Zuckerberg, Milner, Brin and Other Tech Titans Donate Millions to Science

When you’re as rich as some of the Silicon Valley elite, most anything is at your fingertips. Jetpacks, yachts, skydiving while wearing augmented reality headgear. Oh, and there’s that whole philanthropy thing, too.

A few are opting for that last option with the launch of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation on Wednesday, a non-profit organization drummed up by a handful of tech billionaires.

“I think that our society needs more heroes, more scientists, more researchers, more engineers,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, one of the sponsors of the foundation, at an event in San Francisco on Wednesday. “The things that we can do from the sidelines are build institutions that celebrate your work.”

The prize aims to spur innovation in the field of science research and is backed by tech luminaries including Russian entrepreneur and venture capitalist Yuri Milner, who reached out to Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin months ago to talk about launching the foundation. Art Levinson, Apple chairman and former CEO of Genentech, will act as the chairman of the board for the foundation.

The first round of prize recipients includes 11 scientists from a range of research disciplines, including studies in genetics, cancer research and neural behavior. Each of the 11 prize winners will receive a $3 million award for their work, and Brin, Zuckerberg, Milner and the rest of the sponsors have agreed to a five-year commitment to awarding prizes.

For now, the group’s board intends to remain small. Milner said the design of the five-person board — which also includes Zuckerberg’s wife Priscilla Chan and Brin’s wife Anne Wojcicki (a biology analyst and co-founder of 23 and Me) — is purposely small, targeting research on five specific diseases chosen by the board members. Wojcicki’s donation will go to supporting Parkinson’s research; the other sponsors haven’t named their chosen diseases yet.

At the same time, Zuckerberg said there’s room for expansion. “We specifically said we weren’t going to name the prize after a specific person,” he said, in order to potentially attract more sponsors in the tech industry.

U.S. Unveils New Strategy to Combat Hacking

The White House unveiled a new strategy to exert pressure on China and other countries that engage in corporate espionage against the U.S. as part of a new administration push to counter cyber attacks and commercial spying.

The strategy, released Wednesday in a report that was the subject of a White House meeting, raised the prospect of stepped-up U.S. trade restrictions on products and services derived from stolen trade secrets. Officials also outlined a series of diplomatic actions to reinforce the administration’s commitment to curbing such thefts.

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The Pirate Bay’s advertising program actually works

A little less than one year ago, The Pirate Bay announced a new campaign where the site’s iconic logo would be replaced by an ad for some form of media — usually music. Dubbed The Promo Bay, the promotional campaign aimed to help artists promote their work — no doubt an effort by The Pirate Bay to show that it isn’t just a platform for piracy. Those of you that have visited the site frequently enough may have wondered how well the promotion platform is working, and luckily for us, the developer of the indie game — Sean Hogan — Anodyne broke down just how much the promotion helped.

The Promo Bay isn’t simply a free promotion, as the catch is that the featured artist must provide a free torrent to the promoted work. Hogan said that the promotion was a success, and fueled sales to far exceed the projected numbers.

Over the three days that Anodyne was promoted on The Pirate Bay, Sean experienced traffic of over 240,000 unique visitors, with the largest referral being from The Pirate Bay. The total cost of the promotion was $7, but that was simply web-hosting costs. The release trailer of the game broke 100,000 views, and the Facebook page gained around 200 to 300 Likes.

To compare to how the game was doing before The Promo Bay, the developers only experienced traffic of around 40,000 unique visitors, which resulted in around 800 to 900 sales at an average of $8 a pop, which results in around $6,400 to $7,200. The sale resulted in around 6,700 purchases of the game, and though the average price paid was much lower than $8 — at around $1.50 to $2.76 depending on game-only or bundle purchases — the developers doubled their revenue from the sale, generating around $12,000.

So, at least for one developer, The Promo Bay actually worked, showing that more sales come with more exposure, even if the product is sitting right there available for free.

