Why teens are tiring of Facebook

To understand where teens like to spend their virtual time nowadways, just watch them on their smartphones. Their world revolves around Instagram, the application adults mistook for an elevated photography service, and other apps decidely less old-fashioned than Mark Zuckerberg's main kingdom.

And therein lies one of Facebook's biggest challenges: With more than 1 billion users worldwide and an unstated mission to make more money, Facebook has become a social network that's often too complicated, too risky, and, above all, too overrun by parents to give teens the type of digital freedom or release they crave.

For tweens and teens, Instagram -- and, more recently, SnapChat, an app for sending photos and videos that appear and then disappear -- is the opposite of Facebook: simple, seemingly secret, and fun. Around schools, kids treat these apps like pot, enjoyed in low-lit corners, and all for the undeniable pleasure and temporary fulfillment of feeling cool. Facebook, meanwhile, with its Harvard dormroom roots, now finds itself scrambling to keep up with the tastes of the youngest trendsetters -- even as it has a foothold on millions of them since it now owns Instagram.

Asked about the issue, a Facebook spokesperson would only say, "We are gratified that more than 1 billion people, including many young people, are using Facebook, to connect and share."

The data doesn't exist to slap a value on Facebook's teen problem. But we know -- from observing teens, talking to parents and analysts, and from a few company statements -- that age doesn't become Facebook with this group.

In recent weeks, Facebook has told us twice about its teen-appeal problem. When it filed its annual report, it warned investors for the first time that younger users are turning to other services, particularly Instagram, as a substitute for Facebook.

Then, earlier this week, Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman admitted that Instagram, an application he described as popular among the "younger generation," is a "formidable competitor" to Facebook. Which seems odd until you realize that the profit-hungry Facebook isn't yet making a dime from Instagram.

"What we do know is that Instagram is already a very popular service that continues to grow rapidly, and we believe, based on the information that we have, that it's quite popular among these kinds of users that you're asking about, the younger generation. It is very important for Facebook to build products that are useful to those users, and to build products that they feel comfortable ... they can have a good experience with. Definitely high on the list of priorities for us."

The under-13 tween crowd, including one CNET editor's daughter, technically isn't allowed to use the application, as dictated by the terms of service and a federal restriction (although the law is changing this July in ways that will make it easier for kids to join). Yet kids found Instagram anyway, largely because their parents wouldn't let them join Facebook, argues Altimeter Group principal analyst Brian Solis. Teens 13 and up joined Instagram, he said, because Facebook became "too great" a social network where they're now connected to their grandparents.

Isn't it ironic, as Alanis Morissete would say, that Facebook, the one-time underground drug of choice for college kids is now so readily available and acceptable that we all do it in broad daylight, and worse, at work? Sure, a 12-year-old skateboarder can derive some value from Facebook, but in the whitewashed kind of way that the rest of us use LinkedIn.

"We take pictures of food and landscapes," Solis said, "but teenagers use [Instagram] to share pictures of themselves ... the more you share, the greater the reaction, and the more you push outside comfort zones, the more people react."

A teen's Instagram account.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Michelle Meyers/CNET)

Tweens and teens are addicted to the idea of eliciting more reactions in the form of likes, followers, and comments, he said. They employ like-for-like photo tactics, use a myriad of hashtags to get their pictures in front of more users, and promote their desire for additional followers in their profiles.

Ascertaining the extent of Instagram's popularity with teens is particularly tricky -- until you talk to them. And some data on the phenomena does exist. Nielsen, one of the few companies to measure teens' online behavior, can only track web usage for this youngest demographic. The analytics firm told me that Instagram was the top photography website among U.S. teens ages 12 to 17 with 1.3 million teens visiting the website during December 2012. By the analytics firm's count, roughly one in 10 online teens in the U.S. visited Instagram in their browser during the month.

Anecdotally, the evidence overwhelmingly points to Instagram as the preferred social network of tweens and teens. A personal relationship provided me with a direct lens to view how two teenage boys used the application in their everyday lives. I also chatted with other kids, some the children of friends, and others I found through friends of friends.

Beth Blecherman's 14-year-old son, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, downloaded Instagram when he was 13 because all of his friends were using it as their social network. Marisa, a 16-year-old girl who attends Cathedral City High School in southern California, has been using Instagram for more than a year. She said that a majority of her high school friends are using the application. And a San Diego friend's 12-year-old son is so hooked on the application that he was in tears when his account was temporarily suspended earlier this year.

"Teens recognized Instagram as a social network before anyone else," Solis said. "Everyone else treated it as a camera app."

