Feedly, our favorite Google Reader replacement, announced today that they're opening their API to third party developers-including the people behind Reeder, Press, Newsify, and gReader-so you'll be able to access your feeds in all of those apps and sync across devices long before Google Reader sunsets.
    
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One of our most popular posts on this site is How to Photograph Silhouettes.
Today I thought I’d add to the theory of the topic by posting some examples of silhouettes to give a little inspiration to take some of your own.
Image by Luza
Image by Thomas Hawk
Image by 3blindmice
Image by Alexbip
Image by !!sahrizvi!!
Silhouette by !!sahrivi!!
Photo by FreeWine
Photo by simpologist
Photo by Kalandrakas
Silhouette by Yves Lorson
Image by Thomas Hawk
Photo by Fort Photo
Have you taken any Silhouettes? Share them in our forum’s Share Your Shots section.
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
I have written before on TorrentFreak about the Red Flag Act of 1865 in the United Kingdom.
As the automobile industry gained steam there, lobbyists spoke out and pretended to embrace the automobile, while in reality acting to kill its utility value to the benefit of the previous generation of industries.
More specifically, the Red Flag Act stipulated that any car in the United Kingdom must have a “crew” of three people: the driver, a stoker (essentially a mechanic), and a man walking in front of the car waving a red flag. Yes, you read that right.
In this way, the car could be used to safely (and slowly) transport people and cargo to the incumbent transport industries of the day: the stagecoach and railroad stations, while at the same time preventing the car from replacing the stagecoach and railroad. Unsurprisingly, it turned out later that these same industries – the stagecoach and railroad industries – had been behind the lobbying that led to the law that killed the disruptive innovation against their industries.
As a result, the German automobile industry got a head start of several decades against the British, which still – 150 years later – is clearly visible in market share and engineering know-how. That’s how damaging it is to let an incumbent industry set the terms for the disruptive upstarts.
These days, we can observe three industries trying to pull a Red Flag Act trick on the Internet. Apart from the copyright industry, which is completely obsolete and literally fighting for its life, we can also trivially observe that the telco and cable TV industries are pretending to embrace the net, while actually trying to prevent its utility value for as long and as much as possible (as the net will disintegrate both of those industries, too).
But the real interesting thing happens when the described mass psychosis sets in, and legislators in several countries perceive a thing like the Red Flag Act to be a good idea. It wasn’t just in the United Kingdom that an automobile-killing law was created, and to be frank, the UK law requiring somebody to walk in front of a car waving a warning flag was one of the more sensible incarnations.
For once this kind of industrial protectionism (“IP”) laws are wrongly imagined to be good for the public, just because they are good for an obsolete industry, everybody lines up in a race to the bottom to save the old obsolete industries at any cost against the threat of everything new and disruptive.
There is a word for this: neophobia. It means “fear of the new”, and is very often seen in politics in general, and in lobbying in particular.
My favorite example of how the Red Flag Act spread in a mass psychosis is its appearance in Pennsylvania, 1896. (That’s thirty years after the initial law – don’t think that people see a horrible idea for what it is anytime quick, if there are financial interests to prop it up, the public interest be damned.)
The bill proposed in Pennsylvania stated that any driver of a car, when he or she sees cattle or horses up ahead on the road, must immediately take three actions in order: the driver must a) stop the vehicle, b) disassemble the vehicle completely, and c) hide all the parts in the nearest shrubbery until the animals have passed.
That crazy bill passed both legislative chambers in Pennsylvania. Unanimously. In retrospect, that’s what I’d definitely call a mass psychosis. To us, today, it’s obvious that the law was not just a bad idea, but asylum-worthily catastrophic.
That’s where we are with copyright monopoly enforcement today. Saving the old, obsolete industries at any cost, defending the copyright monopoly and obsolete distribution models against the future, and seeing legislators taking part in this neophobic race to the bottom is a clinical mass psychosis.
The future will not be happy about these events, rightly laughing at them. But the good news is that we know we can build a better future than the equivalent of Pennsylvania’s car laws (three strikes, ISP liability, DMCA, InfoSoc, domain seizing, culture-sharing bans in the first place, the list goes on) – we, the people aware enough to read this article and understand the ridicule of everything proposed and enacted to defend the copyright monopoly today.
About The Author
Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at falkvinge.net focuses on information policy.
Book Falkvinge as speaker?
Source: Copyright Monopoly Enforcement Today Is A Mass Psychosis
Imagine a scenario in which all file-sharing, streaming, linking and hosting websites are completely drained of cash, their revenues throttled by relentless anti-piracy company pressure.
Free content and online piracy more or less comes to an end – right?
If the rhetoric coming out of industry bodies like the RIAA, MPAA, IFPI, BPI and FACT is to be believed, that’s exactly what would happen. These organizations think that file-sharing sites and services are motivated only be the reward of hard cash and without it they would cease to function.
But is that the case? Is The Pirate Bay only interested in being super-resilient in order to maintain its advertising revenue? Is your favorite private tracker only making the site better and enforcing tight ratio rules in order to keep this month’s donations healthy?
Entertainment companies nearly always offer a resounding ‘YES’ to each of the above while uncompromising pro-piracy advocates throw in a blanket “NO”. The truth, as with most things in the file-sharing debate, lies somewhere in the middle.
Let’s get one thing straight from the start – ALL file-sharing related sites are interested in money, just as everyone reading this article will be. Money is a fact of life (ask charities who rely on handouts) and in the file-sharing world servers and bandwidth have to be paid for. Sites cannot operate without cash so revenue has to be generated to keep them online.
Basics out-of-the-way, the question switches to how that cash is raised.
Public sites like The Pirate Bay raise money in a way that is roughly compatible with the original file-sharing ethos. Not only is content-free but the site is free to use too, with money generated via advertising and affiliate schemes. Unless users want to, they don’t contribute a penny towards the site’s upkeep.
Broadly speaking, the same can be said about most publicly available sites, such as the many varied public indexes that cull torrents from other sites. They tend not to have communities of their own and generate revenue from advertising and affiliate schemes. It is hard to prove or say with the utmost certainty, but it seems likely that some of these exist mainly for the money.
Private trackers, on the other hand, are a different prospect altogether. They have their own walled ecosystem where the main unit of currency is bandwidth. In most cases all users must contribute bandwidth via their uploads or face getting kicked out. Users with lots of upload bandwidth need never pay any actual money to the site. On the other hand, those with limited upstream clout may find themselves in a position of having to donate real cash to stay on board. Private torrent sites generally generate cash from this latter group, plus other users who simply value what the site has to offer and voluntarily hand over cash as a ‘thank you’.
