Google gifts Nexus 7 prime advertising spot on homepage

Google really wants you to buy a Nexus 7 tablet. No, I mean really really. So much so it has gifted the device a prime advertising spot on its homepage.

The Nexus 7 is Google’s first own-branded tablet. Built by Asus, it’s a 7-inch powerhouse running Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). It’s not perfect, but the reviews have been very positive thus far. This isn’t surprising as it only costs $199, half the price of the iPad 2, and a full $300 less than the entry-level, Retina Display-boasting new iPad.


Google has already been promoting the Nexus 7 through television commercials and ads across the Web, but it has now brought it home. Literally. As first noted by CNET, the Nexus 7 is now popping up on the Google homepage for some people. This is prime advertising real estate, being one of the most-trafficked pages on the Web.

It should be noted that this isn’t the first time Google has sought to promote its own products by utilizing its homepage, that distinction goes to the Motorola/Verizon Droid. The Nexus phones and Chrome have also appeared on the Google homepage in previous years. However, these efforts were primarily text-based, while the Nexus 7 enjoys an eye-catching animation.


Google usually keeps its homepage free of clutter in a quest to retain its minimalism. This is excluding the iconic Google logo and the doodles which take its place at random times throughout the year. But advertising is usually off-limits, especially advertising of a visual nature. The Nexus 7 pops its head out of the page several times before emerging under the tagline, ‘The playground is open. The new $199 tablet from Google.’ This links to the 8GB version on Google Play.

The timing of the ad is interesting, coming some time after the Nexus 7 originally launched, at the same time as it became available in several more countries, and just a matter of weeks before Apple is expected to unveil the iPad Mini. It’s at that point that the real battle of the tablets will begin.

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Samsung Windows 8 machines come with free Start key

Samsung has unveiled three new Windows 8 machines with the innards fitted in a touchscreen monitor rather than a desktop unit. We’d say it’s reminiscent of an iMac, but that might be a touchy subject at the moment.

The three computers will debut in October and come with a mouse and keyboard but no touchpad: users will have to rely on the screen to take advantage of the Windows 8 touch features. They are technically part of two different ranges, the Series 5 and Series 7.


The Series 5 machine is 21.5 inch and costs $749. The Series 7 options are 23 inches for $1,099 and 27 inches for $1,699. (Yes, that’s the same 27″/$1699 as the iMac, but seriously, don’t go there.) The specs scale appropriately: the 23 inch has 6GB of memory while the 27 inch has a better processor and 8GB.

Innards aside, the thing that may stand out the most is actually a tweak Samsung has made to Windows 8 itself. Right there at the bottom of the screen is a custom “widget” officially known as the S Launcher.

The widget has two parts. One icon labelled “Start menu” is indeed a replica of the feature that’s disappeared with the “new and improved” Windows 8. As with the old Microsoft feature, you click on this, start typing a term, and the relevant settings and applications show up. The second icon is a gear and brings up settings options, making it the equivalent of the control panel.

You can also drag application icons to the widget. They’ll then remain there until you remove them, allowing the widget to act as a launcher. That’s a launcher and definitely not a dock, OK?

So yeah, Samsung has indeed tried to turn the potential hybrid mess of Windows 8 into a usable and practical machine, and wouldn’t you know, the results don’t half have an appley taste. Let’s hope for Samsung’s sake that this time the lawyers take it as flattery.

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Robotic Shark looks for lost ships in the Arctic

A University of Victoria (UVic) team will use an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to look for ships lost 167 years ago in the Arctic. The ill fated Franklin expedition went down in 1845 looking for the Northwest Passage.

According to the University of Victoria in Canada, the two missing ships are called the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. All 129 crew members were lost. According to the CBC, the ships were outfitted with advanced technology for their time period.



Franklin’s vessels, the Erebus and the Terror, were outfitted with steam engines, desalinators, iron plates over their wooden hulls, and propellers and rudders that could be retracted to prevent ice damage.

Fast forward to 2012 and UVic will be using some of the most advanced technology of our time to look for the doomed vessels. The AUV is called “Mano” which means shark. It has a side sonar which will help its handlers identify items on the sea bottom and chart the region.


