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Twitter voice gets drowned out

Written By Unknown on Selasa, 22 April 2014 | 00.24

Twitter has lost its way.

It's no longer the platform that gives marginalized citizens a voice. It's not a digital equalizer where barriers between the ordinary and the powerful are broken down.

It's so noisy there that ordinary people can barely be heard at all. It's where Justin Bieber has more followers than the leader of the free world. At bottom, it's a platform that has a hard time making a case for new users to sign up.

Recent data bears out Twitter's problems. A full 44 percent of its 947 million accounts have never uttered a single tweet, according to Twopcharts, a third-party tracking site.

What's more, there are about 391 million accounts with zero followers. Just over 232 million are themselves following no one.

It wasn't too long ago that Twitter had so much egalitarian potential. For Egyptian and Libyan protesters, Twitter lit up candles in the darkness. During the so-called Arab Spring, Twitter carried messages of freedom and democracy throughout the Middle East and North Africa. At that time, just three years ago, interesting and compelling content bubbled to the surface.

But no longer.

Twitter is arterio-
sclerotic now, clogged with idle users and spam accounts that make it difficult to find anything of real interest. If you were an ordinary person looking to join Twitter today, you'd have to put serious time into gaining a following in order to yield any semblance of an audience.

And before you even get to that, you'd have to figure out your primary purpose in being there. For instance, are you into politics, advocating for a cause or looking for local news?

Unless you're a known brand or personality, finding a niche and crafting a brand is essential. And time-consuming. It's about updating constantly and consistently.

Count on babysitting your feed and even posting the same content over and over to gain followers.

These days, Twitter is a world where celebrities rule. Relationships are superficial. And that's why those who use the service are using it less.

If Twitter doesn't right the ship, it will become exactly the type of entity it was supposed to counteract: a caste system where popular people just become more popular and powerful people, more powerful.


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HTC One (M8) challenges Galaxy S5

HTC One (M8) (AT&T wireless, $199.99 on contract)

This isn't the HTC One. It's the HTC One (M8). And as the name suggests, it's an incremental upgrade, timed to compete directly with another Android flagship, Samsung's Galaxy S5.

The good: With speakers that make this phone more like a pocket-sized boombox, the HTC One (M8) is a great multimedia device. An excellent HD display, this luxurious Android offering is better and faster than its predecessor. And it doesn't hurt that it's crafted from a single place of aluminum.

The bad: Like many Android smartphones, the One (M8) is chock full of bloatware — programs that you're never going to use. The rear-facing camera should be better for the price.

The bottom line: For Android purists, it's a tough call between the One (M8) and the Samsung Galaxy S5, but the S5 is the winner due to a slightly better form factor and camera performance.


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Stocks edge higher at start of a big earnings week

NEW YORK — Stocks were mixed Monday at the start of another major week for company earnings. The stock market also got a lift from an encouraging report on the U.S. economy. The Standard & Poor's 500 index is coming off its best week since July.

KEEPING SCORE: The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose four points, or. 0.2 percent, to 1,868. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 24 points, or 0.2 percent, to 16,433. The Nasdaq composite gained 15 points, or 0.2 percent, to 4,110. The stock market was closed for Good Friday.

BIG MINING: Newmont Mining surged $1.30, or 5.5 percent, to $24.84 following reports that the mining company was considering a merger with Barrick Gold. The two companies are seeking to cut costs after a slump in metals prices.

OIL TURNAROUND: Halliburton rose $1.94, or 3.2 percent, to $63.25 after the company said it was profitable in the first quarter after reporting a loss in the same period a year ago. Last year the company set aside money for litigation over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

GROUNDS FOR OPTIMISM: A measure of the U.S. economy's strength rose in March for the third consecutive month, an encouraging sign after harsh winter weather slowed down economic growth. The Conference Board said Monday that its index of leading indicators increased 0.8 percent in March after a 0.5 percent rise in February and a modest 0.2 percent gain in January.