Ancient icosahedron: 3D printing ressurrects the world’s oldest die

While it’s unlikely that the ancient Egyptians had anything like Dungeons and Dragons (Sarcophagi and Serpents?), we’ve never been shy about misappropriating the discoveries of pre-Christian Pharaohs. Why start now? A few months ago the internet became aware of a 20-sided die carved in serpentine and dated to the first few centuries BC. Inlaid with ancient Greek symbols, it was almost certainly used for gambling and/or simple games of chance, but it was quickly heralded as the originator of the critical hit. Forget 20s — a true gamer rolls Kappas.

Now, the inevitable: a 3D-printable model of the die makes it attainable by those of us without a professional art thief on retainer. Starting at $17 and ranging to over $300, depending entirely on the materials and finishing used, this die is sure to spice up any friendly dungeon-crawl.

It is also, unfortunately, likely to confuse any such gathering of the nerds, as it features the same Ptolemaic symbols as the original. Unless you’re willing to incorporate yet another chart into your role-playing sessions, this one will likely stay on the shelf as a display.

The confluence of nerd interests, increasingly medieval printing materials, and the simplicity of a die’s design has actually led to quite a number of stylistically ancient dice. It turns out that almost any primary sold can look ruggedly ancient when made out of pitted steel.

The thorn dice have attracted a fair amount of attention, as heavy metal steampunk or caltrops D4; the sheer variety of the die designs out there should threaten the dice-making industry.

Nestlé finds horsemeat in pasta meals

World's biggest food company withdraws products in Italy, Spain and France, saying they contained more than 1% horse

Nestl , the world's biggest food company, has removed beef pasta products from sale in Italy, Spain and France after finding traces of horse DNA.

The Swiss-based company, which last week said its products were unaffected by the scandal, said its tests had found more than 1% horse DNA in two products.

"We have informed the authorities accordingly," Nestl said in a statement on Monday. "There is no food safety issue."

Nestl withdrew two chilled pasta products, Buitoni Beef Ravioli and Beef Tortellini, in Italy and Spain. Lasagnes la Bolognaise Gourmandes, a frozen product for catering businesses produced in France, will also be withdrawn.

Nestl was suspending deliveries of all products made using beef from a German subcontractor to one of its suppliers, the company said.

The discovery of horsemeat in products labelled as beef has spread from the UK across Europe since last month, prompting product withdrawals, consumer anger and government investigations into the continent's complex food-processing chains.

Governments across Europe have stressed that horsemeat poses little or no health risk, although some carcasses have been found to be tainted with a painkiller banned for human consumption.

But the scandal has damaged the confidence of consumers in supermarkets and fast food chains since horsemeat was first identified in Irish burgers.

The retailer Lidl said on Monday it had withdrawn products from its stores in Finland and Sweden after finding traces of the meat.

Chinese military unit behind 'prolific and sustained hacking'

Security firm says Unit 61398 has stolen hundreds of terabytes of data from at least 141 organisations in US, UK and Canada

A secretive Chinese military unit is believed to be behind a prolific series of hacking attacks, a US computer security company has said, contradicting claims in Beijing that the government is not involved in such operations.

The report, by Mandiant, identified the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) Shanghai-based Unit 61398 as the most likely perpetrators of the hacking. The company said it believed the unit had carried out "sustained" attacks on a wide range of industries.

"The nature of Unit 61398's work is considered by China to be a state secret; however, we believe it engages in harmful computer network operations," Mandiant said. "It is time to acknowledge the threat that is originating in China, and we wanted to do our part to arm and prepare security professionals to combat that threat effectively."

China has dismissed the allegations as "groundless", saying it strictly outlaws the practice, and says it has also been a victim of such crimes.

Questioned on the report, the foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said he doubted the evidence would withstand scrutiny. He said: "To make groundless accusations based on some rough material is neither responsible nor professional."

Unit 61398 is based in the Pudong district, China's financial and banking hub, and is staffed by perhaps thousands of people proficient in English as well as computer programming and network operations, the report said.

