Posts tagged Gets
Google Active View Format Gets Accreditation
Apr 30th
Active View lets advertisers reserve inventory on the Google Display Network and pay only for those that meet the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s proposed standard of at least 50 percent of an ad being visible onscreen for one second or longer.
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Shazam Gets New CEO: Music-ID App Maker Has Big Plans
Apr 29th
Shazam, a company mostly known for its music identification app, has hired Rich Riley as its new CEO. Riley comes from high up on the corporate ladder (formerly Executive Vice President Americas at Yahoo), but he’s only one piece in the company’s larger roadmap, which includes going plans to go public.
With a successful second-screen television app and its accompanying advertising platform, Shazam is no longer just that neat app that helps you identify the song that you happen to be listening to. Switching from CEO to Exectuive Chairman, Andrew Fisher, who has helmed the company since 2005, makes it clear that Shazam has “ambitions to deliver a successful IPO,” he writes in the company’s press release.
Shazam, which now has more than 300 million users in 200+ countries, became known to U.S. consumers in the early days of iOS as the go-to music discovery and identification app. However, the technology behind the function was in fact far older.
Originally founded in 1999 and based out of London after a failed attempt to gain investment in Silicon Valley, Shazam launched its service in the UK in 2002. It required you to dial in and play the song into the phone receiver – you’d then receive a text message identifying the artist and track name.
After the smartphone boom and its successful multiplatform app - alongside a slew of partnerships with international companies like Entertainment UK and the Indian streaming service Saavn - Shazam was able to branch out and secure further funding. In 2011, it launched its TV app, the backbone of which is its advertising arm generating revenue in the “double-digit millions” for the company.
Image courtesy of Shazam.
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Yahoo iPhone App Gets Story Summaries, Better Video & Image Search
Apr 22nd
Yahoo has launched an iPhone app using Summly’s technology less than a month after buying the firm for $30 million. The Yahoo app allows users to search for news topics they are interested in and displays summarized versions of chosen articles.
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Google Places For Business Gets Its Own iPhone App For Managing Listings
Apr 22nd
Local business owners have a new tool for managing their Google Places For Business listing: a dedicated app that works on the iPhone and iPod Touch. There’s no official announcement that I can find about the app, and as best I can tell, the iClarified blog was first to report on it. The…
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Nate Silver Gets Real About Big Data
Mar 29th
While it has become de rigueur to ascribe all sorts of supernatural powers to Big Data, one of the world’s most celebrated statisticians, Nate Silver, is far more circumspect about it. If anything, according to Silver in his book The Signal and the Noise, Big Data carries the potential to cloud our decisions by introducing far more noise than it does signal. It’s an interesting position for someone who makes a living predicting the future, and one that directly counters other expert opinion.
Take, for example, the new book from data experts Viktor Mayer-Schonberger (University of Oxford) and Kenneth Cukier (The Economist), Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think. Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier urge us to trust data, not worrying about trying to understand correlations but simply to accept it. As Cukier tells Wired, “Big Data enables us not to test [a] hypothesis, but to let the data speak and tell us what hypothesis is best. And in that way it completely reshapes what we call the scientific method or…how we understand and make sense of the world.”
One big problem with this view is that it assumes we have any clue how to query the data to even come up with a “what,” much less a “why.” It’s not as if data simply presents itself to us, and we read it objectively.
Quoting Silver at length:
“[Big Data] is sometimes seen as a cure-all, as computers were in the 1970s. Chris Anderson…wrote in 2008 that the sheer volume of data would obviate the need for theory, and even the scientific method….
“[T]hese views are badly mistaken. The numbers have no way of speaking for themselves. We speak for them. We imbue them with meaning….[W]e may construe them in self-serving ways that are detached from their objective reality.
“Data-driven predictions can succeed–and they can fail. It is when we deny our role in the process that the odds of failure rise. Before we demand more of our data, we need to demand more of ourselves….Unless we work actively to become aware of the biases we introduce, the returns to additional information may be minimal–or diminishing.”
So, for example, more data has not resulted in less political divide, as Silver points out. It has only hardened positions on either side of the aisle. The same holds true for global warming science. The more data we have, the less we seem to agree.
Why? Because data is never neutral. Or, rather, our perception of it is not neutral.
