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Microsoft chucks our reviewer from Xbox Live Update Preview program

Publié: décembre 8, 2011, 11:22pm CET par Joe Wilcox
Steve Ballmer won't get a Christmas card from me this year. Or next.

Microsoft's assault on BetaNews' Xbox 360 dashboard review continues. I awoke to find a take-down notice waiting in Gmail, for photos posted with the review. A few hours ago, our reviewer, a BetaNews reader, informed me that Microsoft had kicked him out of the Preview program for violating the NDA. But did he?

Here's the email he received late this morning:

As an Xbox Live Update Preview participant, you agreed to a Program Participation Agreement that included an obligation to keep the program confidential.

Unfortunately, it has come to our attention that you have directly violated this agreement by posting pictures, information and/or talking with the press about the program and its contents. As a result, the following actions will be taking place:

You have been removed from the Xbox Live Update Preview Program.

The console(s) you registered as part of the program will not be able to connect to Xbox Live until the official dashboard release date later this year. You will not be eligible for future Xbox Live Update programs.

We share your excitement about new content, but it is unfortunate you chose to not abide by the terms of the agreement and have been removed from the Xbox Live Update Preview Program. Xbox Live Team.

I take non-disclosure agreements quite seriously. You don't break them. It violates trust established with the vendor. But reality is this: Embargoes and NDAs are violated all the time. I can't even count the number of times someone working for another publication broke an embargo and got a jump on me and other competitors. The excuse is always the same: "It was a mistake!" "We screwed up time zones" or "An editor hit post to soon". Pick any other excuse you like. Does Microsoft cut off the publications? Bar them from future embargoes? I'd love to hear of an instance, because I don't know of any.

That's not meant as justification but background and to raise questions about who and who doesn't get cut slack for mistakes and whether or not Microsoft should treat our reviewer so harshly. Earlier today I wrote: "I will take it as a personal affront should Microsoft choose to ban our reader from participating in future beta programs". This is much worse. He's kicked out right now and for the future.

I deliberately do not name the review's writer, even though his name is quite visible when linking to the story. Search engines give the Internet longer memory than an elephant. I still hope to resolve this situation with our reader's wrists slapped rather than legs broken.

Series of Events

Here's the timeline as I've reconstructed it so far:
- On December 5, Microsoft made a big splashy announcement -- with press release, blog post and other marketing material -- about the dashboard update coming the next day. That after Major Nelson reminding about it weeks before. Microsoft wasn't exactly keeping secrets.
- The same day, I asked for readers to review the autumn 2011 Xbox 360 and Live updates. (Microsoft's PR agency had rejected my request for game console and Kinect loaner.) Our reader responded in comments -- that he would do it.
- On December 6, Microsoft made yet another splashy announcement about three autumn 2011 updates, coming that day to an Xbox 360 near you.
- Our reader sent the review and photos during early business hours on the same day. He shot the photos that morning.
- I initially ignored the review -- to finish up a news analysis about the Xbox news, which posted at 12:22 pm ET.
- After completing other responsibilities, I edited and posted the Xbox 360 dashboard review -- at 3:12 pm ET. It was clear that our reviewer participated in the Preview program, but Microsoft supposedly had released the update -- that's what the fanfare was about.
- However, unknown to me then, Major Nelson tweeted: "Sorry for the dash launch delay. Good news: first set of customers will be getting the Xbox LIVE update within the next few hours". I assume the 3:46 pm tweet was Pacific Time.
- That means our review went up before the Dashboard release, but after the announcement. Something else: The rejection letter our reader received today gives different timing: "official dashboard release date later this year".
- Lastly today's aforementioned events: Take-down notice and reviewer rebuked by Microsoft.
While my first inclination is to support a BetaNews reader, I would be more understanding of Microsoft's position if the updates had been kept secret. Just the opposite, the company couldn't contain corporate enthusiasm about them. The date and content was public knowledge.