THE QUOTE: "The data are suggesting that we will gain economic momentum," said Quincy Krosby, a market strategist at Prudential Financial. "There is a sense, more and more, that the economy won't run into another soft patch this year."

THE EARNINGS TRAIN: This week 159 companies in the S&P 500 index, representing about a third of the value of the index, are scheduled to report first-quarter earnings. Netflix will release its earnings after the closing bell. Companies including McDonald's, Delta Air Lines and Ford are also among those scheduled to release their results this week. S&P 500 companies are forecast to report an overall 1.1 percent decline in earnings for the period, according to data from S&P Capital IQ.

RECOVERY WEEK: The S&P 500 climbed 2.7 percent last week, recovering from a big-sell in early April off triggered by a slump in high-flying Internet and biotechnology stocks. The index is up 0.9 percent for the year and is trading close to its record close of 1,890, set April 2.

TREASURIES AND COMMODITIES: Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.70 percent. The price of oil rose 19 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $104.49 a barrel.


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Stocks edge higher as major earnings week starts

NEW YORK — Stocks are edging higher as another big week for company earnings begins.

Halliburton rose after the oil exploration company said it was profitable in the first-quarter after reporting a loss in the same period a year ago. Athenahealth, a provider of online services to the health care industry, slumped after its earnings fell short of Wall Street's expectations.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose three points, or less 0.2 percent, to 1,868 in the first few minutes of trading Monday. Last week the index logged its best performance since July after the first major week of earnings.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 35 points, or 0.2 percent, to 16,443.

Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.70 percent from 2.73 percent on Thursday.


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Dart adapter flashes power

Laptops keep getting smaller and lighter, but chargers never seem to change — until now.

A California-based company founded by a group of MIT graduate students has invented what it calls the world's smallest laptop-charger.

Measuring 2.5 cubic inches and weighing just over 2 ounces, FINsix's Dart is barely bigger than a lipstick case — making it four times smaller and six times lighter than the average laptop adapter — but it charges just as quickly.

"Everyone who has a laptop knows the big brick they have to carry around," said CEO Vanessa Green, who co-founded the company as an MBA student at MIT's Sloan School of Management. "We looked at the market and said, 'Hey, we can do something different here.'"

FINsix launched the Dart in January to rave reviews for its practicality at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Last Monday, the company began a monthlong Kickstarter campaign and met its goal of $200,000 on the crowdfunding site within 12 hours. By 7 p.m. Friday, the Dart had 3,104 backers who had pledged $336,706, with 25 days still to go in the campaign.

The money will be used to complete the development and production of the 65-watt charger, which sells on Kickstarter for $79, but which FINsix expects to retail in stores for about $119.

In addition to its small size and light weight, the Dart is designed for use anywhere in the world, and its laptop plus USB port allows people to charge multiple gadgets from a single outlet.

The Dart works well with all major PC brands, as well as with MacBooks 65 watts and under. To make chargers for the latter, though, FINsix has to buy off-the-shelf Apple adapters to get the connectors. So the Dart for MacBook costs $79 more than a standard Dart.

The charger is not compatible with 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros and the 15-inch MacBook Pro with retina display because they require more than 65 watts. It also is not compatible with the Microsoft Surface tablet and the Google Chromebook Pixel.

The good news for gadget buffs: The Dart is just the first of a full line of the smallest, lightest and highest-performing power electronics FINsix intends to make.

To accomplish that, the company has raised more than $6 million in venture capital and angel investments and assembled a team of 18 employees — five in Boston and the remainder in Menlo Park, Calif.


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Robot gives telecommuters a presence in the workplace

Technology is already allow­­ing people to tele­commute across vast distances, giving companies the luxury of finding the talent they want, even if that talented individual doesn't live in the same city, state or country. And the ability to work remotely is a perk more companies are using­ to retain workers.

