Q&A With Superbetter, the famous game designer has built a tool that is helping thousands of people overcome a wide variety of problems. It just goes to show how games can make us stronger.
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The son of an astronaut and a former space tourist, Richard Garriott thinks going to space can be profitable. Biological research and solar farms could be the place to start.
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At SXSW, CNET’s Daniel Terdiman lets the people discovery apps lead him to new contacts who wax philosophical about whether the new genre of tools will really change how we interact.
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Q&A As South by Southwest heats up, attendees have all-new ways to find new friends or potential business partners. Glancee thinks its approach will win in the end.
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CNET has been at South by Southwest for years, and we have the advice you need to make it out alive. Be realistic, make sure to eat, and for pete’s sake, keep your iPhone charged.
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New iPad app offers an innovative way of visualizing users’ social media feeds based on a biological metaphor. Bigger cells means more vital information.
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Big Blue’s new prototype chip surpasses major milestone, thanks to unlikely innovation: tiny holes in a quarter-inch chip, boosting data transfer.
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Interesting story from CNN Money, which talks about the implications of the new Ipad3 on 3G networking. Clearly, 4G networking has gotten a foothold and is rapidly expanding all over the world, and if the new Ipad3 is in fact a 4G device, it may drive that technology and leave 3G as the weaker cousin. If nothing else, this certainly seems to be paralleling the development of Intel’s processor chips, going from a single core to dual, dual to quad, and so on. There is a point where the older technology doesn’t compare very well, and doesn’t compete. The snob factor of “I am on 4G” certainly has it’s marketing appeal as well.
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Last year, thousands flocked to Austin, Texas, for South by Southwest Interactive, and even more will likely show up when the 2012 event kicks off this week. But why do they come?
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Boeing has broken ground on its Everett Delivery Center, a modern center where airlines picking up their new jumbo jets can come for the hand-off of their new plane.
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The Taiwanese animators at NMA News have put together a primer on how the electromagnetic railgun works. Whether they’ve got it right is anyone’s guess.
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For years, Halo games have kept millions of passionate fans glued to their Xboxes. This year, 343 Industries gets its shot at Master Chief. It may be a big year for the Xbox.
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Sometimes you have to stand back a bit to appreciate things, to see them for what they really are. Sometimes you have to look past the headline or past the placard waving protester to see the reality of a situation. You have to pay even closer attention to see the meta trends or overall patterns that truly define how things happen in the world.
I find it even more important a lesson when looking at why things succeed or fail. The pattern of a failed movement or organization often comes as a result of certain actions, or certain types of changes that come to something over time. There are magic points along the way where things happen, the people change, and the movement or idea is lost forever.
I think that the most powerful one at the moment is the California medical marijuana situation. There are a reasonable number of researchers, doctors, and patients who will say that weed has certain positive effects when it comes to things like general pains, certain specific issues like eye problems, and can apparently help those with cancer and other ailments to have a better quality of life. I won’t go into all of it here, except to say that while all of that is being bandied about, it’s still clear that nobody is even making a passing attempt to make “pot medicine” in any meaningful way. However, I don’t begrudge the supporter of using wacky tabacky to help with the pain or to handle a terminal illness. Heck, I might want it to.
It’s isn’t the good intention of medical marijuana that are meaningful to me. Rather, it’s the “pile on” effect that has happened. Medical weed as a concept has pretty much been hijacked by the “legalize weed in general” community, who are using the medical weed laws as a way to get around police action and to be able to “buy legally”, by getting sympathetic doctors to “prescribe” weed for these potheads. The good of medical marijuana (if any) has been quickly squeezed out of the debate, as the dispensing locations have turned into a big business, a legalized dime bag business that can still charge “street drug” prices, and apparently avoid legal prosecution. All it takes is a doctor willing to see these “patients” and write them a script. The process has been hijacked, and will likely as a result become very restricted or perhaps even shut down if the current pattern continues.
