Monday 20 January 2014

Microsoft May Breathe New Life Into Halo's Cortana AI

The hottest rumor for Microsoft Xbox Halo fans has taken on a life of its own: The voice and text-based virtual assistant service -- code-named "Cortana" and planned for release with Windows Phone 8.1 -- actually might be created with the real-life voice behind Cortana, Jen Taylor.
The rumor comes from MSFTnerd, and while there is no evidence to back it up, millions of Halo fans will be -- how should I say this -- totally freakin' stoked to hear Cortana may come to life as a real AI virtual assistant.
In fact, on one Windows Phone feature suggestion forum post, nearly 39,000 users have voted in a sort of ad hoc petition to encourage Microsoft to launch the service with "Cortana" as the official name.
That's just for the name -- not the real voice of Jen Taylor used with the name.

Why Cortana?

If you haven't played the massively popular Halo series of games on Microsoft's Xbox, you won't know Cortana from Siri, HAL or a turnip. However, millions of gamers -- teenagers and adults alike -- have spent hours upon hours following the artificial intelligence of a character known as "Cortana." She is basically a vaguely sexy hologram AI who helps the hero of the Halo series -- Master Chief -- fight off alien invasions and the destruction of pretty much everything we know and love.
Jen Taylor's voice is rich, seductive and nuanced -- and familiar in all ways good. To have it define an experience with Windows Phone similar to Apple's Siri voice assistant, if not in a more Windows-integrated way, would spark a fire of goodwill toward Microsoft.
In fact, there's a decent chance some fans would even leap into a Windows Phone device just because of this new Cortana. (I'm an iPhone-using Apple smartphone diehard, and this rumor made me pause -- and I can't even remember the last time I touched a Halo game. Such is the power of Cortana.)
It's a win win win situation.
If only it is true.

Where Does the Rumor Come From?

Cortana rumors have been floating around since last fall, but up to now, they focused just on the service and code-name -- what it would be, how deeply integrated into the Microsoft mobile, PC, Xbox, and online experience it would become.
This new rumor is spartan at best, posted with a teasing title, "What turns Cortana on."
The answer: "Bing Tell Me."
If this is true, the "Bing" comes from Microsoft looking to brand and elevate the search engine Bing to do something greater than word-based search. The "Tell Me" part is clearly a play on words that could have come from Microsoft's US$800 million acquisition of Tellme Networks in 2007. Tellme was popular voice-enabled mobile search service.
"Cortana will be voiced by Jen Taylor & will launch first in beta on Lumia this April for US developers," MSFTnerd reported, noting that the service will expand to the Bing app for iPhone in the U.S. this fall, and be extended to the Xbox One and to Windows users in 2015.
And that's about it.
Why April? Microsoft's sold out Build Developer Conference is slated for April 2-4 in San Francisco, where Microsoft is expected to show off Windows Phone 8.1.
Jen Taylor has provided other voices, most notably Zoey from Left 4 Dead and Princess Peach from the Mario series of games.

The App Store and Children, or Tim Cook's Latest Crock of Bull

The App Store and Children, or Tim Cook's Latest Crock of Bull


The App Store and Children, or Tim Cook's Latest Crock of Bull
Tim Cook's memo to employees strikes me as a lame attempt to "leak" Apple's message ahead of the FTC's settlement announcement. What bothers me most is not Apple's lack of leadership in protecting children -- and parents -- from unscrupulous apps. It's Tim Cook's brazen assertion that Apple has outshone its competition in that regard. Amazon, for one, puts Apple to shame when it comes to kids.

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I was pleased last year when Apple finally took a proactive stance and reached out to 28 million App Store customers who might have been bamboozled by shady in-app purchases in games designed to take advantage of children. However, even that action had dubious beginnings stemming from a class action lawsuit that Apple settled this summer.
Most recently, Apple settled a similar issue with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over App Store in-app purchases, and the FTC released an announcement to that effect on Tuesday. Before the FTC could tout its "win" with Apple over the issue, Apple's CEO Tim Cook sent out an email to all employees alerting them to the agreement that Apple had just made with the FTC to provide US$32.5 million in refunds to affected customers.
So far so good. As most any iOS-loving parent will tell you, the options for locking down your iOS device to ensure that a child won't accidentally shell out real money through in-app purchases have been confusing at best -- if not outright pathetic for a company of Apple's brains and means. Reimbursing customers for unintended purchases -- some parents were billed for hundreds, some thousands of dollars -- just made smart business sense.
However, Apple's memo to employees reads as though it were intended for public consumption -- as if it were carefully crafted so that it could "accidentally" make it into the hands of the tech press prior to the FTC announcement.

