What Obama’s second term means for technology

Obama has four more years in the White House, but what will his policies mean for the future of the tech we use every day?

A couple of years ago, President Obama was having dinner with Silicon Valley movers and shakers, including an ailing Steve Jobs. Although no recording of the dinner has been made available, legend has it that the President asked Jobs what it would take for Apple’s manufacturing jobs to come back to America.

“Those jobs aren’t coming back,” replied Jobs.

Whether that is true or not, during the campaign both President Obama and Governor Romney focused a lot of their energies on plans to bring that kind of manufacturing back to American shores. Now that the president has won a second term, what does that mean for American technology and manufacturing?

Mr. Obama’s plan was built on education and training, investing in clean energy, and giving tax incentives to companies that bring jobs back to America.

Jobs’ grim reply was based on the fact that American workers are no longer trained for the needs of high-tech manufacturing. Obama believes that making college more accessible, both at the university and community college level, is part of the solution for closing that skills gap.

A major focus during Obama’s first term was keeping tuition rates down, doubling funding for Pell Grants, and trying to get community colleges to work together with local employers to better train outgoing students for jobs that already exist locally. There’s every reason to believe that push will continue.

Another creative idea from the campaign trail was the creation of “manufacturing innovation institutes,” where businesses and research institutions work together to make sure that American research and development produces corresponding high-tech manufacturing jobs. How the federal government can spur that idea remains to be seen, but it could be a key step in reshaping the American manufacturing sector and making sure the next Apple keeps its assembly lines here at home.

During the campaign, Obama predictably hit Governor Romney on the Republican Party’s close ties with the oil industry. In his first term, the president advocated an “all of the above” energy policy. He’s willing to explore any source, including oil, which can help America reach a majority of energy independence by 2035. It is now expected that investment in alternative energy technologies will only continue in the next four years.

During his first term, President Obama pushed ahead with plans to double fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks by 2025, which is spurring the auto industry’s investments in hybrid and electric vehicles and has led to an American manufacturing boom of sorts in battery technology. Since these rules are now under no threat of repeal, cars and light trucks are expected to sip less and less gas in the next four years. Horsepower may be a different story.

One of the places where we heard repeats of 2008’s campaign pledges was in the area of corporate tax structure. The president promised to end tax breaks for companies that participate in outsourcing during his first term and promised to do the same in his second term (which you can assume to mean that the first effort didn’t go so well).

He also wants to provide tax incentives for companies to bring jobs back to the US. Considering Apple currently enjoys a 1.9 percent tax rate on its foreign earnings, I’m not sure how much of an incentive the US government can provide. Perhaps they will mandate that all federal employees will have to buy an iPad Mini. At least all of our forest rangers will have something to do while they’re stuck in those fire towers.

Any conversation about tax policy centers on Congress. In the coming days, it will be interesting to see if our Republican House makes any overtures of bipartisanship to the president now that they know they are stuck with him for another four years. If history is any indication, don’t hold your breath. There’s probably better chance of an impeachment investigation than bipartisan tax reform.

Whatever the case, many pundits believe that the president will be bolder in his second term, enacting whatever policies he can without congressional approval if Congress proves to be as intransigent as they have been in the past. A lot of the policies mentioned above came to pass through that same kind of executive maneuvering. Because of that, the next four years of America’s technology and education policy might be just as much decided in courtrooms as in the Oval Office.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Barack Obama Announces ‘Four More Years’ With Tweet

Image credit: @BarackObama/Twitter

It wasn’t in a speech or a statement that Barack Obama announced that he was going to be re-elected as the president of the United States. It was through Twitter.

At 11:14 p.m. ET, @BarackObama tweeted, “This happened because of you. Thank you.”

A few minutes later: “We’re all in this together. That’s how we campaigned, and that’s who we are. Thank you. – bo.”

And finally along with a photo of him and Michelle Obama: “Four more years.” That last tweet is now his most retweeted tweet and one of the most retweeted tweets ever. Twitter would not confirm if it was the most retweeted tweet ever. Just 40 minutes after posting it, it had 308,705 retweets.

According to Twitter, after a network call of the presidential race at 11:19 p.m., there were 327,453 tweets per minute. On Election Day itself there were over 20 million election related tweets. For more on the social media reaction to Election Day, check out our guide.

Check out our full article on Barack Obama’s win. 

