Marketplace Tech Report
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5-17-13 Marketplace Tech: Searching for Source Anonymity...
Aaron Swartz left behind a considerable online legacy before his suicide earlier this year at age 26. But a posthumously-released collaborationwith the New Yorker might be among his most profound innovations and it might just be the first step towards guaranteeing true onlineanonymity. Plus, why U.S. officials froze an exchange for the online Bitcoin currency, and what happens next.
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5-16-13 Marketplace Tech: Will Robots Replace the Middle...
Lately, it seems like we talk about Moore's law at least once a week on our show. It's the idea that our computing power jumps forward by leaps and bounds every two years -- so fast that soon our computers will be as smart as we are. Kevin Drum is a writer at the magazine Mother Jones. He's just written a long piece about intelligent robots. Drum thinks by the year 2025, they'll be smart enough to take almost all of our jobs. Don't worry though -- he says that's a good thing.
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5-15-13 Marketplace Tech: Google I/O kicks off
Today marks the beginning of Google's three day conference for developers, called Google I/O. Last year the company unveiled its tech-boosted spectacles, Google glass. It was perhaps one of the most extravagant unveilings in tech history -- glass-wearing Googlers streamed live video of themselves jumping out of a plane and riding into the convention on trick bikes. Plus, a look at TV's Upfronts, where the major networks unveil new programing for advertisers.
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5-14-13 Marketplace Tech: Pushing for anti-theft tech on...
Cell phone and smartphone theft is a problem that only seems to get bigger. The international black market of stolen phones is huge, lucrative, and not just for the thieves. Phone makers don't seem to be exactly in a hurry to protect customers from theft. Prosecutors in San Francisco, and most recently New York, are trying to change that. Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzer reports. And, three drone stories from China, Canada and the U.S.
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5-13-13 Marketplace Tech: The New 20 Dollar Bill Turns 10
It's been ten years since the U.S. introduced the "new" color $20 bill. According to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the average life of the 20 is just two years before it wears out. But the reason for the color 20 was introduced wasn't just about wear and tear, it was about anti-counterfeiting technology. And, does your family have etiquette for using tech at the dinner table? Marketplace Tech speaks with a Cape Cod mother of five who is making rules to help her family navigate how to...
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5-10-13 Marketplace Tech: NASAs Adam Steltzner on future...
Today, the head of one of the world's largest e-commerce giants is stepping down. Jack Ma, chief executive of Alibaba says he's too old to run an internet company at the decrepit age of 48. Plus, all this week we're talking about the near future of tech, and today we look at what's coming in the next decade of space exploration. Marketplace Tech talks to Adam Steltzner, a NASA engineer who navigated the incredibly challenging landing of the Mars Curiosity Rover. Steltzner says it's about...
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5-9-13 Marketplace Tech: Intels near future innovations
All this week we're talking about the near future of tech. Not artificial intelligence and storingconsciousness on computer chips, but what's coming in the next decade. Let's talk about hardware, and the world's biggest chipmaker, Intel. A week ago the company named a new CEO, Brian Krzanich. But the head honcho at Intel Labs, where the company invents all sorts of cool new stuff, is CTO Justin Rattner. His army of innovators is working on something called seeing through the rain.
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5-8-13 Marketplace Tech: The Near Future of Media
All this week we're talking about the near future of tech. Not clones and robot servants, but what's coming in the next decade. Today we look at what's coming in our own industry: Media. More and more it isn't just a discussion of old forms, but new forms as well -- I know one of my go to news sites these days happens to be Twitter. Kara Swisher, the co-exectuive editor of AllThingsD, says any media company that wants a future needs to be thinking about going mobile in every way.
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5-7-13 Marketplace Tech
The price of natural gas has been dropping, and it's not just people turning off the heat for spring weather. It's cheaper and easier than ever to extract natural gas thanks in part to advances in controversial technologies like hydraulic fracturing. What does the next ten years of our energy consumption look like? And, a tale of middle school hackers.
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5-6-13 Marketplace Tech: 3D printers at Staples and the...
If you make office supplies, you know you've arrived when your product hits the shelves at Staples. The retail chain says it will start carrying the Cube 3D printer made by 3D Systems.You can buy the Cube 3D online at Staples.com now, or wait until it hits stores in June. And, this week we'll be talking about the near-future of tech -- not flying cars and terminators, but what's coming in the next decade. Today, a conversation about free speech online. A year ago, George Washington Law...
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5-3-13 Marketplace Tech: Quitting the Internet cold...
A slice of digital cold turkey: On May 1 of 2012, Paul Miller atthe tech site The Verge cut himself off from the Internet. Noweb, no streaming, no email, no texts or voicemails either. It's nowa year later, and Paul has just woken up. He says we should all be impressed at how well we use something as complex as the Internet, but also describes his own euphoria after cutting himself off.
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5-2-13 Marketplace Tech: Talking to Family About Online...
There's been a lot of talk online about Jason Collins, the NBA player from the Celtics and the Wizards who came out as gay this week -- and some of that talk is offensive. What is appropriate language to use online and in every day life? Janell Burley Hofmann, a mother of five, gives her advice. And you've probably heard of the fisheye camera lens, but how about a bug-eyed one? Researchers at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University have developed a unique hemispherical digital...
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5-1-13 Marketplace Tech: The latest in smell-o-vision
A month ago, 'Google Nose' was an April Fool's prank: Sniff your laptop for eau de wet-dog or scent of Egyptian tomb. But it turns out real engineers have been working on smell tech. John Laurenson reports from a film festival in the Austrian city of Linz, where a smelly movie has just premiered. And, when Yahoo's CEO Marissa Mayer curbed the ability of employees to work from home, she got rapped by those who saw this as old-thinking. Now, the company is trying to make Yahoo a more...
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4-30-13 Marketplace Tech: Disaster apps grow in number
It has been six months since the savage storm dubbed Sandy wrecked and flooded a stretch of the East Coast. As people increasingly carry smartphones and Internet-linked tablets, how can digital devices help during an emergency? Developers are creating a growing number of crowd-sourcing disaster apps in the hopes of making a difference during natural and manmade disasters.
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4-29-13 Marketplace Tech: A Growing Cell Phone Valet...
Apple and Samsung both reported quarterly earnings last week. Today we hear from the company that makes many of the gadgets they sell. That would be Taiwanese tech giant Hon Hai, or as we know it, Foxconn. And, New York City hasn't exactly gone easy on teenagers with cellphones. Its city-wide ban on phones in schools is just one example. But what may be a monumental inconvenience for teens has become an opportunity for a growing number of businesses, who are only too happy to store those...
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4-26-13 Marketplace Tech: Re-imagining the Internet
The Internet is powered by vast banks of computers which eat up energy. That's expensive for the people who run these servers, and it has a cost to the earth, depending on how all the electricity is generated. Aaron Rallo is CEO of TSO Logic, which offers a software solution to this. Another company working to make the net more efficient is Joyent. Its chief technology office, Jason Hoffman, believes the demands are going to get so high on our digital systems -- given all the computer chips...
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4-25-13 Marketplace Tech: Taming the iPad tantrum
Is online retailer Amazon about to do to TV's what it did to bookstores? A published report says Amazon is coming out with its own box to attach to TV's. Businessweek says this would compete with Apple TV, Roku and -- possibly with cable and satellite companies. And from Britain comes the story of the four-year-old whose parents took her in for therapy when she became "distressed and inconsolable" without her iPad. Research about the early childhood effects of tech is ongoing, but it's an...
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4-24-13 Marketplace Tech: Twitter Hacks and Road Trips
Twitter can be hacked. Who cares, if Twitter is for fun. But consider this: Somebody hacked into the Associated Press Twitter account Tuesday and sent a fake tweet about a bogus explosion at the White House. Investors were watching and the Dow fell about about a percent before the tweet was retracted. Some experts believe the hack started with a tainted email sent to some unsuspecting AP employee. The strategy is called spearfishing and we are all urged to be alert for suspicious email. And,...
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4-23-13 Marketplace Tech: Google Nows data mining coming...
Ever type a random search into Google and watch the system auto-complete just exactly what you were looking for? There is now a hint that Google could soon add even more predictive technology to its search page. A sharp-eyed blogger noticed some software code that suggest a Google Now predictive personal assistant could come to any old browser.
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4-22-13 Marketplace Tech: A New Supermaterial Called...
Today we take a look at a non-toxic construction and engineering material that's strong, saves trees, and could help reduce greenhouse gases. A lab at the University of Texas is working on a way to produce what's called nanocellulose in mass quantities. The technique involves altering the genes of bacteria that produce vinegar. What goes in is sunlight and what comes out is a goop-like material that can be made into houses, cargo ships, dressing for wounds, you name it -- if they can perfect...
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4-19-13 Marketplace Tech: Could Smart Firearms Help with...
Gun control advocates are looking for new options, including some tech strategies. On Wednesday, seven measures failed in the U.S. Senate, including an amendment that would have expanded background checks. Some gun control advocates are now looking in new directions. So-called 'smart guns' are firearms that only authorized users can fire. But so far, there's not a single one on the market in the U.S.
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4-18-13 Marketplace Tech: Crowdsourced Car Design
A year ago, Marketplace Tech host David Brancaccio drove solo across the country trying to deal only with technology and no people, as part of a series called Robots Ate My Job. Jamie Kitman, New York editor for Automobile Magazine, is now trying to make the drive the other way -- meeting as many interesting human beings along the trip as he can. Kitman, who is driving a $240,000 McLaren MP 4-12C sports car, caught up with Marketplace Tech on the second day of his journey after he'd hung out...
