Pandora’s relationship with music labels hasn’t exactly been cozy, with more than a few legal disputes over royalties . Today, though, it’s extending an olive branch. The internet radio service has forged a deal with the Merlin rights agency’s 20, 000-plus indie labels to help their artists get discovered. The move will use Pandora’s music discovery techniques to bring “additional exposure” to these musicians when they’re relevant to listeners. They’ll also have direct access to playback data (to help decide on set lists and tour locations), and they’ll get custom communication channels to reach fans. The agreement is big, whether you’re an up-and-coming artist or just want to hear music beyond the big three record companies. Merlin’s labels represent about 10 percent of streaming music worldwide, so you’re likely to notice if you listen to enough tunes. Of course, this isn’t quite a selfless gesture. On top of the extra attention it draws to Pandora, the pact gives the company a better shot at offering service outside of the US. It has offerings in Australia and New Zealand, but the lack of direct artist connections has made it hard to expand elsewhere. That may prove crucial — Pandora has to compete against international heavyweights like Apple and Spotify in the online radio space, so it might not want to depend on one country for its success. [Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images] Filed under: Internet Comments Via: CNET Source: Pandora (1) , (2)

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Pandora deal helps indie musicians get noticed on internet radio

Bragging rights are a tricky thing. It’s easy to say that you’re the first or best, but backing up that claim is another matter. Take MSI’s brand new WS60 , for example. The company bills the 15-inch laptop as the “world’s thinnest and lightest mobile workstation, ” and it’s definitely on the featherweight side at 0.78 inches thick and 4.36 pounds. There’s only one problem: it’s actually a runner-up. Dell’s Precision M3800 is both slimmer (0.71 inches) and lighter (4.15 pounds), so that’s the machine you want in your bag if sheer portability is the major deciding factor. Thankfully for MSI, there are plenty of reasons why you might pick the WS60 instead. It’s packing a more powerful Quadro K2100M graphics chipset, for one thing. You’ll also get more storage out of the box (a 128GB SSD plus a 1TB hard drive) and a Thunderbolt port for high-speed peripherals. There’s even the gaming-friendly keyboard, networking and speakers from the closely related GS60 , just in case you’re itching to play Titanfall after you’re done with your 3D modelling work. Just be prepared to pony up if MSI’s system is more your style. The base model with a 1080p display and a 2.5GHz Core i7 processor will cost you $2, 300, while opting for a “3K” (2, 880 x 1, 620) screen and an extra SSD ups the price to $2, 600. Filed under: Laptops Comments Source: MSI

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MSI (almost) has the thinnest pro laptop ever

Remember Cryptolocker? It was a clever but terrible piece of malware that encrypted files on your PC, charging you a ransom to get them back. The leader of the gang behind to be behind the software is now awaiting trial, but that won’t help around 500, 000 people who still can’t get at their prized documents. That’s where FireEye and Fox IT, two of the companies who helped take the gang down, come in. Using the seized databases, the pair have built Decrypt Cryptolocker , a web portal where you supply your email address and one encrypted file, and it’ll give you a recovery program and master key that’ll restore control of your files. Filed under: Internet Comments Via: BBC News Source: Decrypt Cryptolocker

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Security firms help Cryptolocker malware victims get their files back