It said the unit had "stolen hundreds of terabytes of data from at least 141 organisations across a diverse set of industries beginning as early as 2006". Most of the victims were located in the US, with smaller numbers in Canada and Britain. The information stolen included details on mergers and acquisitions and the emails of senior employees, the report said.

China has consistently denied being involved in such activities, but experts have dismissed the denials. "The PLA plays a key role in China's multifaceted security strategy, so it makes sense that its resources would be used to facilitate economic cyber-espionage that helps the Chinese economy," said Dmitri Alperovitch, chief technology officer and co-founder of CrowdStrike, a web security firm.

Apple Airs New Ads With Beating Hearts, Sharks and All That Jazz

Here are two ads — called “Alive” and “Together” — that Apple just released to tout its iPad and iPad mini. They’re a clear departure from Apple’s previous TV spots.

With jazzy music and quick word-association, they are much more hyperactively catchy than the usual doink-doink, thinking-nerd style of many others, and they feature a range of very active and visually arresting apps.

Here they are:

Viral Video: Cure "Downton Abbey" Depression With a Dose of Dowager

Without giving away the tragic end to the third season finale of popular PBS Masterpiece Classics television series “Downton Abbey,” it might be a good idea to take a big dose of Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess to feel better.

Here’s a compilation of some of her most withering asides from the first season — take 10 and see me in the morning — and also an interview of Smith that aired last night on “60 Minutes”:

Mercury's 'dynamic and complex world' revealed by Nasa's Messenger

First time planet has high-resolution maps after Nasa spacecraft orbited planet over course of a year

Mercury is the smallest of the solar system's eight planets and, for decades, also its most neglected by humans. While Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn have been probed and photographed in exquisite detail during the space age, the closest planet to the Sun has had to make do with a few flybys from the Mariner 10 spacecraft in the early 1970s.

Now Mercury has its own high-resolution maps, down to the scale of kilometres, made from thousands of images taken by Nasa's Messenger spacecraft as it orbited the planet over the course of a year.

"Messenger has revealed Mercury to be a fascinating, dynamic and complex world," said David Blewett at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University and a scientist for the Messenger mission. Part of the reason, he said, that it had taken more than 30 years to revisit the planet since the Mariner 10 flybys was that most people thought Mercury was probably like the moon and largely inert and boring.

"We know now that it is an oddball planet," said Blewett, speaking ahead of a briefing on Friday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston. "It's the smallest of the eight planets but has the highest density. The interior structure is different than the other planets. The geologic surface is different to the moon and Mars. The surface composition is enigmatic because ... it consists of rock types that we don't have much experience with. It has a global, Earth-like magnetic field, Venus and Mars do not."

The new global colour map is an enhanced image that shows the different compositions of rocks on the surface of Mercury. The more orange areas are volcanic plains while the make-up of the rocks in the deep blue areas is unknown. Though Messenger was able to detect the abundance of individual elements on Mercury's surface - including iron, titanium, sulphur and potassium - without rock samples to study, scientists cannot determine the exact compounds or minerals in which those elements are arranged.

Mercury orbits the sun in an eccentric orbit that gets as close as 46m kilometres and never goes further than 70m kilometres from our star (earth, for comparison, stays about 150m kilometres away). This means the surface of the planet can reach more than 400C.

Nasa's Messenger spacecraft made its first flyby of the planet in 2008 and began to orbit in early 2011, since when it has been mapping and measuring the surface of the planet. In November 2012, Nasa announced there was water ice and tar-like organic molecules at Mercury's poles. Because the planet's axis of rotation around the sun barely tilts from the vertical, the deepest parts of craters at the polar regions never get sunlight and the temperatures there are about -200C. The presence of ice and organic compounds lends weight to the idea that the planet was pummeled by icy comets during the early years of the solar system.

The biggest surprise for researchers is that, on the surface, the abundance of relatively volatile elements such as potassium and sulphur is so high. Most of the models for the formation of Mercury predict that these elements should have evaporated away during the planet's formation.