But while these are basic explanations of how money is raised to keep sites running, we still don’t have an idea of whether the operators of these sites are only running them to make money. The truth is that only the sites and those close to them know for sure, but there are some interesting signs to be read.
If we take a look at The Pirate Bay, we can see a site that in pretty much all respects has not improved in more than half a decade. For a traditional business this would be suicide. Expansion plans and grand ideas for the future aren’t fueled by standing still. The site definitely makes some money and the people behind the site could certainly make money elsewhere in a less risky occupation.
On the other hand, private sites are very much a mixed bag. There are some trackers around that aren’t interested in any more money than is needed to pay the bills each month and these are quite easy to spot with their relaxed attitudes. These sites are often over-sized hobbies for their owners.
At the other end of the scale (and this is a bitter pill) are trackers, large and small, that are almost entirely focused on money. They have donation drives every other month plus tight ratio restrictions and ruthless bannings unless users stump up cash. Every Christmas there is some crisis or other which imperils the admin’s drink supply future of the site unless there is an immediate cash influx from site members. Often these sites are completely filled to capacity, unable to process even one solitary extra invite. Until cash is handed over for one of course, then space is magically found.
In between though there are many other trackers which through no fault of their own have become slaves to their site’s finances. What started off as a fun hobby with a few hundred members costing very little, can rapidly turn into a much larger concern that without funds cannot be kept going. The admins of these sites aren’t in this to make money but if they don’t then the site won’t survive in its current state. The options are i) cull the site back to its roots and pay the small bills from your own pocket, ii) say it was good while it lasted and shut down, or iii) leave the decision to another day that never comes. Many site owners are in this final position.
But for all of this post’s previous 800 or so words we still have no idea whether site operators are all in this game for the money. The likely truth is that some are and some aren’t, but in most cases their users don’t really care one way or the other. A good service is being provided – for free.
However, what we do know is that the people actually sharing the files in the first instance are almost completely not motivated by money at all. They do it for fun, for entertainment. They do it for the thrill and to enjoy the act of sharing something with others. How do you deal with that – ineffective strike systems or the on-the-spot fines being mulled by France at the moment? That won’t cut off their finances for long – or place them in the industry’s back pocket either.
The simple fact is there were file-sharers before torrent sites came along and there will be file-sharers after they have gone. If the authorities squeeze every last drop of revenue from all the major sites, no matter what their financial motivations were, then people will come together to find a new solution.
The biggest fear for the entertainment industries must be that even after they’ve removed all financial incentives and blocked all the sites, the sharing culture simply continues.
Then what?
Source: Are Torrent Sites All About the Money?
Every week copyright holders send millions of DMCA takedown notices to Google, hoping to make pirated movies and music harder to find.
As a result more that 100 million links to copyright-infringing content are no longer available through Google’s search results. One of the latest additions to this growing list is the homepage of H33t, one of the top 10 most visited torrent sites.
Those who type “h33t” into the Google search box will see that the homepage listing for the site has disappeared. At the bottom of the page Google explains that the listing was removed following a DMCA notice, which came from the cable network HBO.
In the notice HBO asks Google to remove thousands of links pointing (in)directly to their shows. The H33t homepage is listed under “Band of Brothers,” which was probably listed there at one point, but has since been replaced by other links.
TorrentFreak caught up with H33t’s owner, who is not happy with the de-listing by Google. However, he also tells us that H33t is not being harmed too much by the homepage removal, as only a tiny fraction of his visitors use Google to access his site.
“Considering possible damage to the site, historically H33t has not been driven by search traffic. About 1 out of 10 people use Google in a search that ultimately brings them to H33t. These are not random searches, people are searching for specific content and clicking a link that brings them directly to the details page of that content,” H33t’s owner says.
“These people are not interested in the homepage. If you know the name H33t then you already know the site, you don’t just accidentally type “h33t” then discover the site’s homepage. You also cannot discover H33t by searching for “torrents downloads whatever” because we were never high ranked for those terms,” he adds.
That doesn’t mean that H33t is going to let this pass. The site’s owner plans to take a stand, if only to defend his principles and to voice his growing concerns over how the DMCA notification system operates.
“I cannot ignore this latest censorship just because it doesn’t particularly make much of a difference to me and my site. The inversion of the burden of proof, H33t is guilty before trial, is a serious issue, and it is so easily done as Daniel Nazer of EFF said this year: ‘The takedown procedure of the DMCA provides a quick, cheap, extra-judicial way to get speech removed from the internet’,” he tells TorrentFreak.
In addition to freedom of speech issues the takedown procedures have also become quite costly for site owners, who have to employ personnel to go over them. Therefore H33t charges $50 per takedown on its own site.
“Freedom of information, free speech, human rights are wonderful concepts but have little meaning until they are no longer there. Money is like that, money doesn’t matter until you don’t have any. For the anti-sharing lobby it is all about the money,” H33t’s owner explains.
“The matter of costs is central, with the DMCA the costs are all ours, we pay the ultimate price as a society, we pay for their broken business model that needs propping up by censorship and our loss of rights.”
For the HBO notice H33t will send a counter-notification, but whether that will be successful has yet to be seen. There are still other infringing links present on the homepage and Google has previously refused to reinstate sites in a similar position.
Whatever Google decides, H33t’s owner doesn’t seem particularly worried.
“We shall see what happens but I am not going to get upset if the homepage isn’t reinstated. As John Gilmore said way back in 1993, ‘The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it’.”
“H33t is not in the race to be the biggest baddest torrent site, it is just me and a bunch of like-minded friends with attitude. Millions and millions of friends. You know what? Getting knocked off Google might just be our passing grade in relevance.”
“We are relevant! Fukin Awesome,” H33t’s owner concludes.
Source: HBO Gets Google to Remove H33T Homepage
This is not a guess. It's not even a prediction. Google Now is going to change the way you use your smart phone, and maybe even the face of mobile itself. What started as a neat way to see baseball scores has graduated into its own platform and service, fully extensible, and downright wonderful.
Hearing and seeing what Google Now can do is one thing. It looks and sounds really cool, but when you use some of the more advanced features for the first time in a real-life situation, you'll have an epiphany. I know this, because it just happened to me. The experience moved me, and made me realize that Google Now is the killer feature everyone has always looked for.
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“Maybe we shouldn’t even call it a browser anymore,” Mozilla’s VP of Firefox engineering Jonathan Nightingale told me a few days ago. “‘Browser’ is really an antiquated word. People don’t really browse all that much anymore.” Instead, he argues, we now mostly use our browsers to access sophisticated web apps, web-based productivity tools and social networks.