An Honest Mistake

Our reviewer takes full responsibility for not being more careful about the NDA, which I asked to see but he can't access having been booted from the Preview program. He doesn't want to make a big deal out of the situation and would prefer to let it subside. I understand the sentiment. But I also think there's honest mistake here regarding this damn NDA. He most certainly never meant to violate anything. He expressed his enthusiasm for Xbox 360 and Live in a review that is extremely positive and so well-written.

I won't recap all reader comments (from this morning's story), but there is some good insight regarding why this happened. Another reader informed me that the NDA doesn't expire until the end of the year. That makes sense since Microsoft plans more content updates for the new dashboard. But unless I missed something, our reviewer stuck to what's available. So what? The NDA bars him from discussing stuff already publicly revealed by Microsoft or available to other Xbox users? That other reader writes, and I've chosen not to name him (for obvious reasons):

I would have done the same thing he did because it wasn't until I checked the Preview program site (the day of the release) that I realized MS's message to us that we were still under NDA until the end of the year because we would be testing upcoming apps.

The problem with all of this is that MS did not make it abundantly clear to us that we were still in the program. I wasted a ton of time wondering why I never got a message saying, 'You have an update!' It wasn't until I went to the Preview program site that I realized, I had been updated days ago and that I would continue in the program until year end.

He should not have been kicked out. He made an honest mistake.

BetaNews' take-down notice remains an unresolved matter. I responded to Microsoft's request asking for more clarification on how the photos violate our reviewer's NDA. I won't do anything until Microsoft responds. However, BetaNews' reader reviewer shot new photos this morning before getting booted from the Preview program. It's pointless to replace existing photos without Microsoft clarification, since the company might view the new ones to be in violation, too.

We will act appropriately and responsibly once Microsoft responds.

Photo Credit: Steve Arnold
Amazon will pay you $15 to shop the mall, then buy online

Publié: décembre 8, 2011, 10:54pm CET par Ed Oswald

Amazon wants you to shop on its website this Saturday. How much so? It is enticing users of Amazon Price Check with up to $15 savings on items they scan in stores and end up buying through the retailer. Users can earn up to a $5 discount per purchase (five percent) on electronics, toys, sports, music and DVDs.

The company is using those scanning to effectively spy on brick-and-mortar retailers for them by enabling a share price function in the app. Amazon says it will use this data to keep its prices competitive. To earn the discount, customers would need to use the checkout function within Price Check.

Why is Amazon giving the discount? It saves them a lot of time in doing research on the competition itself. "During the promotional period, we are offering through the Price Check by Amazon application a discount based off the Amazon Price as an introduction to sharing in-store advertised prices with us," the promotional page reads. "In-store price submission and location confirmation are optional".

It is not surprising that retailers are none too happy with Amazon's move to steal away sales right within their own stores. The Retail Industry Leaders Association calls it an unfair use of traditional retail stores as a "showroom" for Amazon.

"Central to this tactic is Amazon's continued practice of using a pre-Internet loophole to avoid state sales tax collection", the group says -- alluding to the e-retailers continuing fight against states attempting to levy sales taxes on purchases, especially if Amazon has a distribution point within the state.

The Alliance for Main Street Fairness agrees with the RILA's position, saying Amazon's "special treatment" (again, regarding sales tax) makes it hard to compete.

Photo Credit: JCREATION/Shutterstock
Google unveils mobile-formatted news magazine Currents

Publié: décembre 8, 2011, 10:01pm CET par Tim Conneally

Google on Thursday officially launched Google Currents, a news reading application for Android and iOS-based smartphones and tablets, and publishing backend for content producers.

Similar in concept to Flipboard, Zite or any of the dozens of "iPad magazines," Google Currents lets readers subscribe to different news sites and view their Google Reader RSS feeds paginated like a magazine, instead of infinitely vertical like a website. A user's Gmail account is tied with their Currents reading list, so sharing on Google+ has been built into the service.

Another major element to Google Currents' design is the "trending" section, which automatically updates the app with the top five stories across all Google News topics. Users can pick which topics they want to follow on top of this.