Earlier this year, I boarded a United flight from Newark to San Diego. After passing the first few rows, a young boy turned to his mother and asked, “Why aren’t there any TVs?” “It’s probably an older plane, ” she responded — but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The aircraft, a 737-900 with Boeing’s Sky Interior (a Dreamliner-esque recessed ceiling lit with blue LEDs), had only been flying for a few weeks. It looked new, and it even had that “new plane smell” most passengers would only associate with a factory-fresh auto. But despite the plane’s clean and bright appearance, the family only noticed the glaring absence of seat-back screens. To them, our 737 might as well have rolled off the assembly line in 1984. Dozens of other passengers made similar remarks as they walked by my seat, and many more probably inquired with a flight attendant or aired their complaints on Facebook or Twitter. I had a similar experience while flying the same route last week. I was seated next to a corporate executive who normally travels on United’s better-equipped international fleet — he was clearly unhappy about the entertainment situation, and, like the mother I heard earlier in the year, assumed that our brand-spankin’-new 737 predated the 21st century. It’s reasonable to assume a new plane would be delivered with the latest technology, but unfortunately that isn’t the case. That new plane smell The Newark-to-San Diego flight, scheduled for more than six hours from gate to gate, is a prime candidate for airline-provided entertainment. If you don’t come prepared, those raggedy catalogs and magazines in the seat-back pocket can occupy an hour or two at best. Unfortunately, airlines don’t make it easy to figure out whether you’ll have on-demand content, live video or absolutely nothing at all on board. Our flight was equipped with Exede , the fastest WiFi in the sky , provided by the speedy ViaSat-1 satellite and installed by LiveTV , the same company responsible for outfitting United’s 737 fleet with seat-back DirecTV. But leisure travelers seem to be most interested in video, as low quality as it may be. Instead of the DirecTV logo that occasionally appears in the entertainment section of United’s flight status page, the flight only listed onboard WiFi, along with a promise from the airline: “Personal device entertainment is coming soon, ” which will enable you to view content streaming from the plane using your own laptop, smartphone or tablet. Boeing delivers all of United’s 737s without entertainment or WiFi — instead, a third party handles the installation. But since airlines want to get their new planes into service immediately, they usually schedule installations, which take an aircraft out of commission for several days, for a few weeks or months down the line. That means hundreds of bored passengers every day, and a negative perception of the plane and the airline. Streaming video, like the version United’s planning to launch, is very attractive to airlines. Seat-back displays cost carriers thousands of dollars a pop, and outfitting an entire aircraft is very expensive, even before you factor in maintenance and costs to upgrade once a better solution becomes available. Displays at each seat also add significant weight, which causes each plane to burn pricey fuel more quickly. So, instead of installing TVs, many carriers are opting to let passengers use the tablets and laptops they already have to access content on a server in the aircraft’s belly. Bring your own Device It’s a means to the same end. You get to be entertained, and the airline can collect that coveted ancillary revenue. Even though it’s rarely in HD, the content you watch on your tablet or laptop will often look much better than what you’d get with an aging seat-back screen, and passengers on red-eye flights won’t have to deal with the light from unused displays filling the cabin and keeping them awake. You will be on the hook for power (many planes now have outlets installed at every seat), and your device will likely get in the way during the meal service, if there is one, but the trade-offs are worthwhile, for airlines and passengers alike. Gogo, the most prolific in-flight internet provider, also leads the market when it comes to streaming-entertainment service. More than 1, 500 American, Delta , US Airways and Scoot (an Asian low-cost carrier) planes have Gogo Vision installed, and Aeromexico, Alaska and JAL are scheduled to carry it, too. Most of the planes with Gogo’s WiFi have Vision available as well — the company can use the existing WiFi infrastructure, adding only a content loader in the cabin for maintenance to refresh movies and television shows using a USB flash drive. Alaska Airlines is planning to install a unique version of the system that excludes internet access, so passengers can still stream content on routes without coverage. A USB flash duplicator copies streaming content onto loader drives at Gogo’s Chicago headquarters. Global Eagle, the company behind the Row 44 satellite internet installed on Southwest’s fleet, takes streaming content one step further with live TV. If your plane is connected to the web, you’ll also have access to streaming television content. Dish provides that service on Southwest’s 737s, where you can choose from 19 live channels and up to 75 recorded TV episodes on each flight. You can also purchase movies for $5 each, with more than 25 titles available on each plane. Like Gogo, Global Eagle can stream content to customers on planes that aren’t connected to the web. That product, called WISE, is already installed on some of Philippine Airlines’ planes, and it’s scheduled to launch with a second Asian carrier soon. LiveTV is another major in-flight WiFi player in the US. That company was formerly a JetBlue subsidiary, but was recently acquired by Thales Group, a French aerospace conglomerate. Unfortunately, LiveTV executives, who now report to Thales, were unable to detail their future offerings, but we do know the company has been hard at work installing speedy Ka-band satellite WiFi on JetBlue’s A320s and United’s 737s. The airlines play a big part in how you use this technology, too. While Global Eagle, Gogo and LiveTV install the systems used to provide content, each carrier sets pricing. Most movies and TV shows available through Delta Studio, a Gogo service, are free for international, First Class and Economy Comfort passengers, for example, though other airlines can charge anywhere from $1 to $7 per program, depending on pricing models and studio arrangements. If you’re able to stream content from a third-party site, such as Hulu, you’ll likely pay an upcharge for faster in-flight service, so even if you don’t purchase programming from the airline, it’ll still collect a fee. Streaming from the web JetBlue’s trying something different with its Fly-Fi in-flight internet. Instead of blocking access to bandwidth-heavy streaming sites, the airline’s allowing you to view content (even in HD) from a variety of websites, assuming you’re willing to pay a relatively high fee. ViaSat provides the satellite service, which is capable of supporting many passengers streaming video simultaneously. Even if you watch several movies over the course of a flight, however, it probably isn’t worthwhile to pay the $9-per-hour fee (that adds up to $45 for a single five-hour flight) — you’ll end up spending less if you download rentals while you’re still on the ground. As for Gogo, Chief Commercial Officer Ash ElDifrawi expects future generations of its service to enable streaming content from outside the plane, be that live television or media already available over the internet, through sites like Hulu and Netflix. Gogo’s current air-to-ground service isn’t fast enough for HD streaming, but the company’s next-generation GTO (ground-to-air) product should support it. That satellite system could also enable the company to offer live TV, like the Global Eagle service you’ll find on Southwest’s planes, but Gogo’s next-generation infrastructure is still a few years out. “At some point, we see an opportunity for products like IPTV, music and other media content, ” ElDifrawi said. “We also see an opportunity for streaming through connectivity as more bandwidth becomes available.” Of course, a TV-less future impacts the flight crew, especially just before takeoff — without seat-back or overhead displays, crews will need to do a live safety demo before each flight. That means reading a script over the PA as flight attendants throughout the cabin show you how to fasten your seatbelt, use an oxygen mask and put on a life vest. It’s a time-consuming task and removes flight attendants from other duties, such as checking the cabin thoroughly before takeoff. While inconvenient for the crew, the pros still outweigh the cons for airlines that barely break even on any given flight. Revenue from streaming services could impact a route’s profitability, while a screen-free cabin helps the carrier trim some fat, resulting in a lighter aircraft that burns less fuel. As with in-flight WiFi, it may take a while for streaming services to become a compelling option for all passengers, but the next time you board a plane that doesn’t have TVs, know that the future looks very bright. [Photo credit: Boeing (empty cabin and flight attendant)] Filed under: Home Entertainment , Transportation Comments