For browser developers, this means they have to start to rethink what their browsers should look like now that usage patterns have changed and that the majority of users have become pretty experienced Internet (and browser) users.
The project that has been guiding Mozilla’s exploration of what a modern browser should look like is Australis (because Mozilla apparently likes to name projects after star systems) and the fruits of this project will soon find their way into the Firefox release channels, starting with Nightly once it hits version 25 soon. After that, it will make its way through the usual release channels, though Nightingale told me that the team may hold it back from the stable channel a bit longer to ensure that everything works smoothly.
If you feel really adventurous, you can already install a version of Firefox from Mozilla’s relatively obscure UX branch and test it in its current state (but don’t blame us if it crashes a lot or shreds your hard drive).
So what’s Australis all about? At first glance, it looks a bit more like Chrome than the Firefox we know today. In its current iteration, the Australis theme features rounded corners for tabs and the same three-bar icon to the right of the URL and search boxes to bring up a drop-down customization and settings menu.
As Nightingale told me, the idea behind Australis was to design a browser that was just as capable as today, but simpler to use. The team was also tasked to look closely at how people actually use their browsers and then design the user experience around this. The new design, he believes, is cleaner and more intuitive. One example he cited is that in the current iteration of the design, unselected tabs basically blend into the background and don’t even have the usual tab borders around them. Instead of just shrinking tabs as you open more of them, even though you can’t even see the individual tabs’ icons anymore (the way Chrome does), the Firefox team has also decided to set a minimum width for tabs and then move to a scrolling tab bar once the maximum number of tabs has been reached.
While the main Australis theme won’t land in the stable channel before October, Nightingale did stress that even today’s version of Firefox was already influenced by the results of the project. The combined stop/load/reload button in Firefox, for example, came out of this group. So did the new download manager and the fact that Firefox now doesn’t show the forward button anymore when there is no page to go forward to. The customization and tools menu now also uses icons in a three-by-three arrangement and dedicated buttons for copy, select and paste, as well as for increasing font sizes instead of just using a regular drop-down text menu.
Quite a bit of this, of course, is already visible in the Firefox for Android app, too, which in Nightingale’s words had a bit of a “rebirth over the last year.” It’s getting close to 40 million downloads now, however, and this success means a larger user base and the need to slow down radical changes that could confuse users on Android. (And just in case you are wondering, Mozilla still regularly looks at iOS and its opportunities there, but Apple’s current rules still don’t work for Mozilla. The team is, however, looking at “other things” Mozilla could do on iOS.)
Australis is not just about the design, though. One area that’s also changing with Australis is how you customize the look and feel of your browser. Mozilla currently offers quite a few tools for this, but the team believes they are hard to find and not “fun” enough to use. As Mozilla’s Gavin Sharp told me, the idea here was to get users to enjoy customizing their browsers for the way they use it. Unless users can find these features, though, they could just as well be left out, so the team is working on ways to make it a bit more obvious that users can rearrange and remove virtually all the parts of the Firefox interface to suit their needs.
Now that Firefox is on a rapid-release schedule, the team obviously can’t change the user interface with every update, so the current thinking is to roll some things out together once they are ready and, where it makes sense, roll others out individually. This means that while we’ll see Australis and its curvy tabs in the nightlies of Firefox 25 very soon, it may not actually land in the stable version of Firefox 25.
Building the browser of the future, of course, is not just about design. Mozilla is also trying to adjust to how its users now use their browser through tools like its Social API, as well as more perfomance-oriented initiatives like OdinMonkey and asm.js.
Still, the first thing users will notice once Australis rolls out is the new design. It’ll be hard not to look at it and think that it looks a bit like Chrome – and that will surely stir up a bit of controversy.
We've all had days where we feel a little rushed and can't be bothered with things like breakfast, a workout, or that grocery shopping you've been putting off. Make all those chores easier with these time-saving tips.
If you're sick of taking time out of your day to slog through all your bills, you can make your life a lot easier with automatic, recurring payments. With auto-pay, email alerts, and a good budgeting program, you can make the process a lot easier. Already got auto bill pay? How about automatic bill reduction? We all know a simple phone call can reduce your bills, but if you don't want to deal with that every few months, check out a service like BillCutterz that does it for you.
Your commute to work doesn't have to be a boring trek down a five lane highway full of traffic. Not only is there an art to finding a better route, but there's an art to using that time wisely, too. You can outsmart traffic with a few apps and beat your boredom with something like podcasts, or even get work done with a voice recorder. If you wanted, you could even learn a new skill while you commute, like practice a new language. Photo by kusuriuri (Shutterstock), Fontana (Shutterstock), Lilkar (Shutterstock), and Nelli Shuyskaya (Shutterstock).
Whether you're reading for pleasure or have mountains of textbooks to wade through for school, reading is one of those things we never feel like we have time for. It is possible, though: with a bit of effort, you can easily fit reading into your busy schedule. And if that isn't enough, use some simple techniques—like not saying words in your head—to actually read faster and get through those books. Photo remixed from silver-john (Shutterstock) and gladcov (Shutterstock).
Whether it's putting on a tie in the morning or washing those clothes when you get home, clothing-related chores can make nudist colonies pretty appealing. We've shown you a ton of ways to speed up laundry before, and getting dressed and out the door in the morning is just as easy. You can tie a tie in only 5 seconds, and shoes even faster than that—not to mention cut your ironing time in half with aluminum foil (or get rid of wrinkles with a damp towel if you don't have time for ironing at all). After all, it makes a big difference in how you're perceived at work. Photo by bark.
If the idea of cooking a real, honest-to-goodness meal just fills you with dread (whether because you hate cooking or you just don't have the time), fear not: you can overcome. We've shared 10 easy dishes and drinks everyone can make at home, not to mention the even-easier tricks for people who hate cooking. For the time-crunched, breakfast can be the toughest meal, though—but it's one of the most important. The best way to keep breakfast in your routine is to prepare it all in advance, whether it's oatmeal in jars or a batch of egg sandwiches in a muffin tin. Photo by Gatanass.
Somewhat related to cooking, shopping—particularly grocery shopping—is one of those time-consuming activities we never want to do, but have to. There are a lot of apps that can help you get through the store faster, and getting groceries online can be a great way to cut down on shopping, too. If there's one thing I personally found helped the most, though, it's planning the week's meals in advance. If you know what you're going to eat ahead of time, you only ever have to go shopping once, and you won't be rushing to the store because your pantry is unexplainably empty. Illustration by Dominick Rabrun.
If your sleep schedule is suffering, you might need more sleep—or you might just need better sleep. If your sleep cycle is a mess, you may need to give it a full reboot before you figure out how much is right for you. But once you do, giving yourself the right environment, preparation, and timing will get you to sleep better so you need less of it. And if that isn't enough on occasion, you could always grab a scientifically soundpower nap, too. Photo by Mislav Marohnić.