At the same time, Instagram could disappear from teen consciousness just as easily at it arrived. Remember: Instagram was only 17 months old when Zuckerberg bought it in the weeks prior to Facebook's IPO last May. Parents are starting to understand that their kids haven't developed a fascination with the application to share artistic photos of landscapes and architecture. All of the teens I spoke to have watchful parents who keep an observant eye on their Instagram accounts.

Teens searching for a cyber hangout to call their own Adam McLane, a former youth pastor who hosts educational social media seminars for parents of teens in San Diego, told me that his sessions are dominated by talk of Instagram, with frenzied parents fearful that their innocent young ones are participating in unsavory activities such as bullying or posting inappropriate photos.

This Snapchat message will self-destruct in seven seconds.

(Credit:
Snapchat)

The parent factor alone could send kids fleeing to other applications such as Snapchat, Pheed, and Tumblr, all of which appear to have strong teen followings. Investors are betting on Snapchat in particular, which sends more than 60 million short-lived messages daily, because they don't want to miss out on the next Facebook.

"Teens are looking for a place they can call their own," Danah Boyd, a senior researcher that studies how young people use social media for Microsoft, told me. "Rather than all flocking en masse to a different site, they're fragmenting across apps and engaging with their friends using a wide array of different tools. ... A new one pops up each week. What's exciting to me is that I'm seeing teenagers experiment."

This experimental nature puts Facebook in the tricky position of reacting to the whims of transitory teens. Take Facebook's impromptu release of Poke, a mobile phone application, modeled after Snapchat, for sending messages that self-destruct moments later. The company's most reactionary move, however, was its surprise purchase of Instagram, an impulse buy that ultimately cost about $715 million.

Now that Instagram has more than 100 million active users, Facebook's impulsive pickup looks like a smart one. But the dangerous reality is that Facebook is bleeding attention to an application with no advertising model, nor does the social network even understand how Instagram ties in with its own applications.

Facebook doesn't know what teens want. Ebersman said as much, albeit in less direct terms:

"Facebook is a very young company in terms of the age of our employees, and I am hopeful that continues to be an asset for us in terms of having our finger on the pulse of what matters to that particular constituency of users and how we can provide products to satisfy them."

Put that way, Facebook's saving grace might be that its employees are also tiring of Facebook.

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Why Google built the pricey, powerful Chromebook Pixel

Chrome OS needed a push. Is the Chromebook Pixel it?

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

It's been a week now since Google unveiled the Chromebook Pixel, and the reactions have settled into a rough consensus: nice laptop, but not for you.

"The Chromebook Pixel is just too much machine for the software," the Wirecutter's Nathan Edwards writes in a representative take. At CNET, Seth Rosenblatt's review makes a similar point: "the Chromebook Pixel's high price and cloud OS limitations make it impossible to recommend for the vast majority of users."

All of which raises the question -- why release it? Surely Google knew that by introducing a high-end laptop for the bare-bones Chrome operating system, it would court incredulity even from enthusiastic early adopters. When you're charging $1,300+ for a Web browser, "Just look at that screen!" only goes so far.

But while we were scratching our heads over Google's intentions with the Pixel, company executives laid out a reasonably persuasive case for bringing it to market. J.R. Raphael, in a sharp piece at Computerworld, has the relevant quote from Google's vice president of engineering, Linus Upson. Emphasis Raphael's:

The Chromebook Pixel ... brings together the best in hardware, software and design to inspire the next generation of Chromebooks. With the Pixel, we set out to rethink all elements of a computer in order to design the best laptop possible, especially for power users who have fully embraced the cloud.

There are two big ideas there. Let's take them in turn.

The Pixel is meant to inspire. No one denies that this Chromebook turns heads. Much of the Pixel's unveiling last week was given over to discussion of the laptop's design and construction -- the etched glass used in the trackpad, the subtle placement of the microphones, the playful light bar on the exterior that changes color to reflect battery life. And that's to say nothing of that screen, the 4.3 million-pixel showstopper from which the laptop gets its name.

Compare that to the bargain-basement laptops that have carried Chrome OS until now. The operating system began life on the CR-48, a rubbery brick of a prototype that appeared to take its design cues from the Brutalists. The first consumer models, from Samsung and Acer, offered only modest improvements in style and performance. What the early Chromebooks lacked in style they made up in value -- starting at $349, they offered a bargain to workers and students who lived primarily in the Web browser and wanted more power than they could get from a
tablet.

The problem is that Chromebooks have yet to escape the perception that they are inferior, meant for consumers who simply can't afford better. Google's vision of the cloud extends to the entire market -- the low end, the high end, and everything in between. Until now, there hasn't been a high-end Chromebook. As a result, you're unlikely to ever step into a meeting and see an executive carrying one under her arm.