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4-17-13 Marketplace Tech: How One Computer Glitch Can...
Computer glitches at home can be frustrating, but what about when they keep an entire airline company from taking off? American Airlines had to cancel over 400 flights and deal with massive delays yesterday when employees couldn't access its computerized reservation system Sabre, which is used by multiple airlines, helps with scheduling, booking, printing boarding passes, and tracking checked bags.
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4-16-13 Marketplace Tech: Can You Really Hack a Plane...
A researcher used an smart phone app to hack the cockpit of a virtual airplane. The setting was a computer security conference in Amsterdam. The FAA and several makers of cockpit equipment say that feat would be much harder, if not impossible, in a real aircraft. We asked regular contributer Chester Wisnewski at computer security firm Sophos if he gives this much credence. He doesn't -- but he does think the story could make flying safer.
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4-15-13 Marketplace Tech: Your Email and the IRS
Can the IRS look through your email without a warrant -- and does that run contrary to the Fourth Amendment? Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU seem to suggest as much, but the IRS has said it doesn't use email to target taxpayers. While millions of Americans pop their returns into the mail today, we look at issues of data, privacy and the law.
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4-12-13 Marketplace Tech: Tech on Display During...
Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival kicks off the season of big summer music festivals across the U.S. and beyond. So what's on the festival's homepage? A link to the Coachella app, of course. But with friend locator apps and visual sharing apps like Instagram and Vine, the list of tech that will be front and center at concerts this summer is growing. But at Coachella, the list goes beyond applications -- there is cooling technology that goes into the festival too.
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4-11-13 Marketplace Tech: The Tech Savvy of MLB.com
Baseball, with its passion for tradition, is higher tech than you think. Major League Baseball is now working with wireless engineering company Qualcomm to make sure that fans can use their smartphones while at the ballpark. And there's been much work over the last decade to insure that things go smoothly for people who pay to watch games online. MLB.com CEO Bob Bowman says things were different in the early, herky-jerky days of streaming.
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4-10-13 Marketplace Tech: The Funding Fight for Cyber...
Funding follows high-tech weaponry. The Pentagon won't say what they are, but the Air Force has now officially designating six technologies as 'weapons.' Reuters reports the vice commander of the Air Force Space Command telling a conference, 'This means that the game-changing capability (of) cyber is...going to get more attention and the recognition that it deserves.' Recognition and more importantly money, since military budgets tend to favor weapons.
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4-9-13 Marketplace Tech: California Rules Against...
An appeals court in the Golden State has ruled it is illegal inCalifornia to use a handheld mobile phone to navigate while driving. The ruling suggested that if State law seemed arbitrary, given that it is legal tomanipulate other devices in a car, people should take it up with thelegislature to change the law.
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4-8-13 Marketplace Tech: The Future of Mobile Television
Television stations have powerful transmitters. Instead of the sometimes slow and often expensive Internet, why not use those transmitters to get TV shows into smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. The National Association of Broadcasters big show is going on right now in Las Vegas and one key development is called, simply 'Mobile TV' -- special smartphones or special add-ons for mobile devices so you can keep watching when you head out the door.
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4-5-13 Marketplace Tech: Ray Kurzweil on Our Brains and...
We've been reporting this week that the federal government wants to spend $100 million to unravel the complex of the human brain. Someone else who's been thinking a lot about the brain is a guy we've wanted to speak with for a long time: The legendary inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. He's done pioneering work in optical character readers, flatbed scanners, electronic keyboards for musicians and beyond. Kurzweil has thought a lot about the ways technology and human beings are becoming more...
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4-4-13 Marketplace Tech: Mapping the Brain for New Tech
Literature and art help us explore the mysteries of the human mind. But understanding the minute circuitries of the human brain takes science, technology and according to the Obama Administration, quite a bit of federal money. You may have heard the administration is pumping $100 million into getting a detailed understanding of the brain, with the hope of treating or eliminating diseases such as Alzheimer's. But what you haven't heard about is the tech involved.
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4-3-13 Marketplace Tech: Tactonics Amazing Touch Screen...
They say the walls have ears. But what if the floors could feel where you are walking and how you are walking? A New York City startup called Tactonic Technologies has revolutionized the computer touch sensor, making them tough enough and cheap enough to turn an entire floor, maybe an entire gym or an entire theme park into a surface that senses footsteps.
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4-2-13 Marketplace Tech: Will There Be a Facebook Phone?
Facebook is only saying that it will have a 'significant mobile-focused announcement' on Thursday. Published reports suggest a custom mobile phone that comes in one flavor -- Facebook -- is on the way. But will the device be made in partnership with HTC, as is rumored? Or will it be something else?
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4-1-13 Marketplace Tech: Is Bitcoin Legit?
Amid the banking crisis in Cyprus, an online-only currency called Bitcoin is getting new attention. Some argue it could be used as a safe-haven for people worried about have their deposits taxed in Cypriot banks. Evidence that people turned to Bitcoins amid the Cyprus mess is actually quite slim, although one company announced last week it wants to create the first Bitcoin ATM and to do it in Cyprus. Bitcoins haven't attracted much attention from regulators, until now. U.S. authorities have...
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3-29-13 Marketplace Tech: Digital Easter Eggs and Where
We feel compelled to do a story today about digital Easter eggs. They're about finding hidden things in the digital world and don't actually have to be egg-shaped.The Egyptian Navy says it caught three men trying to cut a big undersea Internet cable running into the Mediterranean. A military spokesman says the cable belonged to Telecom Egypt, the major phone and Internet company there. No motive was suggested. Experts say there have been Internet slowdowns recently in Egypt, and have noticed...
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3-28-13 Marketplace Tech: Clogging the Internet with Spam
If you found your Internet surfing coming up empty in recent days, it's possibly part of one of the biggest cyberattacks experts have seen. A non-profit that fights junk email has been getting clobbered for days. Spamhaus had blacklisted a web hosting company in the Netherlands for allegedly helping to spread spam. The Dutch company called Cyberbunker didn't like getting blacklisted and the result is clogging things all around the Internet.
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3-27-13 Marketplace Tech: A History of the LCD Screen
All right, you struggling screenwriters.We're about to hand you a plot. It will start in an unlikely place: The fact that it's been 40-years since research was published that led to the development of LCD flat screens, which revolutionized computers and TV. British Chemist George Gray came up with a way to make liquid crystals that worked -- here was the trick -- at room temperature. Mark Lorch wrote about this in The Guardian. Lorch is also a chemist at Britain's University of Hull, and he...
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3-26-2013 Marketplace Tech: Everquest turns 14, Digital...
Video game years are kind of like dog years. And that makes the game Everquest, which turned 14-years-old this month, positively ancient. Everquest was one of the first big games to be an MMO -- Massively Multiplayer Online -- lots of people play against each other by Internet. Dave Georgesen of Sony Online Entertainment has watched these kinds of games spread using the so-called "free to play" model, where you can start without buying it. And, a new academic study shows it's quite easy to...
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3-25-13 Marketplace Tech: Illegal Internet Research and...
Now that he has a federal license, the law school student who wants to use 3D printing to manufacture firearms remains wary the government could still shut him down. Cody Wilson goes to the University of Texas and is head of an enterprise called Defense Distributed. Even with the license, he's working on more permits and issues such as protection from liability. And, how a hacker 'researched' the stability of the whole Internet by creating a giant network of insecure online devices.
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3-22-13 Marketplace Tech: The Mobile Payment Wars
PayPal and Google see a future where you go into a store and use yoursmartphone to pay. These are called electronic wallets and recentlyMastercard, wary of the competition, said it will start charging acontroversial extra fee to some companies that want to run Mastercardtransactions through their e-wallets. But the card company isn'tstopping there. Mastercard's Ed McLaughlin says his company has a walletof its own.
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3-21-13 Marketplace Tech: Sending Photos and Videos in...
South Korea is still recovering from an apparent cyberattack on Wednesday that shut down many cash machines, froze debit card transactions, and caused computers to go dark at banks and broadcasting companies. Power and transportation systems were not directly affected. South Korean officials suspect North Korea but proving that will be difficult. Last week, North Korea had accused the South of getting into its computers. Is this the new norm?
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3-20-13 Marketplace Tech: Keeping our Text Messages in...
When you send a text message or an email, should your Internet or phone company hang onto them in case the police ever want to take a look? That is the discussion on Capitol Hill, as lawmakers look into overhauling the federal law that covers when the authorities can get access to electronic communications and when they can't. And software company Oracle is trying to move to the cloud.
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3-19-13 Marketplace Tech: Time Warner Cozies Up To Roku
A company called Roku makes a little box. In goes the Internet, out comes loads of TV channels when you connect it to a screen. Something like this could terrify a cable company like Time Warner. But what's journalism without 'If you can't beat 'em, join 'em' stories? There's word Time Warner is going to show up on Roku boxes, so its paying customers can watch TV on any screen connected to the little Roku instead of a clunky set top box. Is this the future of television?
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3-18-13 Marketplace Tech: A New Method of Desalination
Defense contractor Lockheed Martin has discovered a way to make desalination 100 times more efficient. And that could have a big impact on bringing clean drinking water to the developing world. The process is called reverse osmosis, and the material used is graphene -- a lot like the stuff you smudge across paper with your pencil. The new material could make for smaller, cheaper plants that turn salt water into drinking water, but it could also have uses in warzones.
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3-15-13 Marketplace Tech
Google says it's doing what it calls 'spring cleaning' and sending Google Reader out to the landfill on July 1. Netflix has a new system that lets customers connect to Facebook, so their friends can see what they're watching. And where is the economic center of the earth?
