Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Coming to Select HTC One Handsets, Confirmed

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Coming to Select HTC One Handsets, Confirmed

"We know HTC fans are excited to get their hands on Google's latest version of Android," HTC said in a statement. "At this point in time, we can confirm that we have plans to upgrade our HTC One X, HTC One XL and HTC One S to Jelly Bean."

Besides confirming an impending roll out of Google's latest operating system, HTC remained mum on other details, like specific dates, and told users to "stay tuned" for more information regarding the upgrades.

In addition to the global One X, One XL and One S models, national carrier versions of the handsets for AT&T and T-Mobile will also get a taste of Jelly Bean. Though there's been no word yet on whether other devices, such as the One V and Evo 4g LTE, will be included in the upgrade plans.

After delays due to a patent battle with Apple, the HTC One X finally launched in the U.S. via AT&T earlier this year. With a 4.7-inch 1280 x 720 resolution display, the smartphone boasts an excellent overall performance, as well as a great camera.

While the HTC One S sports a smaller screen, measuring in at 4.3-inches with a resolution of 960 x 540, the device offers a slim design and great performance.

Yet, when powered by the latest version of Android 4.1, both devices will provide a smoother user interface, making it easier to add application icons and widgets to homescreens, as well as a more interactive notification system.

For more information on the sweet new features of Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean), check out Brighthand for all the details.

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Social networks scan for sexual predators, with uneven results

By Joseph Menn

San FRANCISCO | Thu Jul 12, 2012 1:15am EDT

San FRANCISCO (Reuters) - On March 9 of this year, a piece of Facebook software spotted something suspicious.

A man in his early thirties was chatting about sex with a 13-year-old South Florida girl and planned to meet her after middle-school classes the next day.

Facebook's extensive but little-discussed technology for scanning postings and chats for criminal activity automatically flagged the conversation for employees, who read it and quickly called police.

Officers took control of the teenager's computer and arrested the man the next day, said Special Agent Supervisor Jeffrey Duncan of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The alleged predator has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of soliciting a minor.

"The manner and speed with which they contacted us gave us the ability to respond as soon as possible," said Duncan, one of a half-dozen law enforcement officials interviewed who praised Facebook for triggering inquiries.

Facebook is among the many companies that are embracing a combination of new technologies and human monitoring to thwart sex predators. Such efforts generally start with automated screening for inappropriate language and exchanges of personal information, and extend to using the records of convicted pedophiles' online chats to teach the software what to seek out.

Yet even though defensive techniques are now available and effective they can be expensive. They can also alienate some of a site's target audience -- especially teen users who expect more freedom of expression. While many top sites catering to young children are quite vigilant, the same can't be said for the burgeoning array of online options for the 13- to 18-year-old set.

"There are companies out there that are doing a very good job, working within the confines of what they have available," said Brooke Donahue, a supervisory special agent with an FBI team devoted to Internet predators and child pornography. "There are companies out there that are more concerned about profitability."

THE SMARTPHONE FACTOR

Two recent incidents are raising new questions about companies' willingness to invest in safety.

Last month the maker of a smartphone app called Skout, designed for flirtation with strangers in the same area, admitted its use had led to sexual assaults on three teenagers by adults. The venture-backed firm had not verified that users of its now-shuttered teen section were under 20, giving predators easy access.

Also in June, a teen-oriented virtual world called Habbo Hotel, which boasts hundreds of millions of registered users, temporarily blocked all chatting after UK television reported that two sex predators had found victims on the site and that a journalist posing as an 11-year-old girl was bombarded with explicit remarks and requests that she disrobe on webcam.

Former employees said site owner Sulake of Finland laid off many in-house workers earlier this year, leaving it unable to moderate 70 million lines of daily chat adequately. Sulake said it had kept 225 moderators and is still investigating what went wrong.

The failures at Skout and Habbo shocked child-safety experts and technology professionals, who fear they will lead to a renewed panic about online safety that is not justified by the data.