Walk around the Google campus in Mountain View and you're struck by how many Googlers are working on MacBooks. But of course they are: Apple laptops are built with style, sophistication, and power -- adjectives few would ascribe to the Samsung Series 5. The Pixel marks an attempt to meet style with style and power with power -- to show Web developers, manufacturing partners, and its own employees that Chrome is a serious operating system deserving of a first-class computer.

Google hopes the Pixel's power pushes Chrome OS forward.

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

The Pixel could inspire developers to build fast, full-featured Web apps that take advantage of touch -- a feature rapidly becoming standard on laptops. It could inspire manufacturing partners to launch sleeker, more powerful Chromebooks themselves, at prices above the $250 and $350 they have been able to charge to date. And it could inspire Googlers to ditch their MacBooks in favor of a homegrown solution that has its own advantages. That's a best-case scenario, sure -- but if you're Google, it's one worth pursuing.

Which leads us to the second big reason Google says it developed the Pixel:

The Pixel is a tool for power users. When Google isn't selling the design of the Chromebook, it's selling features meant for people who spend all day on their laptops. The hardware boots up in seconds, connects to Verizon's 4G LTE network, and comes with 1 terabyte of Google Drive storage for three years -- which ordinarily costs $1,800.

At the same time, to say the Pixel is for "power users" feels like a case of marketing materials getting ahead of reality. Power users like laptops that are light; the Pixel weighs 3.3 pounds, or a third of a pound heavier than the 13-inch
MacBook Air. Power users need battery life; the Pixel tops out around five hours, the MacBook gets closer to seven.

And while workers whose companies use Google Apps will feel at home on the Pixel, enough is missing from Chrome OS to make it difficult to use as a primary computer. Having used it for a week now, I find myself constantly missing the native apps that help me work: Evernote, OmniFocus, Tweetbot, 1Password, Rdio. In most cases I can make do with a combination of Web apps and Chrome extensions, but the experience is inferior -- and belies the notion that this is a computer for needy, greedy "power users."

It turns out that the Pixel is more of a computer for what you might call cloud zealots -- users determined to store almost of all of their data online, in exchange for the added convenience and security. It's easy to see why Google would want to cultivate cloud zealots -- more Web surfing equals more advertising revenue. But Chrome OS makes average users -- to say nothing of power users -- constantly aware of the trade-offs they are making. (For a good list, see David Pogue.)

Still, improvements to Chrome OS over the past four years mean that users are making fewer trade-offs than they used to. HTML5 is improving, and Web apps along with it, and the result is that it's now unfair to dismiss Chromebooks as mere Web browsers. Browsing is still the thing they do best, but you can do real work on a Chromebook (I wrote this piece on a Pixel, not all that much more slowly than I might have on my MacBook Air). In time, you might be able to work as fast on a Chromebook as you can on a more traditional laptop.

Ultimately, the Pixel is a case of a company putting its money where its mouth is. If Chrome OS was ever to be anything more than a curiosity -- and let's face it, it's almost four years old and hasn't exactly set the computing world on fire -- Google had to do something dramatic. Some of that can be done on the software side, but a world-class operating system needs great hardware. Great hardware pushes operating systems forward.

And so the reviews that say the Pixel isn't for most people are right -- Google itself all but admits it. That doesn't mean it's a failure, though. If a year from now Samsung and Acer are releasing higher-end Chromebooks of their own, and Web apps have come closer to reaching parity with native software, and more Googlers are using Pixels as their main machines, Google can call its expensive laptop a success. Chrome OS finally has the concept
car to advance its vision of pure cloud computing. Now the company can only watch and wait as it sees what the world makes of the concept.

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This sapphire smartphone screen is strong, strong, strong

Virtually indestructable sapphire smartphone screen

BARCELONA, Spain--The smartphone screen on the iPhone above may look like it's made of glass, but it isn't. It's made of sapphire. That's right, the same aluminum oxide compound (AL₂O₃) better known for brilliant blue gemstones that dangle from ears and throats and can cost a small fortune.

But this particular screen bears little resemblance to Earth-mined rock. Synthetically grown from a "mother" or starter crystal, companies that manufacture synthetic sapphire melt and cut the material (with diamond-tipped saws) into wafers, sheets, you name it.

In the case of the demo, a thin sheet of sapphire has been glued over a regular iPhone 5's chemically hardened Gorilla Glass 2 screen with some transparent adhesive -- it's completely clear. To my eye, the sapphire overlay is indistinguishable from a sheet of glass. That is, until I've spent a few minutes deliberately trying to scratch and smash it with a hunk of craggy concrete.