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3-14-13 Marketplace Tech
Samsung is set to release its latest iPhone challenger tonight -- the Galaxy S4. Is the Korean company starting to challenge Apple's coolness? And, as the Interactive session of South by Southwest in Austin now gives way to the film and music folks, a lesson from the festival on shifting digital media to silliness, and to silliness plus real journalism. Jonah Peretti is founder and CEO of the popular online media website Buzzfeed. He says the change is part of the website's natural...
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3-13-13 Marketplace Tech: Cory Booker, Tech Star?
South By Southwest might be a festival of rock, movie, and technology stars. But Austin, Texas also had a visit from a politician who wants to be a tech star. It's the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Cory Booker, who was at a hack-a-thon put together by some of Lady Gaga's social media people. Why was Booker in Austin? To launch a start-up, of course.
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3-12-13 Marketplace Tech: Tim Berners-Lee on an open...
Forget about Al Gore for a second: Tim Berners-Leeactuallymade the Internet. And the guy who created the World Wide Web has some strong feelings about his legacy. We talked to this computer scientist (who happens to be a knight as well) about a variety of tech topics. Also, SXSW Interactive offers up an Aaron Swartz memorial, and a new hot gadget: Leap Motion's gesture control device.
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3-11-13 Marketplace Tech: Michael Dell on taking Dell...
One of the biggest names in tech in Texas has had a complicated few days. Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of computer and computer services giant Dell wants to buy back his company from shareholders. The idea is once the company is private, it will have room to rebuild itself for the longer term without the short-term demands of a publicly-traded stock. But a powerful Dell shareholder, Carl Icahn, is reportedly now pushing for more money than is on offer, a development that could upset the...
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3-8-13 Marketplace Tech: Changing the Culture of New...
Jessica Lawrence is the executive director of NY Tech Meetup. Along with helping to showcase some of the city's most exciting new companies and digital projects every month, Lawrence is also helping to change the culture of the scene she is part of. Tech may not exactly be a boys club, but it does suffer from lopsided numbers when it comes to participation of the sexes. With women-only demo showcases, and a willingness to speak out against sexist remarks, Lawrence's daily work is helping to...
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3-7-13 Marketplace Tech: Diversifying the New York Tech...
New York City's Chief Digital Officer Rachel Haot began in the city's startup world and rose to prominence quickly. Now, she's a member of Mayor Bloomberg's administration who is advocating for more private-public collaboration in making New York a tech mecca that rivals Silicon Valley. Marketplace Tech explores Haot's latest efforts, including finding strong ideas for reinventing the city's 11,000 payphones, drawing more talent to the city as well as growing it at home.
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3-6-13 Marketplace Tech
Complaints are rampant that the video game industry treats female employees and female players as outsiders or worse. But it wasn't always that way. And, remember MiniDiscs? Way better than cassettes, right? But as of this month, Sony says the format is no more. Though Minidiscs were engineered to make imperfect copies, some people clung to it deep into the iPod era.
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3-5-13 Marketplace Tech: Women in the Video Game Industry
Last November, a guy posted a blunt question: 'Why are there so few lady game creators?' This spawned a big response under the Twitter hashtag '1reasonwhy.' Stories are added regularly including stats about women paid less than men in the gaming industry and ugly accounts of workplaces that seem more like fraternities. As part of our focus on women in tech this week, we reached Rhianna Pratchett in London. Pratchett's just finished an overhaul of the Tomb Raider game where she set out to...
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3-4-13 Marketplace Tech: A status update on women in tech
Our focus this week is women in tech and in recent days some of Silicon Valleys most powerful have been making headlines. The CEO of Hewlett Packard, Meg Whitman, leading her company's backing of same sex marriage. Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg has her new book on sparking a social movement in tech. And there's Yahoo's boss, Marissa Mayer, with a controversial ban on employees working from home. To start the week, Marketplace's Silicon Valley reporter Queena Kim gives us an overview.
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3-1-13 Marketplace Tech: Piracy Re-Education Camp, and...
We've been covering the new Copyright Alert System that a group of major Internet companies launched this week to patrol for customers doing illegal downloads. The system will generate an escalating series of warnings. In theory, six strikes and a movie, music or software pirate is out. But what exactly happens on strike six? Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain talks about how you might actually need to go to pirating re-education camp.
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2-28-13 Marketplace Tech: A tool that tries to help...
What online activity is worth the effort and actually leads to sales? Banner ads, Facebook likes, links to the time you were on public radio? Diamond Candle turned to a New York startup called SumAll, which has come up with a way to let clients see the stats on what online action caused what online reaction. SumAll's founder Dane Atkinson says big Internet companies have a mountain of data on this, but making sense of it is the trick. And, aCarnegie Mellon post-doc student and Japanese...
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2-27-13 Marketplace Tech: Facebooks Newtown Response,...
Facebook is responding to a call from top elected officials to crack down on Newtown school shooting conspiracy theorists. There are people who deny the terrible events in Connecticut in December and have been putting taunts and abuse on social media pages designed to help victims. Senators and a Congresswoman from Connecticut want Facebook to take the pages down; Facebook says no -- but points out that it has been dealing with the issue and is in constant contact with families affected by...
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2-26-13 Marketplace Tech: Getting Up Close With Google...
Google Glass: we know the company plans to have them available this year, and have them cost around $1500, but are these lens-less frames really a technological revolution? Joshua Topolsky, editor and chief of The Verge, talks with David Brancaccio about the experience of wearing them. And, a billboard in Peru that does more than catch the eye -- it catches condensation and turns it into drinking water.
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2-25-13 Marketplace Tech: Tech Tax Havens
Big U.S. tech companies are good at generating profits -- and they’re also good at holding onto those profits when tax season rolls around. A report out this month details how some of the biggest names in the technology world avoid paying more taxes on revenue by storing assets overseas.
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2-22-13 Marketplace Tech: Unlocking Your Phone and...
Unlocking your phone might not be illegal, but you still might get in trouble with the law for doing it. It's a gray area, and some people are upset about a rule change by the Library of Congress that could impact the way users do business with cellphone carriers. That's why they started a petition to force the White House to address the issue -- and the petition now has enough signatures to make the administration take another look. Meanwhile, how do you broach a different kind of rule: the...
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2-21-13 Marketplace Tech: 3D Printing With a Pen, and...
Yahoo's homepage has gotten a makeover. Why? The website wants to be a place that people visit -- and stay on. And we were all just starting to get used to the idea of 3D printing, and now here comes the 3Doodler -- a pen that lets you draw with plastic. The company that makes the 3Doodler launched a Kickstarter campaign two days ago with a goal of raising $30,000. Since then the campaign has raised over $1 million. Maybe that's because the price is right: $75.
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2-20-13 Marketplace Tech: Hacking Apple, and Destiny as...
Hackers managed to compromise a group of computers at Apple -- much like they did earlier this week at Facebook. What does this mean? Macs, which are usually touted for their resiliance against viruses and hacks, are being put into the crosshairs by cybercriminals because they're being used more often. And, there's a new game coming out from the makers of 'Halo,' called 'Destiny.' The game's makers say it's the future. Is it?
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2-19-13 Marketplace Tech: Snoozing Email, and A...
There's a new app that lets you snooze your email alerts. Is that actually useful? 800,000 people say 'yes.' Also, a family questions the circumstances of their son’s death following a job he took to work with a semiconductor that may be of use to both the Chinese and American militaries.
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2-18-13 Marketplace Tech: Thirsts New Social Reading...
Thirst Labs has created an app that CEO Anuj Verma says could revolutionize the way we take in news and other data online. But will it? Also -- telephone companies aren't worried about competition from Skype, which by some estimates now accounts for one-third of the international calls market. Why not? Hint: there's more money in data plans. And, the guys from "Wedding Crashers" go to Google.
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2-15-13 Marketplace Tech: Tesla Vs. The New York Times,...
The battle between Elon Musk of Tesla and the New York Times in the wake of a bad review for a test drive of the company’s car continues. But what is the real takeaway from the flap? Will Oremus of Slate says we're all focusing on the wrong facts. Also, the town in Northern England where residents who couldn’t get high-speed Internet decided to put in their own.
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2-14-13 Marketplace Tech: Presidential Internet...
President Obama's executive order for increased sharing between government agencies and large infrastructure companies endeavors to help bypass Congress in a fast-moving Internet attack. And mass texting among teenagers is a growing problem -- as Janell Burley Hofmann can attest. Her son woke up the other morning with 0ver 600 missed texts from the night beore.
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2-13-13 Marketplace Tech: Apples Shareholder Problem,...
Apple's stock has been drooping since its maps fail in September -- but are things getting serious? Tim Cook may have been sitting with the First Lady during the State of the Union Tuesday, but he was also making speeches to Wall Street at Goldman Sachs' Internet and Technology conference, trying to convince shareholders that all is well. Some shareholders don't think that's true -- and are suing to get Apple to start delivering on its mountain of cash in hand. And, however you heard about...
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2-12-13 Marketplace Tech: Teaching Giant Corporations to...
Applico's CEO Alex Moazed started an App company five years ago that now caters to the big dogs like NBC and ATT. But his own tech startup is transitioning as he is realizing he needs to teach major corporations that the move to mobile is more about just making an application for your smartphone or tablet -- it requires a re-imagining of your business model. Also: Would you wear a watch made by Apple? Don't worry, CNET's Molly Wood says you won't have to make that decision any time soon. But...
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2-11-13 Marketplace Tech: Black Boxes in Cars, and...