“Among the challenges, will be navigating the torpedo-shaped vehicle in the northern waters where the magnetic field is erratic,” says research engineer and team leader Alison Proctor. “That’s an integral part of our navigation system and these are uncharted waters, so we are uncertain what to expect.”

The Mano will be controlled by team members in a “16-foot boat that will be launched daily from a Canadian Coast Guard vessel and a research vessel provided by the Arctic Research Foundation”. They will spend 12 to 14 hours a day in the boat. The actual sonar pictures won’t be seen until the end of the day when the AUV resurfaces and the pictures can be downloaded from the Mano’s onboard computer.

No one knows exactly where the two ships went down so this years expedition may not be successful, but even if it is not successful, it will rule out at least one section of the Arctic for future trips. If the trip is successful and one or both ships are found, this is just the beginning of the exploration.

Once the ships are located by sonar, another expedition will set out to get actual footage of the ship or ships using another type of submersible equipped with a camera. The final step will include sending divers down to the wrecks for a closer look.

Best of luck to the researchers. May seas be calm and the wind always at their back.



The above photograph is of:

UVic Research Team
A team of UVic researchers are traveling to the arctic this summer to help Parks Canada locate Sir John Franklin’s lost ships. Pictured from front to back are UVic research engineers Emmett Gamroth, Alison Proctor and Jeff Kennedy.
Photo by: UVic/Bluefin

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Joel Tenenbaum pays for music piracy

Joel Tenenbaum, one of the few people caught sharing copyrighted content online who decided not to pay up to make it all go away, has been told to, well, pay up.

According to BBC News, in 2005 Joel Tenenbaum, then 16-years-old, was accused of file-sharing and hit with a fine of $5,250 for seven songs. He offered $500 but was declined. In 2007 the case went to court for the first time. Damages of $675,000 were eventually awarded to the music labels who sued Tenenbaum for the 31 songs he now admitted to having downloaded, but he requested a new jury trial.


Today that request was denied, with District Court Judge Rya Zobel affirming the penalty. The judge also saw fit to add an extra verbal admonishment, stating in the judgment [PDF link], “There was ample evidence of willfulness and the need for deterrence based on Tenenbaum’s blatant contempt of warnings and apparent disregard for the consequences of his actions. In spite of the overwhelming evidence from which the jury could conclude that Tenenbaum’s activities were willful, the award of $22,500 per infringement not only was at the low end of the range – only 15% of the statutory maximum – for willful infringement, but was below the statutory maximum for non-willful infringement.” Well, that makes it OK then, I guess.

Should Tenenbaum have stopped doing what he was doing when he was warned against it? Yes, of course. But does that continued infringement on copyrights, willful or otherwise, justify such a huge cash amount in damages? Most right-thinking people would say no. It doesn’t matter that it’s a lot less than the maximum that could have been awarded, it’s still too much for the crime that has been committed.

The maximum is absolutely ludicrous, as Tenenbaum would have been hit with a bill for several million dollars had the jury truly taken against him. But $675,000 is still a sum of money that means Tenenbaum will be in debt for the rest of his life, barring some miraculous lottery win. And all for downloading and distributing just 31 songs.

The RIAA sees this as a glorious victory, but what does it really achieve? Tenenbaum has had his life ruined, but the money is small change to those organizations who’ll (eventually, some day, maybe) receive it. And I can guarantee this verdict won’t do a thing to put anyone else off sharing content online. It just makes the RIAA look bad, and the record companies look greedy and incompetent. Victory!

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German law firm to name and shame “porn downloaders

A law firm in Germany is to begin publicly naming Internet users it believes have infringed copyright by sharing hardcore pornography without permission. A company insider says Urmann will start by targeting those users most likely to be embarrassed by such publicity, though officially its denying that claim.

Urmann mirrors the tactics of law firms in other countries by writing to alleged copyright offenders and asking for a settlement fee to avoid court action. In this case the fee is €650 euros (approx US$815.)


Whether the recipients have genuinely breached copyright isn’t clear. In similar situations in other countries, large numbers of the recipients deny the claims. That’s prompted suggestions that law firms are unlikely to proceed with legal action and are simply relying on a proportion of recipients being frightened enough to pay up.

Urmann now says that from 1 September it will begin publishing details of some of the people on its list of alleged offenders. This list could have as many as 150,000 people on it.