By some measures, Internet-related sex crimes against children have always been rare and are now falling (as are reports of assaults on minors that do not involve the Net). Most sex crimes against children are committed by people the children know, rather than strangers.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children processed 3,638 reports of online "enticement" of children by adults last year, down from 4,053 in 2010 and 5,759 in 2009.

Even those companies with state-of-the-art defenses spend far more time trying to stop online bullying and attempts to sneak profanity past automatic word filters than they do fending off sex predators.

Still, as the Skout case showed, there are several recent trends that have heightened the concerns of child-safety experts: the rise of smartphones, which are harder for parents to monitor; location-oriented services, which are the darling of Net companies seeking more ad revenue from local businesses; and the rapid proliferation in phone and tablet apps, which don't always make clear what data they are using and distributing.

EXPENSIVE DEFENSES

A solid system for defending against online predators requires both oversight by trained employees and intelligent software that not only searches for improper communication but also analyzes patterns of behavior, experts said.

The better software typically starts as a filter, blocking the exchange of abusive language and personal contact information such as email addresses, phone numbers and Skype login names. But instead of looking just at one set of messages it will examine whether a user has asked for contact information from dozens of people or tried to develop multiple deeper and potentially sexual relationship, a process known as grooming.

Companies can set the software to take many defensive steps automatically, including temporarily silencing those who are breaking rules or banning them permanently. As a result, many threats are eliminated without human intervention and moderators at the company are notified later.

Sites that operate with such software still should have one professional on safety patrol for every 2,000 users online at the same time, said Sacramento-based Metaverse Mod Squad, a moderating service. At that level the human side of the task entails "months and months of boredom followed by a few minutes of your hair on fire," said Metaverse Vice President Rich Weil.

Metaverse uses hundreds of employees and contractors to monitor websites for clients including virtual world Second Life, Time Warner's Warner Brothers and the PBS public television service.

Metaverse Chief Executive Amy Pritchard said that in five years her staff only intercepted something terrifying once, about a month ago, when a man on a discussion board for a major media company was asking for the email address of a young site user.

Software recognized that the same person had been making similar requests of others and flagged the account for Metaverse moderators. They called the media company, which then alerted authorities. Other sites aimed at kids agree that such crises are rarities.

NAUGHTY USERS, NICER REVENUES

Sites aimed at those under 13 are very different from those with large teen audiences.

Under a 1998 law known as COPPA, for the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, sites directed at those 12 and under must have verified parental consent before collecting data on children. Some sites go much further: Disney's Club Penguin offers a choice of viewing either filtered chat that avoids blacklisted words or chats that contain only words that the company has pre-approved.

Filters and moderators are essential for a clean experience, said Claire Quinn, safety chief at a smaller site aimed at kids and young teens, WeeWorld. But the programs and people cost money and can depress ad rates.

"You might lose some of your naughty users, and if you lose traffic you might lose some of your revenue," Quinn said. "You have to be prepared to take a hit."

There is no legal or technical reason that companies with large teen audiences, like Facebook, or mainly teen users, such as Habbo, can't do the same thing as Disney and WeeWorld.

From a business perspective, however, there are powerful reasons not to be so restrictive, starting with teen expectations of more freedom of expression as they age. If they don't find it on one site, they will somewhere else.

The looser the filters, the more the need for the most sophisticated monitoring tools, like those employed at Facebook and those offered by independent companies such as the UK's Crisp Thinking, which works for Lego, Electronic Arts, and Sony Corp's online entertainment unit, among others.

In addition to blocking forbidden words and strings of digits that could represent phone numbers, Crisp assigns warning scores to chats based on multiple categories of information, including the use of profanity, personally identifying information and signs of grooming. Things like too many "unrequited" messages, or those that go unresponded to, also factor in, because they correlate with spamming or attempts to groom in quantity, as does analysis of the actual chats of convicted pedophiles.

The highest scores generate color-coded "tickets," with those marked red requiring the quickest response from moderators.

Facebook's software likewise depends on relationship analysis and archives of real chats that preceded sex assaults, Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan told Reuters in the company's most expansive comments on the subject to date.