There are so-called 'black boxes' on airplanes. Turns out many newish cars have something similar, devices that collect data that can help determine what happened in an accident. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is pushing for all new cars and light trucks to have these devices. And whether or not you are the member of a presidential family, you should probably change your email password more often to prevent hacks -- as well as jumble your answers to your security...
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2-8-13 Marketplace Tech: Europes Fraught GPS Plan,...
Europe has a plan for its own version of the Global Positioning System (GPS), but the over-budget, overdue Galileo system may never actually come into being. Twitter's purchase of Bluefin Labs might just be all about selling TV ads on your second screen. And the Internet of things is also going to have significant impact on the health care industry.
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2-7-13 Marketplace Tech: SmartThings, iPad Etiquette,...
Marketplace Tech talks to the CEO of SmartThings about controlling your house from your smartphone or tablet, hears from a mom about iPad etiquette, and learns more about the FCC’s plan for spectrum.
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2-6-13 Marketplace Tech: Will.I.Am on the Internet of...
Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas is a tech geek. He's also predicting what the future might look like thanks to the Internet of things -- the idea that networked objects, like your car and the road, will one day talk to each other. And Samsung has just set up shop in Silicon Valley with a new one million square foot space and a plan to innovate further into the hardware.
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2-5-13 Marketplace Tech: President Obamas Chief...
President Obama'sChief Technology Officer, Todd Park, talks about what exactly America's CTO does -- and announces a second round of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program. Also, a debate over whether the FCC should be involved inpaving the way towards more free WiFifor all of us.
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2-4-13 Marketplace Tech: Cisco CEO on The Internet of...
The Internet of things -- what is it and how will it work? John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, gives some answers and says we're closer to classic science fiction novels than we may think. There's a new app on the market that focuses on the need for an instant truth-o-meter for when politicians open their mouths. Meet TruthTeller, from the Washington Post.
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2-1-13 Marketplace Tech: New York Times Hacking; Do...
Chinese hackers infiltrated The New York Times for months, and the technique they used was something not so advanced -- email. Google’s “Project Glass” promises to put the functionality of a smart phone on your face. But is that what people want? And, the first down line you see on TV football games could be coming to a real-world Super Bowl, but not yet.
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1-31-13 Marketplace Tech: Blackberrys Back, and Facebook...
Blackberry is back, with the launch of two new phones it hopes will revive the struggling smartphone company formerly known as Research in Motion. Facebook is working on best practices in an emerging area of social media -- suicide prevention. And, the military is using brain scans on new recruits -- canine recruits.
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1-30-13 Marketplace Tech: Happy Birthday, Midi and the...
A protocol that lets musical instruments talk to and trigger one another turns 30 years old today. MIDI is still used by the likes of dance-punk band !!!. It’s inventor Dave Smith explains its use. A new version of Microsoft Office turns purchasers into subscribers. The IRS has had a Tumblr for months, but it’s just now getting noticed.
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1-29-13 Marketplace Tech: The Human Brain Project and...
The European Commission is giving $1 billion to the Human Brain Project, an effort to build a computer model of the human brain. The Pentagon wants to nearly quintuple the size of its cyber command. Experts acknowledge the seriousness of cyber threats, but disagree on the necessity of 4,000 new hires at a time of tight budgets. Plus, an academic journal on driverless cars gives a vision of the future, and it’s not all defensive driving.
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1-28-13 Marketplace Tech: Using Startup Ethic to Fight...
Does a tech entrepreneur bring a certain startup ethic to a company that fights pirates in Africa? We ask Spencer Ackerman from Wired, who wrote a story on the head of Typhon -- perhaps the first private navy of the 21st century. And, how bad are Apple's woes, really? Adam Lashinsky explains why he disagrees with those who think some bad earnings might mean the company is lost at sea, and Marketplace's China Correspondent Rob Schmitz tells us what a "supplier responsibility report" is, and...
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1-25-13 Marketplace Tech: Tweeting Videos with Vine, and...
Now your tweets can be videos, thanks to Twitter’s acquisition of Vine. Privacy activists are asking Skype to be more transparent. They want Skype to be more like Google, which just issued a new Transparency Report. That report gives insight into the data they share with government entities, which could benefit a debate over what information the government can acquire without a warrant. And Joe Biden gave a fireside chat using Google Hangout.
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1-24-13 Marketplace Tech: Technology at Davos, and...
Business and political leaders are gathered in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, but they’re also talking about technology. Telemedicine started as a way of reaching those stuck at home. But in the smartphone age it’s taken off, and is saving lives of pregnant women in rural Nicaragua. A new ranking of broadband shows that the U.S. is slow. What’s the city that’s in first place?
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1-23-13 Marketplace Tech: Mining Asteroids in Space, and...
Microsoft is reportedly considering investing billions of dollar in Dell, as part of a deal to take the company private. A new outfit called Deep Space Industries is seeking investors for a project to mine asteroids -- and eventually establish a long-term human presence in space. Google’s quarterly earnings beat estimates, but its focus is beyond the next quarter. Their data-driven HR department tries to maximize employee happiness, while making sure those policies pay off.
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1-22-13 Marketplace Tech: Kim Dot Com Unveils Mega, and...
The founder of Megaupload -- the file-sharing website shut down after beingaccused in the largest criminal copyright case in U.S. history -- has a newproject. It's called Mega, and it's a lot like Megaupload. But a newreport suggests that piracy on the part of users may not be such a badthing. Also, the future of libraries seems to be shifting away from books -- butnot if the library patrons have anything to say about it, according to anew report.
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1-18-13 Marketplace Tech: A Data-Mining Inauguration...
The Presidential Inauguration Committee has put out an official Android and IOS app. But if you read the fine print, it could be sharing your personal information with political campaigns. It’s an example of how our private information is constantly being shared online. But there are systems to take control, like MyPermissions. Also: Nokia has a new product, a smartphone case you can print out. All you need is access to a 3D printer.
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1-18-13 Marketplace Tech:
Yelp is partnering with cities around the country to put public data in their restaurant listings: health department ratings. The program is currently rolling out in San Francisco and in a few weeks will begin in New York, though some restaurant owners are nervous at the prospect. Realtors are launching their own "tech accelerator." And, new research suggests that spending time on Facebook may boost your self-esteem at the cost of your real world self-control.
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1-17-13 Marketplace Tech: The Aftermath of Aaron Swartzs...
The suicide of Internet activist Aaron Swartz is having a legal backlash. Rep. Zoe Lofgren has proposed "Aaron's Law" to scale back what critics call an overly broad law, that allowed prosecutors to threaten Swartz with decades of jail time. But will "Aaron's Law" go far enough? Ebay's PayPal system is widely used for online payments. In a new partnership with NCR, the cash register and automated teller company, PayPal is taking another step toward making payments offline. Soon they may be...
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1-16-13 Marketplace Tech: Facebook Joins Search, and Red...
Facebook's big new effort is a search function that works only within the social media. Could "graph search" actually be a game changer? Perhaps -- and the idea that it could may be the reason Yelp's stock took a dive yesterday. Meanwhile online security experts have discovered a form of malware that's been operating for five years. Its name? Red October.
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1-15-13 Marketplace Tech: Aaron Swartzs Legacy, Java...
Java is all over the place, and now Homeland Security wants us to disable it. But how do we do that? We talk toChester Wisniewski of Sophos. Meanwhile the arguments continue over famous Internet innovator Aaron Swartz's legacy. Swartz killed himself in the face of charges that he hacked a data center at MIT. Last, an amazing technology that could be the next big thing in tablets and smartphones: The magical appearing buttons made by Tactus.
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1-14-13 Marketplace Tech: Googling the Flu and Going...
Is this a regular flu season or one for the record books? It depends a bit on whether your metric is the official numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or Google. One thing's for sure, a lot more people are Googling the flu, but it's still unclear whether that means a lot more people are getting it. In China, a lot more people are getting high speed internet into their homes. Why? The country's government is requiring that each new home close to the necessary...
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1-11-13 Marketplace Tech: How CES Proves Success For some
International CES has wrapped, but there are still stories to tell. For instance how the startup Veveo's schedule got even more jam packed with clients for its predictive software at the annual event, and how bad chip maker Qualcomm's keynote presentation really was in the final judgment. Also, MIT has invented a new process of bending light on a computer chip, which means we're a step closer to hologram televisions, biomedical imaging, and predictive or autonomous driving.
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1-10-13 Marketplace Tech: Can Polaroid Reinvent Itself...
One company you wouldn't necessarily expect to be at a giant conference about the technology of the future: Polaroid. But the company has been around for 75 years, says CEO Scott Hardy, and it plans to be just as relevant now as it was when it was making goggles for World War II fighter pilots. How? Fotobars, for one. But the company also just released a new iM1836 camera that runs Android Jelly Bean and can upload the shots you take with the help of WiFi. Meanwhile Engadget's senior reviews...
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1-9-13 Marketplace Tech: Google Brings Free Wi-Fi to...
Google just created the biggest Free Wi-Fi network in Manhattan, blanketing the Chelsea neighborhood with outdoor access for two years. The company says it's just being neighborly -- but will other internet service providers be mad? Meanwhile, International CES is usually known for televisions and smaller gadgets, but one of the big themes this year at the big event in Las Vegas is the self-driving cars of the future...and the present tech that looks towards autonomous vehicles.
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1-8-13 Marketplace Tech: The Value of CES, and Netflix...
