High-tech Skully helmet: A Google Glass that's born to be wild

SAN FRANCISCO -- The scariest thing about riding a motorcycle is the cars and trucks. To help riders deal with big, boxy, and often lethal vehicles, the Skully P1 motorcycle helmet sticks a Google Glass-style heads-up display, rear-view camera, and Bluetooth in the helmet. But isn't that tech more distracting and dangerous?
It's hard to imagine how hurtling yourself at freeway speeds down the road while dealing with what appears to be a Google Glass knockoff is a safe way to get wherever you're going. It sounds extremely cool, and ridiculously dangerous.

How can you pay attention to cars zipping about you, sometimes within inches of killing you, while flipping your eyes around to focus on a clear plastic box at the bottom of your field of vision?
That's what I was considering on Thursday in the bright noontime sun as I slid on the Skully P1 and gently wiggled my glasses back into the helmet, one of three prototypes in existence.
I was the first person outside the company to road-test the helmet, which is based on a shell from one of the top American helmet manufacturers and has been in development since May 2012. Skully's founder, Marcus Weller, and its director of mechanical engineering, Drew Shirmer, had given me plenty of background on the helmet: how it works, why it works, which features were operational and which ones were yet to come.
Since its debut a few weeks ago at a tech conference in San Francisco, where the angel-funded Skully scored the DEMOgod award, the Skully P1 has attracted more than 35,000 requests through an online form from would-be beta testers, said Weller.
The Skully helmet is not designed to give you full Internet access. Its limited features -- GPS maps and navigation, always-on rear-view camera, a Bluetooth connection to your phone for music streaming and call management -- nevertheless might prove more appealing to some people than the more open ended tool that Google Glass is. Skully's helmet is for Internet-augmented motorcycling, and even in its rough, in-development form, it's possible to evaluate those features.
We stood on an unusually wind-free and warm Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay, about a mile from the Google barge, and I struggled to adjust the heads-up display. It sits on a ball joint in the lower right corner of the helmet, unobtrusive and no taller than the breath deflector, but I couldn't see what it was supposed to be showing me.

Skully Helmets founder Marcus Weller, holding a prototype Skully Helmet that sports a heads-up display, rear-view camera, and integrated Bluetooth.

Finally, we realized that the display brightness might have to be adjusted because of the bright sun. Closing the prototype helmet's tinted visor did the trick, and suddenly in the right corner of my field of vision I could see a small display of the world behind me, projected what appeared to be 15 to 20 feet ahead of me.
The goal, he said, is to make the heads-up display appear far enough away so that it requires as minimal an amount of ocular muscle accommodation as possible, but not so far that it appears to be a small TV at the end of a long tunnel.
The rear-view camera was not the final production model, Weller later told me. The one on the helmet I was testing offered up a view of around 75 to 80 degrees. The final production will give riders a full 180 degree view, said Weller.
In the video above, you can see me turning my head to check my side mirror. That won't be eliminated with the final Skully, but you'll have to do it a lot less.
Surprisingly, even in its rough prototype state, the foundational promise of the Skully helmet holds fast. A gentle flick of your eyes downward and you can check your surroundings for incoming vehicles. That quick shifting of the eyes down and up again takes less time than it does to turn your head to the mirror, or even further around.
Right there, that's safety gold. To be able to see what's around you without taking your eyes off of the road in front of you is an incredible boon to bikers.
"It's like being surrounded by ninjas," said Weller. "You know one of them is going to attack you, but you don't know which one. Imagine you can keep your eyes on them right in your periphery while looking forward."
While it may seem that attempting to see in front of yourself and behind yourself at the same time while avoiding becoming street sushi is a task too dangerous for the human brain, it worked impressively well. The display was not distracting, as long as I treated it like a conventional side mirror.
"What's the opposite of distracting is taking all that information [from the rear-view camera] and putting it up in one place, so that I can consume that information at a rate that was physically impossible before," said Weller.

The key to the Skully helmet is the heads-up display, which looks large here but is actually unobtrusive from inside the helmet.

 

The lower right corner was an intentional placement for the heads-up display. Bikers already look there when checking their side mirrors, Weller said, and he explained that the easiest way to get people comfortable with the helmet was to make it as familiar as possible.
"We wanted natural familiarity," he said. "Familiarity breeds liking. The more you're exposed to something, the more you like it."
That familiarity, he said, would come from exploiting actions riders already make. "You capitalize on behaviors you know that people have, you don't create new ones." Otherwise, Weller added, "you have so many user adoption and safety issues."
The integrated rear-view camera and display would probably be enough for many riders, but the Skully P1 has more features.
The helmet comes with onboard GPS, so that if you don't have a smartphone you can still get directions. Directional arrows appeared in my display with a soft glow, and then went away in the same manner. Weller said that the company's research showed that abrupt pop ups would distract the rider, so they went with more gentle visual notifications.

 

 

This mock-up of what riding with a Skully will look like. The main view takes up most of your field of vision, while the heads-up display sits out of the way in the lower-right corner. The reality of using it was closer to this than you'd expect for a prototype.