"The big problem in making Mercury is how do you get a planet that has such a huge iron core and such a small proportion of rock? One of the ideas was that maybe there was a giant impact that stripped off much of the rocky outer layers and left you with unusually high proportion of iron in the core," said Blewett. But Messenger's data, he said, meant planetary scientists would have to come up with new ideas.

One alternative candidate is that the chemical conditions in the inner part of the nebula where Mercury was forming were different than scientists had expected, and this probably allowed iron to condense first, while the rockier parts of the planet were swept away. "That model seems to predict the correct sulphur and potassium abundance for the surface and that's probably the leading contender right now," said Blewett.

Syria crisis: opposition rules out talks with Assad - Friday 15 February 2013

Follow how the day unfolded as Syria's opposition tried to clarify its approach to negotiations with the government as they faced criticism from Russia

Matthew Weaver

Forget about next-gen video game consoles from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft – Apple is going to dominate them all

“What I'm about to say is undoubtedly going to piss some of you off,” MG Siegler writes for TechCrunch. “And that's fine. Because in a few years, I'll be right and you'll look silly.”

“While everyone is focused on the next generation video game consoles from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft - the latter two of which should be coming later this year - Apple is going to dominate them all,” Siegler writes. “And it won't even be that difficult.”

“Anyone who has been following the smartphone space for the past few years knows that Apple has sort of backed into video game dominance by way of their iOS devices. Apple has sold over 500 million of them. These devices have yielded over 40 billion downloads of the over 800,000 apps. And a large portion of those apps are games,” Siegler writes. “Even if you lump together the Xbox 360, the Playstation 3, the Wii, and the Nintendo DS, Apple has still sold about 100 million more iOS devices than all of those systems combined... [and] in a much shorter span.”

Siegler writes, “The rumor that Apple would unveil some sort of Apple TV SDK at an event next month turned out to be bogus (as most things analysts say about Apple prove to be). But that doesn't mean it's not coming. In fact, I'd bet on it sooner rather than later.”

Read more in the full article here.

How Tony ‘Father of the iPod’ Fadell reinvented the thermostat with Nest – and what’s coming next

“In 2007, Tony Fadell believed he could see the future. He was an Apple executive who had created the iPod and was a leading figure on the team that had worked on the iPhone, which the company was about to launch,” Tom Simonite reports for MIT Technology Review. “He knew people would soon form attachments to the Internet-connected computers they carried in their pockets, and he kept thinking about that as he started another major project: building an energy-efficient dream home near Lake Tahoe.”

“‘I said, ‘How do I design this home when the primary interface to my world is the thing in my pocket?” says Fadell. He baffled architects with demands that the home's every feature, from the TV to the electricity supply, be ready for a world in which the Internet and mobile apps made many services more responsive,” Simonite reports. “When it came to choosing a programmable thermostat for his expensive eco-friendly heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system, Fadell blew a gasket: ‘They were 500 bucks a pop, and they were horrible and doing nothing and brain-dead. And I was like, ‘Wait a second, I'll design my own.””

Advertisement: Nest – Learning Thermostat 2nd Generation – Stainless-Steel

Simonite reports, “Fadell's instincts turned out to be correct. Nest's first model, a striking stainless-steel-ringed disc with a circular display, went on sale in October 2011 to widespread acclaim. The HVAC industry, a sector as unexciting as the thermostats it sold, was astonished by the fresh ideas behind the device, which learned from its owners' behavior and could be controlled with a polished mobile app. The company released a second, more advanced thermostat in October 2012, and says sales of the two models have been brisk... Now the company is preparing to release another product. Details are scarce, but it seems that Fadell's thermostat epiphany has launched a technological campaign that will make every part of your home more intelligent.”

Much more in the full article here.

Elite Iranian general assassinated near Syria-Lebanon border

Syrian rebels claim responsibility for killing of General Hassan Shateri, a senior figure in the Revolutionary Guards

A senior commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards has been killed while travelling from Syria to Lebanon, according to Iranian authorities.