International CES was created a generation ago...is it still relevant in the digital age? At least one man doesn't think so -- he said as much in Reuters. But you can still find some impressive gadgets there. Tech reporter Queena Kim discovered a smart fork; but there are also plenty of giant 4K televisions to be ogled. Meanwhile, the battles over television content continue. HBO Go battles Netflixby inking a deal with Universal, while Time Warner makes a deal with Roku.
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1-7-13 Marketplace Tech Report
These short January days mean it is what season? Skiing, you say? How about electronics. An annual circus of gizmos gets under way in Las Vegas this week. The Consumer Electronics Show is a festival of both hype and innovation. And imagine leaving your house keys sticking out your front door -- and not noticing it for a year and a half. Experts at Google discovered and have now fixed a dangerous security flaw that might have allowed bad guys to steal private customer information for 18...
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1-4-13 Marketplace Tech Report
There's the government's official employment and unemployment report today, but what about prospects for the kind of jobs you do online? Elance, a company that uses the web to fix up freelancers with jobs has a 2013 forecast with a bold prediction: One out of four college students in this new year will earn money through online jobs. If we said there's a machine that makes music by itself, you'd be unimpressed. But what if there's a robot that will improvise music along with you?
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1-3-2013 Marketplace Tech Report
We check in with a mother in Massachusetts who drew up an 18-point contract listing the rules her 13-year-old son would have to live by if he got a nice new phone. Stuff like: put it away in public, and don't use it to lie or cheat. And digital photography has been, to say the very least, a challenge for the first instant photo company, Polaroid. Now, the company is testing out a new business model: Physical stores where you go to get prints of the digital photos on your smart phone, while...
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1-2-13 Marketplace Tech Report
A recent piece by New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman called "Robots and Robber Barons" took a look at a question we are familiar with:Are robots eating our jobs? Krugman stops by to share his take on automation, technological change, and the future of the work and wages in America.
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01-01-13 Marketplace Tech Report
Instead of a new digital trend for this New Year, how about getting rid of an old one before it hurts more people? There's an argument that the era of anonymously creeping around the internet being a jerk without consequence is coming to an end. And as we take stock of our lives to start a new year, here's an unsettling question. What if all that's left of us when we're gone is what we did online?
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12-31-12 Marketplace Tech Report
However you plan on celebrating this New Year's Eve, you'll probably spend at least part of it on the Internet. One tech observer predicts that as we enter 2013, we also enter the era of always being online. On Mondays we like to talk big ideas, but how about when a big idea becomes a breakthrough? Research has now made it possible for humans to control robotic appendages with their brains. The tech behind it aids a special relationship between the brain and the limbs.
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12-28-12 Marketplace Tech Report
This week we're looking at what's going to be big in tech in 2013. One of the most important stories next year will be about what we're giving up when it comes to the version of ourself we present online. Plus, while we're talking about living online, a new experiment for an old medium: Lettrs.com. Founder Drew Bartkiewicz, a tech entrepeneur who has a soft spot for snail mail, launched the website this month.
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12-27-12 Marketplace Tech Report
This holiday week we are looking into the future of tech in 2013. Our first guide is General Electric's chief teechnology officer Mark Little. He's looking closely at the energy industry. GE has been working a more efficient tech -- like tiny cooling devices that could make our laptops and tablets even thinner. But there have been huge leaps and bounds in big tech, too. Plus, If you tried to escape the family this Christmas Eve by firing up your trusty Netflix account, you might have been...
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12-26-12 Marketplace Tech Report
A big idea to chew on as you recover from the holiday revelry: A dog is said to be our best friend, but what if technology became mankind's worst enemy? Cambridge University is starting up an institute to keep an eye on things that could some day wipe out the human race. It's got a title that would do Albert Camus proud, the 'Centre for the Study of Existential Risk'.
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12-25-12 Marketplace Tech Report
This Chrismas day, many people will be turning on their new gadgets: Tablets, smartphones, laptops, and televisions. Granted, many of us don't even really use televisions any more, unless it is to project whatever we're streaming from the Internet. But if you're like us, you know and love good televisions, and what it is to plug in and customize your settings just the way you like them. One problem: In 2012 there are so many different settings -- with different names depending on the...
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12-24-12 Marketplace Tech Report
If you were looking for Santa, you would probably head to the North Pole. But we ran into St. Nick just walking down the street in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. And this one, who in the off-season goes by the same Alex Roshuk, attorney at law, is a tech Santa. He's alongtime hobbyist and electrical engineer, and he invited us into his workshop, which isn't full of elves, it's full of drones.
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12-21-12 Marketplace Tech Report
A video gamer has asked for a kind of "ceasefire" today, 24 hours in which people agree not to play shoot 'em up digital games as a gesture of respect to the children and adults killed in the Newtown massacre a week ago. And there's new data on how social media reacted to the Sandy Hook story. Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism has been looking at Twitter, Blogs and op-eds online.
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12-20-12 Marketplace Tech Report
There are apps that let stalkers track their victims. Now there's a move in Washington to outlaw them. And while they're at it, some members of Congress would like us all to have a clear idea of which pieces of software for a smartphone keep track of our physical location. One of the sponsors of new legislation that has just come out of committee is Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota.
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12-19-12 Marketplace Tech Report
The net this week is awash with complaints about privacy and Instagram. That's the photo-sharing application Facebook bought this year for about a billion dollars. A new Instagram policy is set to take effect within weeks that seemed to give the company the legal right to use your photos in advertising. Even though the company says it has no plans to actually use pictures this way, the policy change is angering some users.
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12-18-12 Marketplace Tech Report
It's likely that Google will go into the holidays with what some see as a nice bouquet of holiday flowers courtesy of the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC could wrap up its antitrust investigation without forcing Google to make big changes to the way it displays search results. At the heart of the case were complaints about the way Google sometimes puts its own products at the head of the pack when listing results.
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12-17-12 Marketplace Tech Report
They've been dutifully circling the moon all this year, but the craft that make up NASA's GRAIL mission end with a flash today. Ebb and Flow, twin spacecraft the size of a washer and dryer, have been gathering data about gravity for a high-resolution map of the inside of the celestial body.The plan is for the robotic twins to hit the edge of a lunar crater and disintegrate as a separate orbiter records any data kicked up by the impact.
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12-14-12 Marketplace Tech Report
People who don't like the Apple maps that came with the new iPhone--quite a few--can finally go back to Google Maps, which seem to do a better job getting you where you're going. The iPad version is also here soon. But the map battles are not over.
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12-13-12 Marketplace Tech Report
You could believe the advertising about who has the fastest Internet connections or you could believe Netflix. The company's movie streaming service generates useful data about which data service providers are fastest. Now it's sharing its latest list. Plus, General Electric has come up with a new way to cool down electronic devices that's quiet and thin. Dual piezoelectric cooling jets that quietly inhale and exhale. Think fireplace bellows or when you gently waggle the blankets for a bit...
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12-12-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Call it a sign of the end of the world, or a sign of new beginnings...the Pope will likely be trending on Twitter today. Benedict the 16th will be tweeting official answers to followers' questions in 8 different languages. And Facebook maybe a community but it's no longer a democracy. Members were given the chance to vote on changes to the company privacy policy, and though the overwhelming majority did reject the changes--it wasn't big enough.
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12-11-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Researchers in Baltimore have just begun experimenting with a kind of pacemaker for the brain. One patient has the system in already. Meanwhile, it’s gotten to the point that life in America may be practically impossible without a phone. A federally funded program that helps bring telephone landlines to low income people at little or no cost may soon be to bringing super-cheap cell phones to homeless people, among others.
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12-10-12 Marketplace Tech Report
When tech becomes the best friend of the elephant, and the rhinoceros. The World Wildlife Fund is working on electronic systems in its worldwide fight against poachers. An e-book was sold on Twitter this week. Not Amazon...Twitter!
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12-7-12 Marketplace Tech Report
The first cycle of headlines were about Apple's CEO promising to make some iMac desktop computers in the USA. But a day later, some experts are realizing that a $100 million investment does not equal a manufacturing revolution. And a reason to love the tech beat: Where else would you meet a guy who used to be a senior official with the Russian Central Bank, who later moved into currency trading, but now is in Seattle trying to convert not rubles or dollars, but fake gold and diamonds from...
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12-6-12 Marketplace Tech Report
A Stanford study has found that you would think harder about saving for retirement if you could see just what you'd look like when you are older. If you just noticed your Instagram photos started looking weird on Twitter, you weren't alone. It's not a software glitch -- it was more like "shot's [being] fired" between the two social media giants according to Slate technology blogger Will Oremus.
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12-05-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Facebook would like to become that set of shoeboxes in the attic: A place to store all your photographs, even ones you have no intention of sharing with any of your friends. It's calledPhoto Syncand Google-Plus already has something like this. To be clear, you have to opt in. And while we're talking privacy there'sthis new patent, filed by Verizon.
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12-04-12 Marketplace Tech Report
We could be soon enterting a world with no more neon. Wake Forrest phyics professor David Carrollhas just come up with a better way to replace energy-wasting light bulbs, using plastics and nanotechnology. And he's bullish about buy in from consumers. Carroll's plastic lights can be made into rectangles for office ceilings or bulb shapes for home, none of this loopy corkscrew business you see with compact fluorescents. When you factor in the energy savings, he believes they could be 25...
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12-03-12 Marketplace Tech Report
On this day 20 years ago, a British engineer named Neil Papworth typed out "Merry Christmas" on a computer and sent it to the cell phone of a guy at a Vodaphone holiday party. This is said to be the very first SMS text message. Plus a debate begins in Dubai over the extent to which governments will have the authority to reign in, shape, and tax the Internet.