(Credit: Skully Helmets)

However, the full GPS system was not yet functional. One of the difficult design challenges for the GPS, Weller said, is to create a display and rider experience where they're given just the right information at just the right time. Missing a turn in a motorcycle can be a deadly error. A planned but not active Wi-Fi component will allow people without smartphones to update and synchronize their maps, otherwise you'll be able to do it on the fly with your phone.
The Bluetooth phone pairing and built-in audio speakers were functional, and streamed music from the phone in my pocket to the helmet in crisp, clear sound. The planned microphone, which will give the rider voice control over the helmet and allow for phone calls, was not yet built into the model I tested.
Listening to music while riding is one thing, but having an occasional voice tell you when to turn has the potential to be another high-risk riding activity. Unfortunately, even though the speakers were working, the GPS's audio component demonstrated in the Skully promotional video was not yet operational.
Also planned but not available to me was a remote control for the handlebars.

CNET's Seth Rosenblatt tests an early, pre-market prototype of the Skully Helmet.

 

 

The Skully helmet is designed to be a premium product costing somewhere "north of $1,000, but not obscene," said Weller. It'll have a nine-hour battery life, to outlast a full day's worth of riding.
Weller and company are looking at new kinds of fabric for the helmet's insides, and ways to charge the battery while on the go. Weller is aiming for an ideal weight toward the lower end of the helmet range, meaning closer to three pounds rather than five.
Demand is much higher than Weller expected, so while he'd like to have it available for the 2014 riding season in the spring, he's not sure his company can hit that production target.
Just as there are always more variables when you go out for a ride than you can actually plan for, any number of problems could crash the Skully project. But assuming that Weller and his team continue to exert the same kind of attention to safety and detail that has taken them this far, the Skully helmet could be the first of a revolutionizing wave of heads-up display technologies that reach far beyond mere motorcycle tech.

How Amazon Studios went from grassroots idealist to Hollywood threat

 John Goodman attends the premiere of his film "Argo" last year. The award-winning actor stars in Amazon.com's first original series, "Alpha House," debuting Friday.

The small army of comedians that swarmed Portland, Ore., last April for the Bridgetown Comedy Festival were sleeping off their hangovers from the previous night's festivities, or still drunkenly stumbling through the hallways of the Hotel Fifty.
Except for two of them.
Ben Roy and Adam Cayton-Holland -- members of the three-man Denver comedy gang, the Grawlix -- woke up early in their shared hotel room and grabbed their laptops to watch their sitcom pilot, "Those Who Can't," debut on Amazon.com. Their act had never had such a large stage, and the two men followed in real time as hundreds of customers banged out reviews. Their phones started ringing with interview requests.

"It was like Christmas morning," said Roy, a tattoo-covered dad, punk-band frontman and longtime stand-up comic.
This was exactly the sort of success story that Amazon envisioned when it unveiled its Hollywood arm, Amazon Studios, three years ago. Its purpose: Invest in video projects from Hollywood outsiders and let the world's biggest focus group -- Amazon's customer base -- approve or not. The idea was to help talent bubble up and, along the way, collect valuable data about what Amazon customers watch.
It's also a mission Amazon quickly downgraded from star to extra. Top customer ratings aren't enough for Amazon Studios and what it wants to achieve: namely, to challenge Netflix, upend the traditional studios and, above all, persuade millions of people to sign up for Amazon Prime, the $79-a-year service for second-day shipping on some items and for access to streaming movies and TV shows.

 

(Credit: Amazon) 

 

 

"Those Who Can't" earned the highest customer score of any Amazon pilot, but Amazon is betting potential Prime customers are more interested in big-named talent than the Gawlix gang. And so Amazon is spending as much as cable heavyweight HBO and others to create programs with top stars. To some degree, we've read this script before: Jeff Bezos bleeds millions -- think Kindle -- to bulk up and plow through an entrenched industry that he remakes in Amazon's image.
So when "Alpha House," Amazon's first full series, debuts Friday, it will star John Goodman, and include cameos by Stephen Colbert and Bill Murray. "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau, the first comic-strip artist to win a Pulitzer, created the half-hour political comedy.
As one top talent agent put it, "Amazon has the potential to be very scary to its competitors because content is a very small part of its business." In other words, what's $10 million here and $10 million there when you're trying to overhaul the movie business as a way to lure lifelong Amazon customers?


Idealistic beginnings


When Roy Price, the founding director of the studio, rolled out Amazon Studios in November 2010, he positioned it as the "movie studio of the future," a sort of anti-Hollywood shop that helps aspiring movie makers and empowers them with Amazon's reach. "Today, the movie business is organized and decisions are made pretty much in one place, Hollywood," Price said in a promotional video aimed at amateur actors and screenwriters. "At Amazon Studios, we hope to discover voices that might not otherwise be heard."

