Amazon touts success of Kindle Fire HDX Mayday Button

Amazon is pretty proud of its Mayday Button. The technology, available for free on Kindle Fire HDX devices, allows users to have near-instant access to a real support team member, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year.

Since launch eight months ago, the Mayday Button has become the most popular form of support-related communication for Kindle Fire HDX users, who have questions concerning everything from updating or installing apps to how to finish an Angry Birds level.

“When we set out to invent the Mayday button, we wanted to revolutionize tech support—and we’re happy to report it’s working!” said Scott Brown, Director of Amazon Customer Service. “75% of customer contacts for Fire HDX now come via the Mayday button.”

Support requests have been made from users around the world, from Australia and Venezuela to St. Lucia and Kenya, to name a few. To access the feature, users tap on the Mayday Button in their device’s Quick Settings menu, and wait for a response from an advisor.

Brown adds, “Even as the Mayday button has grown to become the most popular way for customers to ask questions, the team’s been able to beat the response time goal of 15 seconds or less—our average is just 9.75 seconds.”

Think all support questions are serious? Not exactly. Here’s a look at some of the more unusual requests that have been made to Mayday support staff.

“–After being stuck on a specific Angry Birds level for a week, a Tech Advisor helped a customer beat the level.

–What better way to settle a score than to use the Mayday button? A group of friends asked how to make a perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich to prove whose approach was best.

–A Tech Advisor sang happy birthday to someone as they were receiving a Fire HDX from their boyfriend.

–Customers have asked Tech Advisors to draw everything from happy faces to rainbows, unicorns, fire-breathing dragons, and aliens.

–Mayday Tech Advisors also get their fair share of date requests and marriage proposals, but beyond that, they’ve been called everything from helpful, patient, sweet, wonderful, and courteous to beautiful, polite, and the “BEST EVER.”

Source:
www.insidemobileapps.com

Posted by Editorial Team on 9:37 PM in 365 days, Amazon touts, Angry Birds, Australia, Brown adds, Fire HDX, HDX Mayday Button, Scott Brown, technology, Venezuela

Kevin Spacey Leads 'Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare' Trailer

Activision on Thursday confirmed that the next installment of its massively popular Call of Duty series will launch on Nov. 4, with a special guest.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare takes players in a future where advanced technology and tactics are used for "a new era of combat"—led by House of Cardsactor Kevin Spacey. The star goes full-on Frank Underwood in the official Advanced Warfare trailer (watch below), giving a speech about democracy and power, set to the intense computer-generated imagery of the new game.

This installment is expected to launch a year after Call of Duty: Ghosts. The first COD title to run on Sony and Microsoft's next-gen consoles, Ghosts boasted a major multi-player overhaul, as well as a new mobile app for on-the-go access (see slideshow below).

The Advanced Warfare trailer, meanwhile, was originally scheduled for a big Sunday reveal, but game makers Activision and Sledgehammer Games posted it three days early, after it was leaked online.

"Ideas don't determine who's right. Power determines who's right," Spacey's character said in a clip posted to Instagram. "And I have the power, so I am right."

According to Destructoid, the actor, who lends his voice and animated likeness, portrays the main antagonist—a man turned against the U.S. government, who runs a group of hoverbike-riding super soldiers, able to scale tall buildings and leap across a burning bridge.

In COD: Advanced Warfare, the world's most powerful military is not a country, but a corporation—run by Spacey's power-hungry executive. The game, based on the global shift toward the use of private military corporations (PMCs), answers the question of "What happens when the highest bidder becomes the world's next superpower?"

You'll have to wait until Nov. 4 to find out. In the meantime, keep an eye on the Call of Duty Facebook and Instagram profiles, and follow the title on Twitter.

Source:

www.pcmag.com

Posted by Editorial Team on 7:01 AM in Duty series, game makers, Instagram, Kevin Spacey, Leads 'Call, Microsoft's, takes players, technology, Warfare' Trailer

Google self-driving cars are now less dangerous on roads, thanks to improved sensors

Google is continuing to look for new ways of fine-tuning its self-driving vehicle in order to make it safer for city use, a concept it believes will help revolutionize driving in urban areas. Currently, the vehicle is only being tested and used on rural roadways of California.