PR Puffery

Frankly, it's full of Tim Cook defensively blowing hot air under the pretense of playing the good guy. This isn't what really bothers me -- it's just standard big-company-marketing-blowhard-out-of-touch-with-reality-business-as-usual standard practice. Who cares? Yet Tim Cook pretends to care, and I think he's full of crap.
Re/code "obtained" the official memo, which it republished in full. Here's what I take issue with:
"We have been negotiating with the FTC for several months over disclosures about the in-app purchase feature of the App Store, because younger customers have sometimes been able to make purchases without their parents' consent. I know this announcement will come as a surprise to many of you since Apple has led the industry by making the App Store a safe place for customers of all ages."
First of all, Apple has not led the industry in making the App Store a safe place for children. Sure, Apple curates apps so that a lot of sex- or drug-related apps don't get into its store, but it allows rampant violence instead. Protect? Hardly. All of our kids can easily find some extremely dubious apps in the short time it takes for a parent to cook up some macaroni and cheese. But hey, I think most parents know this, and they attempt to keep track of which apps their children are downloading and using -- if not approve the downloads for them.
Trouble is, a parent could download a free app that looked innocuous and fun, turn over the iPhone, iPod or iPad to junior, and within 15 minutes become obligated for all sorts of extra features or coins or gems through in-app purchases designed to make it easy for small children to tap the wrong buttons.
Apple approved many of these apps when few parents -- had they been the Apple app reviewers -- would have approved them for their own children. (And yes, I have some personal experience with this. In less than two minutes of play, while sitting right next to me, a small child managed to buy two monster trucks to the tune of US$50 to play a so-called "free" game. No way I'd ever allow any game into the App Store that offered overpriced in-app purchases in ways that would be hard for kids to ignore.)
In some ways, this is water under the bridge. Apple has since made it easier for parents to turn off in-app purchases -- as well as making the process just a bit clearer. In addition, the old default ability to buy anything for 15 minutes after entering your Apple ID has been addressed, too.

Cook's Made-for-Public-Consumption Memo Assertions Still Stink

Here's what Cook goes on to write:
"From the very beginning, protecting children has been a top priority for the App Store team and everyone at Apple. The store is thoughtfully curated, and we hold app developers to Apple's own high standards of security, privacy, usefulness and decency, among others. The parental controls in iOS are strong, intuitive and customizable, and we've continued to add ways for parents to protect their children. These controls go far beyond the features of other mobile device and OS makers, most of whom don't even review the apps they sell to children."
The parental controls in iOS are strong, intuitive, and customizable, Cook says, but he is totally out of touch. When I open my iPhone with iOS 7, nowhere on the main settings page do I see anything that vaguely represents "parental controls." That is not intuitive. Tap on iTunes & App Store. There are no parental controls.
To find any sort of control, you have to tap General, then scroll down until you notice Restrictions. Then, eventually, you'll find a way to require a password immediately for purchases. If you set that, your kid won't be able to make in-app purchases without your password. You can also eventually figure out a way to allow only apps that are rated 4+, 9+, 12+ and 17+.
Intuitive? Not for any busy parent I know.
Let me tell you about a company that is actually leading the industry in parental controls and creating a safe mobile environment for children: Amazon. That's right, the tablet upstart with the line of Kindle tablets. Amazon did something that Apple -- after selling tens of millions of iPads and providing billions of app downloads -- failed to do: It created a delightful and safe tablet environment for kids, complete with critical parental controls.
Amazon has a feature called "Kindle FreeTime Unlimited." It's a special app service that lets you hand over a Kindle and let a child explore the device -- and thousands of apps -- without worrying that something bad will turn up.
Without access to your email and calendar, the child won't be able to delete your messages or contacts, or surf into sexy or violent content while you do something parental, like attempt to fill out a mess of paperwork while standing in a QuickCare waiting room with a sick, feverish kid who desperately could use a distraction.
Amazon's hand-picked apps for kids 3-to-8 years old have no ads and no in-app purchases. Speaking of hand-picked, this isn't hard to do -- it especially shouldn't be for a company with as much cash as Apple has gathering electronic dust. Apple easily could create a parental commission to hand-pick titles it could then approve.
They could be called "Parent Approved Apps." They could have their own promoted section in the App Store and become coveted for App Developers. Instead of developers seeking to reward themselves by creating apps that try to trick kids into buying gems to complete a game, they would have an incentive to create an app that was honest and worthwhile.
Yet there are even more parent-friendly features in Kindle FreeTime: You can create multiple profiles for up to four kids -- different ages, different apps. Try that with an iPad. Oh wait, you can't. Access on an iPad is pretty much an all-or-nothing proposition. What about something simple, like screen limits? This is not a new idea. Amazon lets parents limit their child's screen time through handy tools. Parents can set daily limits or even restrict games or video in favor of books.
Apple doesn't have anything like this, and yet Cook talks like Apple is a leader in this space. Apple is not. Apple is woefully behind. Sure, some of the best apps in the world are available for kids on iOS -- but parental management tools? Barely there. Uninspired. Hardly a priority. Damn, I find it sad that Cook seems to think he can persuade us that Apple is leading here.

