Community

John Waibochi, 45, CEO of Virtual City, right, talks with Sami Muneer, left, vice president of design at SAP. Virtual City is a Kenya-based company using mobile technology to improve how small farmers sell their harvests and how much they get paid. Waibochi was visiting the valley for two weeks as part of a fellowship funded by Acumen, a social impact investor and SAP. By Heather SomervilleThe venture capital investing boom has sent billions of dollars to start-ups that serve the upper crust of society with an app to deliver your laundry or order a valet to park your car, yet many VCs continue to resist investing in viable businesses bringing toilets, water and electricity to the rural poor.For years, companies whose aim was to improve the lives of the poor or downtrodden were dismissed as charity work, not for calculating investors. These days, social-impact businesses are increasingly proving to be profitable investments, but VCs still pass on companies that offer access to the potentially huge market of developing Asian and African nations, where billions of people are poised to enter the middle class with money to spend and access to technology, according to interviews with dozens of entrepreneurs and investors.“Silicon Valley has a lot of money,” said Peter Scott, founder and CEO of BURN, which sells clean-burning stoves to Kenyan families and helps them finance the purchase. “We thought money would just flow to us. But it’s not. I’m worried that I can’t raise more capital.”Scott was one of nine entrepreneurs selected for the Social Entrepreneur Fellowship funded by tech giant SAP and impact investing firm Acumen, a programme that offers social-impact entrepreneurs three months of mentorship and access to Silicon Valley leaders during a weeklong stay here. Their visit in July, say experts, highlights the disparity in access to funding between Silicon Valley start-ups and companies working in rural, poor communities.“It’s very unlikely that you’re going to invest in a social company that has the payoff of, say, Uber,” said Eric Nee, managing editor of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. “So Benchmark or Kleiner, they’re not going to do this.”But if investors can find the same courage to fund social-impact start-ups that the early institutional backers of the fledgling venture capital industry showed decades ago, social entrepreneurs could have the chance to move the needle on ailments — poverty, disease and lack of education — affecting billions of people, and deliver financial returns at the same time, according to William Sahlman, a professor of entrepreneurship for 35 years at Harvard Business School, who in 2013 co-authored a paper titled “Social Impact Investing Will be the New Venture Capital.”“It’s always really frustrating to hear really, really terrific entrepreneurs doing terrific things and they can’t get funding,” Sahlman said in an interview.Some VCs are starting to show interest. VC investments into US-based companies working on technology for rural agriculture, malaria treatment, water purification, new stove technology, toilets and hygiene, microfinance and other technologies to assist communities in poverty grew from $151.9 million in 2010 to $267.2 million in 2014, according to data provided by Dow Jones for the San Jose Mercury News. That’s a 76 percent jump, but still just 0.5 percent of the $50.1 billion invested by VCs nationally last year.Impact investing generally refers to investments in companies that, in addition to promising a financial return, also offer a benefit to society or the environment. The pedigrees of the other SAP social-impact fellows show just how compelling those benefits can be.Consider John Waibochi, whose company, Kenya-based Virtual City, builds mobile technology for small farmers to track their harvests and get paid through a mobile cash advancement that can be used to buy fertiliser, farm equipment or even pay for school. The technology is used by more than 350,000 tea farmers and 90,000 dairy farmers. Waibochi says he has raised $4.5 million, but needs another $6 million to grow the company.But some VCs argue their job is to take calculated risks on technology they are familiar with, in a ZIP code they know, to find the next Google or Facebook — not to make bets on a company halfway across the world working under the threat of an Ebola outbreak or a military coup.“It is seen as a distraction from maximising your return for your investors,” said Ashmeet Sidana, founder and managing partner at VC firm Engineering Capital.VC firms raise money from institutional investors that include endowments and pension funds, which have a fiduciary responsibility to protect peoples’ money, not bet it on better hygiene in East Africa, say experts.Yet the mainstream VC industry is increasingly in the minority in its aversion to impact investing, an increasingly profitable, if risky, business. The field has grown to include investors of all types: Big banks such as Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase have cut checks for tens of millions of dollars to non-profit or boutique impact investing firms — the number of which has soared in the last five years.JPMorgan says it one day hopes to sell its financial services to that part of the world, which is why it has dedicated $100 million to businesses serving poor and rural communities. These start-ups can bring more technology and economic power to consumers, the theory goes, so they are one day ready to be JPMorgan customers.“This is a business opportunity for a lot of organisations,” said Amy Bell, head of principal investments for social and sustainable finance at JPMorgan. “We are intentionally trying to invest in markets that are important and where we see our business is going to grow.”Others include SAP, which has made a $500 million investment in 51 African countries through 2020. San Francisco-based impact investing firm DBL Ventures just raised its third fund, a $400 million pot. Massachusetts-based investment fund Root Capital has made more than $900 million in loans to social-impact companies, and gotten 97 percent of that capital back.LeapFrog Investments has raised $535 million in two funds “which in the impact field is pretty unheard of,” said Stephen Bowey, a partner at the global impact investing firm. “But we think that’s just the start.“There is a financial return in this business, and not just any financial return, but exceptional returns,” Bowey said. “We don’t aim to compromise on that issue.” —San Jose Mercury News/TNS

Visitors look at fridges at the booth of the Turkish electronics and home appliances manufacturer Vestel on the opening day of the 55th IFA electronics trade fair in Berlin on Friday. AFP/Berlin Smartwatches, intelligent homes and drones that follow users wherever they go are on show at Berlin's mega consumer electronics fair, which opened its doors to the public on Friday. Here are some of this year's eye-catching trends and innovations at the six-day showcase: Smartwatches go round Samsung, Huawei and Motorola pick spherical faces for their latest smartwatch offers, giving them a distinctly different look to arch-rival Apple Watch, which has a rectangular face. Keeping track of emails, water versus caffeine intake or how many steps taken in a day, are among the myriad functions offered by the intelligent wristwatches. The Android smartwatch makers are hoping that their models will claw back some market share from Apple, which shipped about 4mn smartwatches globally in the second quarter, market researcher Strategy Analytics estimated in July. Samsung had shipped just 400,000 units in the same period. Homes that run themselves If there is a word to describe electronics and appliances launched this year, it would be "smart". Household must-haves from refrigerators to washing machines to coffee makers can all be hooked up to the Internet and controlled through an app on a smartphone. Italy's Cuciniale is showcasing a cooker that takes orders from a smartphone, and can cook a steak to perfection - be it rare, medium rare or well done. And pasta will of course be al dente, the company says. Love plants but can't remember to water them? French company Parrot has a sensor that waters automatically. Samsung Electronics has meanwhile unveiled not only a line of smart appliances but also a series of gadgets called "Smart Things", including plugs and a hub that coordinates or goes with intelligent white goods. Its vision is for the homeowner to programme daily routines that the house can run on its own. Alternatively, certain tasks can be controlled remotely through the smartphone - for instance, opening the door from a distance when grandmother comes to visit, as usual, half an hour too early. 'Follow me' drones For skiers who want photos of themselves in action on the slopes, camera drone maker DJI says it has the answer. Among several new features for its "Phantom" series is a function that keeps the drone hovering over its user wherever he or she goes. And, if the drone loses signal and strays off the beaten track, there is another new feature called home lock which would take the little buzzing unmanned aerial machine back home. Back-to-camera basics The pioneer of instant photos Polaroid returns to its roots with a digital camera that prints snapshots instantly - on special paper without requiring ink. The so-called ZINK paper contains colour crystals that are invisible until a photo is taken, working much like old-school Polaroids. However, the camera also has the advantages of a memory-card which stores up to 32 GB of images. Print me some food No IT show would be complete without 3D printers, which have taken the world by storm, making anything from protheses to jet engines to jewellery. In a bid to whet the appetite for 3D printers, Taiwanese maker XYZprinting is showcasing one in Berlin that ... prints food.