But email, tele­conferencing and phone calls still prevent a remote worker from establishing a presence in the workplace. Spontaneous interactions are impossible — there's no brainstorming in the hallway, or popping into a colleague's office to bounce around an idea.

The answer? ROBOT ME!

A number of robotics companies have begun marketing "telepresence robots," upright devices that can roam hallways carrying a screen displaying a live video ­image of a telecommuter. The remote worker can see and hear via a camera and microphone on the robot.

I spoke with Colin Angle, CEO of iRobot, the Mass­achusetts-based company that created, among many other things, the robotic Roomba vacuum cleaner that is currently striking fear into the hearts of your house pets.

"If you actually want people to have high-quality remote experiences, you need to solve this remote presence in a creative way," he said. "We're trying to create a true immersive remote presence — I'm trying to build you. So you can attend meetings not as the forgotten, dis­embodied black spider phone thing, or the strange floating head that's up there on a screen until we need to use Power­Point, but as the guy who shows up at the meeting, sits down and participates in a way completely analogous to you being there in person."

iRobot has created — and some companies have begun using — the Ava 500. It looks like a sleek, round-based pedestal with a rectangular high-definition screen mounted on its wide neck.

The screen slides up and down to simulate a standing or sitting position, keeping interactions on roughly the same eye-to-eye level with people. The remote user can pivot the screen 360 degrees and move the robot in any direction. (The robot has sensors so it doesn't run into people or walls.)

Angle said they intentionally steered clear of giving Ava 500 a human form.

"We had to create a stylized,­ attractive form for the robot that wasn't gender specific but had a gravitas and scale volume and fidelity that would make the remote user feel good about representing themselves," he said. "And the people on the other end would look at it in a friendly way where the robot wasn't distracting because of its failed attempt to look like a person."

Basically, if the robot looked too human it would be seriously creepy. So they stuck with a non-human design that makes Ava 500 substantial enough to give people the sense that there's a presence beyond just a face on a screen.

The robot memorizes the layout of an office building, allow­ing a remote user to simply press a point on a map to dispatch Ava 500 to a certain office or conference room. Once there, the worker "teleports" into the robot, appearing on the screen and en­gaging with whoever's around.

On a recent morning, the folks at iRobot allowed me to teleport into an Ava 500 at their facility. Within minutes, I was linked up with the Ava 500 using an app on my iPad and teleconferencing software on my desktop computer. I controlled the robot, the screen height and the camera direction via the iPad touch screen, zipping around with ease and making lots of ­cliche robot sounds.

It was amazing. I spoke with two iRobot employees and a photographer, followed them to different locations and checked out displays in the company's robot museum.

Before long, the inherent strangeness of the experience melted away and I under­stood why they call it an immersive experience. This was different than using Skype or making a conference call — I was able to react to facial cues, turn my attention to other people as they spoke and engage in a much more conversational manner.

"The difference in metaphor is that anything that you can do if you were in a meeting physically, we want to try to mimic and replicate using a robot," Angle said. "The feeling was that if we did a good enough job, meetings could take place identically to how they would take place if you were there in person."

The price for this technology is steep — one Ava 500 costs $69,500. But it can allow companies to bring people from far-off distances into a workplace without paying for flights or hotel rooms.

, and remote workers tend to reduce company costs by requiring less office space.

Devices like Ava 500 are going to become common in many workplaces. It's an inevitable step in sorting out how best to mix technology with our human need for some form of spontaneous interaction.


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Homing in on survivors̢۪ needs

A group of architects are donating their services to make the homes of marathon bombing survivors more accessible.

Nearly 100 architects and 10 consultants have signed up to help through an effort called Renovate for Recovery, working with engineers, carpenters, designers and dozens of other volunteers to complete one project in New Hampshire, with more than a half dozen others in the works.

"After the bombings, survivors were overwhelmed, physically and emotionally, so their homes were on the back burner," said Dawn Guarriello of the Design Partnership of Cambridge. "But people don't have to be an amputee to take advantage of this. No injury is too small."