What's Up With Tizen?

Tizen is designed to be a low-cost, highly configurable OS that will make portable devices available to a wider range of consumers. Its developers hope to create an alternative mobile ecosystem to break the stranglehold of the big phone companies. Tizen's promise is to let carriers maintain a competitive edge by producing devices tailored to a particular user base.

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Consumers might soon have access to cheaper, more talented smartphones that could challenge the market dominance of Android and iOS.
Tizen Home screen
At least that is the promise from the Tizen Association. The growing group of phone makers and application developers recently launched a partner program with 36 companies from all segments of the mobile and connected device ecosystems.
The Tizen Association is planning a widespread release later this year of its open source Tizen operating system. The new OS initially will run mobile phones, but it eventually could expand to power tablets and other portable devices.
Tizen evolved from the Meego framework after phone maker Nokia dropped its use to power Nokia phones. Tizen is still a very young project, noted Abraham Elias, chief technology officer of Sencha, which is working with the Tizen Association on the use of HTML5 and Internet browser capabilities.
"Consumers should see devices with Tizen in production later this year. I expect to see the 2.x branch of Tizen ship on these devices. Work is already being done on the 3.x branch," Elias told LinuxInsider.
"A key benefit with Tizen is that it is highly optimized around HTML5. From our standpoint, that is very encouraging. It runs Linux at its core, so it is very suitable to bringing in a range of technologies," he noted.

Who's Who

Tizen resides within the Linux Foundation, where its development is guided by a Technical Steering Group.
The Tizen Association is led by a consortium of mobile operators chartered with actively developing the ecosystem around Tizen. This development work involves market presence, gathering requirements, and identification and facilitation of service models. It also involves overall industry marketing and education.
The Tizen Technical Steering Group is focused on architecture and implementation, along with the formation of working groups to support device verticals. Many members of the Tizen community are active contributors to the W3C and other Web standards bodies.
The list of association partners includes eBay, Konami, Panasonic, Sharp, TrendMicro,TuneIn Radio, Sharp Electronics, Samsung and Panasonic.

Hedging Bets

The Tizen OS is driven by a grassroots movement within the industry to create an alternative, less expensive mobile market platform. Developers hope the Tizen ecosystem will give both vendors and consumers more flexibility than is offered by existing mobile ecosystems.
Consider the amount of money that Samsung is putting into the Tizen OS, suggested Tuong Huy Nguyen, principal research analyst for Gartner Research. It is a safe bet to say that with all of the tech-savvy people at Samsung, the company would not be supporting the Tizen effort unless it was sure it was going someplace.
"Based on what I have seen and my knowledge of the market, hardware vendors and carriers are looking for an alternative to the Apple and the Android ecosystems," Nguyen told LinuxInsider. "They want to have choices and be able to provide low phone-cost alternatives for themselves as well as their customers."

Field of Dreams

Introducing any new mobile platform takes a huge effort.
The first issue is gaining an established customer base. The second is accessing an extensive library of applications. The third is convincing developers to provide new applications for the platform.
That last issue is perhaps the most critical. It forces app developers to decide if they have the time and money to devote to Tizen over existing platforms, explained Nguyen.
"These issues are fairly significant. They are not insurmountable. It is an uphill battle for anyone who gets involved in it," he said.

Unknown Entity

Things have been quiet on the Tizen front for about a year, noted Ramon Llamas, research director at IDC, with developers drifting mostly toward iPhone and Android.
"Tizen still remains an X factor, and an untested one at that," he told LinuxInsider.
From an end user perspective, Tizen has yet to make headway as it remains unreleased. That is preventing developers from jumping on the bandwagon, Llamas explained.
"Yes, there have been some developers getting in on the ground floor, but that is the exception and not the norm," he noted. "The thing is that Tizen needs developers in order to remain viable in the market."

Turning the Corner

Tizen's vaporware persona could be about to change, however, and its technology advantages could impact mobile device performance.
"Based on what we are seeing with our testing, this is very encouraging for the Tizen OS," said Sencha's Elias. "The promise of Tizen is that it gives first-class citizen status to HTML5. That will be a big advantage to app developers."
The challenge for developers is how to tailor their applications for all the competing mobile platforms. With Tizen built around HTML5, developers can write one application and have it run on any device, he explained.