Like most of its peers, Facebook generally avoids discussing its safety practices to discourage scare stories, because it doesn't catch many wrongdoers, and to sidestep privacy concerns. Users could be unnerved about the extent to which their conversations are reviewed, at least by computer programs.

CATCHING ONE IN 10?

In part because of its massive size, Facebook relies more than some rivals on such technology.

"We've never wanted to set up an environment where we have employees looking at private communications, so it's really important that we use technology that has a very low false-positive rate," he said. In addition, Facebook doesn't probe deeply into what it thinks are pre-existing relationships.

A low rate of false positives, though, also means that many dangerous communications go undetected.

Some adults have used Facebook to target dozens of minors before assaulting one or more and then being identified by their victims or the victims' parents, court records show.

"I feel for every one we arrest, ten others get through the system," Florida's Duncan said of tips from Facebook and other companies.

Another pillar in Facebook's strategy is to limit how those under 18 can interact on the site and to make it harder for adults to find them. Minors don't show up in public searches, only friends of friends can send them Facebook messages, and only friends can chat with them.

The gaping hole in the defense of Facebook and many other sites popular with teens is that minors can easily make up a birth date and pretend to be adults -- and adults can pretend to be minors, as happened with Skout, which declined an interview request.

Technology is available for verifying the ages of Web and app users. One of the providers is Aristotle International Inc, which offers a variety of methods, including having a parent vouch for a child and make a token payment with a credit card to establish the parent's identity.

Yet even in the wake of the Skout disaster, no site aimed at minors has hired Aristotle for age checks. "We could do real parental consent with 14-year-olds, but no one has asked," said Aristotle Chief Executive John Phillips.

Such checks would cost money and alienate teens who don't want their parents involved.

Barring a wave of costly litigation or new laws, it is hard to see the protections getting much tougher, experts said. Instead, the app and location booms will only add to the market pressure for more freedom on youth sites and greater challenges for parents.

"For every Skout that shuts down, there are ten more that popped up yesterday," said the FBI's Donahue. "The free market pushes towards permissiveness."

(Editing by Jonathan Weber and Prudence Crowther)

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Palm-sized Star Trek tech may be closer than you think

In the Star Trek universe, the tricorder is a handheld device used by Kirk, Spock, and various red-shirted crew members to make detailed scans of unfamiliar planets and even less familiar life-forms. It can be used in sick bay to diagnose intergalactic patients, and in engineering to find which part of the warp core is missing.

One small device that can do all that must be total science-fiction, right? Well thanks to recent advances in x-ray technology, the tricorder might be much closer that you think.

[Hey Tweeters! Like this video? Here's a short code: http://yhoo.it/HBpE23. Don't understand what that last sentence meant? Go find a neighborhood kid and ask them. Orrrr...you could click here.]

When many of us hear of X-rays, the first thing we think of is a visit to the doctor's office.  We're led into a big room, covered with a lead apron while the intended area is shot with those powerful, yet invisible rays.  Or perhaps we think of a trip to the airport, where X-rays are used to check baggage and passengers before boarding a plane.  But aside from that, X-rays tend to be - literally - out of sight, out of mind.

But that may be changing.  The scientists at Tribogenics have found some creative ways to advance a technology that doesn't seem to have evolved much in the past 130 years.  CEO Dale Fox and Chief Scientist Dr. Carlos Camara are taking advantage of an amazing scientific phenomenon similar to what occurs when light energy is created as an adhesive is peeled (try it yourself with some Scotch tape in a dark closet).  They are harnessing that energy to create usable and portable X-rays.










Dr. Camara hard at work

 For us non-scientists out there the technology is quite complicated, but the implications are not.  Since the X-ray source is small, that means devices can be made smaller as well.  Contrast this with the big and bulky machines we're used to seeing.  These new machines are portable enough to carry around in a pocket and focused enough to limit dangerous, unnecessary exposure.  Simply put, the possibilities are endless.  X-ray devices could soon be used to scan virtually anything.  It could suddenly be much easier to find a wall stud, diagnose a bone fracture in the battlefield or even detect the metallic composition in jewelry.  From making everyday tasks easier to literally saving lives, this technology has tremendous potential.