One time a tiny nugget of concrete did break from the chunk and stick to the sapphire display. I thought perhaps it was embedded, but it too wiped away without any noticeable nicks or indentations. The result: a layer of concrete powder that coats the screen, but wipes away clean. Next to it in the demo, a sheet of Gorilla Glass collected scratches.

Depending on the exact formula of chemically reinforced glass, sapphire has approximately 2.5 or 3 times its strength.

Apart from being one of the strongest compound materials there is -- second only to diamond -- synthetic sapphire is highly rigid and won't buckle or melt in high heat situations. It is also slow to corrode, conducts heat at low temperatures, and is known for its excellent light transmission for wavelengths well beyond the scope of human vision. The screen was just as responsive as glass when I handled the device.

Grown sapphire is already used in aerospace, military, and medical devices -- especially lasers, protective windows, and highly-specialized lenses. It's also used in
LED TVs and bulbs, and the high-end watch industry, and already existed in the
iPhone 5 demo unit as a cover material for the main camera lens.

And yes, sapphire has already turned up in a smartphone, making its debut in the Vertu Ti Android phone, which sells for upwards of $10,000. Luckily, most future smartphones with sapphire displays won't cost such a jaw-dropping bundle, although the material is more costly, about 3 or 4 times the cost of regular glass.

Yet, cost is exactly why we're even able to conceive of sapphire as your phone's topper material. Manufacturing prices continue to drop -- it's all about economies of scale.

GT Advanced Technologies, the company that organized the sapphire display demo, manufactures the giant blocks, or boules, of crystalline sapphire that customers like China's Zhejiang Shangcheng Science and Technology eventually turn into phone screens and more. It takes 16 days and a 2,200-degree Celsius furnace (almost 4,000 Fahrenheit) to create a 250-pound block of synthetic sapphire.

Today there's not enough capacity to create sapphire displays en masse, but we will see an uptick in adoption at the higher end of the spectrum. How much would you pay for a phone with a virtually indestructible screen?

Check out more cool finds, videos, and photos from Mobile World Congress 2013.

Bend it like Corning Willow Glass

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VirnetX v. Apple Judge upholds $368M patent suit verdict

FaceTime FaceOff: VirnetX v. Apple's patent battle grinds almost to a halt after both companies are denied injunctions or new judgments.

A U.S. District Court has upheld an earlier decision by a federal jury last year to award intellectual property and patent holding firm VirnetX more than $368.2 million, after Apple was found to have infringed patents relating to the proprietary video chat service, FaceTime.

First noted by Seeking Alpha, Apple must award VirnetX more than $330,000 per day until the case is settled, forcing the companies to hammer out agreements between themselves.

VirnetX, known for going after major tech companies on patent infringement claims, believes Apple infringed four networking patents designed to establish a secure connection between two devices.

The "royalty" mediation settlement will require the two firms to thrash out exactly how much Apple should pay for any further use of VirnetX's patents. Failure to reach an agreement will lead to a new ruling that could incur further damages.

Apple's
iPhone 5,
iPad Mini, fourth-generation iPad, fifth-generation
iPod Touch, and the latest Mac computers all infringe the patents, according to the original jury.

While Apple's offering of FaceTime is likely not at risk for the end customer, the terms of the settlement will need to be decided upon by both firms sooner rather than later to prevent any further damages being added to the case.

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Hot topic at Apple shareholders meeting is off limits

Apple opens up its doors to shareholders tomorrow, an annual event that's been home to everything from group renditions of "happy birthday" to environmental protesters donning giant iPod costumes.

It's also home to formalities like re-electing board members, choosing Apple's accounting firm, as well as a chance for executives to dodge the inevitable shareholder questions about products the company is working on.

This year is a little different though. Shareholders were set to vote on something that's no longer on the table following a lawsuit filed against Apple earlier this month.

Greenlight Capital, a hedge fund run by David Einhorn, successfully sued Apple over its plans to change its articles of incorporation dealing with preferred stock. Einhorn argued that Apple bundled the issue in with other items. A federal judge last week sided with Einhorn, meaning Apple's policy will not go to a vote.

Ahead of the decision, Apple CEO Tim Cook made his disdain for the issue very clear -- that did not include Einhorn's proposal, which the company said it would "thoroughly evaluate," but the lawsuit that came with it. In an interview earlier this month, Cook referred to it as a "silly sideshow" and a waste of resources for both companies.