Amazon Studios Director Roy Price 

Anyone could join, and Price invited members to submit scripts and suggest revisions, with the enticement that Warner Bros. could option films. If the projects went to theatrical release, the creator would get $200,000, plus a $400,000 bonus if the movie earned $60 million at the box office. So far, Warner Bros. has optioned none.
Amazon sweetened the pot for writers with the prospect of instant cash, promising to dole out $2.7 million in prize money to projects submitted in 2011. (The top prize, $1 million, went to a 34-year-old music composer from Mesa, Ariz., named Rob Gardner. He made a rudimentary full-length animation mockup of his children's musical about princesses. Gardner, who didn't reply to requests for comment, is still raising money, most recently on Kickstarter.)

Each step of the way, Amazon learned a bit more. The data showed, for instance, that many of the most popular scripts were comedies. Price used the submission system and customer reaction to scripts to test out stories before shooting anything, he said. It was the first of many ways Amazon would use data to decide which movies and shows to bankroll.
The premise, however, wasn't quite right. The customers involved didn't represent the audience Amazon ultimately needed -- people who like to shop a lot online. People who read scripts, Price said, are a rare niche.

 

 

Jack Epps Jr., who co-wrote "Top Gun," is a University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts professor and was an unofficial adviser to Amazon early on. He said this kind of pre-testing is vulnerable to the same trap as all focus groups: they're all supposed to represent what people want, but often they don't.
"Nobody knows what they want until it's there," he said. He gave the example of AMC's critical and ratings darling "Breaking Bad." What focus group would have ever applauded a show about a cancer-stricken high-school teacher cooking meth?
It didn't help Amazon Studios that the submitted scripts needed work.
"Some were better than others, but there was nothing that jumped out at me and said "God, I'd like to option this,'" said Michael Taylor, a producer and another USC professor who judged Amazon movie scripts in the early days. "It's probably a very good idea that they evolved to the in-house development....They've taken control over the process."

Falling behind Netflix
In early 2012, Amazon Studios was far behind the original content race. It had been a year since Netflix, looking at its viewer data, outbid HBO with a reported $100 million commitment for two seasons of "House of Cards." Its first original TV show, "Lilyhammer," premiered that February, and Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings was telling investors that Netflix would lavish its original series with up to 15 percent of its content budget, which was already three times the size of Amazon's. Amazon's service, he declared, was "a confusing mess

."

 

 

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings

And so began the march to make it all more professional, although Price wouldn't talk about why Amazon changed strategy. He brought on a television development team with people whose resumes boast stints at 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures Family Entertainment.
"We explicitly decided to include both an open online process of submitting ideas and have a robust traditional development process, reaching out to top talent, top producers," Price said. "With TV, the goal was to get the best shows we could and to make progress quickly."
Epps, the "Top Gun" screenwriter and one of the first people to publicly applaud Amazon Studio's open-invitation system, said the new direction is smarter if Amazon wants to make headway. "At the end of the day, they still went to a successful writer to pull off their series," said Epps.

 

 

The "Alpha House" set recreated the Russell Senate Office Building hallway in 

 exacting detail.

Price has stayed mum about the budget for "Alpha House," but he did say that Amazon is spending as much as big production houses would on any high-end TV series. The set, at the Kaufman Astoria Studios in New York, reflects that, including a replica of the Russell Senate Office Building, precise down to the mailbox slots and marble. On the day I visited, one of the stars, Mark Consuelos, half joked that the quality of a show's catering matches the quality of the production. "The food is hard-core," he said, gratified that the spread included almond milk.


A data-driven operation
Even if Amazon isn't outspending Netflix -- remember, Netflix paid a reported $100 million for "House of Cards" -- it's likely beating Netflix's data dedication. The company has also culled from statistics about what movies and shows people buy on Amazon.com and what they look up on the Internet Movie Database, which Amazon bought in 1998.
"Amazon customers like 'Breaking Bad' and they like 'Downton Abbey,' so maybe we should develop a show about aristocrats in Surrey who are also crystal meth dealers?" Price said in an October keynote at an entertainment conference in France. "Too simplistic."
So Amazon plowed deeper into the data. In April of this year, Amazon Studios put 14 pilots up for all customers to watch and rate, including "Alpha House" and "Those Who Can't." It used those customer ratings plus viewing data to help pick programs to make into full series. Joe Lewis, a former Fox development manager who was Price's first hire to work on television, said the company looked at how many people finish watching a pilot, how many watch more than once, and how many write a review. Price noted that different shows draw in different audience segments, and "it helps to be attracting the right group."

 

(Credit: Amazon) 

 

 

In essence, it made Amazon the first studio with ratings for its shows before they're really "shows" -- that is, before it gives the green light to a full series.
Price likened it to owning a restaurant, and testing out a special entree one night before printing up entirely new menus. He also has said that human oversight is essential too. "It's not just like you walk in Tuesday morning and the computer tells you which shows to order," he said at the conference in France. "You still have to apply human judgment."
Amazon is still starkly behind Netflix in several respects. A study by Sandvine, which runs fixed and mobile data networks worldwide, found that Netflix commands the largest amount of North American Internet traffic of any Web property, 31 percent of the total volume during the peak part of the day. Amazon Video represented just 1.61 percent.