Terri Brax, CEO of Women Tech Founders and founder of Teacher Care and Teacher Care online. By Heidi StevensTerri Brax launched her first business to help women find quality child care. She launched her second business to help them find their voices.In the mid-90s, Brax was a young mother of one searching for day care options so she could return to her job selling computer systems to retailers. Unhappy with the choices, she left her job to pursue a master’s degree.When she was ready to return to the workforce, her day care centre and nanny options were no more appealing than before.“I wanted somebody who was going to provide lots of enrichment and be knowledgeable about child development,” she said. “I wanted to see the kind of child care that would really change families’ lives.”She created Teacher Care, a service that connects families with teachers who are educated in child development and will tailor the type of care they provide to a child’s particular interests and needs.“Let’s say a child is into bugs,” says Brax, who grew up in Hanover Park. “The teacher and the child can go to the library and check out books about bugs. They can do art projects about bugs. Lunch becomes ants on a celery stick. It’s the kind of learning that sticks with you.” (Raisins play the part of ants, of course. No actual insects are ingested.)In the process of expanding her company beyond its Schaumburg, Ill., headquarters — Teacher Care now places teachers and tutors in New York, Washington, DC, San Francisco and several other mid-size to large cities — Brax started to notice how difficult it was to find women in technology positions: videographers, coders, producers.“That’s how I started understanding the needs of women in tech,” she says.Seven months ago, two decades after creating Teacher Care, Brax launched a start-up of a different sort: Women Tech Founders, whose acronym is, very intentionally, WTF. It’s a non-profit media company whose goal is to inspire more women to pursue careers in technology and to help tell the stories of women who are already making waves in the field.Brax has three children now, all of whom are grown and living around the Chicago area. Following is an edited transcript of our recent conversation at 1871, the tech incubator on the 12th floor of Chicago’s Merchandise Mart.Was there one moment when you specifically decided there was a need for Women Tech Founders?It was a few different things, but while I was collecting testimonials for Teacher Care, I was filming one (woman) who was a tech founder, and the whole idea of bringing together women to be interviewed and to hear their stories led to launching Women Tech Founders. It felt like there was such a lack of any females who were visible in tech.Is part of the mission also to showcase the women who are already succeeding in tech?There are so many women who are deeply contributing to the world and making money at the same time: Desiree Vargas, co-founder of GiveForward (a website that enables users to create online fundraisers), Katie Hench who developed an autism app. The question becomes, “What if there were as many women as men who went into tech?” What would the world look like if you had the collective efforts of more women? And why isn’t that happening?Are there stereotypes that keep women from pursuing technology careers?A lot of women don’t go into tech because they think we’re all nerds sitting behind computers, or that we’re bored all day. If you talk to somebody who’s successfully building a tech start-up, they love what they’re doing. You can see the light in their eyes because they’re so excited about what they’re creating, what they’re building, what they’re putting out there and giving to other people. It’s the same thing I look for when I’m hiring a teacher.Why is it important to correct those misconceptions?Tech is, in the world right now, the most powerful thing there is. If less than 10 percent of minorities and women are in it, that means we don’t have the power. The power is there for us, and we need to figure out how we can take it and use it to give us a voice. That’s why I feel strongly that the message should be out there, in colleges and high schools and junior high schools, that tech should be on your radar. You might love it. It might be your end-all.Are you optimistic about women’s future in technology? In leadership, in general?When a woman knows there is something out there she wants, she goes through anything to get it. I don’t think women aren’t going into coding because they don’t think they can do coding. I think it’s, “I don’t see a reason to do coding.” We want to show them those reasons. I’m so encouraged. In the past, women felt like there were only so many seats at the table. I don’t think today’s woman feels like that. I think she’s going to make more seats. She’ll add more chairs. There’s a whole different attitude now, and it’s so exciting.Did you grow up with a mother or someone else who was a strong example of a woman creating change?My mom is an incredible person. She was a concentration camp survivor. I’m adopted. My mom was in Siberia in a concentration camp as a teenager, and she lost almost all her family except her brother, whom she was separated from. When you grow up with somebody like that, you learn a lot of WTF. She did everything. She was on the roof at 80 years old, “I have to take the leaves out of the gutters.” She was as tough as they come. Is she still with you?She passed away. She had cancer. Because I own a business, I feel incredibly lucky that I was able to take care of her in my home at the end of her life. It took cancer and a lifetime for us to feel a bond, but it’s such a gift that I had that time with her. It was a difficult childhood. War is never over. War goes on for generations. The fallout is all over the place. I wish there had been more support for her, but she didn’t have any. I think that’s part of what brought me to be such an advocate for families in need.How do you unwind?I’m a big runner. I think because I drink so much coffee. I have to run it off. It’s a bad cycle.  —Chicago Tribune/TNS

A journalist looks at the new Google logo at his work station in Washington, DC on Tuesday. AFP/San Francisco Google on Tuesday refreshed its logo to better suit mobile devices that are supplanting desktop computers when it comes to modern Internet lifestyles. Google's logo keeps its four-color scheme but shifts to a soft sans-serif font. The company is also replacing the well-known blue lower case "g" icon with an upper-case "G" combining blue, green, red and yellow. The 17-year-old Internet company is keen to follow users of its online products onto new generations of Internet-linked devices such as smartphones, tablets and watches. "We're introducing a new logo and identity family that reflects this reality and shows you when the Google magic is working for you, even on the tiniest screens," the California-based Internet firm said in a blog post. "We've taken the Google logo and branding, which were originally built for a single desktop browser page, and updated them for a world of seamless computing across an endless number of devices and different kinds of inputs - such as tap, type and talk." The unveiling of the new logo came just weeks after a surprise reorganisation of Google under a newly formed parent company called Alphabet. The plan calls for Alphabet to be the corporate parent, with an operating unit for Google and its related search operations, and a handful of other operating firms created for projects in health, Internet delivery, investment and research. While Google is known as the dominant player in Internet search, it has launched a variety of projects in recent years that are marginally related at best to its core operation. The projects include self-driving cars, Google Glass, Internet balloons, drones, health care, Google TV, mobile payments, home automation and its Google+ social network, among others. The Google unit, to be headed by current company vice president Sundar Pichai, will include search, ads, maps, YouTube, Android and related technology infrastructure.