But now, the company believes it is doing a better job at improving the vehicle's existing software that will allow it to be able to see and recognize city driving situations, including but not limited to pedestrian crossings, bus stops, stop signs being held up by crossing guards at schools. It is also now able to recognize hand signals made by bicyclists.

"A mile of city driving is much more complex than a mile of freeway driving, with hundreds of different objects moving according to different rules of the road in a small area," Chris Urmson, the head of Google's self-driving-car project said in a blog post.

The vehicles first became street legal in Nevada back in 2011 and Urmson believes that through the continued effort of engineers, self-driving cars could become the thing for the future on America's streets.

"A self-driving vehicle can pay attention to all of these things in a way that a human physically can't -- and it never gets tired or distracted," Urmson wrote. "As it turns out, what looks chaotic and random on a city street to the human eye is actually fairly predictable to a computer."

In the four states such as Nevada, Florida, California and Michigan, they are currently legal to use, but all do require a human to be behind the wheel at all times. It is still a ways off before there will be an empty space where a driver would traditionally have been placed.

Urmson does admit that there is a lot of work that needs to be done before the vehicles are safe and ready for all urban environments and all potential changes on the street from moment to moment. However, Urmson is confident that the future may not be as far away as some tend to believe.

The question will remain - even as Americans are on the ropes about future technology - whether the country and subsequently the world, will want self-driving cars at all.

For now, they are sticking to the highways of America, but could soon be on a street near you.

Source:

www.techtimes.com

Posted by Editorial Team on 1:11 AM in cars, Chris Urmson, city driving, dangerous, highways, improved sensors, Michigan, Nevada, self-driving, technology

Nike fails to fuel its FuelBand dream: What really went wrong

Rumors of Nike exiting the wearable device market for good have been circling the Internet for quite some time. However, these rumors have intensified after Nike fired most of its FuelBand team due to the failures of the device in the marketplace.

As per the person who is familiar with Nike's decisions, the company plans to exit the wearable device business and stick solely to software, mainly improving the Nike+ app for the iPhone, thus having no idea if Nike plans to launch the app on other devices, or if the company is interested in creating more apps in the future.

"As a fast-paced, global business we continually align resources with business priorities," Nike spokesman Brian Strong said in an email. "As our Digital Sport priorities evolve, we expect to make changes within the team, and there will be a small number of layoffs. We do not comment on individual employment matters."

To prove how terrible the FuelBand performed, Cnet has reported that as many as 55 people were fired from the 70-man team behind the wearable device on Thursday. This alone could be signs that Nike has no intention to return to the wearable device market, but we might be getting ahead of ourselves.

Nike gave the impression that the company is not yet ready to leave the wearable device market just yet.

"The Nike+ FuelBand SE remains an important part of our business," Strong added. "We will continue to improve the Nike+ FuelBand App, launch new METALUXE colors, and we will sell and support the Nike+ FuelBand SE for the foreseeable future."

The big question though, why is Nike firing over 80 percent of the FuelBand's workforce? Well, the device did not perform up to expectations in the marketplace and based on an anonymous post via the app Secret, a social network for gossip centered on the tech industry, problems could lie with the execs.

"The douchebag execs at Nike are going to lay off a bunch of the eng team who developed The FuelBand, and other Nike+ stuff. Mostly because the execs committed gross negligence, wasted tons of money, and didn't know what they were doing."

It is clear that wearable devices are bound to take off with the amount of top technology companies entering the space. It would be wise for Nike to return to the drawing board, and then bounce back again before the market is too crowded.

Source:

www.techtimes.com

Posted by Editorial Team on 12:08 AM in 80 percent, FuelBand, marketplace, Nike fails, Nike+, Secret, social network, spokesman, technology, wrong

Nike to stop making FuelBands: Report

It's shutters for Nike FuelBand fitness tracker. According to a report in CNET, the sportswear giant is reportedly exiting from wearable hardware business altogether. 

"As a fast-paced, global business, we continually align resources with business priorities," said a Nike spokesperson iIn an email sent to CNET. 

"As our Digital Sport priorities evolve, we expect to make changes within the team, and there will be a small number of layoffs. We do not comment on individual employment matters," he said. 