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11-30-12 Marketplace Tech Report
One moment terabytes of data are flowing through the Internet in Syria. The next minute, next-to-nothing. The digital lights went out in the strife-torn country on Thursday, with experts suspecting the Syrian government shut off the net as a tactical measure in its fight against the rebel uprising. You can't hide from marketing that wants you to buy a smartphone. Who are the 40 percent of Americans who remain immune to smartphones and why?
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11-29-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Think of life's most embarrassing moments. Now imagine that embarrassment multiplied thousands of times. At New York University, a technical foul-up meant that that hitting "reply all" to an email sent it to 40,000 people. It all started with one guy who just wanted to forward an email from the school to his mom.Some argue 3D printing is the next manufacturing revolution: Computer printers that go beyond flat images to squirt out three dimensional objects. But could it also start a...
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11-28-12 Marketplace Tech Report
The hotel room lock that uses not a key but a card may present a big problem: A simple hack that can make for an easy burglary. It requires a $50 piece of hardware called a microcontroller. A software engineer showed off how to do it at what's called the "Black Hat" hacking conference last summer. What is a black hat hacker? It's the more mischevious version of a white hat hacker.
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11-27-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Now it's time to get Medieval on your digital lives. What if computers and the Internet are turning us into serfs, and we've become dependent on the protection of feudal lords by the names of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook? According to Internet security expert and author Bruce Schneier, we pledge allegiance to these feudal lords by handing over our data. The hope, at least, is that these lords safeguard our credit card numbers and our privacy.
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11-26-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Remember, people: Alt-Tab. Or on a Mac: Command-Tab. The fastest way to flip from the web page where you are sneaking in Internet shopping to the spreadsheet your boss thinks you are working on. You, of course, wouldneverdo that at work. You also would alsoneverfall victim to online fraud that's so pervasive this time of year. Computer security expertssay onCyber Mondaymany people are prone to what literature professors call a "willing suspension of disbelief." Be careful, that deal might...
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11-23-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Shopping headaches today? Take two tablets... or perhaps four. Tablet computers, the ones you control with your fingers, are considered the big gadgets of the season. The fresh iPad from Apple, Amazon's Kindle Fire, Google's Nexus and the Surface from Microsoft are key options. But which is the best?
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11-22-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Today we start with a story of the sock puppet and the politician that should put us all on alert for digital dirty tricks. In Britain -- as in the U.S. -- here is a debate about so-called payday loans: how much is too much to charge, for very short-term lending to people with low incomes. A British member of parliament pushing to cap these fees found herself getting attacked on Twitter. But it's Thanksgiving, so instead of nasty tweets, let's make the world a better place. One Silicon...
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11-21-12 Marketplace Tech Report
24 million people are expected to board airplanes this week, and all relying on complex computer systems to keep everything sorted out. As United Airlines combines with Continental, it has been struggling with its computer foul ups, including one last week that delayed more than 600 flights. If you think about it, flying is like factory logistics: everyone's hoping for just-in-time delivery. The widget you hope gets there "just in time" is yourself.
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11-20-12 Marketplace Tech Report
We're told the secret of humor is timing. So is the secret of rolling out the Thanksgiving meal. Today's the day for planning the complicated logistics. A food and recipe website has been running scenarios for the holiday food extravaganza and has a piece of software that could be a guide to making sure everything gets ready on time.
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11-19-12 Marketplace Tech Report
What is the Wii U? The first thing you notice is that the system's controller is like a tablet computer that supplements the big image the Wii puts onto your TV. And what good is that? Well, the small screen is enough to keep the kids happy if they want to play with the Wii U while the grown ups are watching TV. In a few weeks, Nintendo will unveil software that also lets the second screen act as a souped up remote control for all the digital content, from music to movies.
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11-16-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Federal accident investigators want to bring robotics to the next new car you buy. The National Transportation Safety Board says all cars, not just fancy ones should come equipped with technology that warns of accidents ahead, slows you down if the car in front of you hits the breaks, or helps you stay in your lane when you start weaving.
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11-15-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Get to know this phrase: Cyber Ops. President Obama has reportedly signed a secret directive that sets out rules for how the military might get aggressive in the face of a cyber attack. The order acknowledges that the military response to a computer attack isn't just battening down the hatches on government computers to stop hackers or malicious software. Washington Post national security correspondent Ellen Nakashima found out about the directive and says it spells out what's considered...
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11-14-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Did you see how former CIA director David Petraeus communicated electronically with his biographer and paramour? It is an email technique supposedly favored by terrorists to cover their tracks. Open an email account using, for instance, Google's Gmail. Write a message, don't send it. Instead, save it as a draft then give your email password to the recipient. She then logs in and reads the message in the draft email folder. The message seems tougher to trace because it's never been sent, like...
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11-13-12 Marketplace Tech Report
It's got to be like a bath of endorphins: A $5 or $10 million check to get your big idea for a YouTube channel off the ground. Google sent out a hundred million dollars of these check in January. But imagine the stress hormones when word comes that people aren't watching enough and the money is getting cut off? Advertising Age is now reporting that more than half the channels are about to get dropped.
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11-12-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Here's a conversion worthy of a Transformers movie: Take buttoned-down, MBA-toting business professionals, and turn them into video game designers. That's the goal of a new book about Gamification, changing behavior of employees and customers by appealing to their sense of fun and their competitive instinct, video game style. Here's another big idea: The interplanetary Internet. The experimental technology has just been used by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station to control a...
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11-9-12 Marketplace Tech Report
To help tap financial donors and to get out the vote, we knew the Obama campaign was crunching big data. But, until now, it wasn't very clear how big. Michael Scherer, White House correspondent for Time got an inside-look at the math wizards, behavioral scientists and other data specialists helping to drive the campaign. His access was given on condition: He not publish anything until it was all over.
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11-8-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Microsoft has filed a patent for the Xbox gaming Kinect controller, and it has nothing to do with how well you dance Gangam style. It appears to be designed for figuring out if too many people are watching something on Xbox -- a DVD, a Blue Ray disc, etc. If it detects a couple of people watching, fine. But what if it's a dozen? That might constitute a real audience, and you'd have to pay more for a lisence to show it like you're a theater.
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11-7-12 Marketplace Tech Report
It is Obama 2.0. The current president of the United States is set to stay in the job until January 20th, 2017. In "tech-years" that is an enormous amount of time, so forecasts are tough. But what are the technology issues that will dominate over the next four years of the new Obama Administration?
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11-6-12 Marketplace Tech Report
On this election day, we'll be looking at a map -- not of swing states that could go red or blue, but a map measuring states' voting technology, and which have the best and the worst chances of messing up the count. For instance, Wisconsin: Good. Georgia: Not so good at making sure votes are recorded in a way that can be audited or recounted if needed. It’s a lot easier to modify electronic records than to modify paper records which is why banking and a lot of other critical activities still...
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11-5-2012 Marketplace Tech Report
Brian Eno, one of the most influential musicians of the last forty years, thinks music can be too one way: Usually, artists create it and your job is to listen to it, over and over. So Eno has released an iPad app called Scape, full of the building blocks of his music that the listener assembles into their own custom compositions. It's part of something he's been calling "generative music."
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11-02-12 Marketplace Tech Report
One of the most common images of this week's hurricane is power-sharing: People huddling with their phones and laptops plugged into power strips set up in bank foyers, coffee shops, or dangled helpfully out windows.But the storm hasn't just shaken up the East. We got a note from a listener a thousand miles from the flooding in New York and New Jersey. Katryn Conlin designs websites in Minnesota, but she and her clients were using Squarespace -- a web company with its bank of computers in...
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11-01-12 Marketplace Tech Report
There is nothing like a superstorm to make two cellphone competitors play nice-nice. ATT and T-Mobile say they have temporarily jury-rigged their network in parts of the Northeast so that customers who can't reach their normal cellphone connection can use the rival's tower without extra charge. It is a response to the hurricane, with the FCC's latest assessment showing more than one in four cell sites remain offline from Virginia through Massachusetts.
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10-31-12 Marketplace Tech Report
With the city's mayor warning it could be days before subway trains are restored, a key question is what are other options for the 5.3 million people that use New York's system on a typical day? Turns out, the Los Alamos National Laboratory has transportation simulation software that can help cities get the planning down to a science. And, how a shakeup at the top of Apple might affect the electronic device in your pocket. The senior executive deemed responsible for the company's clumsy...
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10-30-12 Marketplace Tech Report
In the teeth of a not-so-perfect storm savaging the East Coast, the freer the flow of digital news, the better. So concludes the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Both papers have temporarily taken down their paywalls so that anyone with an internet connection -- not just subscribers with a password -- can use their sites. When the power goes out, computers and internet go out, but many people can still browse news sites with their smart phones, at least until the battery goes.
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10-29-12 Marketplace Tech Report
When a monster storm roars out of the Caribbean as Hurricane Sandy has, lives and billions of dollars can hang in the balance. So what technology is in the pipeline to help us react quicker? And what about predicting the big storms? Weather scientists are working on new "scavenger" satellites. The satellites, which are reportedly only the size of four loaves of bread, will harvest reflections coming from the radio waves already bombarding earth from the legions of existing satellites in...
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10-26-12 Marketplace Tech Report
This weekend marks the opening of the much anticipated sci-fi film Cloud Atlas, and a lot of people are planning on seeing it. Many have already watched a good chunk though -- seven minutes worth. Not through illegal downloads, mind you, but with the help of a giant trailer released online by the film's studio. It's part of a growing strategy in the movie making business: use every technology possible to hype a film.