Survivors apply for modifications to their homes or businesses through a Department of Public Safety initiative called the Boston Survivors Accessibility Alliance, which assesses requests on a case-by-case basis, said Terrel Harris, a spokesman for the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security.

"Those getting help don't need to worry about anything," Harris said. "It's all done free."

Although most of the projects so far have called for redesigning kitchens and bathrooms or installing lifts or elevators, volunteers can modify homes in a variety of other ways, including replacing door knobs with handles for people who sustained neurological problems such as gripping, or installing smoke detectors with strobe lights for those who lost some or all of their hearing, Guarriello said.

"Our biggest need right now is donated materials like garage doors, sinks and tiles, hopefully through local suppliers," she said. "We want to open people's eyes to different ways of thinking about accessibility."

Michael McHugh, a member of the Boston Society of Architects and chairman of Architecture for Humanity Boston, began working with Karen Rand, who lost her leg from the knee down.

Rand lives in a third-floor apartment in Somerville. So McHugh and the firm he works for, Davis Square Architects, designed a new handrail and sturdier steps, which were built by "Ask This Old House" for a segment of the TV show.

To allow Rand to sit outside in nice weather, McHugh and his firm also designed a new roof deck, which was built by S+H Construction in Cambridge.

"As a runner myself, I feel a strong connection to the running community, and it's been really great to reach out in some way," McHugh said.


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Asian stocks mixed after holiday weekend

BEIJING — Global stocks were mixed Monday in light trading after Japan reported a record annual trade deficit and investors looked ahead to economic data this week from China and South Korea.

Oil declined but stayed above $104 per barrel amid concern over simmering tensions in Ukraine.

The regional heavyweight, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index, edged down 0.03 percent to 14,512.38 after Japan's trade deficit widened by nearly 70 percent in the year ending March 31. It was Japan's third straight year of deficit.

China's benchmark Shanghai Composite Index shed 1.5 percent to 2,065.83. Investors are waiting for the preliminary version of HSBC Corp.'s survey of Chinese manufacturing due out Wednesday for signs of whether an economic slowdown has bottomed out.

The flash purchasing managers' index "will be closely watched after a raft of mixed (but mostly soft) data," Mizuho Bank said in a report. "Potential for upside resides more in stimulus prospects rather than activity pick-up."

Markets in Germany and France were closed for Easter.

Taiwan's Taiex shed 0.2 percent to 8,951.19 and Seoul's Kospi lost 0.2 percent to 1,999.22. South Korea is to report data on Thursday that are expected to show economic growth slowed in the first quarter.

Singapore was flat while Manila and Jakarta rose. Markets in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong were closed for the Easter holiday.

Oil shed 23 cents to $104.07 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange amid concern about tensions in Ukraine following an Easter morning shootout at a checkpoint manned by pro-Russian insurgents. The contract added 44 cents in the previous session to $104.30 on concern Russian supplies might be disrupted if Europe or the United States imposes sanctions.

In currency markets, the U.S. dollar gained 0.1 percent to 102.56 yen and the euro was up marginally at $1.382.


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Massachusetts gas prices up 7 cents

BOSTON — The price of a gallon of gas in Massachusetts has shot up by 7 cents in the past week, but still remains well below the national average.

AAA Southern New England reports Monday that self-serve, regular has risen to $3.60 per gallon.

That's 7 cents less than the current national average, 8 cents higher than the in-state price a month ago and 16 cents higher than the in-state price at this time last year.

AAA found regular, self-serve selling as low as $3.43 per gallon and as high as $3.79.


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Court to hear dispute over Internet TV broadcasts

WASHINGTON — Thirty years after failing to convince the Supreme Court of the threat posed by home video recordings, big media companies are back and now trying to rein in another technological innovation they say threatens their financial well-being.

The battle has moved out of viewers' living rooms, where Americans once marveled at their ability to pop a cassette into a recorder and capture their favorite programs or the sporting event they wouldn't be home to see.