The service launches with approximately 150 different content partners, but Google has launched a self-service publishing platform to let any website owner syndicate their content on Google Currents and track their metrics with Google Analytics, so plenty of content is sure to follow.
Chinese artist embeds microchips in 'smart fireworks' for explosive art exhibit in Doha [Video]

Publié: décembre 8, 2011, 9:51pm CET par Tim Conneally

At the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar this week, Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang put on his largest "explosion event" of the last three years, utilizing microchip-controlled explosives to form incredible designs and patterns. The video we've embedded of the event is an impressive testament to how a volatile black powder explosion can be controlled and shaped by computer.

Each set of explosions was calculated to paint a different picture. One series of explosions created black smoke clouds that looked like "drops of ink splattered across the sky."

In another, 8,300 shells embedded with computer microchips exploded in a pyramid shape over the desert.

A spectator present at the event on Monday told us this particular explosion also caused an equally impressive blast of heat.

In 2001, Cai began developing a technique to use microcontrollers to more accurately time his explosions. Fireworks are typically ignited by a fuse, and the delay of the explosion is simply determined by the length of that fuse. However, this is an extremely imprecise science due to the variation in fuses and construction of fireworks.

In an interview in Japanese art blog Cool, Cai said "if you use fireworks with built-in microchips, the altitudes and timing of explosions are already calculated. For instance, it is like 2000 people who have tickets get seated exactly in their right seats. I can control the altitude and timing of the explosions of 2000 fireworks. However, there are a good thing and a bad thing about introducing microchips. The good thing is that now I can use the sky as canvas. The bad thing is that they are expensive. I feel pressured in many aspects because huge amount of money is spent on few dozens of seconds of art."

The brief but breathtaking exhibition celebrated the opening of Cai Guo-Qiang's art installation at the Arab Museum of Modern Art which will run until May 26.
What the hell is SOPA? [infographic]

Publié: décembre 8, 2011, 8:23pm CET par Joe Wilcox
All kinds of unsolicited mail pours into my inbox, and I ignore about half the stuff that probably matters -- that's if the Junk Mail filter doesn't grab it first. I'm particularly leery of messages promoting an infographic made by some organization that might have vested interest in the topic. But this one, from BusinessInsuranceQuotes, depicts such an emotionally-heated topic, I figured: "Oh, what the hell, just post the damn thing".

Feast your eyes on this little ditty about SOPA -- the Stop Online Piracy Act -- that I repeatedly mistype as "privacy", subconscious response meaning to invade it, perhaps. The infographic really lacks the drama SOPA would create if enacted as law. Little things like empowering the government to take down your site or seize your domain based on the presumption of guilt. That's the painless part. You go to jail if convicted. Perhaps Federal prisons aren't as overcrowded as California jails.

"What're you in for, bitch?" "My website linked to Lady Gaga's new album; it was pirated".

SOPA is picking up some surprising opponents -- and, yes, many of you are among them. What a strange juxtaposition, too. SOPA should, in theory, curb software piracy, so you would think major developers would back it. Some are so against the proposed legislation they've taken drastic action. This week, Kaspersky Lab ended its membership in Business Software Alliance -- the industry's anti-piracy trade group -- over SOPA. CEO Eugene Kaspersky faults BSA, which has "blindly supported SOPA while ignoring any other point of view. We had to withdraw from this association because we disagree with its decision. And this is why". He continues:
If we accept this law, hundreds of thousands of lawyers will suddenly appear out of the woodwork because almost any website can be accused of copyright infringement! This law will lead to major legalized extortion. The Internet business faces hard times -- look at those who do not want to join SOPA: eBay, Facebook, AOL, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Yahoo, Wikimedia, etc...