Source : abcnews[dot]go[dot]com

Our first look under the hood of the Wii U

In a recent interview with Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, four of Nintendo's engineers give us our first official look at the inner workings of the Wii U.

Nintendo has released an internally conducted interview of four engineers working on the Wii U product. Though the company stopped short of getting into the specifics of clock speeds and architectures it does provide some new details about what is in the company’s latest console.

The juiciest information relates to the new processor, which Nintendo calls the multi-chip module (MCM). It is a package that puts both the CPU and the GPU onto a single die. This is similar to what both Intel and AMD do with the integrated graphics components in some products. In this case, however, the package combines hardware from IBM (the multi-core CPU), AMD (the GPU) and Renesis (RAM).

Genyo Takeda, one of the engineers on the project, stated this approach was beneficial because “the package costs less and we could speed up data exchange among two LSIs while lowering power consumption.” The MCM’s reduced latency between components and reduced power consumption has made it possible for Nintendo to extract respectable perform from a small, inexpensive part.

With that said, this decision bolsters complaints that the Wii U might not have mind-blowing performance. Placing the CPU and GPU on one package concentrates power draw and heat generation at a single location. This reduces the maximum performance potential relative to a system with a separate CPU and GPU.

Engineer Yasuhisa Kitano went further into the packaging of the new console. He revealed that Nintendo sees its console as a “stagehand” – something that works unobtrusively behind the scenes – and went on to describe how this influenced its design.

To be unobtrusive the Wii U had to be small, quiet, and reliable. The new MCM helped achieve this goal by reducing the areas responsible for producing significant heat from two to one. However, because of the console’s improved performance, overall heat generation tripled. The engineers dealt with this by substantially increasing the size of the heat sink and the fan. Even the system’s vents were tweaked to ensure maximum airflow. 

Yet, in spite of these efforts, the system’s fan speed still had to be increased to keep the console cool. Kitano said that engineers accounted for this during testing. “If you increase the number of fan revolutions, it makes more noise, so we checked to see how much noise was acceptable while playing games.”

Some details about the console’s exterior emerged, as well. The engineers confirmed that it is designed to be primarily horizontal, but will work in a vertical position with a stand that comes in the Deluxe Set. They also revealed that the Wii U has moved the two USB ports found in the original Wii from the front to rear and made the remote sync button more accessible.

Nintendo’s engineers took time to talk about the extensive testing conducted on the Wii U to make sure defects won’t occur after launch. Using the MCM made this process particularly complicated because components from three different manufacturers were included. All four companies had to work closely during testing to locate and squash bugs.

While a fair amount of information was divulged in this interview there’s some that we’re still waiting to hear. Specifics about the architecture used in the CPU and GPU remain elusive, and the engineers did not reveal any new information about the technical specs regarding the console’s controller. It’s possible that we’ll have to wait until release, or even after, to know more.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Google’s VP of Engineering ‘leaks’ Snapseed for Android on Google+

Google's Vic Gundotra's Google+ post shows Android sporting Snapseed integration.

Vic Gundotra, Google’s Senior Vice President of Engineering, has already shown off Google’s Snapseed integration through a Google+ post yesterday. During a flight to Baltimore, Gundotra published a photo to his profile, which through a tag indicated that the photo was taken using the Snapseed app.

Google recently acquired Nik Software, a company that specialized in developing and selling a line of digital image editing tools, just last month. But the acquisition was suspected to be motivated by Nik Software’s iOS photography app and Instagram competitor, Snapseed. Now, it would appear that Snapseed will be making its way to Android phones in the near future. 

As we’ve reported earlier, based on the latest data (June 2012) that Nik Software has released about the number of Snapseed users, it revealed that there are nine million users. It pales in comparison to Instagram, which has an excess of over 100 million users. Even if Snapseed has grown to 15 million users, there should be no mistakes that Instagram still outcompetes Snapseed — and then some. But it’s also available for Android and iOS, and adding Snapseed to the Google Play market would inevitably bump its numbers up. 

It’s possible that Snapseed will seen a deeper integration with Google products and perhaps the Google+ ecosystem, and if more users can be driven to Snapseed, we might see the partnership play out like a mini version of the Facebook-Instagram deal. Of course, the $4.99 to download Snapseed isn’t doing it any favors, and we’re wondering if that price tag will be around for long. But one thing is very nearly certain: Snapseed should be available for Android in the near future. 