Some reports quoting an insider suggested that the firm would prioritize customers whose IP addresses corresponded to a church, police station or an embassy of a Middle East country: all workplaces where being publicly linked to hardcore porn would be a particular embarrassment.

The company has said this isn’t the case and it will instead prioritize those people accused of downloading the most content.

The legalities of such a tactic are unclear. Urmann believes it is legal because of a German court ruling that said law firms to publish the names of their clients’ opponents as a promotional tactics. However, that seems to be designed more for dealing with corporations (“Hire us because we took on Megacorp!”) and might not hold up for naming private individuals.

There’s also the question of what happens if the company falsely names somebody who hasn’t downloaded any material, which sounds like a recipe for a defamation suit.

In practical terms, Urmann may only be able to carry out its naming and shaming for a few people and hope that puts fear into the rest. Once it does publicly name somebody, they’ve got much less incentive to pay up rather than sit back and wait to be sued.

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Star Wars-style speeder bike tested

A speeder bike just like those seen in Star Wars, you say? I’ll take two, and pay any price you care to name.

I would hope that, as geeks, everyone reading this will have seen the Star Wars movies at least once. The original trilogy, not the prequel trilogy, of course. Those who haven’t seen George Lucas’ opus should go do so immediately. And everyone who is left is free to get really excited over the news that someone, somewhere is succeeding at turning the speeder bike into a reality.


That someone is a company called Aerofex, and the somewhere is California. Aerofex has been developing the vehicle for some years now, but an early test in 2008 saw the contraption crashing into a tumbleweed and catching light. The brave pilot came away with burned hands, while the team decided to head back to the drawing board in order to try again.

Four years on and the test flight went a lot smoother. We know this because the company released video footage (embedded below) of what it calls the Tandem Duct Aerial Vehicle in operation in the Mojave Desert. While it’s clearly years away from production it’s mightily impressive this thing can even be maneuvered at all. And already I can see I’ll want one in the future.

Interestingly Aerofex isn’t talking these thins up as being speeder bikes from Star Wars, either now or in the future. According to Innovation Daily they’ve been conceived as unmanned vehicles, though I suspect that were they ever to become commercially available consumers and supply/demand would have the final bearing on that.

Some people are doubting the validity of the footage – understandable given the ability for anyone with even an ounce of tech-savvy to manipulate moving images in this day and age – but I believe it. And sure, there is still a lot of work to be done here, but compare footage of early test flights for planes with the reality of today and tell me it isn’t possible we’ll all be flying one of these around some day.

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AT&T defends FaceTime ban but convinces noone

AT&T has defended its block on iPhone users running FaceTime over its 3G network. It’s a decision that may follow the precise letter of net neutrality rules but certainly doesn’t pay much heed to the principle.

The comments come as the company announces it will let users run FaceTime over the phone network if they are on Mobile Share, its new plans that give a fixed amount of data across multiple handsets. Those on older plans, including those with “unlimited” data packages, are stuck with FaceTime being Wi-Fi only.


Bob Quinn, the AT&T official in charge of regulatory matters, says the block is perfectly within Federal Communications Commissions rules, meeting two specific requirements for mobile broadband firms. Firstly, he says AT&T is making its policies clear and open as required.

Secondly, he claims that restrictions on who can and can’t use an app, and in what way, are not relevant in this case because the rules only cover downloaded apps and not those that come preloaded such as FaceTime.

Whether that’s the case is highly debatable: there doesn’t seem to be any mention of a distinction between downloaded and preloaded apps in the regulations that the FCC has published.

Even if such a loophole does exist, it doesn’t change the fact that AT&T’s policy is a flagrant violation of the principle of net neutrality. If you’re on an older AT&T iPhone deal and you’re out of Wi-Fi range, you can use your Internet connection to visit Blorge as many times as you like, but you can’t make a FaceTime call. That’s a clear breach of the idea of treating all data the same and is about as valid as the Post Office charging extra to carry a letter written in French.

And while AT&T is indeed extending access to FaceTime over 3G, that arguably makes things worse. Before it was just a case of saying “Want to use FaceTime but not on WiFi? Screw you.”

Now it’s “Want to use FaceTime on 3G? Upgrade to a new contract that may well cost you more money and/or extend your commitment period.” That’s breaching the principle of net neutrality in order to make profit. And that’s bullshit.

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