My position can be summed up as follows:

1. SOPA should be tossed onto the fire
2. The dinosaurs should be pensioned off
3. Content should be distributed in new ways, e.g.:
- Low quality content is free. You can take as much as you can eat (for advertising, for example)
- Medium quality content should be quick and cheap
- High (professional) quality – expensive
- There has already been movement towards the last point, for example, iTunes. Some studios are also practicing free distribution of low quality content for promotional purposes.
So far, 3,377 people have responded to BetaNews poll: "US Congress is considering two new copyright bills: PROTECT IP and Stop Online Piracy Act. Do you support them?" Nintey-five percent answer "No".

BetaNews commenter partypop: "This will stop privacy not piracy. Most hosted servers will simply relocate outside the juristiction of the US. This bill will only give more power to government to shutdown sites it doesn't like, i.e. WikiLeaks. k1jello: "Piracy laws are already in place in the USA, this is an attempt to gag and persecute people...Freedom of speech and privacy is at stake".

With that introduction, here's the infographic:
Mendeley: where academic research meets the cloud

Publié: décembre 8, 2011, 7:41pm CET par Nick Peers

The world of academia and research thrives on organization and collaboration. And when it comes to keeping your research, notes, journals and other documents in order, Mendeley is just the service you need.

It’s cloud-based, allowing you to not just back up and sync your research library online and across multiple computers via the cross-platform Mendeley Desktop tool and Mendeley (Lite) for iPhone and iPad, but you can also collaborate with others, too, thanks to the tools it provides in conjunction with its group sharing capabilities.

The simplest way to use the service is via its own dedicated Mendeley Desktop tool for Windows, Mac or Linux. Once signed up for a free account, which gives you 1GB storage space (500MB personal, and 500MB for sharing with others), simply drag and drop documents of various types into the program for archiving and organizing as you see fit. Alternatively, you can add files and folders the old fashioned way, or select folders to watch, making it easy to add future content to your library.

You don't need to be an academic or researcher to use Mendeley.

Once in the library, you can organize documents into folders and sub-folders, assign them to groups for peer review and collaboration, and more besides. Individual documents will have metadata assigned to them, either from the original document or automatically if a match is found online at various academic indexes. All data can then be edited manually if required.

Documents can be viewed within Mendeley itself, and you can highlight passages or add notes for your own use or for others if collaborating. Additional notes about the document can also be recorded separately.

Your research library is automatically backed up and synced online, allowing you to access it from any computer, either via its own copy of Mendeley Desktop, or through your web browser at the Mendeley web portal. You can also access your research while on the move through your iPad or iPhone.

Although geared towards academics and researchers, Mendeley can be used in other environments too -- this writer found it quite useful for cataloguing articles he’s written, for example.

Mendeley Desktop is a free-for-personal-use download for Windows, Mac or Linux. Mendeley Lite runs on iPhone and iPad. A free account is required, with extra storage and features available as paid-for upgrades.

Photo Credit: Steven Chiang/Shutterstock
Nokia Lumia 710 Windows Phone comes to T-Mobile USA

Publié: décembre 8, 2011, 7:29pm CET par Ed Oswald

T-Mobile is the first stop in the United States for Nokia's Windows Phone line, as a Federal Communications Commission filing and an invite sent to the media confirm the nation's fourth largest carrier plans to bring the Lumia 710 to its network. The FCC filing can be seen here.

The 710 sports a 3.7-inch screen and 1.4 GHz Qualcomm processor with 512MB of RAM. It has 8GB of on-board storage and integrated 5-megapixel digital camera. Nokia produces GSM and WCDMA models, running Windows Phone 7.5.

The Finnish handset maker debuted the Lumia 710 along with the higher-end Lumia 800 at a press event in October. At the time, Nokia announced no US carrier partners. The 710's proposed manual filed with the FCC clearly shows a T-Mobile logo on the phone, which jives with other information uncovered this week.

Both companies are sending invitations for a joint event to be held in New York on December 14. The layout of the invite itself is reminiscent of Windows Phone's tiled interface, which suggests they are preparing to officially launch the Lumia here.