This is as true for individual enterprises grappling with product or personnel decisions as it is for countries debating policy issues. Big Data can contribute to the solving these issues…even as it contributes to making them more difficult. Again quoting Silver:
If the quantity of information is increasing by 2.5 quintillion bytes per day, the amount of useful information almost certainly isn’t. Most of it is just noise, and the noise is increasing faster than the signal. There are so many hypotheses to test, so many data sets to mine–but a relatively constant amount of objective truth.
This jibes with Gartner’s Svetlana Sicular, who suggests that “Formulating a right question is always hard, but with big data, it is an order of magnitude harder,” due in part to the difficulty of figuring out meaningful correlations in our data.
Again, while it may seem convenient to wish for the “data to speak for itself,” it simply doesn’t. It can’t. It is always mediated by imperfect individuals with all of our biases, strengths and self-interest.
Which is not to say that data can’t help us with our answers. Silver certainly turns to data to help him forecast elections, baseball games and Oscar winners. The trick, as he argues, is to take a Bayesian approach to data analytics, getting comfortable with probabilities, working hard to recognize and account for our biases, and not trying to predict certainties. When we predict certainties, we are almost always wrong.
In short, Big Data has tended to come with its share of Big Hype. So long as we’re realistic about its potential, and recognize that our data is only as useful as the human intelligence we bring to it, minus the human biases with which we burden it, Big Data should, indeed, pay significant dividends.
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Google Gets Trademark Reprieve In Sweden Over Definition Of ‘Ungoogleable’
Mar 26th
“Ungoogleable” won’t become an official word in Sweden … at least not this year. As Sveriges Radio reports (found via The Verge), the Language Council of Sweden won’t be adding ogooglebar, which translates to “ungoogleable,” to its official list of new…
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YouTube Now Gets More Than 1 Billion Unique Visitors Every Month
Mar 22nd
YouTube’s milestone is important to more than 1 million content creators from over 30 countries who are earning money from their YouTube videos, as well as more than a million advertisers. Also, YouTube search data is now available on Google Trends.
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Apple Finally Gets Serious About User Security, Adds Two-Step Verification
Mar 21st
Apple is beefing up its security for users of its iTunes, App Store and iBookstore consumers. Starting today, Apple is offering two-step verification for Apple ID, the authentication mechanism it uses for customers using iPhone, iPad and Mac computers.
The move is long overdue for Apple. Two-step verification is a security feature that requires users to verify their identity in more than one way. Previously, if you bought an app in the App Store, Apple would only ask you for your password. That’s a one-step verification. Two-step verification adds another hurdle — asking users to swipe a card, for instance, or to enter a PIN texted to their phone. The idea is that each additional factor used to authenticate a customer makes it that much harder for spammers and crooks to log in as someone they’re not.
Apple is enabling two-step verification as an “optional security feature” for Apple ID. To set it up, you must register one or more trusted devices — say, your smartphone (though technically any device you control that can receive 4-digit verification codes via SMS text or the “Find My iPhone” feature of iOS will do). Apple will also send users a 14 character “Recovery Code” you can print out and save as a way of getting back into your account should you lose your smartphone or forget your password.
The Importance Of Two-Step Authentication
Many companies use multi-factor authentication. Google has offered two-step authentication to all users for more than two years. Facebook also offers it.
The biggest cautionary tale about Apple security and two-step authentication recently is that of technology reporter Mat Honan. Honan, now a senior writer at Wired, had many of his important accounts hacked, including his Twitter, Google and Apple ID. The hackers, who Honan said were after his three letter @mat Twitter account, were able to remotely erase his iPhone, iPad and MacBook after gaining access to his Apple account.
Apple, which lacked two-factor authentication at the time, more or less allowed the hackers into Honan’s accounts after they had tracked some personal information about him through his Amazon account. If Apple ID had two-factor authentication at the time, the malicious attack might well have stopped dead when trying to dive into Honan’s Apple accounts.
How To Set Up Two-Factor Authentication
Go to Apple’s support page here and follow the directions. It’s fairly simple. First, you want to sign in to your account with “Manage your Apple ID.” Then click on “Password and Security.” Click on “Two-Step Verification” and follow the onscreen instructions.