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10-25-12 Marketplace Tech Report
In a given day, you probably spend more hours gazing at Microsoft than you do your lover. Think about it: Microsoft controls the desktop of more than 80 percent of computers, and many of us have grown accustomed to that face. So when Microsoft proposes to radically change things, as is the case with Windows 8, it is time to pay attention.
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10-24-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Do you need Apple's new iPad Mini, a shrunken version of the iPad? No you don't need it. What you need is love, fulfillment, security and good health. So the question should be, will you want the iPad's smaller sibling? Apple stresses that the smaller screen is still the same shape as the bigger iPad. This means apps for the regular iPad will fit fine. Plus Apple claims web pages fit better on its screens than they do on rival tablets which look a little squeezed by comparison. What the Mini...
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10-23-12 Marketplace Tech Report
The fact that hackers are lurking is no surprise, but what about news that 185 million users might be vulnerable to thieves who want to steal your data? They won't divulge which ones, but European researchers say some apps on Android smartphones leave passwords, bank accounts, credit cards, and other sensitive info vulnerable to theft. Eight percent of apps downloaded by the researchers from the official Google Play store were found to have security flaws.
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10-22-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Boy, could we make a lot of money if we knew who was going win the election in two weeks. All this technology, all of this fearsome data crunching power, you'd think our predictions would be getting better. Nate Silver, who runs the New York Times political blog Five Thirty Eight, says that all the new technology we have at our fingertips doesn't guarentee better predictions. Turns out our computers often help us make bad political predictions more quickly.
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10-19-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Twitter flipped a switch this week and bam: Users in Germany could no longer see the tweets of a banned neo-Nazi group. German cops wrote Twitter trying to get the account shut off completely; Instead the company confined the blackout to Germany. How did they do that? The microblogging social network had already engineered its own system to block content country by country.
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10-18-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Teacher's fantasy: Press a button and your students suddenly have new textbooks in their hands. Amazon thinks it can do this using its Kindle electronic reader. The company has just unveiled something called Whispercast, a free wireless system that lets a teacher's Kindle communicate with student tablets and new books materialize from the ether. Amazon hopes to use this to gain a foothold in the education market where Apple has a head start. Unlike the free-for-all that is the internet,...
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10-17-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Internet search engines are tapping into the brains of your friends -- well, more or less. You'll soon be hearing a lot about what's called "social search." For instance when you do a Google search, hits from your Gmail show up in the results. Google is now expanding that system. Over at rival Bing, the Microsoft search engine, they're doing something more interesting. Do a search for info about, say, athlete's foot and Bing will also check what friends on Facebook are saying about fungus...
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10-16-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Gawker staff writer Adrian Chen got himself into a bit of trouble with some internet users recently, for a story he wrote about one of the most well-known internet trolls on the social news website Reddit. The man Chen profiled, called Violentacrez, had launched and moderated some of Reddit's more controversial community-generated forums, also called subreddits. The trouble for Chen was that, before it was even posted, rumors of his article got him and Gawker banned from Reddit. It was...
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10-15-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Some people think that the convenience of clicking Romney or Obama the same way you buy a song on iTunes could radically increase voter participation. So just what's stopping online voting? Is it simply a lack of enthusiasm or a problem of bureaucratic red tape? The real reason has a lot more to do with online security and just how easy it would be to hack such an online voting system -- or maybe rather how hard it would be to build one that was hack-proof.
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10-12-12 Marketplace Tech Report
There's a new online scam that might freeze you at your keyboard: Software that for all intents and purposes, threatens to shoot your computer if you don't pay. The bad guys infect your system and hold it for ransom by locking up your hard drive with encryption. How to protect against it? A familiar line: backup your files! But let's be honest: how many of us consistently back up our files, really?
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10-11-12 Marketplace Tech Report
A new start up called Lend Up is plunging into a line of work with one of the worst reputations in all of finance. The hope? To transform payday lending. LendUp's Jake Rosenberg says the inspiration is microlending, which has worked in very poor parts of the world. Today, MIT is starting an outfit dedicated to delivering us from our wireless streaming frustrations. The newly minted Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing is working on a technology called Softcast, and the results...
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10-10-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Here's an idea: Put kiosks throughout a mall armed with facial recognition cameras that figure out a shopper's gender and age. The Wall Street Journal says it's happening now at the International Finance Center Mall in Seoul, South Korea. The system then makes shopping recommendations and will soon generate customized ads. Add the Taiwanese military to the list of people who think the new maps on Apple phones and tablets need fixing. Authorities there are unhappy with how clearly a secret...
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10-09-12 Marketplace Tech Report
A law student in Texas wants to make a handgun using a device that prints out 3-D objects using melted plastic. Cody Wilson asked people for money online and got $20,000 to try it. His aim is to prototype this so-called "Wiki Weapon" and make the plans freely available to anyone online. It's open source weaponry. It's also a example of how 3-D printing could change society even as it begins to revolutionize manufacturing.
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10-08-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Ever sold or bought used vinyl records at a yard sale? A startup called ReDigi is trying to do the same online, offering to erase your copy and resell the digital music file to someone else. What's yours, you can resell, right? Turns out, it's not that simple. ReDigi is now facing a court battle with big music company EMI. The massive online multiplayer gameWorld of Warcraft is being cast by some as a political liability. The Republican Party in the state of Maine has put up a website and...
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10-05-12 Marketplace Tech Report
The penalty: $163 million. The crime? Using something called "Scareware." This particular Internet scam delivers fake popups saying, "you've got a virus," followed by a prompt to solve the problem and clean up your computer with the help of your credit card. Of course, once you're that far, they're quite possibly helping you dissassemble your computer's security system as well. This week, the FTC is continuing a multinational crackdown on this particular kind of scam, shutting off phone...
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10-04-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Crowdsourcing: reaching out to the entire planet in search of talent to solve problems. Many argue crowdsourcing is the job market of the future. A New York startup called VoiceBunny is using the power of the crowd to provide voice-overs for online videos, advertisements, and blog podcasts. While the service aims to lower costs and provide faster turn-around for customers, it may threaten the job model of traditional staff announcers.
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10-03-12 Marketplace Tech Report
With the first presidential debate set for tonight in Denver, a question for you: Remember Texas governor Rick Perry's brain freeze in a debate during primary season? How did you see it -- live on TV or later on your laptop or phone? Recent studies have shown that technology is shaking up the way we consume media. We check in with the online news site Buzzfeed and blogger site Tumblr to find out their plans to cover the debate for today's digital, instant, and social age.
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10-02-12 Marketplace Tech Report
What if the data used by your Smartphone to browse the web, check email and Facebook and look for nearby restaurants were free? A new service called FreedomPop hopes to go up against ATT and Verizon's paid data plans by offering customers 500 megabytes per month for free. And, how about electronics that get implanted in the body during an operation and dissolve when no longer needed? This is still early-stage according to an article in the latest edition of the journal "Science," but it...
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10-01-12 Marketplace Tech Report
A new report says the U.S. Justice Department allowed law enforcement agencies to examine more private data in 2010-2011 than in the entire previous decade. The kind of surveillance allowance isn't new -- but the kinds of data the government is being allowed to pull has changed. And while digital technology has disrupted the old way of doing business for many industrites -- like music and books -- it's taken a while with one near-essential, wine. But Amazon may try selling wine online, again.
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09-28-12 Marketplace Tech Report
People are spending more time sharing photos on Instagram than they are writing or reading on Twitter. The new numbers are a surprise, given how Twitter-style microblogging is supposed to change the way we interrelate. But sending a picture of Dmitri the goldfish via Instagram?
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09-27-12 Marketplace Tech Report
It's called "Additive Manufacturing." There's a snappier name for it: 3D Printing. Til now we've tended to make objects by cutting, grinding, chiseling away at metal or wood. Now we are entering the age of making things by adding, not subtracting.The Obama administration thinks this sort of thing creates jobs, and wants to get 3D printing to a place near you.
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09-26-12 Marketplace Tech Report
The once-mighty social media site Myspace has a slick video showing off its new look. And pop star Justin Timberlake likes it so much he's endorsing it... though it should be noted that Justin's also a major investor. But will some celebrity power and a thorough redesign make Myspace a go-to spot again for online users?
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09-25-12 Marketplace Tech Report
With all this information technology at our disposal, it's striking how getting to the truth of a matter can still be so tough. Two tech stories from opposite sides of the world today remind us how even in 2012 the flow of information is still tightly controlled. First, Iran, where authorities seem to be restricting access to some big websites. And part two, from China: that brawl-slash-unrest-slash-riot involving employees of one of that country's huge technology factories the other night.
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09-24-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Let's start with the anatomy of a troll: First you email. Then you follow up with a text. Then, if all else fails, you place a phone call. All of this to get your kid in college to register to vote. Technology to the rescue? Turbovote is of one of a host of websites that try to make sure you are on the voter rolls ahead of the election... which is nice, but Turbovote's real strength is that it won't give up on you after this election day November 6.
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09-21-12 Marketplace Tech Report
You know those online display ads that seem to know where you've shopped on the web recently? Facebook had been making the most money on them, but new forecastssuggest Google will earn the most revenue from display ads this year. What does this clash of titans mean for mere mortals? For one, Google's lead isn't just coming from tech. There are real human beings hard at work selling those ads. Google has about 2,000 people working in New York. And about half of them are marketing folks.
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09-20-12 Marketplace Tech Report
North Carolina is taking a hard line against kids who bully teachers online. There's a new law with fines up to $1000 for students putting up a fake Facebook site about the teacher, no tweeting private or sexual info about the teacher or other school employees or doctoring photos. Plus, here's the definition of a hot ticket: Every monthNew York Tech Meetup sells out in just four minutes...and the theater's a big one at NYU. Venture capitalists are here along with engineers, designers, and...