A woman tries out a game at the German Film Museum’s exhibition, Film and Games, with a warrior figure behind her. By Tobias HanrathsIn the 1983 movie War Games, Matthew Broderick searched the net for new war games — and almost caused a real nuclear apocalypse. A year before Jeff Bridges had explored the virtual world in Tron. Interplay between cinema and computer games has been around for decades, but in recent years that creative relationship has become even tighter.It’s a relationship that’s being examined in a Film and Games exhibition running at the German Film Museum in Frankfurt until the end of January 2016.One reason for this convergence is technical progress — for a while now, games have looked just as good as movies. Another factor is that the games industry first caught up with Hollywood financially and then overhauled it.According to a forecast by market researcher IHS, this year around 92 billion dollars will be spent worldwide on games — more than on films (62 billion) and music (18 billion) combined.No wonder then that famous computer game characters such as Super Mario and Lara Croft have turned up in movies. It goes the other way too, with games that are based on movies.However, such titles don’t have the best reputation: “They are often very disappointing, because there was not enough care taken,” says Andreas Rauscher, curator of the Frankfurt exhibition. For the makers it’s often been more about getting a rapid financial return than making a good game.Memorably awful was the hastily produced game put out to cash in on Steven Spielberg’s 1983 box office smash ET — it flopped so badly that it not only damaged the game’s producer, Atari, but also the whole games industry.Countless unsold copies were dumped in a desert landfill in New Mexico and only recently rediscovered. One of them can be seen in the Frankfurt exhibition.Equally, the films made out of computer games are often more embarrassing than exciting, one common reason being that the filmmakers didn’t really understand the game.”The film version of Super Mario Brothers for example had little to do with the game,” says Rauscher. Instead of the colourful comic-book world of the game, the 1993 movie was a gloomy sci-fi adventure.The relationship between game and movie works when the exchange is more subtle and the creative elements of both formats are embraced. Game episodes where the player just watches can work in a game. In the game Metal Gear Solid, players can sometimes put down their controller for 30 minutes or more at a time to just watch.Games make use of elements from movies, Rauscher says, and often in a creative way. The successful titles from Rockstar Games for example are not based directly on any particular template. Instead the company’s games such as Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption are a colourful mixture of various elements from gangster movies and Westerns, including settings, characters and plots. Out of these set-pieces, a new story can be woven.The exchange also works the other way, with game techniques turning up in movies. This can be seen in particular in the camera work. “Video games offer a different experience of the space, something which is coming slowly into films,” Rauscher says. “The first person perspective was frowned upon in films for a long time. Now there are films, mainly horror ones, that use it.” The surprise 1999 hit The Blair Witch Project was one of the first.Some movies even borrow directly from the game format: In Edge of Tomorrow, Tom Cruise fights the same hopeless battle against alien invaders again and again until he learns how to defeat them — something familiar to any gamer who’s had to play a particular game level over and over.In the final analysis both media forms benefit from the exchange. This holds true not only for games and films, but books too. “There are now even games that take on literary subjects,” says Peter Tscherne, managing director of the Digital Games Culture Foundation in Germany.For example, the apocalyptic adventure The Last of Us contains more than a few connections to Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road.Then there’s the game Spec Ops: The Line which borrows generously from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a novella which also inspired the classic 1979 movie Apocalypse Now.  — DPA

AFP/San Francisco Facebook boasted of a new benchmark on Thursday in its seemingly inexorable march to Internet ubiquity: a billion people used the social network in a single day. "We just passed an important milestone," chief executive and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg declared in a post on his Facebook page. "On Monday, 1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family." "When we talk about our financials, we use average numbers, but this is different," Zuckerberg added. "This was the first time we reached this milestone, and it's just the beginning of connecting the whole world." Zuckerberg also posted a video dedicated to the achievement. In its earnings update last month, Facebook said monthly active users surged 13% from a year ago to 1.49bn. The number of mobile active users rose to 1.31bn. Facebook on Thursday also said it is building new technology that video creators can use to guard against their works being copied at the social network without permission. "This technology is tailored to our platform and will allow these creators to identify matches of their videos on Facebook across pages, profiles, groups, and geographies," a blog post said. "Our matching tool will evaluate millions of video uploads quickly and accurately, and when matches are surfaced, publishers will be able to report them to us for removal." Facebook planned to soon begin testing the new matching technology with a select group of partners, including media companies. The California-based social network said that it has got word from some publishers that videos are sometimes uploaded to Facebook without permission in a practice referred to as "freebooting." Facebook is already using an Audible Magic system that uses audio "fingerprinting" to identify and block copyrighted videos from making it onto the social network without proper authorisation. "We want creators to get credit for the videos that they own," Facebook said. "To address this, we have been exploring ways to enhance our rights management tools to better empower creators to control how their videos are shared on Facebook."

AFP/Washington Facebook remains the dominant social network for US Internet users, while Twitter has failed to keep pace with rivals like Instagram and Pinterest, a study showed on Wednesday. The Pew Research Center report found 72% of Americans who are online currently use Facebook, a modest uptick of one percentage point from a year ago and five points higher than in 2012. Because the vast majority of Americans use the Internet, the figures suggest 62% of all US adults are on Facebook, according to Pew. The study showed Pinterest, the bulletin-board style network, was used by 31% of those surveyed while Facebook-owned photo-sharing network Instagram grabbed 28%, with both showing significant growth. Twitter's share remained stuck at 23%, the same level as last year, although it rose from 16% in 2012. 'Highly engaged' Facebook has an added advantage over its rivals because its users are "highly engaged," according to the survey, which found 70% of Facebook users saying they log on daily, including 43% who do so several times a day. That compared with daily engagement of 59% for Instagram users, 38% of those on Twitter and 27% of Pinterest users. LinkedIn, a social network oriented toward career enhancement, saw its user base decline to 25% of online adults, from 28% in 2014. But those who use the platform daily rose to 22% from 13% a year earlier. Some 10% of online adults said they used Tumblr, the blogging platform acquired two years ago by Yahoo. That compared with 6% the last time Pew asked in December 2012. Tumblr is popular among younger adults with 20% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 reporting they use it, Pew found. The survey mirrored the global picture for the major social networks. Facebook last month said its monthly active user based grew to 1.49bn. Twitter's user base increased only marginally to 316mn. Pew found that Facebook was notably popular among women, garnering 77% of those who are online, and the 18-29 age group, where 82% use the social network. Messaging gains   The Pew survey also showed considerable interest in messaging applications which allow smartphone users to bypass carrier networks. Some 36% of smartphone owners said they used messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Kik or iMessage. These apps are especially popular among young adults, and were used by 49% of smartphone owners between the ages of 18 and 29, Pew found. "The emergence of messaging apps is noteworthy as these communication tools serve different social needs than traditional online social networks," said lead author Maeve Duggan, a researcher at Pew. "The data also show how swiftly an already complex terrain of interaction is becoming more varied." The Pew report is based on telephone interviews conducted from March 17 to April 12 among a national sample of 1,907 adults, including 1,612 Internet users, with a margin of error between 2.6 and 4.6 percentage points, depending on the subgroup.

President and CEO of Samsung Electronics J.K. Shin holds a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+ and a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 at the products' launch event in New York on Thursday.  AFP/New York Samsung unveiled two new smartphones on Thursday to ramp up its efforts to win over consumers seeking large-screen handsets, and announced launch dates for its mobile payment service. The moves are aimed at keeping the South Korean giant atop the global smartphone market and countering US rival Apple, which has made gains with its large-screen iPhone 6 and 6-Plus and its tap-to-pay feature. At a New York media event, Samsung unveiled its Galaxy S6 Edge+, the latest update for its flagship device, and Galaxy Note5, its main device in the "phablet" market. "Today the journey continues in the large-screen category that Samsung created," said J.K. Shin, Samsung's head of IT and mobile communications. The S6 Edge+ and Note5 each have a 5.7-inch display, but the S6 has smaller overall dimensions and a curved "dual edge" screen that sets aside a portion of the display for contacts or other content. Samsung Pay The company also announced that its Samsung Pay service would roll out in South Korea on August 20 and in the US on September 28, and that it would launch in Britain, Spain and China with partners to be named in each market. Shin said he expects wide adoption because Samsung Pay "doesn't cause small business to upgrade their terminals and will be accepted almost everywhere on day one." Samsung said its mobile service can be used with magnetic stripe terminals as well as those using updated NFC or "near field communication" contactless payments employed by Apple Pay. InJong Rhee, Samsung Electronics vice president, said that "NFC is fine technology but most stores don't have it." He added that Samsung Pay will be secured by its Knox software, which creates a one-time code without transmitting credit card numbers. Attacking phablets   Samsung has remained atop the global smartphone market even though its sales have been slipping in the past year. With the new devices, Samsung expands from its 5.1 inch display on the existing Galaxy S6, and leapfrogs Apple's handsets at 4.7 and 5.5 inches. The new handsets, which have Samsung Pay and wireless charging options integrated, will go on sale in the US and Canada on August 21, Samsung said. The Note5 is the upgraded version of the phablet which Samsung is generally credited with popularising. The new device has a new pop-out pen stylus and shares its upgraded 16-megapixel camera with the S6 edge+. Kantar WorlDPAnel analyst Carolina Milanesi said Samsung trailed Apple in the phablet market - devices with screens at 5.5 inches and above - in the second quarter. Avi Greengart at the research firm Current Analysis said on Twitter that "Note5 is a worthy upgrade, but unlikely to expand the category" and that the S6 edge+ "is pretty but hard to hold." Daniel Gleeson at IHS Technology said the Note5 appears aimed at professionals and business users due to its stylus and keyboard attachment, while the S6 edge+ "is a much more fashion-forward device and is likely to appeal to a younger, hipper market."