A man identified as General Hassan Shateri was reportedly assassinated by what Iranian officials described as "the agents and supporters of the Zionist regime" while travelling from Damascus to Beirut.

It was not immediately clear in which of the two countries Shateri was killed but a Syrian rebel commander said an Iranian official was killed in an attack carried out by Syrian rebels in Zabadani in southwestern Syria, close to the Lebanese border.

"General Hassan Shateri was martyred by the agents and supporters of the Zionist regime on his way to Beirut from Damascus," the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted the Revolutionary Guards' spokesman, Ramezan Sharif, as saying on Thursday.

Iran's state English-language television, Press TV, reported that Shateri was killed on Tuesday and described him as the man who "led the Iranian-financed reconstruction projects in the south of Lebanon". By pointing the finger at "Israeli agents", Sharif was probably referring to Syrian rebels whom Iranian officials portray as terrorist armed groups backed by Tel Aviv.

Iran is a staunch supporter of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, providing both with military and financial support. Syria gives Iran physical access to Lebanon and Hezbollah, which is strategically important for Tehran's leaders because of the group's geographical position in respect to Israel. Iran does not recognise Israel as a country and usually refers to it as "the Zionist regime".

After the 2006 war between the Israeli military and Hezbollah, Iran's elite forces bolstered their presence in southern Lebanon, saying they were willing to revamp the region's war-stricken infrastructure. This became a contentious issue for Tel Aviv but boosted the popularity of Iran among Hezbollah supporters.

Mehr said Shateri was a veteran of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war who in recent years "had devoted his time to the reconstruction of damaged areas after the 33-day Israeli war on Lebanon".

Iran's embassy in Lebanon, meanwhile, identified the dead man as Hessam Khoshnevis, leading to confusion that there might be a second death. But the circumstances given about Khoshnevis's death and his job title were similar to those of Shateri.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP that Shateri was killed when a rebel group ambushed his vehicle while he was returning to Lebanon from Syria.

On Thursday Iran held a funeral ceremony for Shateri in Tehran that was attended by the foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, and the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari. Ghasem Suleimani, the man who heads the external arm of the Revolutionary Guards, known as the Quds force, members of which usually shun public ceremonies, also attended the funeral.

In May 2012, a senior Quds force commander conceded for the first time that Iranian forces were operating in Syria in support of the Assad regime.

"If the Islamic republic was not present in Syria, the massacre of people would have happened on a much larger scale," Ismail Gha'ani, the deputy head of the Quds force, said at the time.

In February 2012, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, went public to say that the Icountry has provided assistance to Hezbollah and Palestinian group Hamas.

"We have intervened in anti-Israel matters, and it brought victory in the 33-day war by Hezbollah against Israel in 2006, and in the 22-day war [in Gaza Strip]" he said at the time.

Crashlytics Makes Enterprise Features Free for All

Crashlytics, the mobile crash-reporting and analysis platform that was acquired by Twitter last month, said today that it will make its enterprise-level features available for free. In a company blog post, the company’s co-founder, Wayne Chang, said, “The features and usage we used to charge for based on limits are now unlimited across the board.”

Exploratorium App Explores the World of Sound

The folks at the Exploratorium in San Francisco are some of the best in the world at designing participatory exhibits that teach visitors about their own perception and the world around them through direct experience.

The Exploratorium has long had a website — it was the world's 600th (or so) in 1993 — but the tablet is perhaps a more fitting venue for its craft, given that the devices are by their nature social because they can be easily shared, and that touch provides a less abstract method of interaction.

The Exploratorium’s first free iPad app, Color Uncovered, has been downloaded one million times since late 2011.

Today, it’s launching a second, called Sound Uncovered, with a set of fun and mind-bending audio illusions, manipulations and tests.

Jean Cheng, who led the team that built the app, took me through a series of mini-iPad exhibits on a recent visit to the still-under-construction new Exploratorium building on the water at Pier 15 in San Francisco.