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Sticking around: Apple design chief Jony Ive buys $17 million home in SF

Jony Ive, Apple's vice president of industrial design, appears to have put to bed rumors of a move back to his native Britain with the purchase of a luxury home in San Francsico for $17 million.

Apple design chief Jony Ive has reportedly just bought a property in San Francisco’s exclusive ‘Gold Coast’ neighborhood  for $17 million. The is likely to end speculation suggesting Ive wanted to move himself and his family back to his native Britain.

The house, which was built in 1927 and has six bedrooms and eight bathrooms, went on the market back in February for $25 million, people familiar with the deal told the Wall Street Journal. Apple’s vice president of industrial design will be able to enjoy sweeping views across the San Francisco Bay from the back of his 7,274-square-foot property.

Located close to Alta Plaza Park, the house also has an oak-paneled library and six wood-burning fireplaces. According to the WSJ, one of its upstairs bedrooms has “cathedral ceilings with exposed beams.”

Ive is the man widely credited for the design of some of the Cupertino company’s most iconic products, including the iPod, iPhone and iPad as well as its range of computers, such as the MacBook Air.

He started working for Apple in 1992, though, according to Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, was on the verge of quitting five years later, concerned that profit was taking precedence over product design. Jobs persuaded him to stay.

“Ive and Jobs would soon forge a bond that would lead to the greatest industrial design collaboration of their era,” Isaacson wrote.

 In May, 45-year-old Ive made a trip to the UK to receive a special honour from the Queen for services to design and enterprise.

Early last year, rumors were circulating that Ive was considering a move back to his native Britain because he wanted his children to attend school there. However, Apple execs reportedly said that if he returned, he wouldn’t be able to keep his position within the company.

The move to the new place in San Francisco indicates that Ive is in with the tech giant for the long term, a prospect that is sure to please Apple fans everywhere.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Obama’s DNC speech sets new political record on Twitter

President Obama helped set a new Twitter record Thursday night, with his DNC speech provoking the most tweets ever for a "political moment."

Twitter went into overdrive Thursday night as masses of its users fired off a ton of tweets during President Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.

According to the official Twitter blog, the speech set a new record for “political moments” on the microblogging site, with 52,756 tweets-per-minute being posted at the end of the president’s address.

Adam Sharp, Twitter’s head of government, news, and social innovation, wrote in the post: “The Democratic National Convention has driven an incredible amount of Twitter conversation since the very first day. [At] the close of the official proceedings, we have seen more than 9.5 million tweets sent about the events in Charlotte.”

He added that Thursday alone saw 4 million tweets relating to the convention, a figure equal to the total number sent during the entire duration of last week’s Republican National Convention.

Sharp singled out the moments during Obama’s speech which really got Twitter users going:

- 43,646 tweets for “I’m no longer just the candidate, I’m the President.”

- 39,002 tweets for “I will never turn Medicare into a voucher.”

- 38,597 tweets during a discussion of Medicare

- 37,694 tweets for “We don’t think government can solve all our problems…”

- 34,572 tweets for quips about the Olympics and “Cold War mind warp.”

Sharp assured its users the Twitter blog would be following events closely between now and Election Day in November. “With the conversation about the 2012 election happening on Twitter, the road to Election Day 2012 will be paved in tweets,” he wrote.

It seems that wherever Obama goes, the connected world goes with him. Last week he did a 30-minute ‘Ask Me Anything’ session on Reddit, setting a new record for visitors to the site in the process. In fact, so many people logged on to view Obama’s AMA that the site buckled under the weight of demand, causing it to crash several times over the course of the session.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

EA: No more single player-only games on PlayStation 4, Xbox 720

EA talks up its future as a purveyor of free-to-play games played across all platforms. The casualty of this strategy? Single player games.

EA Labels president Frank Gibeau has been particularly vocal about the future of EA lately. The executive is adamant that the company’s new focus doesn’t mean EA will abandon the game console market in favor of mobile and PC. It’s all the same ecosystem after all.

“For all the investments we’ve made in mobile and social, we never abandoned consoles,” says Gibeau in a brochure distributed at the Cloud Gaming USA Conference and Exhibition, “We are working closely with the console manufacturers and we are VERY excited about the Gen4 consoles that will be launched in the months and years ahead.”

“Gen4” consoles are Microsoft’s Xbox 720 and Sony’s PlayStation 4 respectively, and possibly machines from other competitors as well, like Boxer8’s Ouya and Valve’s rumored Steam Box.

