firehose

Eddy Cue, the Apple executive who helped build iTunes and iBookstore, revealed some potentially embarrassing information this morning at the company's ebook antitrust trial in Manhattan.

Cue took the stand after being by called by Lawrence Buterman, an attorney for the US Department of Justice, which has accused Apple of participating in a scheme to raise and fix ebook prices in 2010. Cue confirmed that very early on when Apple was weighing whether to enter the ebook market, he discussed a plan with then CEO Steve Jobs that called for offering Amazon a deal: Apple would stay out of the ebooks market if Amazon stayed out of music. This kind of arrangement could be considered anticompetitive and illegal.

Apple never went through with the plan but the government certainly tried illustrating that Apple was willing to play fast and loose with the rules as it began to enter the ebook market. The morning definitely went to Buterman, who appeared to poke holes in Cue's story as well as embarrass Apple. Cue is likely to have an easier time in the afternoon when Apple's attorneys get a chance to question him.

Cue acknowledged that as a result of Apple's agreement, ebook prices would rise

The DOJ filed an lawsuit last year accusing Apple and five of the country's book publishers of conspiring to fix ebook prices and limit Amazon's ability to discount ebooks. The publishers believed the low prices hurt their distribution and Apple wanted to snatch away the company's chief competitive advantages, the government alleges. The publishers, however, settled with the government, leaving Apple alone to fight the charges.

Key to the government's claims are Apple's insistence that the publishers force Amazon to agree to an "agency" model, giving publishers the power to price ebooks and handcuff Amazon's managers when it came to discounting. Cue said on the stand that at some point, Apple quit caring because their contracts with the publishers guaranteed that Apple would get access to the lowest price offered online — and still be allowed to take its 30 percent commission.

The government tried to show that Apple was playing fast and loose

Cue acknowledged that as a result of Apple's agreement with the publishers, ebook prices would rise. The government argues that because of Apple's guarantee to get the lowest possible price, it forced the publishers to require all retailers boost prices. Cue said he was indifferent about what other retailers did.

"Do you think your customers care?" Buterman asked, as someone in the audience gasped. "Who protected Apple's customers from the higher prices?

"I did," Cue said. He told the court that customers were happy with the iBookstore. Later Buterman asked Cue if any of Apple's customers complained about the higher prices. Cue responded that "they may or may not have, I can't recall." Buterman then asked if any of Apple's customers thanked the company for raising prices. This is how it went for much of the morning.

Cue stays on the stand this afternoon as he's cross-examined by Apple's own legal team.

In the upcoming video game Watch Dogs, you play Aiden Pierce, a rogue hacker in a seemingly dystopian future Chicago — a city where every piece of technology is controlled by a supercomputer, where every citizen is monitored by a citywide operating system. It's a surveillance state which wormed its way into place by providing Wi-Fi as a basic human right, and where the government claims it can use surveillance to stop crime before it happens.

Ubisoft announced the game nearly a year ago, when its ideas seemed plausible but perhaps slightly far-fetched. But in light of PRISM, the US government's alleged internet surveillance program, Ubisoft developers are starting to look practically prescient. "It's like reality is catching up to the game," Watch Dogs lead game designer Danny Belanger tells The Verge.

"Data collection is immensely powerful, and most of the big internet giants track it and use it," he suggests. "They can predict who you're going to vote for and predict the kind of person you are... and maybe try to influence that."

Watch Dogs, he says, is about asking ourselves the moral questions that arise when faced with that reality. "Data collection, social media, having all these cameras 24/7... in my most intimate moments, reading in bed, there's a camera in my face." Belanger relates.

"In my most intimate moments... there's a camera in my face."

In the game, Aiden has access to all of those cameras, and can use or abuse that power as players see fit. Hack into the city police's crime prediction server, and you can attempt to save citizens. But Ubisoft also showed us how you can hack into a mother's laptop webcam — you can hear baby cries coming from an adjacent room — and steal her bank account number to further your own ends. While both of these scenarios are totally optional, that's not true of "profiling" people you meet. In Watch Dogs, you'll know the name, occupation, salary, and secrets of every pedestrian, because Aiden has access to the government's secret database. It's a core element of gameplay.

As eerie (and entertaining to play) as the idea might be, Belanger admits that at least Aiden's powers over physical objects in the environment — car alarms, traffic bollards, individual devices connected to the power grid — aren't realistic as of today. "The smart city isn't there yet," he says. "But it's coming."

(Image: @gageacademy)

Originally available to advertising partners, Twitter Analytics platform is now open to the public. The dashboard allows Twitter users to check the performance of their tweets and view breakdowns of their followers which are presented in neat tables and graphs for easy reference. The tool originally allowed only website owners and advertisers to track their tweets, but is now available to anyone with a Twitter account.