Anonymous is another example of this sort of thing happened. The 4chan anons were literally in it for the lulz, for the laughs, and the pleasure of tweaking a few noses without being trackable. They have had particular fun over the years dragging Scientology back and forth through the mud like it was college hazing time. Amusing to watch, probably extremely frustrating for Scientologists to have to shadow box against an opponent you can never hit. Anonymous has been perhaps the most original farce ever created.
That has changed in that last couple of years. Even though the anonymous people will tell you they have no leaders, it really isn’t all that true. Anyone can be a leader, and with enough followers, it defines itself. Since the whole Wikileaks situation, Anonymous has become a sort of V for Vendetta type revenge group, organizing DDoS attacks on Paypal, Mastercard, and the like. Recently, the group was pinned for having jacked a large number of credit cards from a certain agency they oppose, and using those cards to drive funds to some organization. There are no more lulz to be had here, just a hardcore group of disruptive people using their power and their control over others to inflict pain on those they do not agree with. The lulz are long gone.
Bit Torrent is a technology that has gotten the same sort of shaft. Good or bad, “torrent” is pretty much synonymous with “pirated” or “illegal”. It didn’t start out that way, but the masses have spoken, turning what may have been a potentially very useful way to distribute information, and instead turned it into the brand name for illegal pirate activity.
Occupy Wall Street is perhaps the best example of what goes wrong with these sorts of things. OWS suffered all of the major illness combined: Lack of focus, lack of leadership, “feature creep”, and so on. Most importantly, in many cities the occupy locations really just turned into a place where the homeless or street kids would set up tents and hang out. They would chant the vapid slogans, but really aren’t in either the 99% or the 1%, they are outside the system entirely. Essentially, the anarchists and the “we oppose everything” people moved in and took over pretty much every city outside of New York.
In the end, many good ideas are eaten up by those who seek personal profit from them. OWS saw it’s message (whatever it might have been) lost to the homeless squatters looking for a place to pitch a tent and anti-government activists looking for a place to throw rocks from. Medical Marijuana loses because those looking for a legal way to support their pot addictions try to subvert the system to legalize their actions. Anonymous fails because whatever the goal, extremist from inside and outside hide under the banner of anon and go past protesting to black hat hacking and full on illegal acts. Bit Torrent is a good technology lost to those who use it to pirate. We all end up losing because, whatever the good idea, whatever the noble goal, it is lost to the extremists who infiltrate every day.
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q&a It may be a 2-person startup, but its people discovery app is poised to take the interactive world by storm. CEO Paul Davison spoke to CNET about Highlight’s plans.
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Well, the Apple Ipad3 is set to be announced shortly, and this is the first truly huge announcement in the Post-Jobs era of Apple. While this may not be a total test of what the company looks like now, as the product is pure Job’s thinking, it will be telling to see how the presentation itself goes. The new IPad3 drops into a marketplace that is becoming more and more crowded, with competitive tablets on Android and Microsoft operating systems, as well as plenty of pressure from the “big screen” phone market. The big news seems to be that the new IPad gets a much better screen, much higher resolution, but that isn’t making everyone happy. Gizmodo has a pretty good summary here of potential upgrade items on the new Ipad.
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Next week is the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts and Adafruit Industries has come up with a DIY-era merit award system. Launched a high-altitude balloon? Here’s your badge.
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First introduced on Flipboard for iPhone, the feature gives you the articles that are considered most relevant based on users’ social connections and what they’ve already read.
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The CEO of the social gaming giant has had a placeholder Web site for years. Now the registration has expired, and Zynga risks embarrassment–and danger–from losing the domain.
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The Office of Naval Research is evaluating railgun prototypes from BAE Systems and General Atomics. One test has just been completed, and another will take place in April.
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Air Force has given clearance for its version of the Joint Strike Fighter to begin tests–a major milestone. The program could cost a trillion dollars over the next 50 years.
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In one of its rare celebrations of two noteworthy events, Google has created a special home page cartoon honoring not just the elusive February 29, but also Rossini’s birthday.
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According to The Verge, HP’s axe falls on the troubled division for cost-cutting reasons, and calls into question the computing giant’s commitment to the platform.