"Amazon customers like 'Breaking Bad' and they like 'Downton Abbey,' so maybe we should develop a show about aristocrats in Surrey who are also crystal meth dealers? Too simplistic."
--Roy Price, Amazon Studios, at entertainment conference

Part of the problem is simple awareness, said Edward S. Williams, an analyst for BMO Capital Markets. People think of Amazon Prime for its shipping bargains, he said, but most Prime subscribers -- estimated at 12 million people -- seem unaware that a premium video service comes with the membership. Netflix, by contrast, has more than 43 million members worldwide.

 

 

But others involved with Amazon Studios productions noted how Amazon has quickly become a peer to industry heavyweights in other ways.
"Amazon is now considered up there with Netflix, FX, anywhere you would go to pitch," said Jill Soloway, the writer and director of a pilot Amazon is shooting, "Transparent," as well as an Emmy nominee for her work writing for "Six Feet Under."
There are differences, she said: if anything, working with Amazon was easier and better than with a typical studio. "Amazon had a business model that felt incredibly fast. Because they're so new, they don't have the levels of infrastructure," she said. "You're usually going through three rounds of notes at each stage, and things can really get paralyzed over the years."

Retailer versus entertainer
The most fundamental way that Amazon differs from its competition, however, is its identity. At its core, Amazon is a retailer. And Bezos, competitors know all too well, willingly sacrifices profits to build out his businesses.

Jeff Bezos, Roy Price, Garry Trudeau and producer Elliot Webb at the New York premiere of "Alpha House." 

In the new book "The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon," journalist Brad Stone recounts how Amazon was in a bidding war with Walmart over Quidsi, the operator of Diapers.com, at the same time it launched Amazon Mom, which offered a yearlong Prime subscription and a 30 percent discount on diapers. Quidsi executives calculated that the program would cost Amazon $100 million over three months just on diapers. And one of Bezos' deputies warned that the CEO would drive diaper prices to zero if Walmart won Quidsi.
"Ultimately, any established player should be concerned when Amazon decides to enter your market, invest heavily to take away market share, with no accountability for traditional measures of profitability, while Wall Street continues to reward them on their long-term strategy," said Steve Felter, who launched digital projects at Warner Bros. and Disney before leaving to run his own gaming startup, GameSalad.

John Goodman in "Alpha House."

How does Amazon Studios fit into that long-term strategy? It comes down to Prime, which is becoming ever more powerful for the company. Analysts estimate that Prime subscribers spend between two and four times as much on Amazon as nonmembers do. Additional features, like original shows from Amazon Studios, could reel in new types of customers. Amazon's decision to release most episodes of its original series week to week, in contrast with the Netflix approach of unleashing them all in one bingeable bunch, supports that idea -- tease your viewers, keep them coming back to the store.
Amazon is also giving everyone a free taste of its originals, having found that a good proportion of the people who sign up for free trial memberships end up as paying subscribers. The first three episodes of its series will be available for anyone to watch, but the rest are reserved for Prime

.

 

 

Next up, Amazon is casting Prime as a true Netflix challenger by moving into edgy dramas, the type of originals that made a name for Netflix in Hollywood. Since Netflix won three Emmys for "House of Cards," Amazon's unofficial stance is to win awards like that too, said Jonathan Alter, an "Alpha House" executive producer.
Late last month, Amazon announced plans for two hour-long drama pilots from Chris Carter, the creator of "The X-Files," as well as best-selling author Michael Connelly and Eric Overmyer, who wrote for "The Wire" and co-created the HBO drama "Treme."
Even the creator of "Alpha House" couldn't resist lampooning the oddity of a television studio creating content to get more people to sign up for rush orders of blenders and Blu-Ray discs. At the New York premiere of the series, in a 700-seat theater of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Garry Trudeau thanked Bezos -- he called him "Mr. B" -- and Amazon before addressing the audience.
"We hope you enjoy our show," he said, "and will spread the word about our sex, our violence, and of course, our free two-day shipping." Which, funny as it sounds, is exactly what Mr. B hopes will happen.

Microsoft experiments with fuel cell-powered data center

      Microsoft's Chicago data center.

There are cord cutters -- and then there are cord cutters.
Microsoft is considering data centers that use fuel cells to generate power right next to the servers they house rather than transmitting it from electrical power plants far away. The move could double efficiency compared with traditional data center design, which loses energy through transmission and conversion, Sean James, a Microsoft senior research program manager, said in a blog post Tuesday.
The cleanest fuel cells convert hydrogen and oxygen into heat and electrical current, releasing water as exhaust. Microsoft, though, used more convenient methane-powered fuel cells, which release more pollutants, but not as much as natural gas combustion, according to Microsoft's study on using fuel cells to power a data center (PDF).
"In the new data center design approach outlined in our paper, chemical energy is first converted to direct current electrochemically and sent a few feet to the server power supply. With our one watt of [initial] energy we are now getting almost 0.4 watts, or double the efficiency of traditional data centers," James said.