Pricing is unknown, nor whether the Lumia 800 is headed to the carrier: so far the required filings with the FCC have not yet appeared.
Can Ultrabooks halt Acer's continuing decline?

Publié: décembre 8, 2011, 7:09pm CET par Tim Conneally

Acer Inc, the world's fourth-largest personal computer maker, is shifting gears slightly after nearly a full year of unprofitability.

In an interview with Dow Jones yesterday, Acer CEO J.T. Wang said the company is moving away from the low-cost strategy to one more focused on profit margins.

While this is essentially the same generic cost leadership strategy, it moves Acer's focus from the demand side to the supply side.

Acer has had a rough 2011, but expects to return to profitability in this final quarter of the year. In March, former CEO Gianfranco Lanci resigned after a clash with the company's board over growth and branding strategies. Lanci believed Hewlett-Packard should have been Acer's main rival, but the board believed the real targets should have been Apple and HTC not in the consumer PC space but in the mobile space.

Following Lanci's departure, the company had to write down $150 million in unsold inventory and announced a round of layoffs in its European facilities.

The problem has been that the demand for mini-notebooks and netbooks has been declining as media tablets have taken a more prominent role in consumer computing, and IT budgets have focused more on cloud services and virtualization.

Gartner Research last October said shipments of mini-notebooks (that is, low cost notebooks with screens 5"- 10" in size running full versions of client operating systems) were expected to decline to 22.7 million units globally in 2012, accounting for just 7% of worldwide mobile PCs. Users now acknowledge the limitations present in these devices, and vendors have shifted R&D over to media tablets and the still emerging "ultrabook" form factor (i.e. ultra thin and light notebooks.)

The Taiwanese end of the global PC industry really succeeded with mini-notebooks and netbooks, as Asus and Acer used them to grow their global PC market share. But in developed markets, it looks like the market-growing potential of these devices came to a rather abrupt end as the iPad gained popularity.

Acer's total PC shipments dropped more than 23 percent over the course of 2010-2011.

To address this, Wang said the key growth driver next year will be Ultrabooks, which command slightly higher prices than netbooks and mini-notes. This echoes statements the company made at the IFA conference in Berlin last September, when it said its new Aspire S3 Ultrabook would become the company's "star product."
Put TouchWiz Care inside your PC toolkit

Publié: décembre 8, 2011, 5:11pm CET par Mike Williams

Does the world really need another PC maintenance suite? Probably not, but they keep coming anyway. And at first glance, the latest, Toolwiz Care, didn’t look like it would exactly break new ground. The program includes a Registry cleaner, for instance. A module to free up a little hard drive space (though not as much as if we’d just installed CCleaner). And another to help control our Windows startup programs: it all seemed very ordinary.

When we took a closer look, though, some interesting differences emerged. So the Startup Programs module didn’t simply provide a list of applications and leave us to make the difficult decisions. It actually makes sensible recommendations about what you should disable or remove to accelerate your boot time. And provides figures to help put your boot time in context in the first place: our boot time is apparently 30-percent faster than the average of other Toolwiz Care users, which tells us it’s probably not worth expending a great deal of effort in trying to improve it further.

Similarly, the Disk Clean option initially looks poor, far below the standards of CCleaner. But by clicking on Settings, say, we can have Toolwiz Care locate redundant files by our choice of extension (*.old, *.tmp etc). The Disk Analyze feature can reveal which files and folders are using the most drive space, helping you to zoom in on the cause of the problem. And a Duplicate File Finder will also quickly identify files which may be wasting drive space.

But the real surprises appear when you select the Tools menu.

Super Explorer and Super Registry tools allow you to browse your file system and Registry without using the Windows API, for instance – perfect for bypassing rootkits or other stealthy malware, and discovering their otherwise hidden traces.

There’s also an MBR Backup and Restore tool, which even allows you to manually edit the MBR if you know what you’re doing.

And you get small tools to undelete files, generate secure passwords, encrypt confidential documents, control Internet Explorer addons, edit Windows context menus and a whole lot more.