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The aviation giant handed over the first next-gen passenger 747 today to an “undisclosed” VIP buyer. Boeing expects to deliver the first commercial 747-8 Intercontinental soon.
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With its latest research, Big Blue says it’s reached device performance close to the minimum requirements for implementing a “practical quantum computer.” But many hurdles remain.
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With no Pixar film to beat, ‘Rango’ won the Academy Award for best animated feature, while “Hugo” won for best visual effects. Both victors show things are changing in Hollywood.
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As airlines wait impatiently for the next-gen, fuel-efficient plane, Boeing today replaces Dreamliner’s leader with the head of the highly successful 777 program.
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A new effort under way at the world’s largest museum and research institution could eventually mean more of its 137 million objects will be publicly available, even if just via 3D digital models.
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In October, the space agency discovered a 19-mile crack in Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier. Now, NASA has created a video showing what the giant canyon of ice looks like up close.
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Known as one of the savviest tech investors, the founder of SV Angel has picked a slew of winners including Twitter, Groupon, Dropbox, Square, and Airbnb. He shares some thoughts with CNET.
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Tool shows what would happen if history’s most notorious nuclear weapons were dropped on different cities. It’s scary and sobering–and more than a million people have used it.
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With the Historic American Engineering Record, the National Park Service and the Library of Congress are celebrating some of the country’s best engineering projects.
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With its new SDK, the cloud communications leader is enabling everyone from iPhone game developers to big businesses to build simple tap-to-chat buttons into their apps.
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The new service means wireless carriers can sell customers a way to seamlessly make transactions at any credit card terminal with their phones, and no hardware has to be changed.
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The NBA’s latest star has been in the public eye for just days, and already there are seven books about him. It just goes to show what’s possible in the new world of book publishing.
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Connect by Getty Images provides Web site publishers quick access to the stock photo agency’s vast collection.
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Dozens of apps tie in seamlessly, but on the audio front, music has led the way. Now, radio news shows and podcasts are available by the thousands, and discovery is the goal.
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Monday is the 50th anniversary of NASA astronaut John Glenn’s mission to be the first American to orbit the Earth. On that day, Glenn became one of America’s most important heroes.
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First unveiled in December, the redesign aims to make it easier for Web users to find and discover the most important tweets and trending topics.
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The aviation giant’s next-gen plane took two weeks to fly a complex route over the Northern U.S. The result? A perfect satellite image for its marketing purposes.
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Dozens of jetliner models fill the skies. But you don’t have to be the only one who can’t tell a 737 from an A320, or a 747 from an A380.
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Bump launches version 3.0, a major redesign that yanked most major features. It’s not the only company to find that products can be better with fewer tools rather than more.
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The president’s re-election effort is looking for a boost in the middle of one of the most tech-savvy cities in the world. It’s not staffed up yet, but the campaign is looking for volunteers.
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Venerable blogging service is launching the “social publishing group” to help elevate some of its most popular communities. And yes, cats and celebrities are among the topics being pushed.
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The space agency may be best known for launching spaceships, but it also has an obsession with creating educational games that might inspire kids to one day become rocket scientists.
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When the sun goes down, that’s when the iPad gets busy for folks with news readers. The iPhone? It’s more of a daytime habit. If you’re building an app for both devices, heed the lesson.
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The Silicon Valley online payments startup grew by 1,000 percent last year and is hopeful it can repeat that level of growth this year. To do that, it’s had to move away from its early friends-and-family roots and embrace small businesses.
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According to The Washington Post, the Obama administration will unveil a new budget on Monday that will slash spending on NASA’s Mars rover program by 20 percent next year, with more cuts to come.
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After large numbers of longtime ‘Burners’ failed to get tickets during the event’s recent selection process, many claimed organizers had failed to adopt a sensible system. Now, those organizers are trying to calm community anger.
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The popular photo sharing app is rocked by news that it uploads contacts from iPhone users without permission.
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The hacktivist group releases a document filled with private information on a group of City Hall and police department personnel. One councilwoman, whom Anonymous thanked for her community support, was spared.
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