This undated picture taken by Nina Sellars and released by the Curtin University on August 12, 2015 shows Australian artist and academic Stelarc revealing the implanted ear on his arm. AFP AFP/SydneyAn Australian artist and academic plans to connect an ear which he has been growing for years on his arm to the Internet so people can hear and track his movements. The project by a professor from Curtin University in Western Australia, known as Stelarc, is his latest in a series of artworks exploring the boundaries of blending robotics, prosthetics and the human body. "Increasingly now, people are becoming Internet portals of experience... imagine if I could hear with the ears of someone in New York, imagine if I at the same time, could see with the eyes of someone in London," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. A miniature microphone with wireless Internet connection will be inserted into the "ear", while people will be able to track it through a GPS device placed on the body part. "There won't be an on-off switch," he said of the microphone. "If I'm not in a wi-fi hotspot or I switch off my home modem, then perhaps I'll be offline, but the idea actually is to try to keep the ear online all the time." Stelarc, the director of Alternate Anatomies Lab at Curtin, has previously created an exoskeleton, inserted a sculpture into his stomach and used a third, robotic, arm for writing. He said the idea of having a ear implanted and grown on his arm first emerged in 1996. "In previous performances I've used a third hand, an extended arm, a six-legged robot. Having an extra ear was sort of a natural progression," Stelarc told commercial broadcaster Channel Nine Wednesday. Stelarc said the ear was "partly surgically constructed and partly cell-grown". "A biopolymer scaffold was inserted into my arm, skin was suctioned over it and then over a period of six months that encourages your cells to grow into the scaffold. "It grows its own blood supply so this ear becomes not only fixed, but a part of your body."

Reuters/London Smartphones have overtaken laptops as the preferred way for Britons to go online, driven by increased take-up of the devices and a jump in superfast mobile broadband subscriptions, the British telecoms regulator said on Thursday. A third of people said they turned to a smartphone first to browse the Internet, access social media or shop online, while 30% opened up a laptop, Ofcom said. A year ago, 40% preferred to use a laptop and 22% a smartphone. People are also spending longer glued to their iPhone or Android mobile, using the devices for 1 hour and 54 minutes every day on average, it said, and a third of users turn to their smartphone within five minutes of waking up. Ofcom said Britain had seen a rapid take-up in superfast mobile broadband in the last year, with an eight-fold increase in subscriptions to 23.6mn. Television, however, still met most people's entertainment needs. People watch on average 3 hours 40 minutes of broadcast TV a day, 11 minutes less than a year ago, Ofcom said.   

By James OsborneIn the more than 130 years since Thomas Edison released the electric light bulb on the world, households have more or less gotten electricity one way. Build a power plant, string power lines in all directions until you’ve connected as many homes and businesses as possible, repeat.But in a nondescript white brick house a few miles outside downtown Houston, there is no need for a distant power plant spinning on a steady burn of coal or maybe radioactive uranium.One moment the lights and home appliances are humming along like those in any building. Then, for a fraction of a second, the lights dim and the room goes quiet. Joe Coffey, an engineer with NRG Energy who spends his days testing out devices like portable solar panels and water heaters you put on your roof, has cut the house off from the power grid.Only, the air conditioner is still running, as are the lights. In place of the grid — or the standard gasoline-powered backup generator — is a battery array in the garage and solar panels on the roof. On the patio, where the grill should be, sits what is essentially a 5-foot-tall miniature power plant hooked into the natural gas line.“A lot of this stuff, it’s going to be years before it can be delivered to customers cost-effectively. But it’s like anything. There’s going to be early adopters, and we want to be ready,” Coffey said.The US by and large runs on a network of more than 7,300 power plants, including 1970s-era coal plants, wind farms in West Texas, the Hoover Dam, nuclear reactors and more. The facilities are large and often away from population centres, each supporting on average 20,000 customers across millions of miles of power lines.But what if each of those 146 million US electric customers could generate his or her own electricity?Historically, generating electricity was expensive, and there were cost savings in size. But with the advent of new technology — known as “distributed generation” within the industry — the prospect of cost-effectively generating electricity at home is moving beyond the realm of science fiction.Solar panels, for a long time so grossly expensive only hard-core environmentalists would buy them, are now being mass-produced in China. With government incentives, solar power can now compete with the power grid in 10 states, according to analysis by NRG.And then there are home battery systems, potentially upending the need for a constant flow of electricity from the grid. Tesla founder Elon Musk is building a battery factory in Nevada so large he calls it a “gigafactory.” Fuel cells, which can be powered by hydrogen, natural gas and other substances, are no longer just for space missions. They’re finding their way into talking points of forward-looking CEOs.“Distributed generation is already in California. It’s not the future; it’s real,” said Michael Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas. “Instead of building large power plants, we’ll install solar panels and battery systems. It’s not today, but 10 years from now it will be.”Solar heating upLocales including Germany, Hawaii, California and Arizona have been inundated with rooftop solar systems, prompted by a combination of high power prices and generous subsidies for renewable energy.If predictions hold true that solar panels are only going to get cheaper, that same growth trajectory is expected to spread across the US.Right now solar power represents about 2 percent of the nation’s electrical capacity, both through rooftop installations and utility-scale farms.If current growth rates continue, by 2025 there should be 90 gigawatts of solar power in the US — more than 8 percent of current capacity — according to the financial services firm UBS. That will hold even if the US government lets the solar tax credit expire next year.Batteries and fuel cells remain firmly stuck in the development phase, with no clear timeline for mass adoption. But were one of those technologies to prove cost-effective, homes and businesses could quickly be generating their own electricity.Texas’ grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, is not taking the potential for a shift away from the grid lightly. After watching the sudden onslaught of solar in other states, the agency launched a study to determine what steps it could take to prepare, said Paul Wattles, a senior analyst at ERCOT.“Other than Austin and San Antonio, we haven’t had the strong incentive programmes that encouraged a massive adoption rate,” he said. “But the price of (solar panels) is so low, it’s approaching the point where we’re going to start seeing massive adoption rates.”The power of greenEnvironmentally speaking, this is all good news. Power plants, particularly those that burn coal, are responsible for more than 30 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions.At a Dallas-area Ikea, planners have cut demand on the grid by covering the store’s roof in solar panels — about two football fields’ worth.The almost one-gigawatt system is one of the largest in Texas and supplies about 20 percent of the store’s energy demands, as throngs of customers a day go in and out to shop for Poang chairs and Caja tablecloths.“If you go back to 2010, we’ve cut our energy costs by 35 percent,” said Tim Smythe, operations manager at the store. “That’s everything: the solar system, switching to LED light bulbs, automating our temperature and lighting to use less power when the store is closed.”In the US, electricity is a $377 billion-a-year industry, employing hundreds of thousands of people.Already the boom in solar panels is cutting into traditional sales, along with a housing stock that is vastly better insulated and more efficient than it was just a decade ago. Since peaking in 2007, electricity sales have fallen by 1 percent, according to the US Energy Information Administration.Oncor, Texas’ largest transmission company, warned investors in its annual report this year, “to the extent self-generation facilities become a more cost-effective option for certain customers, our revenues could be materially reduced.”By and large, the sentiment within the industry is that while distributed generation will cut into profits, it is far from the game changer some have made it out to be. The government regulators who run the power grid must ensure a stable electrical supply. Any change to the grid and the markets upon which electricity contracts are traded would probably be rolled out slowly and cautiously, Webber said.Branching outAlready, the power industry is lobbying in statehouses across the country to reduce the rate they pay for their customers’ excess solar power, to better account for the cost of maintaining the grid.“This is going to be negative headwind to power prices for the foreseeable future. But let’s not overemphasise this,” said Julien Dumoulin-Smith, an energy analyst with UBS.Not everyone in the power sector anticipates a modest shift.In a letter to investors last year, NRG Energy CEO David Crane warned that not only was distributed generation growing but the day was coming when homeowners and businesses would generate “most of the electricity they consume on the premises.”Already, NRG is branching out in an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” strategy. It created a new Home division last year that will not only install solar panels on your roof and a vehicle charging station in your garage, it will sell you a device to charge your tablet while sitting in the bleachers of your child’s soccer game.A house outside downtown Houston serves as a lab in which to test new products. Touring the facility recently, NRG retail president Elizabeth Killinger said that while revenues for the new venture were modest, she expected one day they would help mitigate the anticipated drop in power sales.“We can help make the complex simple. Sure, we might sell less power, but at the end of the day the customer is going to use less anyway. Someone’s going to help them,” she said.Sun is risingIn some parts of the world, rooftop solar installations have become so prevalent they’re already forcing a rethinking of how electricity is transmitted.In Hawaii, which has some of the highest electricity rates in the world, there are so many solar systems that the local utility warns it is losing its ability to maintain the delicate harmony of electricity generation and demand across the grid. Last year, Hawaiian Electric Co. announced it was in negotiations to build utility-scale batteries in hopes of easing the strain.In Arizona, utilities have complained the high rates they are required to pay their customers for their unused solar power — combined with the loss in sales — are threatening to send them into what some have termed a “utility death spiral.”With no state subsidy and the decision on what to pay for distributed power left to the companies, Texas has one of the lowest per-capita rates of solar in the country. But with so many sunny days, developers continue to watch the state as the next big market.Among the early leaders, Adam Stetson, with Austin-based PSW Homes, is selling what he calls “sustainable” houses for which one of the primary selling points is a rooftop solar system capable of supplying about 40 percent of a household’s daily electricity needs.So far, PSW only has four homes built in Dallas. With seven housing developments in development across the city, Stetson says more than 270 homes should eventually get built.Assuming they use the standard size, that should work out to around 3,200 solar panels. —The Dallas Morning News/TNS