As you can see, it is definitely tiny.

The Tribogenics team says they're on the verge of making these possibilities become a reality.  And if they do, they won't just be changing the way we think about X-rays, they might be changing the world too.

Video produced by Will Lerner and Jennie Josephson. Production by Chun Ming Huang, John Boyd, and Mike Baum. Editor: Nolan Cooper. Sound editor: John Adams. Graphics by Todd Tanner, Matt McDonald and Howard Kim for Yahoo! Studios.



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Japan, US, EU discuss rare earth supply security

TOKYO (AP) — Officials from the United States, the European Union and Japan are pledging to work closer together on ways to ensure secure supplies of strategically vital rare earths and other critical materials.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a conference Wednesday in Tokyo that improving processing and recycling of the materials, used in many high-tech products, is vital in the medium term. He said that in the near term, they must be "used as sparingly you can."

China holds about a third of the world's rare earth reserves but supplies about 90 percent of what is consumed. In the past two years it has imposed limits on its exports, citing a need to impose order on an unruly domestic market and to reduce environmental damage.

That has raised protests from countries relying on supplies from China for many industries, including automaking and electronics.

The U.S., Japan and EU recently filed complaints with the World Trade Organization over Chinese limits on exports of rare earths.

"It is important the consuming countries and supplying countries ... develop a global supply chain so that we are not dependent on one source," said Japan's trade minister, Yukio Edano.

Looking to the long term, attention has now shifted toward supply-chain security, said Hans Dietmar Schweistgut, the EU ambassador to Japan.

The officials repeatedly stressed the need to work closely with other producing nations such as Australia and Canada.

Rare earths are used to make goods including hybrid cars, weapons, flat-screen TVs, mobile phones, mercury-vapor lights, and camera lenses.

Japan's need for such materials only increased with last year's earthquake and tsunami and resulting nuclear disaster, which has led to the suspension of almost all atomic power production. Such materials are required for wind turbines and other renewable energy production, Edano said.

"If we cannot access these resources, it will slow the transition to renewables. This is not acceptable," he said.

The U.S. has stepped up research on batteries, building materials and high-performance computers as part of the effort to find substitutes for some rare earths, while Japan and the EU are launching joint research this summer.
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Apple heads into choppy waters as new iPhone awaited

A man shows a photograph he took on his iPhone of an Apple store in Beijing June 6, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/David Gray
By Poornima Gupta
SAN FRANCISCO | Mon Jul 23, 2012 7:06am EDT

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc faces an unusual phenomenon when reporting earnings this time around: low expectations.

Few are expecting the world's most valuable technology company -- which surpasses Wall Street expectations with near regularity -- to deliver a bumper quarter once more on Tuesday.

The main reason: consumers holding out for the new iPhone.

Apple may still surprise market watchers, but many Wall Street analysts and investors remember how chatter over the launch of a new iPhone last year caused Apple to miss quarterly expectations in the fall, for the first time in years.

The iPhone 5 is only expected to hit store shelves around October -- just in time for the holidays -- with a thinner, larger screen and fine-tuned search features. Couple that pre-launch lull with slowdowns in Europe and China, Apple's biggest markets outside of North America, and sentiment on the Wall Street darling is more muted than many can remember in a while.

"No longer is Apple the company that beats every time," said Tim Lesko, portfolio manager at Granite Investment Advisors, which owns Apple stock. "I expect Apple to beat Apple's guidance, but I don't know whether they will beat Wall Street's guidance."

Tony Sacconaghi, analyst with Bernstein Research, sees a reasonable chance Apple will miss expectations on revenue, citing "macroeconomic weakness in China and Europe, a product cycle lull in the iPhone, a later than expected introduction of the new iPad into China, and the late quarter introduction of new Mac notebooks."

Any hiccup in demand for the best-selling smartphone can have a big impact on both revenue and profits as the five-year old device accounts for nearly 50 percent for Apple's revenues. And it comes at a time Samsung and other manufacturers that use rival Google Inc's Android software are chipping away at its market share.