When we start feeling too busy, cleaning is one of the first things to go. But keeping your house clean doesn't have to take any time, as long as you remember to do it. Heck, when you need to, you can clean your whole house in 15 minutes—but a better solution is to just clean for 15 minutes a day. Even if the house isn't clean after those 15 minutes, over time, it will be. You don't even need to keep it spotless, either—just in a 20-minutes-to-clean state. And if all else fails...well, you can always fake it, too. Photo by Maarten Takens.
You don't need to waste hours a day at the gym to stay fit. Depending on your goals, you can often get in a good workout in 30 minutes or less, whether its interval training, bodyweight exercises, or a little combination of everything. Check out our guide to fitting a workout into your busy schedule for tips on staying motivated, and you'll find it's easier than you thought. Image by Taylor Medlin (The Noun Project), Leremy (Shutterstock), Official U.S. Navy Imagery, and The Noun Project.
Chances are, you're not really as busy as you think you are. All it takes is a few small modifications to turn a seemingly-packed schedule into something you can work with, and while it sounds like a cop-out, the best way to make time for yourself is to just erase "I don't have time" from your vocabulary. If you make these things a priority, you'll get them done—sometimes it's as simple as that.
In a post on Google+ today, Google said that it does not intend on approving any apps with facial recognition features — though it hasn't closed the door the possibility in the future. In the post, Google said "many have expressed both interest and concern around the possibilities of facial recognition in Glass. ... We won’t add facial recognition features to our products without having strong privacy protections in place." Google also stressed that this is not an especially new policy, and indeed two weeks ago Steve Lee, director of product management for Google Glass, made a statement along similar lines: "We’ve consistently said that we won’t add new face recognition features to our services unless we have strong privacy...
More on the dry-ice explosion that triggered an evacuation of Toontown in Disneyland: it appears that the employee who put dry-ice in a sealed bottle in order to cause a loud bang and some water vapor did the same thing earlier in the day in another part of Disneyland. That seems like pretty authoritative proof that this was a premeditated attempt to cause alarm and not absentminded improper waste-disposal:
The Orange County district attorney's office says the first dry-ice explosion took place about 4 p.m. Tuesday outside Toontown shortly after Barnes was ending his shift and a colleague was taking over the vending cart with drinks.
Several minutes later, Barnes is accused of taking a second water bottle from the cart and walking toward the employee break room. While passing through Toontown, Barnes allegedly placed a second water bottle with dry ice in a trash can before leaving the area.
They're charging him with a felony and he's facing six years in jail for a prank that would have barely rated being fired a decade or two ago.
Disneyland worker charged in dry-ice blast 'wouldn't hurt anyone' [Mike Anton and Andrew Blankstein/LA Times]
(via The Disney Blog)
(Image: ToonTown sign, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from bfurlong's photostream)
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The Pirate Bay has undergone some drastic changes over the years, moving from a fully-fledged BitTorrent tracker to a trimmed down torrent index.
First the tracker was removed, then the torrents followed and a few months ago the infamous torrent site canceled nearly all central servers as it moved to the cloud. In addition, the site switched domain names on multiple occasions.
All these changes were carried out to make the site more resilient and less likely to be shut down by the authorities. This determination to escape the long arm of justice was first brought to the forefront seven years ago.
Most of the site’s current users are probably unaware that without a few essential keystrokes in the site’s early years, The Pirate Bay may have not been here today.
May 31, 2006, less than three years after The Pirate Bay was founded, 65 Swedish police officers entered a datacenter in Stockholm. The policemen had instructions to shut down the largest threat to the entertainment industry at the time – The Pirate Bay’s servers.
While the police were about to raid the datacenter, Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid and Fredrik got wind that something was up. In the months before the raid they were already being watched by private investigators day and night, but this time something was about to happen to their trackers.
At around 10am in the morning Gottfrid told Fredrik that there were police officers at their office, and asked him to get down to the co-location facility and get rid of the ‘incriminating evidence’, although none of it, whatever it was, was related to The Pirate Bay.
As Fredrik was leaving, he suddenly realized that the problems might be linked to their tracker. He therefore decided to make a full backup of the site, just in case.
When he later arrived at the co-location facility the concerns turned out to be justified. There were dozens of policemen floating around taking away dozens of servers, most of which belonged to clients unrelated to The Pirate Bay.
In the days that followed it became clear that Fredrik’s decision to start a backup of the site was probably the most pivotal moment in the site’s history. Because of this backup Fredrik and the rest of the Pirate Bay team managed to resurrect the site within three days.
The site’s operators were not impressed and renamed the site “The Police Bay” complete with a new logo shooting cannon balls at Hollywood. A few days later this logo was replaced by a Phoenix, a reference to the site rising from its digital ashes.
Instead of shutting it down the raid brought the site into the mainstream press, not least due to its amazing three-day resurrection. All this publicity resulted in a huge traffic spike for TPB, exactly the opposite effect Hollywood had hoped for.
Despite a criminal investigation leading to convictions for the site’s founders, The Pirate Bay kept growing and growing in the years that followed. The site’s assets, meanwhile, had been transferred to the Seychelles-based company Reservella.
Under new ownership two major technical changes occurred. In the fall of 2009 the infamous BitTorrent tracker was taken offline, turning The Pirate Bay into a torrent indexing site.
Early 2012 The Pirate Bay went even further when it decided to cease offering torrent files for well-seeded content. The site’s operators moved to magnet links instead, allowing them to save resources while making it easier for third-party sites to run proxies.
These proxies turned out to be much-needed, as The Pirate Bay is now the most broadly censored website on the Internet. In recent years ISPs in Denmark, Italy, UK, the Netherlands and elsewhere have been ordered by courts to block subscriber access to the BitTorrent site.
Late last year The Pirate Bay made another important change to its infrastructure by switching their entire operation to the cloud. Serving its users from several cloud hosting providers scattered around the world saves costs, guarantees better uptime, and makes the site more portable and thus harder to take down.
Finally, fearing a domain seizure by the Swedish authorities, TPB took action again last month. After hearing the rumors The Pirate Bay quickly switched to a Greenland-based domain, later hopping to Iceland, and eventually landing .SX domains as other problems became apparent.
And so The Pirate Bay lives on, closing on its tenth anniversary later this year and celebrating the raid anniversary which it previously declared as “Independence Day.”
“Our message is as it’s always been: We decide if the site dies or not, no one else. So today, 7 years after the raid, we celebrate our independence once again. Thank you for being a part of all this!,” Pirate Bay’s Winston writes today.