FAST:  Terry Myerson, who has led the consolidation of the teams building the various versions of Microsoft’s Windows, and risen to the top quickly. By Matt DayWindows 10 is the latest and biggest proving ground of whether the new Microsoft is better at building software than the old one.Last week’s release of the newest version of the company’s operating system comes with typically high stakes. Microsoft, based outside Seattle, has in the past two years turned over a majority of its top executive ranks, slashed tens of thousands of jobs and deployed a new organisational structure and philosophy designed to push the company’s units to collaborate, rather than compete.In Windows 10, those changes have resulted, among other things, in a faster browser to replace the bruised Internet Explorer, a built-in voice-activated digital assistant and search tool, and a return of the traditional Start Menu, which took a back seat in the interface of Windows 8.Microsoft executives are hoping that Windows 10, built with the aid of more consumer feedback and a development approach that emphasised user-friendly design from the start, will lift the fortunes of the company’s most famous product.“If you go back in time, we really ran Microsoft as sort of independent businesses,” Terry Myerson, the executive vice president who led the development of Windows 10, said in an interview. “Xbox was a different business than Windows, which was a different business than Phone. Now we’re thinking about the Windows ecosystem. You put this group of people in one room together and say, all right, now we’re going to go build a project.”RISING FASTThe 42-year-old Myerson, who led the consolidation of the teams building the various versions of Microsoft’s Windows, is among a newer generation of executives whose stature has risen quickly with the changing of the guard. He went in two years from leading development of Windows Phone to heading the engineering and development of Windows to becoming one of CEO Satya Nadella’s top lieutenants.As of June, he also has oversight of Microsoft’s range of hardware groups.Myerson’s more collaborative mandate contrasts with the Microsoft of old, a combative place that drew on the intensity of co-founder Bill Gates and, later, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, and was structured to foster competition. Windows and Office, for example, ran as separate businesses vying for the attention of consumers.Steven Sinofsky, the former executive who headed the development of Windows 7 and Windows 8, gained a reputation as a skilled practitioner of that sometimes sharp-elbowed culture. Windows 8 was developed as its predecessors had been: largely behind closed doors.But that software’s bold, touch-screen-optimised interface, which jettisoned the Start Menu, proved to be a step too far for many consumers, a point that was clear after preview versions were released.“When people really started using it and sending us feedback on what they wanted to see change, it was really too late” to make major revisions, said Gabe Aul, then a manager in the Windows quality, reliability and feedback group.Sinofsky left Microsoft a month after Windows 8 was released to mixed reviews. A major update to the software, Windows 8.1, debuted less than a year later.Early in the development of the successor, Windows 10, Aul and his colleagues drew up a proposal for a program to incorporate more user feedback earlier in the development process. Microsoft would invite up to 250,000 people to use early versions of Windows and share their opinions on an ongoing basis with the engineering teams working to finish the product.Myerson rejected the idea of a cap on the program. It should be open to all who wanted to participate, he said.Why cap a connection between developers and customers, Myerson asked. “Let them talk to each other. Listen, iterate, improve,” he said.Ultimately, Microsoft said, more than 5 million people downloaded previews of Windows 10.Microsoft’s transformation toward a more team-oriented organisation began under Ballmer, who in 2013 ordered the consolidation of the company’s far-flung marketing, finance and engineering teams.The separate groups that built versions of Windows for PCs, smartphones and business devices were combined into one unit, resulting that fall in the largest physical shift in the company’s history, as thousands of developers, designers and marketers moved around the campus over eight weeks.Myerson was then leading the Windows Phone unit, which won praise for its user-interface design but hadn’t fared well in the marketplace against dominant Google and Apple smartphone operating systems. Ballmer picked him to lead the consolidated overall Operating Systems Group.“You’d never seen the company organise in that way,” said Chaitanya Sareen, a principal program manager who oversees a user-interface team with Windows.That also meant big changes for the way thousands of people built Windows 10.Under the old model, “feature teams” — the dozens of groups building components of Windows — would make a preliminary plan, run it by a user-research group, then sit down to the work of coding the feature.“Then they’d come back and say, ‘Here’s what we made. Do you like that?’” Aul said.During the development of Windows 10, Microsoft developers saw the feedback that was pouring in throughout the process. “It directly influences planning,” said Aul, now the general manager overseeing the Windows quality and reliability team and the public face of the development process. “It’s just completely embedded in their daily process.”OUTSIDE FEEDBACKFor Sareen’s team, that feedback was taken to an extreme when engineers couldn’t decide how to present open programs in a tool that lets users switch between desktops. The decision was left to the army of outside testers, who were asked to rate two possible options.It’s not just people outside the company who had more of a hand in Windows’ development.In previous desktop versions of Windows, designers and marketers were looped into the development process after much of the software coding was complete, a practice that Microsoft managers admit led to marketing messages and design concepts that shared little in common across products.This time, designers and marketers got involved early, sitting in on planning meetings and monthly engineering reviews.“I thought engineering would be terrified,” said Aaron Woodman, a marketing director with Windows. But the results, he said, should speak for themselves.Microsoft’s engineers had planned to incorporate support for a feature that allows users to log in with fingerprint and iris-scans, avoiding the pitfalls of hackable passwords. The tool, essentially a security feature that might hold little appeal beyond information- technology departments, didn’t need a name.Instead, after the collaboration with other teams, the feature was introduced to the world as “Windows Hello.” After verifying its user’s identity, the tool welcomes its user by name, flashes a smile and a wink, and unlocks Windows.“Great products have the ability to connect functionally and emotionally,” Woodman said.Myerson sees that connection at home. His daughter’s favourite feature of early versions of Windows 10 is the voice-activated Cortana digital assistant, which Microsoft has tried to make spunkier and more accessible than the chatty tools offered by rivals.If Microsoft gets it right, Myerson says, Windows will be a hub that connects software and hardware to make each more powerful, whether for a girl in Washington state asking questions of a digital assistant while playing games or for a technology consultancy in India betting its business on Microsoft software.“The scale of Windows is pretty …,” Myerson said, trailing off. “It’s different. We’re not building a product. We’re building an experience that’s larger than the product.”