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09-19-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Where is the New York tech scene, and what does it feel like?One way to find out is to take a tour.You could your tour on Wall Street, home of all the big financial firms. Or, you could begin it in the lobby of the swanky Ace Hotel. The long tables are always crowded with young, hip New Yorkers with laptops, headphones and four-dollar coffees. Then, continue on to a very different slice of the New York tech scene, found at 10 Jay Street, in an office building in Brooklyn overlooking the...
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09-18-12 Marketplace Tech Report
One fresh headline is declaring: "The personal computer is dead." Might be a bit of an overstatement -- but the evidence is that now more memory chips are going into mobile devices than are going into desktops or laptops. The real world lessons here for kids who want to make tech a career? Bedrock assumptions are smashed every couple of years, and we have no idea what the computers of the future will look like. But they can prepare.
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09-17-2012 Marketplace Tech Report
For years now, Silicon Valley has been known as the hub of tech development in the U.S., if not in the world. But as the new Marketplace Tech Report launches in New York, we take a look at how that city -- known more for its finance and fashion -- can also laying claim to a serious culture of tech innovation. In New York's Meatpacking district, it's less about wholesale beef and more about young technology firms.
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09-14-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Your Amazon purchase could soon cost you more. On Saturday, the online retailer will start charging sales tax to folks in California. Meaning that here in Los Angeles, a $500 TV is going to cost an extra $44. And, it's not the only state where tax-free shopping is ending.
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09-13-12 Marketplace Tech Report
After months of speculation and rumors and waiting, Apple unveiled the Phone 5. (You probably heard.) So did the announcement live up to expectations? What should consumers be aware of as far as their own contracts and their own situation goes before they make this jump? And what is the iPhone-less T-Mobile doing to entice customers? (Hint: BYOP)
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09-12-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Today in the world of tech: Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, and more Apple -- as the company unveils its new iPhone. But before you get swept up in the Apple breathlessness, and rush to preorder, you might want to stop and think about exactly what you're buying into. Because when you buy a device these days, you’re not just buying a gadget -- there are whole ecosystems of products and apps and content that are separate for each phone or device.
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09-11-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Fall is video game season. There’s a long list of games coming out in the next few months, many of which let you decide if you want to play as a good guy or a bad guy. Do right or do wrong? The choices aren’t new. What is: "The Walking Dead, "a game that tracks and publishes the choices players make. Plus, games of all kinds are getting a new boost from the crowdfunding site Kickstarter.
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09-10-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Schools in Texas are testing out radio frequency ID, or RFID tags, that allow easy identification and tracking of students. The government pays schools based on the number of students that show up and school officials say that the RFID tags will allow for more accurate tracking of attendance. Also on the show, meet the Usain Bolt’s greatest contender -- a robot cheetah.
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09-07-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Amazon has added new weapons to its arsenal as it tries to take on Apple in the tablet computer war. Several new versions of its Kindle Fire tablet were announced yesterday as the company gears up for holiday shopping season. Plus, it's the last show from John Moe, Larissa Anderson and Marc Sanchez. They look back at their favorite Tech Report moments.
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09-06-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Here's what we know: There's been a hack that involved information about at least 12 million Apple devices being posted online. It's been in the news and it sounds kind of scary, especially because if you have an iPhone or an iPad, data about that gadget could be involved. First thing: Don't freak out. Second: Keep changing your passwords.
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09-05-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Apple has announced an event for next Tuesday. It's expected to debut a new iPhone. Apple fanatics will go bonkers, count on it. But another phone shows up today: Nokia's new Windows Phone. You won't see long lines to buy it. Windows Phones are a dud, making up less than 3 percent of the market, which is weird when you think of how ubiquitous Windows is on computers. So what problems are the phones are facing?
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09-04-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Are we prepared for a world where people print guns? We better be; Advances in 3D printing have led to difficult issues for law and government. In this episode we talk with Jonathan Zittrain, a law and computer science professor at Harvard and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet. He explains how 3D-printing technology is being used to make guns and gun parts, and explores how the do-it-yourself gun industry might be regulated in the future.
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09-03-12 Marketplace Tech Report
In honor of Labor Day, we have the story of one of the hardest working symbols around; the @ sign, that we use when we email and when we tweet. William Allman is the author of “The Accidental History of the @ Symbol,” in this month's Smithsonian magazine. He offers some interesting tidbits on the @ symbol.
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08-31-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Computer security experts are ringing alarms about Java. Nope. Not the coffee. Java the piece of software that you probably have on your computer. Turns out, Java has some pretty major security flaws that hackers can and are exploiting. Plus, we take a look at the future at the IFA trade show, a consumer electronics show in Berlin going on now.
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08-30-12 Marketplace Tech Report
So just how much privacy can you expect for your Twitter account? That's the question in an ongoing New York lawsuit involving an Occupy Wall Street activist named Malcolm Harris. He was charged with disorderly conduct. Prosecutors want access to his tweets. This week, Twitter appealed a ruling that it had to hand them over. So where do privacy rights begin and end with social networking sites like Twitter?
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08-29-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Know how you have to turn off your Kindle when you're on a plane, at least when you take off and land? The FAA is asking for public comment on those rules. There are two ways digital devices cause problems -- one through radio frequency and one through Wi-Fi frequency. Is one worse than the other? Are either harmful?
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08-28-12 Marketplace Tech Report
There's a flood of new smartphones and tablets coming on the market. Microsoft, Amazon, Nokia, Samsung and Apple are all reportedly gearing up for fall releases. Part of deciding which one to buy is about who has the better apps. Turns out Apple's patent win over Samsung could affect the answer to that question -- especially for Android app developers.
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08-27-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Samsung's devices will have to start looking and acting differently. That's after jurors handed Apple a billion dollar win over Samsung on Friday, in a game-changing patent lawsuit. So what does this mean for consumers? There will be changes to how the devices work, which will will affect even the apps you can use. It got us wondering whether we'd see the real-life introduction of the Pyramid tablet, from the TV show The Office.
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08-24-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Mitt Romney has announced a new energy plan he says will lead to greater energy independence if he's elected. The plan calls for states to have greater authority to allow drilling on federal lands within their borders. What would that drilling mean for those lands? Drilling technology has made huge leaps forward, but it's still drilling and still has impact.
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08-23-12 Marketplace Tech Report
A group of consumer advocate organizations has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that several companies, including McDonald's and General Mills, are violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. There are concerns about email swapping among children, and what happens to the children's email addresses that are collected by companies. And for the most part, children aren't aware of the security issues that come with browsing the Internet.
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08-22-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Any computer hooked up to the Internet is a potential victim of malicious hackers. Of course, it's one thing to be hacked on a desktop PC, it's quite another to be hacked in your car, traveling at 70 miles an hour, with a computer that controls your brakes and steering. It's not time to freak out -- yet. But automakers and security experts will have to learn to evolve faster than the bad guys.
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08-21-12 Marketplace Tech Report
At some point, you're going to buy a new phone. Events today in a San Jose courtroom are going to have a big effect on how that goes as lawyers for Apple and Samsung make closing arguments in the patent lawsuit between the companies. If Apple wins, the adjustments to the smartphone market might not be that huge. If Samsung wins, any company making Android gadgets can keep making them look like Apple gadgets.
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08-20-12 Marketplace Tech Report
The research company Gartner has issued its annual Hype Cycle Report, detailing when different technologies will become part of daily life. Expect paying for stuff with your smartphone to become an everyday thing, and 3D printing too. Jetpacks, though? Don't ask. Plus, a tech reporter who's taking a year off the Internet -- no web, no email, no texting -- and is happier because of it.
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08-17-12 Marketplace Tech Report
The American Civil Liberties Union is filing information requests with nearly 500 police departments in 38 states having to do with License Plate Reader cameras, or LPRs. Apparently, tens of thousands of them are being used around the country. The cameras help police spot cars that may be wanted, but according to the ACLU, the problem lies in the fact that the cameras store people's license plate numbers for a long time, and there's not that much known about how the technology is actually...
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08-16-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Target, Walmart, Lowe's, 7-11, Best Buy, a whole bunch of big retailers are teaming up on a new mobile payment system. It's called Merchant Customer Exchange or MCX and it will let you pay for things using your smartphone. They're not the only ones trying this. Google has the Google Wallet system. ATT, Verizon and T-Mobile are planning to launch one soon as well. So why is everyone racing to join in? It's all about being most popular, and eventually getting the most data from you.
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08-15-12 Marketplace Tech Report
On social media platforms, the candidates can't say enough about the economy. But what citizens are retweeting and sharing and liking isn't mostly the economy, but other issues which tend to be ones that people feel passionately about like immigration, women's rights -- issues where people feel a personal connection to them. The research indicates that voters might be in the mood for a broader discussion.
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08-14-12 Marketplace Tech Report
Google says if it gets enough complaints about something, it will slide those sites lower in search results, make them harder to discover. That something this time is websites that transmit non-copyrighted material -- bootleg music and movies on file-sharing sites. That's because Google needs to score points with the entertainment industry. It wants to sell more music and movies through its Google Play store. It wants cable channels to play along with Google TV and with Google Fiber. And it...
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08-13-12 Marketplace Tech Report
A new study reveals we spend $20 billion a year on fighting spam. The worst part? Spam doesn't bring in that much money. Annual revenues for the whole industry at just $200 million -- 1 percent of what we spend fighting it. But, time may be running out for the weird business model of the pesky inbox fillers.
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