The approach not only avoids inefficiencies of electrical power distribution, but also improves reliability since battery backup isn't required, the researchers said.
For companies like Microsoft, Facebook, and Google that rely on data centers crammed with thousands of servers, a tiny increase in efficiency can pay off. Microsoft thinks the fuel cells could make data centers cheaper to build, too.
"If the fuel cells are placed close to power consumption units, at the servers or racks, we can completely eliminate the power distribution system in the data center, including the power backup generation system. So, no data center wide electrical infrastructure is required. This is over 25 percent of the capital cost for state-of-the-art data centers," the paper said.

Monopoly rises from the grave with 'Walking Dead' edition

We can't even remember the last time we (or anyone we know) sat down for a rousing game of Monopoly. Could our interest be brought back from the dead?
Hasbro certainly has been trying, with various themed editions of the game over the last decade or two. The latest ties in to one of the most popular shows on TV: AMC's "The Walking Dead," based on the comic by Robert Kirkman. It's basically the same Monopoly, more or less, featuring art by Kirkman and zombie-themed chance cards -- and, of course, locations from the series.

Instead of buying houses and hotels to make your property more valuable, though, you buy walls and guard towers to fortify it against attack.
The player pieces are themed for items in the comic: Michonne's katana (dibs!); Rick's hat; Negan's barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat, Lucille; Dale's 1973 D-27C Winnebago Chieftain RV; a telephone; and a bucket of limbs.
The game can be picked up for $39.99 from ThinkGeek and $35.99 from Amazon. Might be just the holiday gift for the Monopoly-loving zombie fan in your life.

(Credit: Hasbro)

(Source: Crave Australia)

One man's broken iPhone is another man's art

Twice Used, a project launched by a smartphone repair specialist, wants to make modern household products out of our stories of "clumsiness and everlasting remorse."

We've all been there: One haphazard shuffle or slip of the fingers and time slows down as your smartphone sails toward the sidewalk, slamming down with the not-so-satisfying slap of glass on concrete. But rejoice, for the infamous feeling of shame upon shattering one's device may have a bright side. It turns out dismantled iPhones that are injured beyond repair make for interesting pieces of functioning furniture, jewelry, and kitchen accessories.
That's the idea behind Twice Used, the project of Chris Koerner, a phone and iOS screen repair specialist and owner of Alabama-based LCDcycle. On Friday, Koerner launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds in an effort to make the initiative a core part of his business, and to get out in the wild his iPhone ornaments -- from picture frames and coasters to pieces of jewelry and artistic renditions of clocks and coffee table countertops.

The idea started when Koerner discovered an interesting statistic from the early days of running his first phone repair shop while still in college. Out of every four iPhones that made their way to what would become his three-chain business, Phone Restore, one unit was typically unfit for rebirth.
"I noticed that only about 75 percent can be recycled -- the other 25 percent were just being stacked up in our warehouse," he said in an interview with CNET. That's because those unlucky devices with broken LCD portions of the screen weren't suitable for Phone Restore's process, which involves heating up the screen to remove and ultimately replace both the adhesive between the layers and the broken layers themselves.
"There are three parts to an iPhone screen: the LCD; the digitizer, which is the touch recognizer; and then there is the glass," Koerner explained. "As long as the LCD is working, it can be recycled. But you can't fix a broken LCD."

PS4: Everything you need to know

1. The PS4 is on sale November 15 in North America for $399. That's $100 less than the Xbox One, which includes the Kinect accessory. It hits stores in Europe on November 29 (399/£349), followed by launches in South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan sometime December. Last but not least, Japan gets it on February 22, 2014.

2. For early adopters, Sony is throwing in some nice freebies, including a free month of PlayStation Plus, free month of Sony Music Unlimited, and a $10 PlayStation Store credit.

3. Unfortunately, you can't play PS3 games on the PS4. The same goes for most peripherals. Except for the PS Move, none of your PS3 peripherals (controllers, etc.) are compatible with the PS4. The same goes for older Bluetooth headsets and headphones, at least for now.

4. The PS4 can play Blu-rays and DVDs, but not CDs or MP3s (for now), and it currently won't read any files from a USB external storage device (via its two USB ports) except system software patches (you have to put the PS4 in a special "safe mode" to do system updates via a USB thumb drive). That's a serious bummer. At launch, it also cannot play 3D Blu-ray movies (nor can the Xbox One). Note that the older PS3 offers support for CDs, MP3s, 3D Blu-ray playback, and reads files from external storage devices.

5. The PS4 and Xbox One offer very similar hardware specs but the two consoles aren't entirely the same on the inside. The PS4's power supply is built-into the system, whereas the Xbox One still has a massive external power brick. The PS4's processor combines an eight-core AMD "Jaguar" CPU with an AMD next-generation Radeon GPU and 8GB of 5500MHz GDDR5 RAM. The two consoles have very similar CPUs but the PS4's GPU is beefier (and that 5500MHz GDDR5 RAM is faster than the Xbox One's 2133MHz DDR3 RAM). On paper at least, the PS4 holds the advantage for gaming performance.
(Extremetech has a good rundown of how the final hardware specs compare on the two systems.) But you can still expect the games to look nearly identical on each system. It's unclear whether that will change over time as game developers figure out how to get the most out of each system.