If there hadn’t been a recent backup, things may have turned out quite differently.
Source: Pirate Bay Celebrates “Independence Day” 7-Year Raid Anniversary
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A UK Parliamentary committee blasted the Office of Fair Trading -- a consumer watchdog agency that is supposed to regulate moneylenders -- for doing effectively nothing to curb the growth of usurious, predatory moneylenders who attack poor and vulnerable people. There are 72,000 consumer credit firms in the UK, some chargin annual interest rates of 4,000%, but the OFT has never fined a single firm for breaking lending rules. On some rare occasions, it did shut down firms, but did nothing to stop them from reopening immediately under another name.
This week the charity Citizens Advice said it knew of cases where loans had been given to under-18s, to people with mental health issues, and to people who were drunk at the time of securing the loan. One client who took out a £50 loan was targeted with emails and texts offering more cash and ended up with debts of £800.
"Some of these lenders use predatory techniques to target vulnerable people on low incomes, encouraging them to take out loans which when rolled over with extra interest rapidly become out of control debts," the committee's chair, Margaret Hodge, said. "Meanwhile, the OFT has been ineffective and timid in the extreme. It passively waits for complaints from consumers before acting."
PAC's report said the OFT lacked information on how much lending was being done by each firm, and about how different people used consumer credit. A study commissioned from the National Audit Office suggested the scale of consumer harm was at least £450m a year, but the OFT was accused of lacking detailed information on the types of harm suffered by different groups of borrowers.
OFT criticised over 'ineffectual' payday loans policing [Hilary Osborne/The Guardian]
(Image: La Danse macabre, Guy Marchant/Wikimedia Commons) 
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The ASUS Padfone 2 was first unveiled back in October 2012 as an update to the original Padfone. Beyond mere spec updates, there are design improvements over its predecessor also. It's an unusual concept for sure, but then ASUS is absolutely no stranger to trying out-of-the-ordinary products. This is, after all, the company that brought us the original Transformer tablet with laptop dock, and one which since has released an enormous Windows 8 desktop/Android tablet hybrid.
And that's why we love ASUS products. There's usually something that sets them apart from the competition, and for that they should always be commended, even if the results aren't always perfect. The Padfone has always intrigued, but it's suffered from limited global availability since the original launched, not to mention astronomical price tags. But, since Mobile World Congress (which also saw the launch of the Padfone Infinity) Padfone 2 availability increased somewhat, and the device finally saw a UK launch. So here it is, one of the more unusual devices to pass through for review, but also one we've been waiting to get our hands on.
But is it any good? Click on and we'll find out.
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A quick heads-up for Sky subscribers in the UK -- the satellite broadcaster's range of Android apps has returned to the Play Store today following its Google Play account being hacked. The hack occurred over the weekend and was attributed to the Syrian Electronic Army, whose banners appeared on the apps' Play Store listings.
In the wake of the attack, Sky's apps were pulled from Google's app store, however the broadcaster has insisted that the apps themselves were not changed. As of this morning the full suite of Sky apps is once again available, including Sky News, Sky Sports, Sky+ and Sky Go. Sky subscribers can click here to view a full list of apps.
Source: Sky Help Team
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O2 customers will lose their inclusive access to telco BT's UK-wide network of Wifi hotspots in just over a month, the operator has revealed. A message on the carrier's site says it's transitioning over to its own network of O2 Wifi hotspots from July 1, as the four-year partnership between O2 and BT Openzone comes to an end. O2's Wifi network consists of some 8,000 access points across the country, it says, however UK-based readers will be aware that BT's hotspots are far more widespread at present.
O2 customers still wanting to use BT Wifi hotspots will need to pay for access, or alternatively log in through another partner account, such as EE or BT Broadband. If you're on O2 and have your Android phone set up to automatically connect to BT Wifi hotspots, you'll need to remove the network names from your list of remembered networks (Settings > Wifi) come July 1.
Source: O2
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EE, currently the UK's only LTE provider, has announced that its 4G network has been switched on in twelve new markets. The new towns include Ashton-under-Lyne, Chatham, Gillingham, High Wycombe, Merthyr Tydfil, Oldham, Oxford, Rochester, Runcorn, Sale, Stafford and Wigan. This brings the total number of markets to 74, and EE says the new additions mean its 4G services now cover more than 50 percent of the UK population.
The carrier recently launched its first rolling 30-day SIM-only 4G contracts, allowing Brits to try out its LTE network without committing to a hefty year-long plan. Competing LTE offerings from rival networks are expected to arrive later this year, with Vodafone targeting September, O2 hoping for a summer launch and Three aiming for the end of the year.
Meanwhile, EE plans to begin trialing the parts of the faster LTE-Advanced standard before the end of 2013.
Source: EE
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Last year the search warrants used by police to raid the New Zealand home of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom were ruled to be overbroad and illegal.
In addition, cloned copies of Dotcom’s hard drives sent to the FBI were deemed to have been unlawfully obtained.
After the ruling Dotcom’s legal team asked the court to order the return of Dotcom’s personal belongings, and in a ruling today Judge Helen Winkelmann did just that.
New Zealand police are now required to go through all illegally seized evidence to determine what is relevant to the ongoing prosecution, and to return the rest.
In her ruling Judge Winkelmann rejected the argument that the police made only a minor mistake resulting from a technical error in the FBI-requested seizure.
“The deficiencies in the warrants and, as a consequence, the searches, were more than merely technical,” she said. “The defects in the warrants were such that the warrants were nullities.”
“The warrants could not authorize the permanent seizure of hard drives and digital materials against the possibility that they might contain relevant material, with no obligation to check them for relevance,” Winkelmann added.
In addition the Judge notes that the warrants did not permit the police to ship the 150 terabytes of data to the FBI.
“They could not authorize the shipping offshore of those hard drives with no check to see if they contained relevant material. Nor could they authorize keeping the plaintiffs out of their own information, including information irrelevant to the offenses.”
The cloned drives holding personal information must therefore be returned and any copies in the FBI’s possession must be destroyed.
Today’s High Court decision is yet another blow to the prosecution, while the Dotcom team can chalk up another win.
Source: FBI Must Return Kim Dotcom’s Illegally Seized Property
Save PodcastingA couple of months ago we wrote that podcasting was under threat from a patent troll. At that time, a patent troll named Personal Audio LLC had sued three podcasters and sent demand letters to a number of others. Since then, Personal Audio has filed two new lawsuits—this time against CBS and NBC. It has also sent additional demand letters to small podcasting operations. We’ve written often in the past about how patent trolls are a drain on innovation, and this latest troll is no exception. Since many podcasters barely make a profit, or simply do it for love, a shakedown from a patent troll threatens to shut down their program.