Now the entertainment conglomerates that own U.S. television networks are waging a legal fight, culminating in Tuesday's Supreme Court argument against a startup business that uses Internet-based technology to give subscribers the ability to watch programs anywhere they can take portable devices.

The source of the companies' worry is Aereo Inc., which takes free television signals from the airwaves and sends them over the Internet to paying subscribers in 11 cities. Aereo, backed by billionaire Barry Diller, has plans to more than double that total.

Broadcasters including ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS have sued Aereo for copyright infringement, saying Aereo should pay for redistributing the programming the same way cable and satellite systems do.

The U.S. networks increasingly are reliant on these retransmission fees, estimated at $3.3 billion last year and going up to more than $7 billion by 2018, according to research by SNL Kagan, which analyzes media and communications trends. They fear that they will lose some of that money if the Supreme Court rules for Aereo.

Aereo's service starts at $8 a month and is available in New York, Boston, Houston and Atlanta, among others. Subscribers get about two dozen local over-the-air stations, plus the Bloomberg TV financial channel.

In the New York market, Aereo has a data center in Brooklyn with thousands of dime-size antennas. When a subscriber wants to watch a show live or record it, the company temporarily assigns him an antenna and transmits the program over the Internet to the subscriber's laptop, tablet, smartphone or other device.

The antenna is only used by one subscriber at a time, and Aereo says that's much like the situation at home, where a viewer uses a personal antenna to watch over-the-air broadcasts for free.

"Aereo is in some ways novel, but it is also among a host of technologies that uses the Internet to offer consumers the ability to do what they always have more cheaply and conveniently," the Dish Network and Echostar Technologies said in a supporting legal brief filed in the Supreme Court.

But the broadcasters and their backers argue that Aereo's competitive advantage lies not in its product, but in avoiding paying for it.

"Aereo is simply a blatant free rider trying to make a quick buck without paying anything toward the true costs of what it misappropriates," Time Warner Inc. said in a court filing.

The broadcasters told the court that Aereo's "competitors pay for the rights to retransmit 'live TV' to the public — as they must to avoid liability for copyright infringement — while Aereo does not."

The federal appeals court in New York ruled that Aereo did not violate the copyrights of broadcasters with its service, but a similar service has been blocked by judges in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said its ruling stemmed from a 2008 decision in which it held that Cablevision Systems Corp. could offer a remote digital video recording service without paying additional licensing fees to broadcasters because each playback transmission was made to a single subscriber using a single unique copy produced by that subscriber. The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal from movie studios, TV networks and cable TV channels.

In the Aereo case, a dissenting judge said his court's decision would eviscerate copyright law.

Judge Denny Chin called Aereo's setup a sham and said the individual antennas are a "Rube Goldberg-like contrivance" — an overly complicated device that accomplishes a simple task in a confusing way — that exists for the sole purpose of evading copyright law.

The Obama administration, artists, actors, Major League Baseball and the National Football League all support the broadcasters. But the administration and computer software and telecommunications groups are urging the court to avoid a broad ruling in favor of copyright protection that could call into question the rapidly evolving world of cloud computing, which gives users access to a vast online computer network that stores and processes information.

Smaller cable companies, independent broadcasters and consumer groups are backing Aereo.

FM radio and cable TV were initially derided as unnecessary, inefficient or just bizarre, said the digital civil liberties watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation. In a legal filing joined by other public interest groups and the consumer electronics trade association, the group said the justices should not become regulators of technology and "the court should not attempt to predict the future of television."

The entertainment industry has changed dramatically since the high court ruled in favor of home video recording in 1984 in a 5-4 decision. Then, Sony was the maker of the Betamax recorder and Universal City Studios and Walt Disney Productions were arguing for protection under copyright law.

Now, Disney owns ABC and cable giant Comcast owns NBC and Universal.

The case is ABC v. Aereo, 13-461.


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