The PS4'controller is stellar.

6. If you've already purchased PS3 versions of select titles, you can upgrade to the PS4 version for just $10 more. This only applies to a handful of games.

7. To play multiplayer games online, you'll need a PS Plus account ($50 a year), which is a departure from the PS3's free online play model.

8. However, unlike the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, you don't need a PS Plus account to use the entertainment apps like Netflix or Crackle.

9. There are 13 entertainment apps available at launch, including Netflix and Crackle. Amazon and YouTube are no-shows for now. A browser is on board, but it doesn't play YouTube videos. (For a complete rundown of apps on PS4 and Xbox One, check David Katzmaier's "Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4: Entertainment apps compared" post.)

10. DLNA streaming is not available at launch.

11. The PS4 includes a 500GB hard drive, but you can replace/upgrade it yourself -- and it's pretty easy to do.

The new PlayStation Camera accessory. 

12. The PS4 has a "near-perfect" controller  that's a big upgrade over the PS3's. It has a built-in speaker and it also doubles as a motion controller (it has a light on the front like the PS Move).

13. You can charge the PS4's controllers while the console is in standby mode (unlike with the PS3).

14. Sony has an upgraded camera accessory (the PlayStation Camera). It's not as essential to the system as the Xbox One's Kinect accessory is, but it adds support for motion control, as well the ability to control your system with voice commands. The camera can also identify who's using the system and log you in. The Kinect offers all those features (and more), and no motion controllers are required since the Kinect can interpret your hand gestures.

15. The PS4 has a tighter link to to the PlayStation Vita. You can play PS4 games on your Vita using PS4 Link, a remote/mirror setting that streams the game to the Vita and turns it into a second screen. We experienced virtually no lag in our tests.

16. Like the PS3, there's no IR port (it uses Bluetooth), so you can't control the PS4 with existing IR remotes. Logitech's Harmony Ultimate and Harmony Smart Control, which have integrated Bluetooth, should be able to control the system when and if Logitech updates the database to support Sony's new console.

17. The PS4 has a 15-minute cache, so you can go back and grab clips and share them on social media sites. In fact, the controller has a built-in "share" button.

18. On launch day (November 15), 26 games are scheduled to be available.

19. Sony has launched a new PlayStation app for iOS and Android users. It allows you to use your iOS or Android device as a second screen and remote control to display and manage the action from compatible PS4 games, shop at the PlayStation Store, and view PlayStation manuals and system guides.

20. Unlike the Xbox One, the PS4 doesn't feature any sort of TV overlay functionality -- it's called OneGuide on the Xbox One -- that allows you to switch easily from watching TV to playing games. On the Xbox One, you can also play a game and display live TV in a small panel on the side (Xbox One's "snap" feature lets you run two apps at once, with one of them in a picture-in-picture window). As an integrated home-entertainment device the Xbox One is more sophisticated out of the gate.
 
21. You can stand the PS4 up vertically, but the console doesn't ship with a stand -- it's an optional accessory.

Ballmer: 'Maybe I'm an emblem of an old era'

        
                                 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: "I have to move on."

As he prepares to head for the exits one last time as CEO, Steve Ballmer is letting down the protective wall that he's guarded in public for so long. In a remarkably personal interview with The Wall Street Journal, Ballmer allowed that perhaps time has passed him by.
"Maybe I'm an emblem of an old era, and I have to move on," an emotional Ballmer acknowledged in what was described as a series of interviews published Friday. "As much as I love everything about what I'm doing," he said, "the best way for Microsoft to enter a new era is a new leader who will accelerate change."
In August, Ballmer surprised the technology world and his company by announcing plans to step down sometime within the next 12 months. The article presents of a picture of an impatient board of directors pushing Ballmer to execute a reorganization plan designed to break down competitive corporate silos. At a certain point, Ballmer told the WSJ, he began to question whether he could meet the board's timetable.
"No matter how fast I want to change, there will be some hesitation from all constituents -- employees, directors, investors, partners, vendors, customers, you name it -- to believe I'm serious about it, maybe even myself," he said.
During a trip to London in May, Ballmer said he began to envision a Microsoft without him at the helm, a change he thought might accelerate sought-after change at the company.

"At the end of the day, we need to break a pattern," he said. "Face it: I'm a pattern."
Thus began a series of conversations with underlings and selected directors, informing them of his thinking. By the time the board met in June in Bellevue, Wash., Ballmer told the WSJ that he broke the news officially. "While I would like to stay here a few more years, it doesn't make sense for me to start the transformation and for someone else to come in during the middle," he said.
Microsoft's board voted officially on August 21 to accept Ballmer's retirement.