As with so many patent troll cases, the troll is asking for money despite having contributed nothing to the industry. By its own admission, Personal Audio tried and failed at its attempt to make an audio player. Having failed at actually making something, it became a shell company that does nothing but sue on its patents. And now it wants a handout from those who worked hard to create popular podcasts.
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The new Galaxy S4 Mini was released this morning with little more than a press release and some stock photos, but now UK carrier Three has just released a promotional video to give us a better look. In the relatively short video, a representative from the carrier gives a walk around the handset with some nice close-up shots of the screen, back plate and sides. We also get a refresher on the specs, which aren't going to blow anyone away: a 4.3-inch qHD (540x960) display, 1.7GHz dual-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, 8MP camera and a 1900mAh battery inside.
There's nothing crazy new being revealed here, but it is nice to see the device in someone's hand rather than just in a press rendering. Throughout the video you do get the impression that the S4 Mini will be much easier to hold in the hand when compared to its 5-inch sibling. Does seeing the device "in person" (so to speak) give you some insight on whether you'll want to pick up one of these? Let us know in the comments.
More: Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini Forums
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A well-equipped toolbox is essential for completing jobs around the home—everything from hanging a picture frame to putting together furniture or doing major home improvements. Here are the tools everyone should own, from the most minimalist toolbox to a kit for the experienced DIYer.
First, let's talk about how you're going to amass all these handy tools. Racking them all up at once could run you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The smartest course is to buy the basic tools you need to have on hand just in case (screwdrivers and a wrench, for example—see the basic tools section below) and any additional ones you need for the project you're doing; then pick up others along the way with each new project. This will also help you buy the best quality tools you can buy—a necessity if you don't care for tools that snap or break after a few uses.
Wondering if you should rent or buy? If you're only going to use it once (like a floor sander), definitely rent. If you're likely to use it at least once a year, buy.
Look for sales (hello, Father's Day!) and refurbished tools; you can even buy power tools and more for cheap at government auctions. The suggestions for the basic toolbox below also make for great graduation or housewarming gifts.
Finally, remember to put your tools back in the same place, whether you store them in a simple drawer, an actual toolbox, or a full-fledged workshop. (Trust me, it's really no fun walking around your house wondering where your wrench is when a pipe is leaking.)
Here's what you should pick up, from the most basic to more advanced kits.
According to Clint Eastwood's character Walt Kowalski in the movie Gran Torino, you can do half of your household chores with just three things: WD-40, a vise grip (adjustable pliers), and a roll of duct tape. As the Art of Manliness points out, the vise grips can stand in for pliers, a pipe wrench, wire cutters, a clamp, a ratchet, and, in a pinch, a hammer. Meanwhile, WD-40 has over 2,000 handy uses, and you know duct tape is an essential tool for every would-be MacGyver.
These three things will cost you only about $15. For good measure, add in a quality multi-tool like one from Leatherman or a couple of screwdrivers and you've got a minimalist toolkit for most kinds of fixes.
Still, for the other half of your household jobs, most people will probably want to supplement with additional basic tools.
A universal toolbox should include these 10 essential tools:
Screwdriver set: From prying the lids off of paint cans to opening child-proof battery compartments, screwdrivers are must-have tools. Aim for flat- and Phillips-head screwdrivers in various sizes; you can often buy these in kits. Look for magnetic tips and comfortable grips to make screwing or unscrewing easier. See Art of Manliness' how to use a screwdriver for more about screwdrivers than you might care to know.
Claw Hammer: No toolbox would be complete without a solid hammer. One end is used to drive nails in, the other side to pull (usually bent) nails out of wood or a wall. Bob Vila recommends, in general, a hammer with a 16-inch handle weighing about one pound. Rubber, plastic, or vinyl handles offer shock absorption and a better grip.
Pliers: Locking, adjustable pliers also known as plier wrenches, lever-wrench pliers, and vise grips are very versatile. Because they lock in place, they can be used as a clamp, or, as mentioned above, in lieu of a wrench, wire cutter, or more. The Art of Manliness recommends a standard 5-10W size for this plier.
Adjustable Wrench: An adjustable, crescent wrench is like having multiple wrenches in one. You'll need one to tighten nuts and bolts and loosen plumbing fixtures.
Tape Measure: You might have heard the saying "measure twice, cut once." Well, you need a tape measure for that and to do other things like make sure furniture will fit in a room and measuring windows for blinds. Tape measures come in varying widths (from ½ inch to 1-inch), with the wider widths easier to support with one hand when extended. According to Vila, a ¾-inch wide, 16-foot long tape measure is a good size for most jobs.
Level: No more crookedly-hung photos! A level ensures you don't hang or install anything (including your flat-screen TV and shelves) less than horizontally perfect. In a pinch you could use one of many mobile apps that serve as a virtual level, but a longer 3- to 4-foot metal level (which can double as a straight edge) will go a long way. For hands-free leveling, a laser level is your friend.
Utility Knife: For opening boxes, sharpening pencils, and more, the utility knife is a toolbox workhorse. This Old House recommends buying one with built-in blade storage and rubber-covered handles for comfort.
Work Light or Flashlight: You'll need a flashlight for your emergency kit anyway, but you could get a dedicated LED light, head lamp, or work lamp to make sure you're sawing/screwing/nailing or otherwise DIYing correctly in low or no light.
Electric Drill: Although you can go without a drill for a while or resort to borrowing one when needed, sooner or later, most handypeople will need a drill—and after getting one, find it indispensable. Cordless drills are convenient for working anywhere, but the corded kinds cost less and don't require expensive battery replacements. Whichever type you get, an electric drill not only drills holes and drives screws, but, with different bits, also sands and grinds materials, stirs paint, and even super-powers your pepper production. Recently launched home shopping advice site Thesweethome recommends the 12-volt Porter-Cable Drill/Driver (about $86).
Hacksaw: A hacksaw cuts through wood and even metal and plastic pipes. Look for the kind you can easily replace with new blades.
Other: Though not your standard tools, a well-outfit toolbox should also include: safety goggles, work gloves, rags, pencil, superglue, and, of course, duct tape and WD-40.
Want a shopping shortcut? Thesweethome recommends the 76-piece Home Depot's HDX Homeowners Tool Kit ($30), which includes a hammer, 12-foot tape measure, screwdriver with 30 magnetized heads, allen wrenches, level, needle nose plier, utility knife, adjustable wrench, slip joint pliers, and light duty clamps. For a step up, with more and better quality tools (including hacksaw and drill bits), invest in the Denali 115-Piece Home repair Tool Kit ($55).