Citing sources, the report says that Nike has laid off the majority of the team responsible for the development of the FuelBand fitness tracker. 

As many as 55 people on Nike's 70-person hardware team were laid off earlier this week, reported CNET. The team is part of its larger, technology-focused Digital Sport division which comprises around 200 employees. The division focuses on areas like industrial design; manufacturing operations; electrical and mechanical hardware engineering; and software interface design. 

The team makes Nike+ sportwatch and other peripherals. The company has also shelved all future physical product projects under the Digital Sport division. 

For now, however, Nike will continue selling the second-generation FuelBand SE. In a follow up email, the company spokesperson said, "The Nike+ FuelBand SE remains an important part of our business. We will continue to improve the Nike+ FuelBand App, launch new MetaLuxe colours, and we will sell and support the Nike+ FuelBand SE for the foreseeable future." 

The report also said that the exit from wearable hardware market does not mean the company is giving up on the technology, Nike is just turning away from hardware and realigning its focus on fitness and athletic software. 

Analysts have reportedly termed Nike's move smart, considering the huge competition in the fitness tracking devices market. Also, with smartphones like Samsung's Galaxy S5 and Apple's forthcoming iPhone 6 adding fitness-related features, the commpetition is bound to get tougher. 

Nike had launched FuelBand in February 2012. The device got an update in October last year when the company announced Nike+ Fuelband SE.

Source:
timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Posted by Editorial Team on 8:10 AM in 55 people, FuelBand, FuelBands, global business, iPhone 6, move smart, Nike, Samsung's Galaxy S5, sportswear, technology

Facebook App To Show When Friends Are Nearby

Facebook moves to allay privacy concerns by saying a new feature - showing the location of nearby friends - will be opt-in only.

Facebook is introducing a new feature on its mobile app to show users when their friends are nearby.

People using the app will be "occasionally notified" when friends are nearby - but only if they turn on the opt-in feature.

Users can decide which of their friend group can see if they are nearby, such as close friends, work colleagues or a specific friends list.

The app will alert users when friends are nearby

The tool uses the geolocation technology in smartphones, and can be turned on and off at any time.

An initial alert tells you how far away your nearby friends are, but does not give their exact location or co-ordinates.

You can then choose to share your exact location with any of the nearby users, who will then see where you are on a map.

Users can then choose to share their exact location

In a news release, Facebook stressed the feature was optional and the user always retained control.

Product manager Andrea Vaccari said: "Sharing your location with Nearby Friends goes two ways - you and your friends both have to turn on Nearby Friends and choose to share with each other to see when you’re nearby.

"Your friends will only be able to see that you’re nearby if you share this info with them and vice versa."

Facebook has reportedly been testing the feature with the "vast majority" of the company's 6,500-plus staff, according to technology site Mashable.

Source:

news.sky.com

• 
  

Posted by Editorial Team on 12:53 AM in Andrea Vaccari, colleagues, Facebook, Friends, geolocation, Mashable, Nearby, smartphones, technology, vast majority

Heartbleed could harm a variety of systems

NEW YORK — It now appears that the “Heartbleed” security problem affects not just websites, but also the networking equipment that connects homes and businesses to the Internet.

A defect in the security technology used by many websites and equipment makers have put millions of passwords, credit card numbers and other personal information at risk. The extent of the damage caused by Heartbleed isn’t known. The threat went undetected for more than two years, and it’s difficult to tell if any attacks resulted from it because they don’t leave behind distinct footprints.

But now that the threat is public, there’s a good chance hackers will try to exploit it before fixes are in place, says Mike Weber, vice president of the information-technology audit and compliance firm Coalfire.

Two of the biggest makers of networking equipment, Cisco and Juniper, have acknowledged that some of their products contain the bug, but experts warn that the problem may extend to other companies as well as a range of Internet-connected devices such as Blu-ray players.

“I think this is very concerning for many people,” says Darren Hayes, professor of security and computer forensics at Pace University. “It’s going to keep security professionals very busy over the coming weeks and months. Customers need to make sure they’re getting the answers they need.”

Here’s a look at what consumers and businesses should know about Heartbleed and its effects on networking devices.

— How is networking equipment affected?