Samsung expert: No one buys Samsung gadgets for touch-screen tech

Outside U.S District Court in San Jose, Calif., where Apple and Samsung are battling over damages in a retrial
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A Samsung expert on Friday made his case for why the Korean giant should pay Apple only $52 million in damages, saying there's no evidence that anyone has bought Samsung devices because of a particular patented Apple technology.
An expert hired by Apple had determined the company was due $114 million in lost profits because of Samsung's use of technology under Apple's patent No. 7,844,915, also known as "pinch to zoom." The '915 patent covers technology that can distinguish whether a user is scrolling with one finger versus using several touch points at once for a pinch-to-zoom action.
However, Michael Wagner, an accountant and lawyer hired by Samsung, said there's no evidence from either company that shows consumers bought Samsung devices because they liked that particular touch-screen feature. As a result, he believes Apple should receive no money for lost profits.
"I believe people bought these phones for other features," Wagner said. That includes bigger, AMOLED screens; faster processors; and 4G LTE.

The comments come on the fourth day of a retrial for damages that Samsung owes Apple for infringing on five of its patents. A judge in March vacated about $450 million of an original award. Samsung is still on the hook for $600 million, no matter what happens in the retrial. Wagner spent his time on the stand Friday disputing calculations made by Apple's expert accountant, Julie Davis. In particular, he said that she didn't correctly determine Samsung's profits from the infringing devices and she attached too much value to Apple's lost profits stemming from Samsung's use of a touch-screen technology patent.
The two companies are battling over how much more Samsung owes Apple for infringing on five of its patents. Apple -- using Davis' calculations -- says Samsung owes it $380 million. Samsung says it should pay $52 million.
A big part of the discrepancy comes from differing views on how much Apple lost in profits and how much it should be due for royalties.
One expert, MIT professor John Hauser, estimated three Apple patents, including the '915 patent, adds about $100 in value to a $199 smartphone or $90 in value to a $499 tablet. Davis said Apple lost out on $114 million in profits because of the Samsung copycat devices. She also calculated Samsung's profits to be $231 million, and said reasonable royalties owed to Apple total $35 million. Apple estimates it would have sold 360,000 devices if Samsung hadn't released infringing rivals.
Samsung, meanwhile, said Apple shouldn't receive any money for lost profits, $52.7 million for Samsung's profits, and royalties of only $28,452 because the patents have limitations.
Wagner on Friday said Davis should have deducted operating expenses for marketing, R&D, and other items from her calculation of Samsung's profit from the infringing devices.
"Davis calculated not a penny of these operating expenses, which I believe are a necessary expense," Wagner said. "You can't sell a phone without incurring those types of costs."

A better-built fitness band, but not much smarter

The good: The Nike+ FuelBand SE adds Bluetooth 4.0 for continuous syncing, more water resistance for wearing in the shower, hourly motivational reminders, and solid social connectivity with other Nike+ users.

The bad: No Android support; only works with iPhone 4S and later; Bluetooth syncing can get quirky; no vibration for silent alarms or hourly reminders; app's toolset is a little simplistic; doesn't track sleep.

The bottom line: The Nike+ FuelBand SE is a minor upgrade to last year's FuelBand, adding Bluetooth 4.0 and a few new motivational wrinkles to its software, but the band's design is more successful than its package of features.

 

. The world of wearable, smart fitness trackers is getting increasingly crowded, and there are a lot of options on the market: the Fitbit, the Jawbone Up, and lots of other assorted pedometers. The FuelBand was one of the first mainstream fitness gadgets, and it's perhaps the best-known, and the best marketed; Nike's presence as a company is far larger than any of the others.

 

 

 

What it does, though, is similar to what other trackers do: it counts your steps and measures your motion, and sends that data to an iPhone app, or to your computer. The difference with Nike's system is the use of universal points system called NikeFuel that serves as a measurement of activity.
What's new from last year? SE stands for "special edition," and the difference mostly amounts to adding Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity for more continuous, energy-efficient syncing, and updating the software to offer more ways to track data and motivate you with video-game-like achievement badges.
But what the FuelBand still boils down to is this: it's a wristband that doubles as a cool watch, counts steps and your Fuel score, syncs with an app, can be worn in the shower, and has some fun social features that link you with friends who use NikeFuel apps. As a deeper coaching tool or life assistant, the FuelBand SE still leaves a lot off the plate.

 

 

 

Design: Best-feeling band around
Many pieces of wrist-worn wearable tech have issues of one sort or another: maybe the clasps are too loose, or the snap-on band not tight enough, or the whole device isn't water-resistant. The FuelBand SE is the best-feeling band I've tried, and the most useful, too.