Yet despite all this functionality, the suite remains relatively lightweight, consuming barely more than 11MB of hard drive space, and around 22MB of RAM when first launched and running in the background.

The primary Toolwiz Care options aren’t anything special, then: the Disk Cleaner isn’t a patch on the leading freeware, and Registry cleaners don’t do much anyway. Look a little further, though, and you’ll find the suite has more than enough interesting tools to deserve its place on your hard drive, and we’d recommend you give it a look.
Microsoft issues take-down notice for our Xbox 360 dashboard review

Publié: décembre 8, 2011, 4:46pm CET par Joe Wilcox

Here's something I don't wake up to everyday -- actually never. At 7:35 am ET, BetaNews received an email demanding that we remove photos from the excellent Xbox 360 review penned by one of our readers: "Microsoft requests that you remove the photos, but not the text, of this story, because the images are copyrighted and were released in violation of an NDA".

BetaNews is investigating the matter, and I will appropriately respond. BetaNews respects copyrights and non-disclosure agreements. It's one reason you see so few rumor stories and supporting photos here. We assume that the writer took the photos and that he participated in the Xbox 360 dashboard preview program. Reviewers take photos all the time while under NDA or embargo and publish them after the restriction lifts. BetaNews posted the review (and accompanying photos) after Microsoft publicly announced and released the autumn 2011 Xbox 360 updates. We assume for now that this is a misunderstanding.

If it turns out that the writer didn't take the photos (I'm awaiting his reply to email), BetaNews will remove them, of course, or obtain rights to use them (if possible). The reviewer took the photos the day the Dashboard updated, and he has offered a fresh set taken today. Microsoft's take-down notice cites NDA violation, which perplexes me, since the review and photos posted after Microsoft started distributing the Xbox 360/Live updates.

To be clear, I deliberately do not name the review's writer, even though his name is quite visible when linking to the story. Search engines give the Internet longer memory than an elephant. Particularly since I assume this is all a misunderstanding, his name shouldn't be forever linked to this take-down request.

BetaNews stands by its readers, which is another reason you're reading a public response to Microsoft's request. I will take it as a personal affront should Microsoft choose to ban our reader from participating in future beta programs. He responded to my call for reader reviews, after Microsoft ignored repeated requests for Xbox 360 and Kinect loaner so that I could test the dashboard, Kinect and entertainment updates and write a review. In a way, I'm glad, since our reader did such exceptional work.

I've got some advice for Microsoft: Learn who your friends are. Enthusiasts are your best evangelists. We posted a 3,200-word review from an enthusiast who gave high praise to the autumn 2011 updates. He should receive gracious response from the Xbox 360/Live team rather than our getting a take-down notice for the photos.

That's friendly advice. My ultimate goal is to resolve this situation amicably.

Text of the take-down notice, with email address of the sender redacted:

Dear Sir/Madam,

We are writing to you in relation to [betanews.com]

Microsoft requests that you remove the photos, but not the text, of this story, because the images are copyrighted and were released in violation of an NDA.

The images in question are:

[betanews.com]

[betanews.com]

[betanews.com]

[betanews.com]

[betanews.com]

Posting of Microsoft’s confidential information as described above is not authorized by Microsoft, any of its agents, or by law. We request that you immediately take steps to remove this material from your website.

We appreciate your cooperation in this matter. Please advise us regarding what actions you take.

Yours sincerely,

James Young

Internet Investigator
on behalf of Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
United States of America

I emailed this response before posting:

Good Day, James,

We currently are investigating this matter and request some additional information. What exactly about the photos violate a NDA? We posted the photos, which we assume the reviewer took (I'm awaiting email confirmation), after Microsoft publicly announced and released the autumn 2011 update.

BetaNews fully respects NDAs, but we're confused how these photos violate any non-disclosure agreement that presumably has lifted. Could you explain further, please? So that we might act appropriately and responsibly.

Appreciated,

Joe

I'll update you once Microsoft responds.