Just like websites, the software used to run some networking equipment — such as routers, switches and firewalls — also uses the variant of SSL/TLS known as OpenSSL. OpenSSL is the set of tools that has the Heartbleed vulnerability.

As with a website, hackers could potentially use the bug as a way to breach a system and gather and steal passwords and other sensitive information.

— What can you do?

Security experts continue to advise people and businesses to change their passwords, but that won’t be enough unless the company that created the software in question has put the needed fixes in place.

When it comes to devices, this could take a while. Although websites can be fixed relatively quickly by installing a software update, device makers will have to check each product to see if it needs to be fixed.

Both Cisco Systems Inc. and Juniper Networks Inc. continue to advise customers through their websites on which product is still vulnerable, fixed and unaffected. Owners may need to install software updates for products that are “fixed.”

Hayes praises Cisco and Juniper for being upfront with customers. He cautions, though, that many other companies make similar products that likely have the bug, too, but haven’t come forward to say so.

As a result, businesses and consumers need to check the websites for devices that they think could have problems. They must be diligent about installing any software updates they receive.

Weber says that while there are some checks companies can do to see if their networking equipment is safe, they’re largely beholden to the device makers to let them know what’s going on.

Companies also need to make sure that business partners with access to their systems aren’t compromised as well.

— Are other devices at risk?

Hayes says the bug could potentially affect any home device that’s connected to the Internet, including something as simple as a Wi-Fi-enabled Blu-ray player.

He also points to recent advances in home automation, such as smart thermostats, security and lighting systems.

“We simply don’t know the extent of this and it could affect those kinds of devices in the home,” he says.

___

Bree Fowler can be reached at http://twitter.com/APBreeFowler

___

Online:

Cisco: http://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20140409-heartbleed

Juniper: https://www.juniper.net/customers/support

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source:

www.washingtonpost.com

Posted by Editorial Team on 12:52 AM in Coalfire, could harm, damage, experts, exploit, Heartbleed, Internet, security, systems, technology

Could virtual reality flop again?

An attendee wears an Oculus Rift HD virtual reality head-mounted display as he plays "EVE: Valkyrie," a multiplayer virtual reality dogfighting shooter game, at the Intel booth at the 2014 International CES in Las Vegas.

$2 billion deal to acquire Oculus last month marked the biggest bet yet on the resurgence of virtual reality.

While any price tag that hefty for an unfinished, unproven technology is bound to spark investor second-guessing, it's hardly a surprise that this purchase is being especially scrutinized. Like 3-D, virtual reality is a concept that has been touted for years, but has always failed to live up to its potential—and historically been rejected by consumers.

And while Oculus has greatly improved the experience—and Facebook and Sony (which is making its own lauded VR headset) are sinking fortunes into the technology—there are still plenty of hurdles virtual reality must clear. Among them:

Content: The best hardware in the world is useless if there's not software to take advantage of it. And if that first rush of software isn't up to par, it can quickly sour the experience.

Tech Yeah! Facebook moves into virtual reality

CNBC's Morgan Brennan and Laptop Mag Senior Staff Writer Sherri Smith discuss Facebook's acquisition of virtual reality hardware maker Oculus and King Digital Entertainment's IPO.

"If anyone's out there making VR, our message is 'please take the time to get it right,'" said Brendan Iribe, CEO of Oculus, at CES earlier this year. "If you don't, you get people sick. ... It's all dependent on the content."

Virtual reality is expected to make its first splash in the video game world. Whether game publishers will be willing to bet on the technology immediately is another concern, though.

VR games aren't cheap to create. They require very high frame rates (the number of frames shown per second) and work best in 3-D, with separate images being delivered to each of the user's eyes. Large game publishers may support existing partner Sony, knowing that the company is planning internally developed titles as well. But Oculus, which is focusing on the PC, might be a harder sell.

Meanwhile, many indie game developers, who were backing Oculus, aren't happy with the company's new owner. "Minecraft" creator Markus "Notch" Persson said he has canceled plans to work on a version of the hit game, which has sold more than 14 million copies, for Oculus' Rift virtual reality headset.

"I definitely want to be a part of VR, but I will not work with Facebook," he wrote. "Their motives are too unclear and shifting, and they haven't historically been a stable platform. There's nothing about their history that makes me trust them, and that makes them seem creepy to me."