PLAYING OFFLINE: Tim Eckhoff, 2nd from the left, often plays board games with colleagues at work. It helps him to develop creative ideas for online games. Eckhoff is a software engineer for Berlin games developer Wooga. By Tobias HanrathsIn the beginning there was only a few. The early computer games were often developed by small teams or even single individuals in garages or bedrooms, often while also working at a “real” job.But today the computer games industry generates billions of dollars in sales and employs tens of thousands around the world.In the early days game developers were almost exclusively programmers and computer scientists but nowadays other specialists are as least as important, says Thomas Bremer, a professor at the game design programme taught at Berlin’s High School for Technology and Economy.“There are three parts — the technical part, the creative part and the game designer,” he says.The third one is the most recent — “That’s only slowly emerging as a separate activity.” Game designers decide the rules on which the game is based. “Without the game designer there is basically nothing,” Bremer says.The art designer and game artists are the people that ensure that there’s something to look at when you’re gaming: they design the world of the game and the characters in it. They’re also responsible for the user interface, for example menus and other displays. And of course someone has to take care of the music and sound effects.Programmers provide the technical framework for the game and the art design and combine the different elements into a finished product. Their task has changed the most in recent years, Bremer says, because many games are now based on so-called engines, ready-made software that can provide the technical backbone for any game. Programmers are therefore used more for the online infrastructure of a game.When it comes to training to be a game developer, students can opt to specialise or pursue a general overview. Tim Eckhoff, a software engineer with Berlin-based game developer Wooga since 2013, did the latter. He studied game design at the Media Design High School in Berlin, getting an overview of everything first followed by specialisation at the end.The wide range of study he pursued proved a challenge when he started work. “I had a lot to learn at the start. A year of specialisation doesn’t replace a complete science degree.” But at the same time it had advantages: “It helps very well with team communication.” By knowing what exactly, for example, an art designer does Eckhoff can give better feedback.That’s very important in the normal day-to-day work, he says. At certain phases of a project he might not spend large parts of his working day at a computer. “When we’re coming right up to the completion of a game there’s certainly more programming. Before that there’s a lot of talk, some days meetings can take up a third or two-thirds of the day.” So games developers also need soft skills such as empathy and an ability to debate and discuss.Playfulness is also needed for the job and not just on a computer - sometimes Eckhoff and his colleagues play a board game for fun but also to try out new ideas. Game developers don’t necessarily spend a lot of time playing on their games console during their spare time. On the contrary: “Someone who plays a lot is not necessarily a good game developer,” says Professor Bremer. “Sometimes an outside perspective is even an advantage.”Apart from developing new games, there are other jobs in the games industry, including traditional corporate tasks such as sales, marketing and personnel which people enter by the usual route for such jobs.At the same time people educated as game designers aren’t restricted to just that role. “Our graduates go into other areas, up to management consultancy. Game designers are motived experts, something that’s also applicable in other fields,” Bremer says.  — DPA

The seven-country survey was conducted online with a total of 7,112 smartphone owners. AFP/Washington Consumers around the world admit it: they sleep with their smartphone, take it in the shower, and would rescue the device from a fire before saving the family cat. Those are among the findings of a seven-country survey of more than 7,000 people about smartphone habits released on Tuesday by Motorola, the newly acquired division of Chinese electronics giant Lenovo. A total of 60% of those surveyed said they slept holding their handsets - with the highest percentages in India (74%) and China (70%). And 57% said they took the device into the toilet, with the highest totals from China and Brazil. One in six smartphone users said they used their phones while showering, and more than half - 54% - said they would reach for the smartphone before saving their cat in the event of a fire. How close are people to their devices? About 22% said they would give up sex for a weekend before parting with their smartphone. And 40% tell secrets to their phones they would not reveal even to their best friend. But the relationship is not perfect. Only 39% said they were "happy" with their smartphone, and 79% felt bothered that their devices interrupted them at inopportune moments. The survey was conducted online by KRC Research with a total of 7,112 smartphone owners in the US, Britain, Brazil, China, Spain, Mexico and India. It was released as Motorola unveiled two upgraded versions of its flagship Moto X handset - one with a larger 5.7 inch display and another with a 5.5 inch screen. The company said the devices would be priced hundreds of dollars lower than other flagship devices. The company also unveiled a second-generation Moto G, priced at under $200 and aimed at emerging markets. Motorola will be selling most of the devices unlocked for use with almost any carrier.

A scene from 'the Terminator', a 1984 American science fiction action film that features a robot that is sent back from the future on a mission to kill. AFP/ParisA group of leading tech leaders, including British scientist Stephen Hawking and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, on Tuesday issued a stern warning against the development of so-called killer robots. Autonomous weapons, which use artificial intelligence to select targets without human intervention, have been described as "the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms," wrote around 1,000 top technology chiefs in an open letter. "The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI (artificial intelligence) arms race or to prevent it from starting," they wrote. "If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable," the letter continued. The idea of an automated killing machine -- made famous by Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Terminator" -- is moving swiftly from science fiction to reality, according to the scientists. "The deployment of such systems is -- practically if not legally -- feasible within years, not decades," the letter said. The scientists painted the Doomsday scenario of autonomous weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, dictators or warlords hoping to carry out ethnic cleansing. "There are many ways in which AI can make battlefields safer for humans, especially civilians, without creating new tools for killing people," the letter concluded. The letter was presented at the opening of the 2015 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires.