Many smartphone users are clueless on how much access their unique IDs allow them. Many people, such as Honan, have most of their gadget and social accounts tied through Apple ID or like services. To stay safe, best to make sure that:
- your passwords are unique;
- your accounts aren’t tied together through a single service (so that if it gets hacked, they all do);
- you use two-step authentication whenever possible.
Lead image via Flickr user thisisanicephoto, CC 2.0
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Nvidia Finally Gets Faces Right – Until They Open Their Mouths
Mar 21st
Nvidia has just about pulled off the trick of rendering computer-generated human faces — in real time — that won’t make viewers squirm. At least so long as they don’t grimace. Or try to talk.
The graphics chip maker Nvidia said on Tuesday that it had teamed up with the University of Southern California to develop two sets of simulation technologies designed to improve rendering and simulations in video games, one for oceans (Wave Works) and one for faces (Face Works).
The faces technology is the big deal here. At certain moments during a demonstration at its GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia’s virtual “Ira” transcended the so-called “uncanny valley” and made me think that the virtual head on stage was an actual, living person.
It’s been a long time coming.
Graphics Chips: Not Just For Graphics Any More
Years ago, Nvidia, Rendition, 3Dlabs and others helped transform the PC with the introduction of 3D graphics, from which evolved PC gaming, CAD animation, video production and a number of other creative enterprises. Nvidia’s chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang has been an evangelist of sorts, helping to push Nvidia into the enterprise space with integrated machines that use its graphics processing units (GPUs), as well as into smartphones and tablets with new versions of its Tegra chips.
“Over the last 20 years, this medium has transformed the PC from a computer for information and productivity to one of creativity, expression and discovery,” Huang said in his opening keynote. “The beauty and the power of interactivity this medium allows us to connect with ideas in a way that no other medium can. And the GPU is the engine of this medium.”
The fundamental building block of the GPU is the polygon, also known as “triangles” – groundbreaking games like Alone in the Dark created 3D characters out of polygons that players could easily distinquish. Today, however, faster processors have allowed those 3D polygons to become so small that they can’t seen by the naked eye. Those 3D surfaces can be colored, textured and even “bump-mapped” to break up the regularity of the image, improving realism.
At the same time, GPUs have become physics engines, modelling everything from how light passes through and reflects off of objects – ray tracing – to applying real “physics” to objects as they fall and bounce. Tracking particles as they move, such as smoke or water, is also part of the equation. That’s the kind of computational power that supercomputers tap into – and in February, Nvidia launched its Titan card, using the same GPU technology as the world’s fastest supercomputer, ORNL’s Titan, uses.
Face Works, Ira And The “Uncanny Valley”
For a time, both Nvidia and its chief rival, ATI Technologies (now part of AMD) used, well, virtual dolls, to demonstrate the realism of their graphics technology and appeal to hormone-fueled gamers. AMD’s Ruby is a thing of the past, but Nvidia’s fairy-like Dawn appeared in Huang’s keynote. The showcase for 2002′s GeForce FX line, Dawn was created to embody “cinematic computing” and turned heads with impressive attention to detail, realistic hair and dynamic lighting effects. But Face Works and Ira are the future.
Nvidia’s Face Works was developed in conjunction with USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, which helped develop LightStage, a high-speed illumination system designed for human-scale subjects consisting of 6,500 white LED sources. Essentially, Huang said, a person marches into a giant sphere, where the subject is photographed from 253 different directions. Each image is matted onto a black background, and compiled into a 3D object. Face Works allows each object to be modified, or “stretched,” to simulate speech and movement.
It’s not easy. “Simulating an ocean is hard; simulating a face is harder,” Huang said.
Humans are trained to instinctively spot things that are a little off, and that reaction, dubbed “the uncanny valley,” ironically kicks in the more realistic a simulation gets. Basically, some people get creeped out by CGI that looks a little too realistic, but not quite realistic enough to be fully convincing.
Ira demonstrates the problem. As these images show, Ira looks quite normal – fully human, actually, under certain lighting conditions. What Face Works does is model light as it enters the skin, reflects, and diffuses through the skin’s surface. Slight disfigurements – a freckle, skin pores – add to the realism.