Find your most popular tweets

In the Timeline Activity view, tweets are listed alongside the number of favorites, retweets, and replies they have received. Twitter also tracks how many times links within a tweet have been clicked and highlights better performing posts based on their reach. The Followers view offers a graph charting follower growth and also splits followers into interest, location, and gender demographics. All of the data can be downloaded in a CSV file, allowing users to remix or display the data as they see fit.

While all Twitter users are able to access Twitter Analytics, it appears that not all accounts are displaying detailed information. We have asked Twitter for comment on its plans for Analytics, and we'll update you accordingly.

Gallery: Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut (E3 2013)

The best way for console makers to deal with the used games market is to ensure their games are so good that people don't want to trade them in, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told Polygon. But supporting used games is also important, he added.

"We have been very clear, we understand that used games are a way for some consumers to monetize their games," Fils-Aime said. "They will buy a game, play it, bring it back to their retailer to get credit for their next purchase. Certainly, that impacts games that are annualized and candidly also impacts games that are maybe undifferentiated much more than [it] impacts Nintendo content. Why is that? Because the replayability of our content is super strong. The consumer wants to keep playing Mario Kart. The consumer want to keep playing New Super Mario Bros. They want to keep playing Pikmin. So we see that the trade-in frequency on Nintendo content is much less than the industry average – much, much less. So for us, we have been able to step back and say that we are not taking any technological means to impact trade-in and we are confident that if we build great content, then the consumer will not want to trade in our games."

Used games have become a hot-button topic this year as both Microsoft and Sony continue to detail how their new consoles will operate.

While Microsoft won't charge any fees as a platform holder for the sale or purchase of used Xbox One games, they are leaving it up to individual publishers to decide whether their games can be sold or traded — a policy that hasn't been very popular.

"The trade-in frequency on Nintendo content is much less than the industry average – much, much less."

When Sony announced during their E3 press conference, held half a day after Microsoft's, that they wouldn't have such restrictions, the news was met with thundering applause.

That spontaneous reaction, Fils-Aime said, was likely not just a message to Sony, but "probably a bigger one to the [publisher] who went earlier in the day."

Sony is still allowing publishers to decide whether the online portion of their games will require some extra fee to be re-activated when resold.

The end result is three next-gen consoles with three sets of used game policies. Ultimately, it will be up to the publishers to decide how they want their games to be bought and re-sold. I asked Fils-Aime if Nintendo is prepared to stick to their open used games policy in the face of publishers who may want Nintendo's policy to become more restrictive, like Microsoft's or Sony's.

"The fact of the matter is, we will see what happens with publishers," he said, "but it seems to me that every major publisher has come and said we don't mind used games."

Nintendo's approach to used games may be in part driven by the fact that the publisher is having increasing success with the sale of downloadable versions of its games.

In April, Nintendo announced that about a quarter of the 3.86 million copies of Animal Crossing: New Leaf sold in Japan were purchased through its online store.

Nintendo found that once a person made a purchase through the online store, they were much more likely to purchase other games or content. In their current form, those disc-less games can't be traded in, lent to friends or sold, essentially removing any question of a used game market.

"But it seems to me that every major publisher has come and said we don't mind used games."

Despite the increasing popularity of purchasing games online and downloading them, Fils-Aim said he doesn't think "digital games" will supplant physical copies and the retailers who sell them anytime soon.

"I don't see [Nintendo stopping the sale of game discs] in the future, certainly not the near-term future," he said. "For us, retail is a key part of our overall business. Retailers play a huge role in driving awareness. Their stores play a large role in consumers having an experience with their interactives. We couldn't do a program like what we are doing with Best Buy without the power of retail and letting consumers play four games that haven't been released yet. The only place you can see these games is either here at E3 or at a 100 best buy locations in the U.S. and in Canada. So we see a very strong role for physical product in the near-term."

Ultimately, Fils-Aime said, he doesn't know how much the used game policies of a console will weigh on a gamer's decision to purchase a console, but with the least restrictive policies, it's not something Nintendo has to worry about.

"I think we'll have to wait and see," he said. "I am not sure what the next steps will be, how the different competitors will respond to each other. Again, for us, it is about the games. We want to give the consumers a great gameplay experience."

For over a century, the United States Navy has written its communications using only capital letters, but that tradition is now going through a sea change. The Navy has finally allowed lowercase letters to find their way into official communications, meaning sentences from here on out should largely use conventional capitalization. Navy Times reports that the all-caps format was a holdout from early telecommunication systems that only supported capital letters. The Navy began use of such systems around the 1850s, but has finally made the change in response to younger sailors' preference for the more-readable mixed case formatting.

The decision is part of a broader initiative to overhaul the Navy's communication systems. The Navy says that the new systems will be more efficient and ultimately save it over $15 million each year. Included among those simplifications is leaving behind the Defense Message System — a type of secure electronic communication — for a more traditional email system. Altogether, it'll allow the Navy to reduce the servers handling these communications from 100 machines down to just five. The Navy's communication plans and changes were first announced last month, but have only now been made public.