Archive for the ‘Advertising’ Category

An anonymous reader writes “A very recent paper in the prestigious biology journal Cell — ‘Human Embryonic Stem Cells Derived by Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer’ (openly accessible) — reports the novel creation of human embryonic stem cells from somatic nuclei. It has received massive media coverage and is surely penciled in as a strong candidate for scientific publication of the year. It does however have several examples of image reuse that have been pointed out by a submission on PubPeer. In the paper, it is recorded that the journal Cell accepted this paper just 4 days after submission. Perhaps, under the circumstances, the pre-publication peer review had to be a little hasty?

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Human Stem Cell Cloning Paper Contains Reused Images

tFor a game with an almost cartoonish art style, Commandos 2: Men of Courage happens to be one of the most visceral and realistic recreations of the Second World War. Unlike the legions of gung-ho WW2 shoot-em-ups that have you blasting through waves of identikit baddies, the Commandos series rewards stealth, cunning, and guile. Instead of a one-man army, you get a crack squad of artfully differentiated commandos whose strengths and weaknesses contribute real depth to the gameplay.

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The Classics: ‘Commandos 2: Men of Courage’

There’s no doubt that the late night TV scene is a cutthroat one — we all still remember the epic Conan vs. Leno battle for the seat of The Tonight Show a few years ago. Jimmy Fallon’s now giving us his own look at what goes on behind the scenes of his Late Night show with a new digital original entitled Game of Desks. It’s a ridiculous and affectionate tribute to Game of Thrones that casts Fallon in several roles, including an Eddard Stark-esque protagonist — but Fallon also dons a blonde wig for his own disturbing take on dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen.

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Watch this: Jimmy Fallon enters the world of Rockefell in ‘Game of Desks’

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from PC Mag’s SecurityWatch: “We’ve pointed out some problems with Twitter’s new two-factor authentication. For example, since just one phone number can be associated with an account, Twitter’s two-factor authentication won’t work for organizations like the Associated Press, The Onion, or The Guardian. They were hacked; they could still be hacked again in the same way. However, security experts indicate that the problem is worse than that, a lot worse.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How To Hack Twitter’s Two-Factor Authentication

An advertising agency is suing the creators of Cartoon Network’s The Annoying Orange, accusing them of ripping off a character they created for a 2005 public information ad. [Mercury News]        

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Annoying lawsuit for Annoying Orange

Another high-level HTC executive has left the company. CNET reports that HTC Asia’s CEO Lennard Hoornik has now parted ways with the company after being on leave for two months. Hoornik was in charge of HTC’s Asian operations for just two years. It’s not clear why he was on leave, nor is it known whose decision the exit was

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HTC Asia CEO Lennard Hoornik joins executive exodus

A new report from Oxfam estimates that at least $18.47 trillion is being held by individuals in so-called “tax haven” countries across the globe. The international agency says that a large bulk of that (approximately $12.29 trillion) can be traced to the EU. Oxfam says if you were to add all of that up, it’d be enough to end extreme poverty twice over. “These figures put the UK at the centre of a global tax system that is a colossal betrayal of people here and in the poorest countries who are struggling to get by, and put the government on the side of the privileged few,” said Emma Seery, Oxfam’s Head of Development Finance and Public Services

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Oxfam claims $18.47 trillion held in ‘tax havens’ as EU leaders meet to discuss solutions

Despite being a driving source of interest in books, films, or TV shows, fanfiction faces an uncertain reaction from authors. Some have embraced it, others have tacitly accepted it, and a few have lashed out at fanfiction writers. But so far, virtually no one has done what bookseller Amazon now promises: offered to pay them for writing in other people’s universes. ” Kindle Worlds ,” announced just now, is an offshoot of Amazon’s Kindle self-publishing program.