Oculus declined to comment. Facebook didn't respond to a request for comment.

Gamers grouse over Facebook-Oculus deal

Sony unveils virtual reality Playstation headset

Finding the right audience: Facebook says it wants to cast a wide net with VR, but consumers have historically shunned any sort of technological headgear. Previous efforts, ranging from Nintendo's Virtual Boy to modern 3-D TVs, have flopped, which could indicate consumers simply aren't interested.

"Hardcore gamers love new technologies and experiences and are willing to do almost anything to get them," said Ed Fries, co-founder of Microsoft's Xbox division, in a recent "Ask Me Anything" on Yabbly. "General users however are a different crowd. Given how little success the consumer electronics companies have had with 3-D TVs with glasses, I am sceptical [sic] that general users are going to be strapping this thing onto their face any time soon."

And while the focus of VR so far has been on the gaming and commercial market, some experts say there's really no way of knowing where the technology will find the best fit.

"What is the best case for thinking about things like VR?" asks Rob Stavis, a partner Bessemer Venture Partners. "Is it playing a video game? Is it military training or teaching? The way we're going to learn about that is through trial and error."

Cost: Neither Sony nor Oculus has given any indication of what the retail cost of their VR headsets will be. Oculus' Kickstarter backers were able to get a Rift developer kit for $300, but there's no guarantee the final product will be in that neighborhood.

Facebook is thinking beyond mobile with Oculus

Beyond hardware, there's a question of whether software prices will be higher. Aaron Davies, director of developer relations at Oculus, said he would not be surprised to see game makers charge a premium for VR-enabled games, pushing them higher than the now-standard $60 price tag.

"In VR, suddenly objects have value—and scale and size and depth and I think there will be opportunities for developers to monetize them," he said.

Iribe agrees, but notes there is a risk with that.

"They'd better deliver if they're going to charge more than $50 or $60 for a game," he said.

Meeting expectations: Part of the reason VR has failed before is it has never lived up to the hype. And after a $2 billion buyout, those expectations are only increasing.

"I think we're living in a world where, in the last six months or so, there has been a lot of enthusiasm for how this tech can change our lives—and it's reflected in some rich valuations for things," said Stavis.

"You might think the Oculus deal is symptomatic of that. At the same time, at Bessemer, we continue to believe the pace of technology change will increase. ... [VR] is in the early innings. so some of the valuations might be forward looking."

Source:
www.cnbc.com

Posted by Editorial Team on 10:58 AM in again, CEO, Could virtual, Facebook, hardware, Oculus, purchase, reality flop, Sony, technology

U.S. gets new, hyper-accurate atomic clock

(CNN) -- Timekeeping in the United States, which was already a pretty precise science involving lasers and atomic particles, just got even more exact.

A new atomic clock, so accurate it will lose or gain only one second every 300 million years, was unveiled Thursday by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The NIST-F2 had been in development for about a decade and is three times more accurate than the F1, which has been in use since 1999. The institute will continue operating both clocks for now at its campus in Boulder, Colorado.

The clock is used for civilian purposes in the United States and its data is shared with the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris.

The clocks work by using lasers to create a fountain of cesium atoms. "Pings" from those atoms as they move are counted to measure the exact length of a second.

Tom O'Brian, chief of NIST's time and frequency division, said the F2 was made more accurate by lowering the temperature of the area surrounding it.

All that is fine. But why go to all this trouble? Most of us won't get fired for being a few trillionths of a second late for work, right?

Well, no. But many of the systems we use in our high-tech world need to be a lot more precise.

"Modern telecommunication networks require synchronization to about a millionth of a second per day," O'Brian said. "Power grids also ... (and) GPS systems require about 1 billionth of a second per day.

"All of these technologies, and many more that we use every day, rely on exquisite timing and synchronization that is only possible with atomic clocks."

The NIST-F2 is expected to lose about one trillionth of a second per day. That's way more accuracy than any of today's technology needs and, hopefully, will be plenty for the next generation of innovation as well.