For instance, there’s a Mobius strip kind of demo of a chord progression, where it’s impossible to find the highest note. There’s another one where you move a slider until you can hear a high-pitched sound, and the app estimates your age. There’s another that plays your voice backward so you can teach yourself audio palindromes.

They’re not necessarily things you’d do over and over again, but they’re pretty neat in the moment, with explanations of what phenomena are occurring.

Asked what ages Sound Uncovered is appropriate for, Cheng declined to say. “Anyone’s experience is authentic,” she said. “This is for curious people of all ages. It’s not about answers, it’s about a ‘what happens’ style of thinking.”

Sound Uncovered was developed with a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Exploratorium doesn’t have any particular ambition of making money from it.

Facebook's Rose: Content Discovery Has Always Been Social, and It Always Will Be

Facebook likes to think of itself as a gateway to the huge markets that have arisen around the social graphs of its users. There’s no arguing with that. Facebook’s audience is a massive one, and there’s obvious value in reaching it. The question is, how do companies do that, and do it effectively? As VP of partnerships at Facebook, Dan Rose is charged with convincing media companies that Facebook’s audience is one worth reaching, and then delivering on that promise. Not always a sure thing, as Facebook’s high-profile falling out with General Motors last year shows.

During a wide-ranging interview at D: Dive Into Media, Rose talked about how Facebook views media, and how media should view Facebook.

“Facebook is primarily two core pillars — identity and sharing,” Rose said, adding that both pillars are part of Facebook’s media pitch.

“From an identity perspective, so much of who we are and how we identify ourselves comes from what we read and what we watch,” Rose continued. “So our identity platform can’t be complete without media being part of it. Similarly, the sharing piece can’t be complete without status updates about news stories, music friends are listening to, updates about movies people are seeing.”

The high-level principle driving this is the idea of finding the perfect balance between great user experience and delivering audience to platform partners.

“At its core, what we’re really striving to do is find the perfect equilibrium from a great user experience and a strong platform that developers and partners will continue to invest in,” Rose said. “… We need to keep the news feed interesting, and one of the ways we do that is through media.”

At the same time, however, Rose said Facebook must “honor” content, and presumably appetite for audience and buzz that’s ever-present behind it.

“We think it’s our job to honor content,” Rose said. “Media content deserves to be honored and respected in the news feed. For example, we recently increased the size of images from media partners. That’s more engaging for users, and for partners it’s great, because click-throughs and engagement increased.”

Media content also deserves to be consumed, says Rose. And here, too, Facebook plays a big role, and hopes to play an even bigger one in the future.

“How did you hear about ‘Downton Abbey’?” Rose asked. “I discovered it on Facebook. I kept seeing it pop up in my news feed. The simple fact is most of us find the TV shows we enjoy by listening to suggestions from our friends. That’s the primary discovery mechanism for content right now. Imagine a future, though, in which you turn on the TV and see a feed of all the shows your friends watch. We think that’s a very compelling idea. Content discovery always has been and always will be social.”

Additional Notes From the Session

• On mobile: “So many things are unlocked on mobile. You don't bring your computer to a restaurant or a party.”
• On Zynga: “I don’t think we walked away from Zynga at all. They built a large and successful business on our platform. … We still spend a lot of time with Zynga.”
• On Instagram: In the past, Facebook acquired small companies for talent, with Instagram being the first company it bought for the product. However, Rose said that more deals for product and technologies are likely.

[ See post to watch video ]

Apple’s App Store, Mac App Store, iTunes Store, and iBookstore down for some, slow for many

On Tuesday evening, Apple’s App Store over at itunes.apple.com started experiencing significant slowdowns. We first noticed the store’s pages stopped loading properly at 4:23PM EST, meaning the outage has already lasted over half an hour at the time of writing.

While this means you can’t access apps such as Facebook for iPhone from the company’s website, a quick check on iOS devices shows that this issue is not affecting the app store on Apple’s mobile devices (aside from app developer pages not loading). The issue is, however, also causing problems for the iTunes store (apps and media content) on the desktop, the Mac App Store, and the iBookstore.