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Amazon will start publishing fanfiction for ‘Gossip Girl’ and other books with Kindle Worlds

Google and other tech companies have come under fire for exploiting a common tax loophole to book revenues through their Irish subsidiaries, but today The Sunday Times is reporting that a former Google UK executive has evidence of further tax avoidance by his one-time employer. Barney Jones worked for Google between 2002 and 2006 and says that during his time at the company, Google relied almost exclusively on its UK sales staff to secure advertising deals in London, effectively closing deals there rather than in Dublin, where it booked the revenues. Google VP Matt Brittin had previously testified to the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that “nobody” at Google’s UK office was selling Google advertising, last week revising his… Continue reading…

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Former Google UK exec alleges company misrepresented sales to avoid paying taxes

To call something “propaganda” is to connote a laughably unsubtle attempt at mind control, from the kind of nasty stereotypes mocked in BioShock Infinite to a hilariously redubbed North Korean propaganda video that many thought was real — precisely because we expect such attempts to be ham-fisted and idiotic. At The Guardian , Eliane Glaser argues that we should be looking instead at how behavioral science, advertising, and even memes can nudge us in certain directions. “The notion that propaganda is always a state-run, top-down affair provides a cloak for our complicity,” she writes. “Social media’s veneer of openness and people-power exemplifies western propaganda’s habit of masquerading as its opposite.” Continue reading…

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What’s the difference between consumer marketing and propaganda?

Twitter’s video-sharing app, Vine, has been used for a variety of teasers, including a Wolverine movie , a TV series , and the new Daft Punk album . Keen to promote its Internet Explorer browser, Microsoft is taking to Vine to create some entertaining and unique six-second sequences. In a series of “not your father’s browser” clips posted to its browser you loved to hate site, Microsoft is once again poking fun at the perceptions of its old web browser. The vines depict a relationship between old Internet Explorer and his son, modern Internet Explorer.

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Microsoft turns to Vine iOS app for entertaining Internet Explorer ads

alphadogg writes “A data center in Sweden has cut its energy bills by a million dollars a year using seawater to cool its servers, though jellyfish are an occasional hazard. Interxion, a collocation company in the Netherlands that rents data center space in 11 countries, uses water pumped from the Baltic Sea to cool the IT equipment at its facilities in Stockholm. The energy used to cool IT equipment is one of the costliest areas of running a data center. Companies have traditionally used big, mechanical chillers, but some are turning to outside air and evaporative techniques as lower-cost alternatives.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Swedish Data Center Saves $1M a Year Using Seawater For Cooling

A reboot of astrophysicist Carl Sagan’s groundbreaking documentary series Cosmos: A Personal Journey hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson is finally on its way to television. On Monday, Fox made an official announcement during its advertising upfront presentation at New York’s Beacon Theatre, reports The Los Angeles Times . The series has been in the works for years , and will be making its long-awaited premiere sometime in 2014. Continue reading…

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Neil deGrasse Tyson’s remake of Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’ headed to Fox in 2014

Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days. There was a time when young, engineering minds were content with putting together radio controlled vehicles for leisurely amusement. Now, they’re using their clever brains to make UAVs fly longer and land anywhere. At least we know who to blame when robopocalypse finally rolls around

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Alt-week 5.11.13: drones, more drones and dual perspective advertising

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg officially launched FWD.us , his immigration reform group made up of such Silicon Valley luminaries as Marissa Mayer, Eric Schmidt, Bill Gates, and Steve Ballmer . However, the group’s impressive list of members just got a little shorter — according to Reuters, SpaceX and Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk has officially left the group after it funded for senators who support an oil pipeline and oil drilling in Alaska. The ads themselves were focused more on the senators’ general policies and positions rather than immigration specifically, including support for the Keystone XL oil pipeline. There was a quick backlash from a number of progressive or environmental-focused organizations like MoveOn.org and Sierra…

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Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk leaves Mark Zuckerberg’s immigration reform group

Noryungi writes “Scientific American reports, in a chilling story, that the Hanford, Washington, nuclear waste vitrification treatment plant is off to a bad start. Bad planning, multiple sources of radioactive waste, leaking containment pools are just the beginning. It’s never a good sign when that type of article includes the word ‘spontaneous criticality,’ if you follow my drift…” It seems the main problem is that the waste has settled in distinct layers, and has to be piped through corroded old tubes. Leading to all sorts of exciting problems (e.g.