RINGING IN THE NEW: The new revolutionary designed motorcycle helmets at 6D Helmets are used for Motocross as well as mountain biking and BMX, and offer engineering that might reduce injuries and save lives. The EPS (expanded polystyrene) foam with isolation dampers allows the helmet to absorb energy. It has a dual liner assembly with a patented omni directional suspension. By Charles FlemingBob Weber had a small but simple plan. He wanted to design a safer helmet for dirt bike riders.The entrepreneur, based in Brea (California), about 20 miles southeast of Los Angeles, ended up disrupting the $250-million-a-year motorcycle helmet industry and igniting a debate over head injuries that could have much broader impact.Weber’s company, 6D, already has an admiring imitator in Bell, the leading US helmet company, which has released a new model in direct response to 6D’s ground-breaking design.In what 6D calls the first comprehensive revision to the motorcycle helmet in half a century, the company installed movable interior liner that absorbs and disperses the energy of a crash, much the way an automobile’s “crumple zones” do.After two decades in the power-sports business, Weber — a veteran racer, rider and industry executive — had come to believe that motorcycle helmets, counterintuitively, were too strong. Designed to protect riders from the most catastrophic crashes, the helmets were actually too hard to protect them from anything else.His 6D helmet instead aims to protect riders from far more common concussions and brain injuries that can occur in lower-speed accidents. It could have implications beyond motorcycling, as new head-protection technology migrates to other sports — particularly football, where a debate is raging over how to protect players from concussions.Bell acknowledges that its new Moto-9 Flex helmet was inspired by the innovation at 6D, which released its Advanced Impact Defense helmet in 2013. Bell’s parent company, Fenway Partners, through its subsidiaries Riddell and Giro, may soon incorporate the same new technology into football, bicycle and snowboarding helmets, according to Bell.“Did they drive us to build a better helmet? Absolutely!” said Chris Sackett, Bell’s vice president. “I definitely want to give them credit. It got us thinking.”Their thinking led to a competitive helmet — at a lower price. The 6D helmets start at $745. A Bell Moto-9 Flex costs $649. An equivalent Arai VX-Pro4 runs about $600. But an entry-level off-road helmet from HJC could cost less than $100.Weber said 6D welcomes the competition, even from industry giant Bell.“They’ve got way more money and bigger distribution capability and more marketing funds — and they priced their helmet $100 less than our helmet,” Weber said. “But the helmet industry has been asleep at the wheel for years about this issue. So I welcome them to the market.”The head-protection industry is big business. There are currently an estimated 10 million to 12 million motorcycle riders in the US. About half of all US states have mandatory, universal helmet laws — though most require helmets for children and young adults.The numbers go up dramatically when they include helmets worn in other sports, such as bicycling, skiing, snowboarding, football and horse-riding.Health and transportation experts agree that helmet use improves rider and passenger safety. The Governors Highway Safety Association reported in mid-May that more than 4,500 US motorcyclists died in 2014, and pressed for universal helmet laws.“Helmets are the single most effective way to prevent serious injury and death in the event of a motorcycle crash,” the GHSA said.But experts disagree on what makes a safe helmet, or what kind of protection is best for the average rider.A representative for the most widely recognised helmet-testing body dismissed the 6D helmet, saying it might meet the legal definition for safety, as set by the US Department of Transportation, but is not safer for the users.“These 6D helmets are 40 percent to 100 percent less protective in a severe crash,” said Hong Zhang, education director for the Snell Foundation.Zhang said her organisation bought a 6D helmet, which was not submitted for Snell approval, and tested it. “The 6D helmet does meet the minimum DOT standard,” she said. “Any other claim, there is no science to prove it.”But others insist the Snell standards are too high and test only for one kind of accident. Specifically, the Snell test involves striking the helmet hard, twice, in the same place — a test critics say is left over from the days when helmets had to protect against roll-over accidents in race cars.“To pass Snell, you have to hit the helmet really, really hard,” said David Thom, senior consultant specialising in head protection with the independent research firm Collision and Injury Dynamics. “But how many people actually have that kind of accident? Very, very few.”Traditional helmet design involves a two-ply system. The hard, shiny poly-carbonate or fibreglass exterior is designed to withstand blunt force from a direct impact. The firm, expanded polystyrene or Styrofoam inner lining is designed to absorb the energy transferred through the hard outer surface.But by trying to protect against high-energy impact, Thom and others said, the traditional helmet surfaces are too hard, and have too little flexibility, to absorb lower-energy impacts.Both the 6D and Bell Moto-Flex operate like traditional motorcycle helmets. Both are lightweight — about 3.5 pounds each — with good ventilation and visibility. They are designed to fit snugly and be secured to the rider’s head by a traditional chin strap.In a slow-speed accident, their manufacturers argue, the rider’s head will be much better protected than in a traditional helmet.Weber said his privately held company is doing well: Revenue doubled from 2013 to 2014, but he declined to offer further details on company sales and finances.6D has already followed the dirt bike helmet with a mountain biking version, and will have a street riding helmet on the market by early 2016. Bell will include the new helmet design in its top-shelf street helmet in 2016 and have it in two more by 2017, the company said, and it will soon be selling bicycle helmets with the same design.Meanwhile, 6D has suitors. The company has been approached by multiple competitors interested in licencing the 6D technology, Weber said.“If it’s a sport with a helmet, I have had contact with them,” he said.Early after its 2013 launch, the company got marketing push when pro motocross rider Zack Bell, wearing a 6D helmet, had a horrific crash that went viral on YouTube. Bell landed hard, on his head, but was well enough to race in the next heat.“This was an absolutely lethal crash, and he got up from it,” Thom said.In late May, top pro rider Eli Tomac has a similarly bad full-frontal crash. His injuries required surgery and eliminated him from the rest of the race season — but he suffered no concussion.Thom and others stressed that although the new 6D and Bell Moto-9 Flex helmets can probably reduce helmet injuries to certain riders under certain conditions, no helmet manufacturer has figured out how to protect all riders in all kinds of accidents.“It’s the age-old question,” said Chris Withnall, senior engineer at Biokinetics, a firm that tests product safety. “Can you tell me how you’re going to crash your bike? If so, I’ll tell you exactly what kind of helmet to buy.” — Los Angeles Times/TNS

AFP/San Francisco Google apologized after an identification program in its new photo app put a "gorillas" label on a picture of a black couple. "We're appalled and genuinely sorry that this happened," a Google representative said late Wednesday in an email to AFP. "We are taking immediate action to prevent this type of result from appearing." Google apologized and went to work fixing the problem earlier in the week after the offensive blunder was pointed out in a Twitter message from @JackyAlcine. "Google Photos, y'all (messed) up," Jacky Alcine said in a series of emphatic messages. "My friend's not a gorilla." Google released its overhauled photo app for smartphones in May, touting it as a major advancement in sorting, organizing, and handling pictures. Google engineer Yonatan Zunger put the blame for the labeling on the artificial intelligence software designed to let machines learn how to recognize places, people and objects in pictures. "Sheesh," Zunger said in the exchange of Twitter messages. "High on my list of bugs you never want to see happen. Shudder." Zunger told of problems such as not seeing faces in pictures at all, or even identifying some people as dogs. Picture recognition has proven challenging for computers and numerous companies are working on programs to improve identification. Google and Facebook are among Silicon Valley technology giants investing heavily in artificial intelligence to get machines to think more like the way people do. "There is still clearly a lot of work to do with automatic image labeling, and we're looking at how we can prevent these types of mistakes from happening in the future," the Google representative said of the photo gaffe. "I understand how this happens," Alcine said in the online exchange. "The problem is more so on the why."

AFP/WashingtonFacebook announced Tuesday it has been using a new security tool to help detect and remove malicious software for users of the world's biggest social network. Facebook said it was working with Kaspersky Lab, bolstering a program implemented with other online security firms including ESET, F-Secure and Trend Micro. "Thanks to the collaboration with these companies, in the past three months we have helped clean up more than two million people's computers that we detected were infected with malware when they connected to Facebook," said Trevor Pottinger, a Facebook security engineer. "In these cases, we present a cleanup tool that runs in the background while you continue using Facebook, and you get a notification when the scan is done to show you what it found." Pottinger said the program uses "a combination of signals to help find infections and get the malware off of your computer for good, even if the malware isn't actively spreading spam or harmful links." Kaspersky Lab's Kate Kochetkova said in a separate blog post that Facebook users are often targeted in online fraud schemes such as "phishing," which are faked emails designed to get recipients to download malware. "Facebook is a major aim for phishers: one in five phishing scams targets Facebook notifications," she said. "So be vigilant when you receive emails appearing to be from Facebook: as they can be fake. There are lots of Trojans targeting Facebook users as well." Fraudsters may also use Facebook, Kochetkova said, to "'like' weird things and promote questionable goods and services on your behalf."  