"If we've learned anything in the last 60 years of building atomic clocks, we've learned that every time we build a better clock, somebody comes up with a use for it that you couldn't have foreseen," says physicist Steven Jefferts, lead designer of NIST-F2.

So, is the NIST-F2 as good as it gets? Not really. While it might be the most accurate atomic clock to use cesium, researchers say there are already clocks that use other atoms being tested and that those are even more precise.

Some of those divide time into units more than 100 times more accurate than even the brand-new F2, O'Brian said.

"I think all those clocks are going to be so good that we're really going to have to change our perspective about what we mean by 'time'," he said.

Source:

edition.cnn.com

Posted by Editorial Team on 10:05 AM in 300 million, atomic clock, hyper-accurate, NIST-F2, O'Brian, standards, technology, Timekeeping, U.S. gets, United States

Visionary or looney? Mark Zuckerberg's spending

Investors are watching the shopping spree of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg who snapped up virtual reality headset maker Oculus in late March 2014 for $2 billion, and weeks before plunked down $19 billion for messaging startup WhatsApp. This Oculus set was demonstrated on Jan. 9, 2014. (Credit: Getty Images / Robyn Beck)

Facebook's latest multibillion-dollar acquisition of virtual reality headset maker Oculus is prompting some people to wonder if CEO Mark Zuckerberg is already living in an alternate reality.

Longtime technology analyst Roger Kay wonders whether Zuckerberg "is nuts" for agreeing last week to pay $2 billion for Oculus, less than five weeks after inking a deal to buy messaging startup WhatsApp for $19 billion.

Oculus, which got its start on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, doesn't have a consumer product on the market, just the promise of bulky virtual reality goggles that have generated huge buzz in the video gaming community.

Zuckerberg, for his part, sees long-term implications in the technology, for communication, entertainment and beyond. He was right about mobile, and he's created the world's biggest online social network.

So, is he looney, or visionary?

"Mobile is the platform of today and now we're starting to also get ready for the platforms of tomorrow. To me, by far the most exciting future platform is around vision or modifying what you see to create augmented and immersive experiences," Zuckerberg said on a conference call last week discussing the deal. "Today's acquisition is a long-term bet on the future of computing. I believe Oculus can be one of the platforms of this future."

Facebook's investors seem to think Oculus's promise is too far off. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based social networking company's stock fell 7 percent on Wednesday, the day after the deal was announced, to close at $60.38.

Beyond the sticker shock, the WhatsApp and Oculus deals -- along with Facebook's spurned offer to buy Snapchat for $3 billion -- have raised questions about Facebook's ability to innovate on its own. Some of the company's most high-profile products, such as the Snapchat-like Poke, the messaging service Facebook Messenger and Home, have flopped.

Gartner analyst Brian Blau calls the Oculus acquisition "kind of out of leftfield."

"We have always thought about experience as a focus of virtual reality," he says. "Certainly it can be social, but we have not thought about it as a core social experience."

That's not to say it can't work. There were questions about Facebook's acquisition of Instagram back when it offered $1 billion for the photo-sharing app (the final purchase price was $715 million) in April 2012 -- and Instagram "turned out fine," Blau points out. Facebook said last week Instagram has 200 million users, up from 30 million at the time it agreed to buy the company.

Chris DeWolfe, former CEO and co-founder of MySpace, the Internet's largest social network before it was eclipsed by Facebook, said, "Given Facebook's size, this deal doesn't seem that weird to me."

DeWolfe, who now runs a mobile game company called SGN, figures Facebook's $154 billion market value gave Zuckerberg the flexibility to wager on a technology that could break new ground.

Like Facebook, Google is led by a CEO, Larry Page, who has vowed to make huge investments building or buying technology that might not pay off for years. When Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.76 billion in stock, some analysts questioned whether the company had paid far too much for a video site with virtually no revenue and a huge stack of potentially expensive legal claims for copyright infringement.

But that deal is now widely viewed as brilliant. YouTube sells billions of dollars in video advertising and has amassed a worldwide audience of more than 1 billion people.

Source:

www.newsday.com

Posted by Editorial Team on 10:42 AM in Brian Blau, Certainly, culus deals, DeWolfe, Facebook's latest, looney?, Mark Zuckerberg's, multibillion-dollar, technology, Visionary, WhatsApp