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Why your brand new plane doesn’t have a seat-back TV

Since the beginning of time — or at least since email was invented — most email services have required the use of non-accented characters from the Latin alphabet for each individual’s address. It’s inconvenient for those who don’t natively use that alphabet, which means that more than half of the world’s population have been frustrated. Here comes Google to the rescue: Gmail (and soon to be Calendar, we’re told) now recognizes email addresses that have accented characters or use non-Latin alphabets, so you’ll be able to send and receive correspondence to these types of addresses as much as you want, and soon Gmail will let you create non-Latin accounts to call your own. It’s all thanks to an email standard established by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) two years ago. Now it’s simply up to each individual email service to officially support that standard. Gmail isn’t the first email service to give it a shot. A provider in Taiwan is currently conducting a public trial, and Chinese email addresses began surfacing as early as 2003. But with the standard now set, we’ll likely start seeing more providers follow Google’s footsteps. [ Image credit: Getty Images, Google ] Filed under: Misc , Software , Google Comments Source: Google Blog

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Gmail now recognizes email addresses from non-Latin alphabets

You may want to be careful about the conversations you hold in the future; if you’re near a window, someone might be listening in. A team of researchers from Adobe, Microsoft and MIT have developed a visual microphone algorithm that picks up audio by looking for microscopic vibrations in video footage. The technique exploits the rolling shutter effect in digital cameras (where the sensor reads pixels one row at a time) to detect sound-related movements that might otherwise be invisible; the only gear you need is a camera that can record at high frame rates. It’s good enough to capture singing from a bag of potato chips, and musical tones from a potted plant. Don’t worry about optical eavesdropping just yet. The experiment only got accurate reproduction with specialized cameras that shoot at up to 6, 000 frames per second; an off-the-shelf device with 60fps recording can identify people’s voices, but it’s hard to make out words. Provided the technology reaches fruition, it would most likely be used by investigators that want to hear what suspects say when they’re not on the phone. It would be useful for more than surveillance, too, as team member Abe Davis believes the visual mic could identify a material’s properties without making contact. It’s definitely clever tech — let’s just hope that it’s used more for science than snooping. Filed under: Cameras , Science , Microsoft Comments Source: MIT (1) , (2)

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Visual microphone can pick up speech from a bag of potato chips

If you saw the Teague X/Sizemore “Denny” e-bike last week and voted for it in the Oregon Manifest design contest, pat yourself on the back — it just won. As a result, what was merely a design experiment will now become an actual retail product built by Fuji Bikes , available to buy in 2015. To bring you up to speed, the Seattle-inspired cycle grabbed our attention with its removable handlebar locking system and electric drive pedal assist. Other techie features include an automatic gear shifter, removable battery, minimalistic “fenders, ” integrated storage and a full set of lights. Along with the clean lines, that helped it best four other formidable entries and launch it as a product. There’s no word on pricing yet, but Fuji said it has “exactly the kind of innovations we hoped would come from (the contest)” and expects it to sell well. Filed under: Transportation Comments

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You’ll soon get the chance to buy Teague’s e-bike of the future