Fans of Electronic Arts single player games of the past five years don’t have much to look forward to on those platforms though. If anyone is waiting for the return of creative visions like the original Dead Space, DICE’s Mirror’s Edge, or classic BioWare efforts like Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins, Gibeau’s got bad news: EA is done with single player-focused games.

“I have not green lit one game to be developed as a single player experience. Today, all of our games include online applications and digital services that make them live 24/7/365.”

That’s not to say that EA’s games will be devoid of single-player campaigns, only that they will all be augmented with multiplayer and social modes. Mass Effect 3 is a perfect example. The game can be played and enjoyed alone, but to get the complete story experience you have to buy additional DLC as well as play online with others.

In the wake of E3 2012, Electronic Arts’ executives have been preaching a new gospel. You’ve heard the goods news! The future is a place where we all play together, on every device simultaneously, and pay what we want for the privilege, forever and ever amen. EA’s future is free-to-play. It’s cross-platform play. It’s day one DLC for triple-A releases like Mass Effect. Is the pattern emerging for you? Do you see EA’s path forward?

Comedic drama aside, yes, Electronic Arts is aggressively redefining its entire business to accommodate for the new gaming market, a place where people expect to be able to play a game of Sim City on their mobile phone, then continue it on PC, and even on their living room console and each base level version of it is free. Grand! Shareholders should have faith in the new model.

EA is sacrificing a vital element of its business, though, in its mad dash to make every game appeal to every potential customer. Single player games still thrive when done right. Look at Bethesda’s Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, Mr. Gibeau. Something to keep in mind as you force studios like BioWare that specialize in single player games to change.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

DT Daily: Obama on Reddit, Samsung’s Windows 8 line-up, 4Chan strikes again

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August 30, 2012

• DT Daily Syndication

President Obama braves an AMA interview on Reddit, Samsung announces its fall lineup, researchers implant the world's first bionic eye, Microsoft announces the Xbox 2012 election hub, 4Chan strikes a Taylor Swift contest, and October 5th officially becomes James Bond Day.

Related Links:

• President Obama to Reddit: ‘Internet freedom’ will be part of 2012 Democratic platform
• Samsung introduces the world to its upcoming Windows 8 line-up
• Bionic eye goes live in world first by Australian researchers
• Microsoft to Launch “Election 2012 Hub on Xbox LIVE”
• 4Chan rigs “Taylor Swift Sing on Your Campus” contest which could see her performing at a DEAF school
• Taylor Swift on Campus
• October 5 dubbed ‘Global James Bond Day’

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Obama weathers site crashes and takes Reddit by storm in his AMA

In a spur-of-the-moment AMA, President Obama took to Reddit, weathered some site issues, and answered (10) of our questions.

President Obama announced on Twitter yesterday that he’d be partaking in a surprise question-and-answer session on Reddit.com. The President followed through with his promise, and took to the forum a few minutes earlier than his promised 4:30 EDT start time. Because of the understandably great demand for viewing the President’s forum, many users were met a message that the site was down due to a heavy load. Not to worry, a few refreshes and users were able to gain access to the site and the President’s answers to select questions.

The issues with bandwidth and access are part of a new set of concerns as more politicians and public figures begin to consider popular websites and social media an important way to reach their constituents. Obama is not new to the concept, having held Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn Town Hall events in the past. But when you include Reddit in the mix, it appears one of these things is not like the others. Reddit, a trove of cat photos, block letter memes, and other mildly NSFW content, is also a destination for millions of Gen Yers and an opportunity for the President to interact with many of his potential voters.

The questions, in true Reddit form, varied wildly. One example was a recent law graduate who had questions about his future and what Obama was doing to improve his prospects:

The President’s seemingly spur-of-the-moment AMA is an example of how close the Internet allows us to get to our politicians. The event runs parallel to FDR’s fireside chats as a way of reaching into our homes and our lives in a way that hasn’t been done before. Although the event is interactive, the President took his pick of thousands of questions and comments to respond to and ended the event with 10 responses. His freedom to be selective speaks to a weakness of the presidential AMA concept and the forum in general. For example, he chose to respond to a question about the forthcoming White House beer:

That said, the President took the event far more seriously than most of the Reddit users who asked questions or provided color commentary to the his responses.