Level up with upgraded versions of the above tools, plus some inexpensive specialty tools for tackling more types of projects.
Stud Finder: A stud finder will help you secure shelves, cabinets, expensive TVs, etc. to studs in the wall—and avoid surprises when cutting into one.
Ratcheting screwdriver: This type of screwdriver locks into place when you turn it clockwise and loosens when you turn counter-clockwise, which lessens the stress on your wrist. Most store a variety of screwdriver heads in the handle and may also bend 90 degrees or more for greater versatility.
Set of pliers: Beyond the adjustable pliers, other pliers to pick up include needle-nose and wire-cutting (or diagonal) pliers, for more exacting gripping work (like fixing jewelry) or, well, cutting wire.
Socket Wrench: For large projects where you have to tighten or loosen many nuts and bolts, a socket wrench set with a ratcheting handle is the way to go.
Allen wrenches: Allen wrenches, a.k.a. allen keys or hex keys, are L-shaped tools used to drive bolts and screws with hexagonal sockets in the head. You'll often find these used in furniture kits and for bike repairs. Look for allen wrench kits in a range of sizes and both Imperial and metric measurements.
Pipe wrench: A pipe wrench, as the name implies, is used for turning plumbing pipes and other fittings. Although large-scale plumbing jobs are best left to the pros, you can save a bunch on small jobs like putting in a new faucet if you have the proper tools.
Putty knife: The putty knife, naturally, is for spreading putty (e.g., to patch holes in walls). Available with stiff or rigid blades, it can also be used to scrape off old paint or glue residue, pry up nails or can lids, clean paint smudges, and remove wallpaper.
Combination Square: When you want to make cuts that are at true 90-degree angles or otherwise precisely measure and mark the squareness of corners, you'll need a combination square. Wood Magazine recommends picking up both a 6" and a 12" combination square and lists eight ways you can use them.
Chisel: A set of sharp chisels comes in handy when you're working with wood or doing something like changing the deadbolt on your front door (where you need to carve out some part of the wall). There are many types of chisels, made for specialized purposes, but the basic design of them all is the same. See Galt Technology's chisel advice page, which recommends Dasco Pro and Stanley's Fat Max brands.
Crosscut Saw: The jack-of-all-trades saw (what most people imagine first when thinking of the classic saw shape), the crosscut saw is perfect for small jobs like cutting 2x4s and for cutting across wood grain. About.com's Home Repair site offers advice on different types of crosscut saws.
Other: Wood glue, plumber's putty, dust mask, voltage tester, wheelbarrow, shovel, rake, step ladder
Serious enthusiasts who do many projects around the house will want to invest in more specialized tools or more power tools to do everything more efficiently.
Crowbar: When you need to pry apart boards, remove stubborn nails, do some heavy lifting, or otherwise break things, reach for the crowbar, a.k.a., pry bar. A medium size bar between 2 to 3 feet might be best for most projects. For larger demolition projects, get a wrecking bar.
Rubber Mallet: A rubber mallet lets you hammer or tap without damaging the surface. It comes in handy when installing laminate flooring or ceramic tile, as well as other uses, and you can pick up a decent mid-range mallet for under $25.
Staple gun: A heavy-duty staple gun doesn't cost much (under $20) but has a broad range of applications: everything from roofing and upholstery to hobbies and crafts. It's like your standard office stapler but more powerful, and comes in manual and electric versions.
Circular Saw: One of the most common power tools today, the circular saw's toothed metal cutting disk cuts through masonry, tile, and steel. Prices range from $50 to $200. See This Old House's article for advice on selecting and using a circular saw.
Automatic Nailer: If you're going to be driving a whole lot of nails, a nail gun will help you save time and effort over using a hammer. Finish nailers are used to nail moldings and small trim boards (like baseboards), while brad nailers are for thinner or more delicate trim. Family Handyman says these two types of nail guns are complimentary, so if you can afford it, buy both a 15-gauge finish nailer and an 18-gauge brad nailer (together, they'll cost $300 to $550), otherwise a 16-gauge nail gun is a good compromise (ranging from $200 to $300).
Impact Driver: To fasten a lot of screws or drill a bunch of holes with speed and ease (for deck-building and other woodwork), an impact driver is a worthy investment (yes, even if you already have a fancy drill). They range in price from $90 to $300. See Popular Mechanics' review of 9 impact drivers for a cost/features comparison.
Cordless Dremel Rotary Tool: A Dremel (or other similar rotary tool) may not be a necessity, but it sure comes in handy for a great variety of applications. With different attachments, you can use the power tool for drilling, grinding, sanding, sawing, sharpening, routing, polishing, cleaning, carving, and engraving. It's like a toolbox in itself. This kit includes 30 accessories and is $80.
Table Saws, Miter Saws, and More: For more precise, specific cuts and slices, there are a slew of specialty saws for the handyperson. Bob Vila's Essential Tools for Woodworking lays out why you might want these saws and other items such as an air compressor, drill press, and table and belt sander. Expect to pay $500 to $1,500 (or much more) for the whole kit and caboodle.
Other: plumb bob or plumb line (a weight on a string for creating a vertical reference line), clamps to hold wood pieces together, sledgehammer, extension ladder, sawhorse or workbench
The lists above should certainly get your toolboxitude on and help you tackle just about any project around your home. For further inspiration (or just plain tools-gawking), check out MythBuster Adam Savage's list of 300 meticulously organized tools.
Photos by mtneer_man, Daren, and Mark Hunter.
Hard drives get messy. You save files and forget them, download huge chunks of data that pile up, and change your naming schemes a hundred times. It's spring, though, so why not do a little tidying up?
To make things simpler, we're going to look at this from the perspective of cleaning up a secondary drive that doesn't have an OS installed on it. You can use these same tactics for any drive, but there are other ways to save space on a system drive including clearing caches, eliminating old temp folders, etc. Right now, though, we just want to focus on your junk.
When you need to clear up hard drive space in a hurry, the first thing you want to do is find out just what's taking up all that space. WinDirStat is a crowd favorite for scanning a drive and finding out what you can get rid of to get a little extra leg room in a hurry. The results are even color-coded to let you know what are important, system files that you shouldn't delete, and what's cat GIFs and videos of your friend's wedding. If you're on a Mac, our favorite analyzer, Disk Inventory X, has a lot of the same features for the same price (free!).
Whether they're big or small, duplicate files take up unnecessary space. Windows, Mac, and Linux users can all use the handy Duplicate File Searcher to track down any files that you've downloaded more than once. Windows users can also use Duplicate Commander to remove the extra copies and replace them with hard links. This clears up the space while still making sure that any apps referencing the files are able to continue to operate without interruptions. Duplicate Cleaner Free also offers a nice, three-tabbed interface for finding duplicate files without all the mess.