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Hanford Nuclear Waste Vitrification Plant "Too Dangerous"

ESPN has approached at least one major carrier about excluding its sports videos from mobile data caps, according to the Wall Street Journal . The report notes the possibility of ESPN paying the carrier as a subsidy so that users can watch videos without fear of hitting any limits. However, ESPN is said to be still working out the economics of any potential deal; no arrangement is in place at present. Continue reading…

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ESPN wants you to watch more sports, even if it has to subsidize your data plan

2003 was an important year for American culture: Baghdad fell, the Human Genome Project was completed, Britney and Madonna French-kissed at the MTV Music Video Awards. And no less significantly, at least as far as internet culture is concerned, it was also the year of the “GI Joe PSAs”: 25 weird, short videos made from re-edited versions of ‘80s GI Joe cartoons. Before YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter were alive to launch a meme in a minute, the GI Joe PSAs went “viral” in a time when that idea didn’t even exist. Created by a young, Chicago-based aspiring filmmaker named Eric Fensler, the series was constructed out of the public service announcements that were originally tacked on to the end of each show (which ran from… Continue reading…

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Body Massage: GI Joe and the invention of the viral video

Medium just launched Lady Bits, a new collection hosted by former Wired.com editor Arikia Millikan. The goal: Provide a space for the kinds of stories and perspectives that get left out of traditional magazines because of advertising profiles that say tech readers are all dudes. It’s a worthy idea and I’m looking forward to seeing        

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Technology, business, culture and more … from a female perspective

Following weeks of rumors and an apparent billboard ad , Nokia has launched a teaser site for its upcoming Lumia 928 handset. The site doesn’t reveal all the specifications and details about the Lumia 928, but it confirms the naming and follows a recent magazine ad noting its launch on Verizon. The printed ad confirms Nokia’s focus on the low-light abilities of the Lumia 928, with a mention of PureView, optical image stabilization, and the typical Carl Zeiss lens. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop recently hinted that a new Lumia would gain hero status at a major US carrier, and it appears the Lumia 928 launch is imminent on Verizon.

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Lumia 928 confirmed by official Nokia website

Google is set to introduce new paid subscriptions for specialist video channels on YouTube, as it looks to move beyond its main advertising revenue stream and deliver a wider range of content. According to the Financial Times , Google could launch the new service as early as this week, with up to 50 YouTube channels offering subscriptions to video content from $1.99 a month. Continue reading…

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Google reportedly launching paid YouTube subscriptions this week

Welcome to The After Math , where we attempt to summarize this week’s tech news through numbers, decimal places and percentages. This week’s After Math appears to have taken on a comic book theme. Want to make your own Thor hammer?

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The After Math: The (homemade) hammer of Thor, Virgin space flights and an atomic movie

Film promotion has changed over the years. Sure, there are still posters , trailers , TV spots, and radio and print ads, but now there’s also Google+ — at least for Ender’s Game. The upcoming film, based on Orson Scott Card’s award winning sci-fi novel, is using the social network to tease fans — flaunting a brief peek at the film’s trailer and advertising a Google+ Hangout with the film’s creators. Leading actors Harrison Ford and Asa Butterfield kicked off the hype machine by introducing a teaser trailer for the film, promising the full preview as a Google / YouTube exclusive next week. The entire clip (introduction included) falls under a minute, just long enough for die-hard fans to cry “the book is better .” You can take your continuity complaints to the film’s director, producer and star on May 7th.

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Ender’s Game trailer teased on Google+, promises full preview on May 7th

Yahoo’s bid for a controlling stake in video portal Dailymotion has ended after the French government raised objections to the deal, according to reports. The collapse of the talks is a blow to Yahoo, which has been fighting the perception it is irrelevant by acquiring up-and-coming talent and releasing well-regarded new apps . It also deprives them of a new distribution channel for original programming and the advertising that will run alongside it. Dailymotion is owned by France Telecom-Orange, in which France holds a minority stake. TechCrunch , building on an earlier report from Le Monde , reports that France’s minister of industrial renewal did not want to see one of France’s marquee Internet companies sold off to a U.S

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France reportedly scuttles Yahoo’s bid for Dailymotion video portal

Indiana University has replaced their supercomputer, Big Red, with a new system predictably named Big Red II. At the dedication HPC scientist Paul Messina said: “It’s important that this is a university-owned resource. … Here you have the opportunity to have your own faculty, staff and students get access with very little difficulty to this wonderful resource.” From the article: “Big Red II is a Cray-built machine, which uses both GPU-enabled and standard CPU compute nodes to deliver a petaflop — or 1 quadrillion floating-point operations per second — of max performance. Each of the 344 CPU nodes uses two 16-core AMD Abu Dhabi processors, while the 676 GPU nodes use one 16-core AMD Interlagos and one NVIDIA Kepler K20.” Read more of this story at Slashdot

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Indiana University Dedicates Biggest College-Owned Supercomputer