But the illusion often breaks when the 3D model moves, as you can see in the keynote video below (the ocean modeling begins at about 9 minutes in, Ira and Dawn appear about 16 minutes in). Essentially, Ira looks eerily realistic when motionless, but when he grimaces (and, above all, talks) we begin to pick up on how his facial expressions aren’t quite lifelike.
Still, recent games like L.A. Noire became famous for their realistic depictions of human faces, and “reading” expressions became a gameplay mechanic. Years ago, getting those right at all was an amazing accomplishment. We’re now at the point where companies like Nvidia get it right most of the time. “All of the time,” it seems, will soon be within our grasp.
Wave Works: Splash!
Nvidia’s ocean simulation, meanwhile, uses Wave Works to tap into Titan for what the company called the most realistic ocean simulation ever. Most water simulations paint the ocean as a flat surface, with random ripples distorting it. Objects that “float” on top, like a ship, might not actually move in response to the ocean’s undulations.
Wave Works, however, uses 20,000 “virtual sensors” on a ship model to model water pressure, and to respond to the proximity of the water on the ship. And Water Works even models spray, tracking 100,000 “spray particles” as they move through the air. The Nvidia software can model an entire Beaufort scale of wind speed, dialing up everything from a sunny day to a near-hurricane, Huang said. And as the ship moves, it crashes through the waves, being tossed up and down. This simulation, at least, was completely convincing.
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Google Gets Set To Babble — Maybe — In A Bid To Eclipse iMessage
Mar 19th
Google reportedly plans to roll up all of its texting/calling/video services — that would include Talk, Chat, Voice, and Hangout — into one platform called Babble, multiple unnamed sources are telling Geek.com.
The same sources also claim Google will unveil the service at Google I/O this May, but didn’t provide a concrete launch date. When I asked Google to babble about Babble, a PR representative primly responded that the company doesn’t comment on rumor or speculation.
Should Babble actually bubble to the surface at Google, it could consolidate many of the company’s disparate communication technologies, most of which have long had trouble playing nicely with one another. For instance, Google Chat is currently the only messaging option that works across various Google services — for instance, allowing users to text their via Gmail and then migrate those chats over to Google+ when the social network is opened. Babble holds the promise of making such chat work anywhere and everywhere within the Google universe and across all Android devices.
And in an ideal world, the Google+ Hangout video chatting service would integrate directly within chats alongside Google Voice accounts, and file sharing in those chats would work through Google Drive. It sounds both neat and kind of awesome, but this sort of communication integration is something the search giant has never really managed to pull off.
What This May Mean For iMessage
If it delivers on that promise, Babble could position Google to take on Apple’s successful messaging ecosystem, iMessage. Apple’s anywhere, any time messaging service, which lets users pick up ongoing chat sessions while moving from, say, an iPhone to an iPad or a Mac, originally won fans because it let users text each other without running up carrier texting charges. Then Apple began expanding iMessage, first opening it to Macs as a standalone Messages app that let laptops and desktops communicate with any iOS device for free via Wi-Fi. Combined with FaceTime for iOS and yet another standalone app for Mac computers of the same name, Apple had locked down the inherent features of Google Chat and Hangouts without the need of a social network.
So by bringing messaging full circle — delivering it to iPod Touches, iPads and all Mac computers with the OS X Mountain Lion and iOS 5 upgrades — Apple neatly looped in nearly all of its devices in a way Google has never been able to match. But Babble could change all that.
Babble could, theoretically, make it a lot easier for users to stay in touch with their friends and contacts across Google’s many different services — and that could be damaging to Apple. After all, the tightly managed yet smooth accessibility of moving between iOS and OS X is one of the many lock-in strategies that Apple employs in its “walled garden” philosophy.
Google, however, doesn’t need hardware to ensure its services get into the hands of as many users as possible. An iPhone user could use Chrome as a browser, Gmail as a primary email client, and communicate to all their friends using Chat, G+, and Hangouts. Assuming Babble could pull that all under one umbrella, it gets easier to see how, at a certain point, an Android device would make more sense for users who primarily communicates via a slew of free Google services.
Hardware is Apple’s strong selling point, but Google has shown time and again that an amazing suite of Web services will keep users locked in where it truly matters. As for the name, Babble certainly fits in the cheeky canon with the likes of Twitter and Jabber. Whether or not that’s simply a project codename or the real deal won’t likely come to light until May.
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