Finding the big stuff isn't always helpful. After all, you probably downloaded those giant videos for a reason. If you'd rather just find the old stuff, you can do that with simple search operators in the search box for Windows 7 and up. You can search for the last date modified, accessed, or when a file was created, and further sub-filter by size or type. Unfortunately this method lacks the nice visualization of file size that WinDirStat has, but it can go a long way in whittling down the stuff you don't need or use anymore. There are bunch more search operators you can use to narrow down your searches here.
Okay, so you definitely want to keep those 12,462 wedding photos, but wouldn't it be nice if they were named something better than IMG01827.jpg? Batch rename apps allow you to bring a more uniform sorting scheme to your collections. Apps like Rapid Streams (Windows) or Name Changer (Mac) are straightforward utilities for doing simple renaming tasks. However, if you want to crank it up a notch or ten, Bulk Rename Utility for windows has more options than you could ever use. On OS X you can use the built-in Automator tool to accomplish many of these same tasks as well.
Now that all your files have meaningful names, put them somewhere equally meaningful. Apps like TeraCopy will allow you to quickly move a bunch of files around and set batch settings for overwriting or renaming duplicate files. Ultra-copier is a cross-platform solution that works on Windows, Mac, and Linux and is frequently much faster than the built-in solutions you find on most OSes.
Most of us have something that we'd rather not share with the world. Sensitive work documents, birthday gift ideas, etc. You can hide files in both Windows and OS X, but this only really makes your folders slightly nicer to look at. There's no real security there. You can use apps like TrueCrypt to lock down files, or even simple zip applications like 7-Zip to keep a collection of files under lock and key from anyone who may stumble on to your machine. These only really help protect against casual access to your machine, of course. If you want more powerful protection in case your hardware is ever seized or stolen, you may want to create a hidden, encrypted partition to store sensitive files on, using your main volumes as a decoy.
If you're like me, you probably have years and years worth of files laying around on your system that need to be cleared out, but it's not necessary to go through them by hand to clean them up.
Video discovery startup Fanhattan is getting ready to change the way that viewers watch TV, with a new streaming set-top box that combines all of the best parts of TV, DVR, and VOD, while also giving users access to all their favorite streaming services. It’s rebranding as Fan and showing off an innovative new take on live TV and streaming services.
The key to the company’s new Fan TV box, being shown off at D11 today, isn’t the content that users have access to, but a beautiful, trackpad-like control that was designed by Yves Behar, as well as a search and discovery screen for navigating all that live, recorded, and streaming content.
A few years ago, Fan unveiled its search and discovery application for iPad, enabling users to find all their favorite movies and TV shows available across a wide range of streaming apps and services. By providing a universal search and discovery mechanism, the app was able to highlight content wherever it could be viewed.
With the Fan TV set-top box, the company is bringing that same discovery experience to the TV. But it’s also combining access to various streaming services with the ability to watch live, pre-recorded, and video-on-demand titles from your local cable or satellite TV providers.
Yes, that’s right. Unlike Apple TV, Roku, WDTV, etc., this is a streaming box that will connect with your cable service. Actually, that’s a key part of Fan’s value proposition, as well as its plans to go to market. More than just a device for streaming Netflix or Hulu Plus, the search and discovery piece of Fan TV will be used to give users the ability to find their favorite programs on live TV, as well as discover new shows.
The company plans to partner with big pay TV operators to make Fan TV available to their customers. While they won’t disclose pricing of the set-top box, the company expects to have a business model similar to the one that is employed by mobile phone manufacturers and wireless operators today, in which the cost of the device is subsidized for the end user by the service providers.
Like existing set-top boxes, the Fan TV doesn’t rely on a coax connection to work. Even when it’s delivering live TV, it’s streaming that content, either over the local Wi-Fi network, or through an Ethernet port in the back of the device. In that way, it’s a lot like your typical Roku box or Apple TV.
For cable and satellite companies, the Fan TV device could replace expensive, poorly designed set-top boxes from legacy providers like Cisco. Not only does it ultimately provide a better user experience, but it will likely do so at a fraction of the price of current set-tops. While the company has yet to announce any partners — those will come later this summer — CEO Gilles BianRosa told me that the company expects to be available to as many as 60 million pay TV households by the end of the year.
The most impressive thing about the Fan TV isn’t just the way it seamlessly combines content from multiple services and makes it simple to browse and discover shows and movies. The most impressive thing about Fan TV is a new trackpad-like remote control that does away with all the ugly buttons and complexities of today’s current options.
For the creation of the Fan TV device, the startup partnered with industrial designer Yves Behar — yes, this is his second product to launch at this conference — and the result is a game-changing new way of navigating options on your TV. The touch remote can be held in one hand, and allows you to change channels, navigate menus, and even control volume settings through a series of swipes, taps and gestures.
I got a chance to try out the Fan TV for myself and I can honestly say that the control is like nothing I’ve ever used. It’s kind of like using your mobile phone’s touchscreen for navigation (and yes, there are apps to do that today), but simpler, and without the need for another device.
The Fan TV has the opportunity to provide a better user experience for users who already subscribe to TV, making it easier to search for, watch and record their favorite TV shows. If it becomes widely available, the device could very seriously revolutionize the way that pay TV subscribers interact with their TV programming.
But more importantly, it could bring cord cutters and so-called “cord nevers” back into the fold. By providing a set-top box that works like other streaming devices today, but with the benefit of also providing live TV, cable operators could introduce new, low-cost video services that match the convenience that young, tech-savvy consumers have gotten used to. That could be great news for cable operators, as well as Fan TV going forward.
In a world where drawings of bears, beds and monsters can be turned into movies - not forgetting board games and theme park rides - perhaps it should come as no surprise that internet memes are getting in on the cinematic adaptation action, with the infamous Grumpy Cat inking a deal with Broken Road Productions.
Todd Garner and Sean Robins are the guys behind Adam Sandler's Jack And Jill and Kevin James' Here Comes The Boom, so you can probably guess at the tone this "Garfield-like feature film" will take. Fingers crossed Bill Murray is available...
If you're not in the know about Grumpy Cat - real name: Tardar Sauce; name of manager: Ben Lashes - be sure to head over to KnowYourMeme.com, as well as Grumpy Cat's Facebook page (950k+ fans) and his YouTube channel (20m+ video views).
The question now is, which other memes need to get their own movies? Let us know your own suggestions in the comment box below, but not before you've voted it our handy poll...
[[Poll923]]
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