Reuters/Frankfurt/Paris Facebook is gaining ground on Google's YouTube as an outlet for big companies to market their products via online videos, the fastest growing category of Internet ads, a report published on Monday said. The competition for video viewers opens up a new front in the clash between the two web giants that already compete in other types of advertising given their appeal to young and international consumers, Ampere Analysis said in a study. London-based Ampere predicts a new advertising "arms race" between the two rivals, neck and neck in terms of audience sizes with around 1.4bn to 1.3bn monthly active users, respectively for Facebook and YouTube. That means consumers are likely to be forced to see more ads, but also enjoy a richer range of video programming as a result, it said. The Internet will overtake TV advertising in 12 key markets, representing 28% of global ad spending by 2017, separate research by media-buying firm ZenithOptimedia said on Monday. Ad spending is projected to reach $531bn this year. Online video is now growing faster than any other digital category or subcategory, rising 33% in 2014, and is forecast to grow 29% a year through 2017, Zenith said. The two reports were released as the week-long Cannes Lions international advertising conference opens this week. Ampere Analysis argues that Facebook is morphing from a platform most advertisers use for building general brand awareness to one that can deliver "pre-roll" advertisements that marketing companies prefer for ensuring their messages are actually viewed. Currently, YouTube remains a more flexible marketing platform, offering advertisers the full range of video ads which run before, during or after a video programme is shown. "If the social network's own video ambitions are to be realised, and if it is to convince content owners it is a viable alternative to YouTube, it must deliver comparable returns," Ampere Research Director Richard Broughton said. Differences in ad formats translate into the rates the Internet platforms can charge advertisers. While YouTube charges advertisers when an advertisement has been viewed, Facebook offers the less advertiser-friendly model of charging once three seconds of the video have been delivered, Ampere noted. Most content providers now use Facebook for branding and awareness purposes, but trial revenue-sharing deals with the National Football League and Fox Sports in the US pose a serious challenger to YouTube's lead, said Ampere, a research firm that serves media companies and investment banks.  

SMILE, CAMERA, ACTION: Marjorie Mabini takes a selfie with her niece Jaydah Mabini and son Jaren in front of the Urban Light lampost installation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles. They were visiting from Oahu, Hawaii. By Deborah VankinIn one photo, a tourist in a baseball cap stands heroically, face scrunched with effort, raising a 340-ton boulder above his head. In another, a spindly yogi, flat on her back and legs in the air, balances the rock on her feet.“The Boulder Holder” pose, a selfie that museum-goers take with artist Michael Heizer’s “Levitated Mass” sculpture at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is so popular that one Instagram count of pictures of the artwork under the lacma hashtag potentially reached 175,000 people in a week.The museum selfie is having a moment. Institutions around the globe — even some that once frowned on photography or that have banned the selfie stick — are creating even more selfie opportunities, sans stick, as a way to attract visitors, especially millennials.Some museums are even designing architecture that encourages the phenomenon.At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, an expansion set to open next year includes terraces with views partly designed to encourage selfies. The museum’s curators are also discussing ways to incorporate selfie-friendly moments into exhibitions.“It’d be foolish for museums not to actively consider this. It plays such an essential role in terms of word of mouth,” said the museum’s chief content officer Chad Coerver. “We are definitely looking at what those iconic selfie moments are going to be at the new SF MOMA.”During its recent Jeff Koons retrospective, the Centre Pompidou in Paris placed stickers on the floor guiding visitors to the best selfie spots with the artist’s shiny Hanging Heart.The Broad museum, which will open in downtown Los Angeles in September, didn’t consider selfies when configuring its architecture, founding director Joanne Heyler said. Nonetheless, a selfie meme associated with the Grand Avenue building is already emerging.“The best selfie spots seem to come about organically,” Heyler said. “We’ve recently seen pictures of people taking selfies outside the building and mimicking the ‘oculus’ — a place where the veil of our building indents into the museum.” The pose: Making a fake dimple by pressing a finger into your cheek.With their visual focus, art museums are natural places for the trend to flourish. Just ask Beyonce and Jay Z, who in October famously posted selfies with The Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris.The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s selfie spots are its “Rocky” statue and the inspiring run up its stone steps, fists overhead. The National Gallery in Oslo has Edvard Munch’s The Scream, glutting the Internet with agonised selfies.There’s even an interactive art museum in the Philippines, Art in Island, that opened in December dedicated to taking selfies with artworks.“The upside is that people share their experiences, word spreads, more people come, young people can relate,” said Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer Museum in West Los Angeles. The downside: They don’t often have intimate or contemplative experiences with the art, she said. “That’s what we’re giving up.”Though the selfie speaks to a culture that values uniqueness and self-expression, it could also be a reaction to the digital world, where experiences are virtual rather than tangible. The selfie screams: “I was actually here!”“Social media put a huge premium on the instant sharing of experience,” said Kate Flint, a University of Southern California art history professor. “And not just with immediate family and friends, but with a whole network of people who, it’s implicitly assumed, will be somewhere between envious and admiring that you’ve actually made it into the Louvre or the Uffizi.”Among major museums, LACMA was among the first to embrace the selfie trend. Its Urban Light installation by Chris Burden went up in the pre-Instagram year of 2008, and almost immediately began attracting cellphone-wielding self-portraitists.The sculpture is now the museum’s crowd favourite for selfies, spawning nearly 10 times the photos on Instagram compared with Heizer’s rock star.In its most interactive social media campaign to date, LACMA’s portrait exhibition Faces of America asks visitors to take selfies with artworks, then projects selected images back to visitors on monitors.Everyday LACMA looks for selfies to re-post, said Scott Tennent, who oversees the museum’s social media. “It helps lower the intimidation factor that so many museums have to wrestle with, and it inspires creativity.”Like many museums, the Hammer once barred picture-taking inside its galleries. Then in February last year it reversed the policy to allow flash-free photography.“We saw it as a necessity and also as an opportunity,” Philbin said. “In the last five years, museums have loosened up around this issue. People want to photograph things to remember them. Cameras are an extension of our bodies at this point.”The Hammer’s spinning chairs in its main courtyard — which invite visitors to take a whirl — have become the unexpected selfie standout. Since they were installed in February as part of Provocations: The Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio, hundreds of visitors a week have unleashed their inner child, twirling on the chairs and documenting it in pictures.“Once we noticed it, we created a hashtag, spunday,” Philbin said. “Now every Sunday we post our favourite pictures in one of the Spun chairs.”At the Getty Museum in Brentwood, curators last month rearranged the ornamental mirrors in the South Pavilion decorative arts galleries to make mirror selfies easier to achieve. In January, the Getty launched MusePose, asking visitors to imitate specific artworks each month and share their selfies on Instagram. Last week alone, MusePose appeared 618,000 times in users’ Instagram streams.“It’s about observing what visitors are already enjoying, noticing what they’re noticing, and facilitating that — showing them it’s not this stuffy quiet place you can’t have fun in,” digital engagement manager Annelisa Stephan said.Not everyone, however — like the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena — is chasing the selfie op.“We see other museums do that, but that’s not the Norton Simon style,” said Leslie Denk, director of public affairs. “It’s a serene contemplative experience here, especially in our sculpture garden. We certainly enjoy that visitors take the time to capture and share their experiences, but we don’t coordinate any efforts to encourage that.”At a Brooklyn exhibition last year, a sculpture by artist Kara Walker depicting an African-American “mammy” as an Egyptian sphinx led to graphic selfies of visitors seemingly touching various nude body parts.“It was really disturbing and stupid and distracted from the meaning of the piece,” said Art in America corresponding editor Michael Duncan. “Museums don’t need to be Disneyland. They need to be places where you experience art, and selfies get in the way.”Duncan’s view was at odds with British blogger Mar Dixon, who last year launched @MuseumSelfieDay.“It just went crazy, the hashtag started trending worldwide,” Dixon said, adding that museums in Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Germany and beyond picked up on her campaign. “Some even made selfie stations with signs saying, ‘This is a good place to take a selfie.’”The art website Hyperallergic, however, wrote that the second Museum Selfie Day on January 20 this year “will forever be remembered as a plague on our social media feeds.” The site called Dixon “the official ringleader of this vast criminal enterprise.”But that “criminal enterprise” at least got people into museums, SF MOMA’s Coerver said.“We fundamentally believe that everything we do digitally is still designed to get a human being in front of a physical artwork,” Coerver said. “If selfies encourage that to happen, that’s a good thing for museums. It reinforces this idea that you have to be there.”— Los Angeles Times/TNS