Apple is expected to report fiscal third-quarter earnings of $10.35 a share on revenue of $37.2 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Top Wall Street analysts are betting the numbers will undershoot that. Apple may miss the average sales forecast by about 0.2 percent, according to Thomson Reuters Starmine's SmartEstimates, which places greater emphasis on timely forecasts by top-rated analysts.

IPAD'S LAUNCH IN CHINA

But some analysts also think the Street is underestimating the impact of a late iPad launch in China, a focal point of intense expansion for the company and a huge driver of growth.

Apple began selling the tablet there on Friday, but many had expected it to ship last quarter.

Sales in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan jumped threefold to $7.9 billion in the second quarter, accounting for about 20 percent of Apple's $39.2 billion in total revenue.

The company typically introduces a new iPhone every year, but has yet to reveal any details on the next model.

However, people familiar with the situation have told Reuters the new iPhone will have a bigger display and that Apple has begun to place orders for the new displays from suppliers in South Korea and Japan.

Meanwhile, Apple's iPhone 4S is just three quarters old, which is relatively new by any standard. But many fans of the phone now see it as a cyclical product with somewhat predictable launch timeframes, preferring to wait a few months to buy the new model, analysts said.

Wall Street estimates Apple sold about 29 million iPhones, down from 35.1 million sold in the March quarter. Sales of the new iPad, expected to be 14 million to 15 million, is likely to offset part of the anticipated sequential drop in iPhones sales.

Apart from concerns about iPhone purchases, Wall Street is worried about the rising prominence of Google and Amazon.com in the mobile market, particularly with the launch of Google's smaller and cheaper Nexus 7 tablet, which is gaining popularity.

Still, no one is bearish in the longer term on the world's largest technology company by market value and most Apple watchers believe the company will make up any lost iPhone volume during the holiday season.

"Big picture, it doesn't matter," said Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu. "They are still the share gainer in the larger scheme of things. This is clearly a timing issue."

BIG HOLIDAY SEASON EYED

Wall Street expects that the outlook for this year's holiday season will be enormous for Apple as it may include the launch of a new iPhone as well as a potential new "mini iPad."

Apple has been working on a smaller tablet, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

It is unclear when Apple will launch such a tablet, but some clues are emerging on the timing of the new iPhone.

When Verizon -- one of the wireless carriers that work with Apple -- was asked on Thursday why customers have been holding back on handset upgrades, CFO Fran Shammo said: "There is always that rumor mill out there with a new phone coming out in the fourth quarter and so people may be waiting."

Investors will pick apart executives' comments for clues to new product introductions. While Apple has a policy of never giving advance details or timings on new products, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer has often hinted of "product transition" in earnings conference calls preceding a launch.

Wall Street estimates Apple sold about 4 million Macintosh computers as the PC market saw growth sputter in the quarter.

The lackluster expectations do not appear to have affected Apple's stock, which is up nearly 50 percent so far in 2012. The stock has been choppy since a high of $644 in April. It closed Friday at $604.30 on the Nasdaq.

"Of all the quarters, this is the one that seems to have widest range of opinion," said Granite's Lesko.

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta, Editing by Gary Crosse)

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Samsung Galaxy S III Sales Break 10 Million

Maybe Samsung is right and the next big thing really is here: sales of the company's Galaxy S III smartphone have officially broken 10 million units.

Though he was unable to provide specific numbers, the head of Samsung's information technology and mobile communication division, Shin Jong-Kyun, told the Yonhap News Agency that the company has moved more than 10 million Galaxy S III units since its initial launch in the EU and Middle East at the very end of May.

This outstrips the pace of its predecessor, the Galaxy S II, which took five months to reach 10 million units in sales. And the company's executives are likely satisfied with the news, as Samsung previously stated that, despite fighting component shortages, its goal was to hit the 10 million mark by early July.

Sales in the United States have surely contributed to this figure, as Samsung's new flagship phone is available from all of the top carriers in this country.

To learn more about the Samsung Galaxy S III, have a look here at our review of the US version, or here for our review of the international version.

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