Possible Marketing Edge

Tizen's design will make it economical and feasible to tailor its features to specific user markets, according to Elias.
For example, a developer who markets mobile phones to the elderly could strip out all the operating system components for running apps that user market would never want or need, he explained.
Tizen will allow carriers and developers to take the core OS and customize it for the specific market the phone model targets.
"This is a differentiator that the other mobile OSes do not provide. We see this as a market positioning that will work to the various segments' advantage. This allows device makers to have flexibility in changing the design of the phone along with the customized internals. They can make the Tizen phone more personalized to the end user," Elias said.
The challenge for individual carriers will be how to differentiate the phones for the users they target.

Tizen for Tablets?

Tizen has been built from the ground up. It is not a phone application being crammed into everything else, observed Elias.
The Tizen OS already is being used to power several consumer products. Jaguar is developing a Tizen-driven dashboard display. Samsung is using Tizen as the OS for one of its digital camera lines.
"Tizen is not just an OS for phones. It is an operating system that can power pretty much anything. When you have that kind of integration everywhere, you can begin to see the world of possibilities with Tizen," Elias said.

Success Factors

The Tizen OS is attracting support from all segments of the connected device ecosystem, said Ryoichi Sugimura, a Tizen Association board member from NTT Docomo, at the Tizen Summit in November.
Tizen's design allows operators and device manufacturers to select features and services making the most sense for the device, the customer's location, and the most popular use cases, he said.
Despite the backing of Samsung, Intel and other large corporations, the Tizen OS will travel a rocky road to adoption. Tizen is not yet being heralded beyond its inner circle of partners.
"We expect to see efforts like this continue from time to time from one developer or another," said Gartner's Nguyen. However, "the forecast and expectation for any meaningful traction in the market is nil."

Huge Growth in Store for In-App Mobile Messaging

Offerings from Facebook perform incredibly well on mobile, said URX CEO John Milinovich. In fact, the majority of in-app advertising expenditure is likely to be spent on Facebook and Twitter, Juniper noted in a recent report. That said, there is hope for small developers building products based on geolocation technologies and other formats. The market is by no means locked up.
In-app mobile advertising is expected to jump significantly between now and 2018, according to new figures from Juniper Research. Ad spend in this category will reach US$16.9 billion by 2018, up from $3.5 billion last year, the consulting group found.
Smartphones currently account for approximately 70 percent of in-app ad spend, Juniper said, but that ratio is expected to change over time as tablet use claims a bigger portion of the mobile ecosystem.
By 2018, the tablet/smartphone adspend split will be almost 50/50, Juniper predicted.
Growth of in-app advertising will be driven by several factors, including improved targeting capabilities and the development of more effective interactive rich media ads, the report found.
There is another reason for the growth, Doug Rozen, senior vice present and general manager of MXM, told CRM Buyer.
In-app ad spending will increase over the next few years for the simple reason that consumers are spending more time accessing content in-app compared to other digital channels.
"More time spent in-app means more opportunity for advertising," Rozen said.

Changing Definition of 'App'

The very definition of an "app" is rapidly changing to include software developed for wearables like smartwatches and Google Glass, as well as cars outfitted with Android and iOS and smart home appliances from retailers like Sony and Samsung.
"This means more useful content for consumers to engage with -- the necessary element of any good ad placement -- and ultimately more opportunity for marketers," Rozen said.

Many Choices

In the near term, though, marketers will be focusing on formats for in-app ads running on smartphones and tablets.
Still, the range of choices and decisions already is wide, said John Milinovich, CEO of URX.
For example, there is a lot of interest in new native ad formats, he said, which boast higher conversion rates and competitive prices, although reach is still relatively small.
"Standard in-app banner ads, on the other hand, are still popular because they have the most reach, costs are relatively low, and conversion rates can be substantial if used correctly," said Milinovich.
There are also the offerings from Facebook to consider. These perform "incredibly well on mobile for both cost-per-install and cost-per-engagement, and remain popular with mobile marketers," he pointed out.

A New Thought Process

Advertisers are approaching in-app advertising in new and more thoughtful ways, Milinovich observed.
"Developing mobile marketing campaigns requires a sensitivity to the form factor that is often missed by brands who've just taken their desktop strategy and applied it to mobile," he explained.
Companies are beginning to understand that mobile apps are incredibly effective points of sale, said Milinovich. They provide a direct way for consumers to make purchases at the point of need.
"Mobile deeplinking creates the opportunity to drive users into the middle of apps to specific points of purchase," he noted, "cutting out several steps from the process."

A Caveat

All of this comes with a caveat, said MXM's Rozen. Five years is a very long time for a rapidly evolving industry.
"Just think, this time five years ago, we had just been introduced to the 3G iPhone, and iPads wouldn't debut until later in the year," he recalled. "We cannot predict a future that has not been fully invented."

Friday 3 January 2014

http://mashable.com/2014/01/02/zuckerberg-charitable-donation-2013/

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