The event and its setting also appeared to be a nod, not just to the Internet and a faithful generation, but to entrepreneurs and tech startups everywhere.  Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, tweeted during the event: “Fun-fact: POTUS doing @reddit AMA from C-Ville, VA — where 7 yrs ago Steve & I founded the company that would build @reddit.” Another indication of the focus on entrepreneurship was the president’s selection of and response to PartyInYourMouth’s question about small business policy:

Despite a few technical concerns, the unexpected event provided unique access to the president and provided him to speak to a major part of his constituency on their level. Of course, as amazing — and it was amazing — as this event was, hopefully a future AMA with the president includes more than six minutes of interaction and a bevy of softball questions. 

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Obama Does Reddit AMA: President Answers Questions and Crashes Site

President Obama answering questions on Reddit. Image via Reddit.

If you had any doubt that the presidential candidates were trying to use every possible piece of technology and social media to communicate with voters, this should seal the deal. Today President Obama took to Reddit, a growing social media and forum site which has become a landfill of cat photos and animated GIFs, to participate in one of the site’s AMAs, or Ask Me Anything sessions. AMAs have become popular with other well-known individuals; users ask questions and the individual, well, answers.

The president began the question and answer session at around 4:00 p.m. ET, and within moments had received hundreds of questions. (You can see Obama’s answers here.) At points the site even went down, returning an error message when users tried to update or log on. Many wondered if it was really the president on Twitter and on the service itself. The Obama campaign confirmed it was in fact the president with a photo of him at his computer and a tweet.

The president fielded questions on internet freedom, the space program, the most difficult decision of his first term (the surge in Afghanistan) and the White House beer (“it’s tasty”), among other things.

“Im thrilled, obviously, but what makes this even more exciting is that President Obama is doing this AMA from Charlottesville, VA — the same place where 7 years ago, Steve Huffman and I started the company that’d create Reddit. (We were undergrads at UVA),” Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian told ABC News in a quick email.  

Reddit and Ohanian have also launched an “Internet 2012″ bus. The bus will make its way from Denver to Danville, Kentucky, with organizers talking to Americans, including students and startup founders, about how they use the Internet and about legislation around it.

After an hour, Obama had hundreds of comments and questions on Reddit. The site still appeared to be up… for at least some.  His closing comment: “If you want to know what I think about this whole reddit experience — NOT BAD!”

ABC News’ Mary Bruce contributed reporting.

Source : abcnews[dot]go[dot]com

Tim Cook pulls Bob Mansfield out of retirement, will stay on at Apple to “work on future products”

Despite announcing his retirement in June, Bob Mansfield will now stay on at Apple to "work on future products," according to Tim Cook.

Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, Bob Mansfield, announced his retirement at the end of June, and that the job would be passed to then VP of iPad Engineering Dan Riccio.

Mansfield had been with Apple for 13 years, having joined soon after Steve Jobs’ return, and has worked on most of Apple’s high-profile hardware projects since then. His departure was speculated to be due either in part to Jobs’ death, or to the $58 million-worth of shares he was said to have cashed out over the past three years.

However, the reason is now moot, as an Apple press release has stated that Mansfield will not be retiring after all, and will stay with the company.

None other than Tim Cook is quoted as saying Mansfield will “remain at Apple” and that he will “work on future products,” but a job title isn’t mentioned. In all probability, Mansfield never got around to leaving Apple, as he was staying on until later in the year to ensure the Riccio’s transition went smoothly.

Bob Mansfield: Job title TBA?

The press release confirms that Dan Riccio has been promoted to the lofty role of Senior VP of Hardware Engineering, and that Craig Federighi has become Senior VP of Mac Software Engineering.

If you head over to Apple’s wall of leadership, you’ll notice that Mansfield is still listed as Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, the same as Riccio. It’ll be worth keeping watch to see if this changes in the near future.

Bob Mansfield’s departure would have been a high-profile one, as he is one of Apple’s old-guard who worked closely with Steve Jobs — therefore he understands the all-important Apple culture, in the same way as other long-standing employees. Amongst the twelve executives, he is one of eight who joined the company in the 90s.

His decision to stay reflects well on Tim Cook, who clearly wants to avoid any major shake-ups, particularly at the executive level, in order to help maintain the company’s incredible momentum.

That said, we’re sure the possibility of a $60 million stock bonus being paid out to Apple’s senior executives in 2016 was a very tempting carrot-on-a-stick too.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com