By Gilbert Falso :: 8:13 AM
According to published reports, Apple will unveil a new streaming music service today at it annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. The service will be announced during the opening keynote address, and represents the company’s most ambitious partnership with the music industry since the pioneering launch of the iTunes Music Store.
The service will be similar to Pandora’s streaming radio service. It will allow users (U.S.-based only, for now) to listen to radio-like channels of music customized to their interests and musical tastes. The service is free, supported by advertising. Individual tracks will also feature options to purchase and download the music in the iTunes store.
It is expected that the service will only be announced today at the WWDC, but not be available until some time later this year, likely in September or October. Apple has inked deals with music licensing groups at Warner, Universal, Vivendi, and Sony over the past few weeks, and is expected to continue to add publishers to its roster. Apple has been in negotiations with the music companies for over a year.
As for a name, the Wall Street Journal is citing sources that claim it will be called “iRadio,” although other names have been tossed around as well. It is likely to be the first thing out of the gate at the keynote, which begins at 10:00 AM Pacific Time.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 11:02 PM
Today, Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former CIA employee and current NSA contractor, was identified as the source of the leak of documents this past week that revealed two classified U.S. spy programs. The programs were far-reaching, one allegedly provides telephone call information for all U.S. originated calls to the NSA, and the other program, dubbed PRISM, provides easy access for the government to many top web and social media sites.
After the news broke this afternoon, Snowden was quickly hailed as a hero online, with many quick to support his actions.
A petition has been started at the We The People website, the White House and Obama administration’s petition tool that allows any citizen to start a petition to bring attention for a cause to the administration. The petition asks Obama to Pardon Edward Snowden, saying, “Snowden is a national hero and should be immediately issued a a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs.”
Petitions established on the White House site require 100,000 votes for the administration to respond to them. At the time of this writing, Snowden’s pardon petition has about 5,000 votes.
[Petition to pardon Edward Snowden]
By Gilbert Falso :: 12:47 PM
According to Israeli media reports, search giant Google is very close to acquiring social mapping and navigation app Waze for $1.3 billion.
The app, which allows drivers to track their trips in real time, and share road and speed trap information with other Waze users, has been courted by both Facebook and Apple in recent weeks. Early speculation focused on a possible Facebook purchase for a slightly lower $1 billion price tag. That deal, is apparently off the table at this point.
A Google-Waze combination makes good business sense, as Waze would benefit from Google’s advanced mapping technologies, and Google would inherit a large and dedicated user base from Waze.
At this point, media in Israel are claiming the only sticking point in inking the contracts is the decision for Waze’s top management and development teams to remain in their native Israel. A move to the U.S. was the breakdown point for Facebook negotiations in May, according to some sources.
Waze has raised a good stockpile of venture capital – $67 million from investors like Blue Run Ventures, Magma Venture Partners, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The app boasted 90 million user reports sent in during 2012, across a combined 10 billion miles tracked.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 5:09 PM
A shooting has been reported this afternoon at Santa Monica College, a two-year educational institution in the seaside city outside of Los Angeles.
Local law enforcement officials and hospital staff have confirmed 3 victims, two of them critically wounded. One of the three victims is the alleged shooter, who was downed by police gunfire.
In addition to the casualties on the College’s campus, Santa Monica fire officials have told a local television station that inside of the charred remains of a house in a nearby neighborhood, the bodies of two unidentified males have been found.
Officials believe, but are not certain, that the shooting and the house fire are connected.
President Barack Obama was in Santa Monica today for a fundraiser, but he was not in the immediate area of the shooting. Secret Service officials have been notified of the incident.
The campus is currently on a lock-down, and the College released the following statement:
“There have been reports of a shooter on the main SMC campus. The college is on lock-down. This means that if you are on campus, stay out of open spaces, stay in doors, lock all doors and do not open the doors until you receive an all clear from college officials. If you are off campus, do not come to campus.”
By Paul Thomson :: 12:24 PM
Yesterday, Microsoft revealed details about its new console offering, the Xbox One. The announcement confirmed what many Microsoft fans and critics alike had feared – far-reaching digital rights management (DRM) technologies and mandatory Internet connectivity will be a part of the Xbox One experience.
Microsoft will allow users to trade, sell, or lend their physical discs of Xbox Games, but game publishers decide whether or not they will allow their titles to be resold or used on a console different from the one it was originally registered to. However, trading or selling games via marketplaces like Ebay or Craigslist will be more difficult now, as Microsoft will only allow someone who has been on your friends list for 30 days to active a game you give or sell to them. Only one additional sale or trade past the original registrant’s purchase is allowed.
As far as Internet connectivity, the requirements are not quite “always on,” but some level of regular Internet connection will be required for users to play games. The new Xbox One console must be able to access the Internet once every 24 hours. If a connection cannot be made, the console will not allow games (even those played completely in offline mode) to be played.
To ally some fears behind the built in Kinect sensor camera and microphone, Microsoft claims that users will have complete control over that aspect of the Xbox. “When Xbox One is on and you’re simply having a conversation in your living room, your conversation is not being recorded or uploaded,” said a Microsoft statement.
However, that statement regarding Kinect was released just hours before the Washington Post broke a story about Microsoft’s involvement in a secret government spy program called Prism, that allows the NSA and FBI to have direct access to customer usage data from Microsoft and eight other technology companies. With new information about the government’s ability to freely sift through Microsoft’s data, many in the gaming community are fearful of having a Microsoft product that can film and listen to them at any time in their home.
The poster below, reminiscent of many of the themes in George Orwell’s book 1984 was posted to Reddit earlier this morning in a thread detailing the privacy issues of the new Xbox console.
