amount is just simply too small to explain why we’re all here, and why everything is still made of matter – so the puzzle still continues.” – Chris Parkes

The findings being shown this week are one in a line of what may eventually lead us to understand the fundamentals of the universe in a way that we’ve never before been able to grasp. For more information on why this is all worth the effort, be sure to hit up our recent article “here’s why it was worth it” – and note that it’s not the same experiment we’ve spoken about there, but the basic “why we spent this cash” reasons hold true!

*For those of you that’ve never heard of the Large Hadron Collider before, below you’ll find an excellent presentation by Don Lincoln for TED Education which explains how an atom-smashing particle accelerator works – let us know if it makes sense!

Antimatter research at CERN turns up new vital clue is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.