 

 

 

It's the same idea as the original FuelBand: it's really a giant LED-lit, water-resistant band with a clasp that doubles as a USB stick. The whole band's a USB stick, which is the ingenious part: plug the end into a PC to sync or charge, or into a USB-jack-equipped wall outlet. An additional extended-length USB dongle comes in the box, in case you need extra room.
The FuelBand snaps on your wrist, and on mine it felt cozy, secure, and utterly comfortable. Just make sure you have the right size: it comes in two different sizes, along with an extra piece of band that can enlarge the size a bit if needed, and a tool you can use to pop it in.
A single button operates everything on the FuelBand SE: clicking cycles through Time, Hours Won (see below for what that means), and Fuel "earned" for the day. You can add Calories (measuring estimated daily calorie burn), Steps (a pedometer), and hourly Move reminders by changing settings via the FuelBand iOS app or Nike+ Connect Windows/Mac software and syncing.

 

 

 

The FuelBand also has a clever progress bar below the readout, made of a spectrum of lights ranging from red to green. As your day continues, it's a clear and effective gauge (to go along with the overall Fuel number) of how close you are, relatively, to your Fuel goal.
Press and hold the button, and you start an activity session timer. Hold longer, and the device cycles through battery-life indicator and Bluetooth on/off controls.

 

 

The big, bannerlike LED array feels like a mini billboard on your wrist, and glows futuristically up from the rubberized black band. The readout runs across the band, so you have to turn your wrist -- it's odd, but it works. The FuelBand's color schemes include electric orange, pink, and yellow underbellies (Total Crimson, Pink Foil and Volt), but from the top, everything's black except the Nike logo highlighted around the clasp. Additionally, a limited-edition Rose Gold version sells for a higher $169, with a metallic clasp.
Bluetooth 4.0: Automatic syncing…sometimes
All of the top-of-the-line wearable-tech products have begun adopting Smart Bluetooth, otherwise known as Bluetooth LE or Bluetooth 4.0. The new FuelBand SE has it, and it enables devices to connect and disconnect and sync automatically in the background, with less strain on the battery.

 

Unfortunately, my FuelBand SE sometimes decoupled and wouldn't automatically sync again with an iPhone 5S, a problem commenters on the FuelBand iOS app seemed to corroborate. I had to log out and on from the Nike+ app, and even reformat the FuelBand once. My colleague Brian Bennett didn't have any problem syncing it with the iPhone 5C. Meanwhile, for me, the Jawbone Up24 never had a syncing problem over its Bluetooth 4.0 connection.
While wireless syncing seemed a bit buggy, the FuelBand always kept its tracking going, and plugging in and syncing with a PC via USB is always a fallback option, too. The FuelBand holds days of data on its own without needing a connection, but only shows the current day's progress.

Google, HP yank Chromebook 11 from store shelves

           
HP and Google have asked retailers to stop selling the HP Chromebook 11 because of an overheating charger, the companies said Wednesday.
Both Google and HP said they are "pausing sales" of the laptop "after receiving a small number of user reports that some chargers included with the device have been damaged due to overheating during use."
The companies are working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to figure out next steps, but, in the meantime, HP Chromebook 11 owners should stop using the charger that came with the laptop.
"In the interim, they may continue using their HP Chromebook 11 with any other Underwriters Laboratories-listed micro-USB charger, for example, one provided with a tablet or smartphone. We apologize for the inconvenience," reads a statement issued by Google and HP.

The statement was in response to media inquiries as to why retailers tasked with selling the HP Chromebook 11 stopped carrying the laptops without explanation.
A scan of Best Buy's Web site and Amazon.com earlier Wednesday showed that the product was no longer available. What's more, Best Buy was urgently removing the HP Chromebook 11 from its stores, according to The Verge.
Store managers were ordered through an internal memo to stop selling the $279 laptop "immediately" and to remove any stock from its shelves, unnamed Best Buy sources told The Verge.
HP and Google introduced the laptop in October and forged a partnership with Best Buy and Amazon to sell it in the US. While Best Buy has removed the listing from its online store completely, Amazon has only stopped selling it directly. Amazon's third-party sellers still have some listings. HP also has removed the listing from its Web site.

Rockstar to dole out $500k 'stimulus' to GTA V online users

As an apology to early users of Grand Theft Auto V's online mode, Rockstar Games on Friday announced plans to give all its online players $500,000 in in-game currency.
The "stimulus package" comes as a response to myriad technical issues many players faced when attempting to use the video game title's online mode, which is a first for the series.
"For players who experienced cloud server errors, connection issues, and lost game progress and characters in these first days of GTA Online, we hope this GTA$ helps to facilitate a fresh start or makes your continued life in Los Santos and Blaine County extra sweet," Rockstar said in a blog post.

             (Credit: Rockstar Games)           

The same amount could be earned in-game, of course, or by spending $10 real world dollars.
Rockstar said it plans to dole the cash out in two installments to everyone who has played the game this month and installs an upcoming patch that promises to fix some of the issues. However the game maker did not specify when exactly that would be happening, short of saying it plans to roll out the first payment by the end of next week.
Yesterday Guinness crowned Grand Theft Auto V with six world records, including best-selling game of all time, as well as the fastest entertainment product to nab $1 billion in sales. The game remains available only for the Xbox 360 and PS3, but is said to be heading to the PC early next year.