For some, those stores are not loading at all, while for others they are loading but take forever to do so. Apple’s status page for its Services, Stores, and iCloud showed green across the board up until 4:43PM EST, at which point it showed problems for the App Store, the iTunes Store, the Mac App Store, and the iBookstore:

Twitter users started to notice as well, with the earliest report coming in at 4:51PM EST. A search for app store down on the social network shows that more users started reporting the problems right after.

We have contacted Apple about this issue. We will update this article if we hear back.

Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

7 reasons why Apple’s unannounced ‘iWatch’ won’t fly

“Apple is reportedly experimenting with wristwatches made of curved glass, a project that could add another profitable product to the company’s iOS arsenal,” Thomas Claburn writes for InformationWeek. “Understandable as it may be that the tech industry would like to see wearable devices follow the same explosive growth trajectory as the mobile market experienced over the last six years, Apple, Google and other companies in this space have yet to demonstrate there’s any mass-market value to buckling, strapping, mounting or otherwise attaching small, Internet-aware computers to one’s body.”

“There is certainly niche-market value: The Nike + iPod sensor, the Nike Fuelband and other activity-tracking gadgets like the Jawbone UP wristband are loved by some,” Claburn writes. “But these specialized gizmos will never have the broad impact of the iPhone.”

7 Reasons An iWatch Won’t Fly
1. Subscription Fees
2. Battery Life
3. Sensors Don’t Matter
4. Everything Watches Can Do, Phones Can Do Better
5. Notifications Are The New Spam
6. NFC Isn’t A Point of Differentiation
7. Cost

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: This world gets stupider with each passing day.

Tommy, a word of advice: Wait for Apple to actually release something first before you start your silly lists.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Dangerfrogg" for the heads up.]

Five takeaways from Apple CEO Tim Cook’s Goldman Sachs keynote

“If you needed any indication that the Apple ecosystem is growing, you got it this morning: Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company has paid out $8 billion to developers, up from $7 billion earlier this year,” Matthew Lynley writes for The Wall Street Journal.

“Apple CEO Tim Cook just wrapped up a big keynote address at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet conference this morning. There weren't a whole lot of earth-shattering surprises, but Cook did reveal a few new numbers that weren't otherwise known,” Lynley writes. “Things are moving pretty quickly over in Cupertino, it seems, and Cook is extremely bullish.”

Here are a few other takeaways from the keynote:
Retail is still a major focus
Specs don't matter
Halo effects matter
Services are also important
There's an enormous amount of head room for smartphones

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Arline M." for the heads up.]

Spotify launches in Italy and Poland, expanding its presence to 23 territories

Reports suggested it was coming, but today Spotify finally brought its popular music streaming service to Italy and Poland, taking its total number of territories up to 23.

The Italian launch is closely linked to the Sanremo music festival, which will act as a marketing push, as artists give the songs exclusively to Spotify. However, it appears the Swedish company has pushed its service live a little earlier than expected, with the event set to commence on February 12.

When Italian and Polish users visit the Spotify website, they are presented with information on the music streaming service, as well as pricing information. Like in all the other countries in which it operates, Spotify offers three account options — Free, Unlimited and Premium.

The free service offers access to millions of tracks, but comes complete with advertising after a specified number of listens. The Unlimited option does away with those restrictions 4.99/PLN9.99 per month, while Premium adds mobile access for 9.99/PLN19.99 a month.

Spotify launches in Italy with the help of former Googler Veronica Diquattro, who joined the company from Google in November 2012.

At Google, Diquattro was tasked planning and implementing the company’s Google Play launch in Italy, as well as managing the “start-up phase of two vendor offices for Google Play in Ireland and UK, supporting the entire EMEA market,” according to her LinkedIn profile.

We first got wind of probable launch last year, when job posting emerged for both countries online. They will be added to its existing launches in Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.