Google has long used automatic image scanning to fight online child exploitation, but it’s now clear that this monitoring applies to email, too. Houston police have arrested a registered sex offender after Google tipped them off to illegal photos of children in his Gmail account. The notice only led to a warrant at first, but it helped the cops discover locally stored images that they wouldn’t have found otherwise. The bust is notable in that there were no public clues to the offender’s activity, such as a website; besides the people he contacted, only Google would have known what he was doing online. That will undoubtedly raise concerns for some, since it wasn’t immediately apparent that Mountain View’s servers were checking Gmail images. However, the activity isn’t a complete surprise. Google’s terms of service already indicate that the company is analyzing Gmail for both targeted ads and security — while illegal pornography isn’t explicitly mentioned in the terms, it only makes sense that this content would be considered as well. Filed under: Internet , Google Comments Via: Business Insider Source: KHOU

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Google email scan helps police arrest a sex offender

If BioShock Infinite ‘s brief stopover in Rapture wasn’t enough to sate your Randian desires, 2K Games’ China studio is currently in the process of moving the original BioShock from last-gen consoles and PC to iOS. Like XCOM: Enemy Unknown before it , BioShock is a “premium” iOS game and thus carries a “premium” price — that price is unknown thus far, but we’d put it somewhere in the $10 – $30 range. As one 2K Games rep told us in an interview late last week, “It is a seven year old game.” So perhaps on the lower-end of that scale, then. Other than that, well, it’s BioShock . Would you kindly head past the break if you’d like to know more? Yes, BioShock doesn’t look as good on iOS. It’s the truth. In-game lighting and shadows are cut down pretty dramatically, as are art assets. The grandeur of Rapture is distinctly less grand , which sucks some of the life out of one of my personal favorites. The first thing you’ll notice is “iOS fire.” The game’s opening — a plane crash — puts main character Jack in the ocean surrounded by some hideously ugly fire animations. It’s the first hint that the iOS version of Rapture has been shrunken down to fit within Apple’s app store file size limitation, and it’s a nagging issue that I couldn’t shake in my hands-on time. But maybe you haven’t played BioShock before and you’re not overloaded with lofty expectations (like me). First things first, you’re in for a treat! Second, even without my lofty expectations, you should probably play this on a couch with an Xbox 360. BioShock is a great example of world-building in video games, and the iOS experience is a subpar representation. Simply put, between the lessened scale and the delivery medium, BioShock iOS is distinctly less immersive. The good news is that it plays perfectly fine, even with touch controls. Admittedly, the touch control situation is not ideal. Like Grand Theft Auto ‘s mobile ports, virtual buttons appear contextually on screen. Also like Grand Theft Auto ‘s mobile ports, I found myself scrambling to figure out which virtual button to push as a gang of enemies descended on me. “But Ben, ” you ask with a hint of hesitation in your voice. “Why not use a bluetooth controller?” Well, you can. And I tried that with a MOGA bluetooth controller. That totally works. Here’s the thing: I don’t carry a bluetooth gamepad on me. Do you? Does anyone? Okay, does anyone who isn’t a crazy person? You can play BioShock iOS with a gamepad. But will anyone? In terms of nuts and bolts, BioShock iOS doesn’t have any of the extra downloadable content that the console/PC version has. It requires a newer iOS device — iPad Air, iPad Mini 2, iPad 4, iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C or iPhone 5 — and straight up won’t run on earlier devices (says 2K). It’ll arrive sometime this summer at an unknown, “premium” price. Filed under: Cellphones , Gaming , Handhelds , Tablets , Software , Mobile , Apple Comments

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The original BioShock is headed to iOS this summer

The cops may be eager to experiment with drones for tracking bombs and (possibly) suspects, but they’re apparently not that keen on people turning the tables. The LAPD claims that activist Daniel Saulmon was trespassing when he flew a machine over a Hollywood police station’s parking lot. He was spying on “private property, ” Lieutenant Michael Ling claims. As you might imagine, Saulmon (who has a history of recording officers on the ground) disagrees. He didn’t step inside, after all, and he contends that law enforcement doesn’t have the same privacy rights as individuals. Saulmon wasn’t busted for his drone flight, and it’s not clear that the LAPD can do much at this stage. It’s a public institution, and the Hollywood location has a see-through fence — it’s not as if the police were guarding a secret operation. He wasn’t interfering with their activities, either. There’s a chance that California and other states will draft rules limiting what both civilians and cops can do with unmanned craft, but it looks like these confrontations between cops and accountability advocates could continue so long as a gray area exists. Filed under: Robots Comments Via: Ars Technica Source: LA Times , Tom Zebra (YouTube)

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Los Angeles police don’t want you flying drones over their stations