Even so, what the company's doing with its money has long been an issue for shareholders, who in recent years were treated to a meteoric rise in the price of Apple's stock. Cook and company would deflect questions about what they intended to do with the growing pile of cash by pointing to the stock as a place for investors to find returns.

That strategy worked last year, but may not go over as well this time around. The company's stock has slid more than 35 percent since reaching an all-time high five months ago. The one thing that's different is that Apple's now paying out a dividend, and shoring up its value with a multiyear stock buyback plan. Einhorn's plan, which was unveiled late last week, calls on the company to go one step further with a preferred stock plan called "iPrefs" that would give investors separate shares for each share of common stock that would deliver a fixed, annual return.

What's on the table
So what are shareholders voting on? Two shareholder proposals, both of which Apple's board has urged shareholders to vote against.

The first suggests a new requirement for Apple's top executives to hold onto at least 33 percent of their shares until they reach the age of retirement, a requirement the proposal's creator says would "focus our executives on our company's long-term success."

A worker at a facility in Chengdu, China.

(Credit:
Apple)

The other shareholder initiative calls for Apple to create a board committee on human rights that would evaluate the company's supply chain and its overall operations.

"In recent years the Company has become embroiled in public controversies regarding the human rights implications of its products and supply chains," the proposal says. "The proposed by-law would establish the vehicle of a Board Committee, but would leave the process of appointment and implementation of the Committee to the full Board of Directors."

In its proxy statement, Apple argued that it already has a Supplier Code of Conduct that's policed by an internal auditing team, and that the creation of such a venture would "distract" Apple's board.

Preliminary votes on both issues are expected to be announced at the meeting, with a final tally to be included in a full filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Why the meeting is still interesting
Even though Apple's annual meeting is typically a dull affair for those expecting product news and announcements, it's really the only time of the year when the public (albeit the Apple stock-holding public), has a chance to pepper some of the company's top executives with questions.

In recent years, that's included questions about the company's strategy in the living room (from set-top box hardware to content deals), its involvement in trade shows, as well as its partnership with other companies including Twitter and Facebook. Oftentimes the answers skirt around a definitive answer, but an open mic and an executive on the hot seat make for a good combination, even if it's on Apple's turf.

Sure to spice things up is that the meeting comes at a time when Apple shares have dropped from all-time highs last September. At last year's meeting, shareholders were almost euphoric about the company's performance, though inquired about the possibility of a stock split and what Apple planned to do with all its cash. That's something investors will certainly remain interested in, even if they can't vote on it.

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Japan's NTT Docomo plans to offer 112.5 mb/sec LTE speeds

NTT Docomo CEO Kaoru Kato at Mobile World Congress in February 2013.

(Credit:
Roger Cheng/CNET)

BARCELONA, Spain--Think Verizon Wireless or AT&T's 4G LTE network is fast? Check out Japan.

NTT Docomo's CEO, Kaoru Kato, said he plans to offer download speeds of 112.5Mbps to his company's customers. The higher speeds should come shortly, he said. NTT Docomo is Japan's largest wireless carrier by customer base.

By comparison, Verizon and AT&T boasts speeds of 20Mbps on a good day and an uncluttered network. In practise, the speeds are more in the high single or low double digits.

LTE, Kato said during a keynote address at Mobile World Congress, is key to the company's push to offer its subscribers a bundle of services it calls "smart life." The carrier is looking to wrest control of the customer from the likes of
Android or iOS by offering a number of different services, offering everything from its own credit card to medical and healthcare services.

NTT Docomo offers a portal of various digital services that is curated, secure, and filled with high-quality content, Kato said.

Like Verizon, NTT Docomo was early in deploying its 4G LTE network. Kato said the company has 10 million LTE subscribers, and is targeting 41 million subscribers by fiscal 2015.

He said that revenue from these non-core services could grow to $11 billion by fiscal 2015.

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Mozilla, AT&T show WebRTC phone-Web communications link

BARCELONA, Spain--Mozilla, Ericsson, and AT&T announced today they're demonstrating technology to place Internet-based voice and video calls that bridge between traditional telephone services and the Web.

The demonstration, at Mobile World Congress here, uses the nascent WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communications) standard to set up browser-based communications between different devices.

The "proof of concept" links a Web app with a person's existing phone number and "shows how consumers can easily take and receive video calls from their mobile phones or desktop browser using WebRTC or share their web experiences with friends or family who might be on a desktop PC or mobile phone across the other side of the world," Mozilla said in a blog post. "The demonstration also shows how
Firefox can perform many functions usually confined to a mobile device, such as voice and video calls and SMS/MMS messaging."

The demo uses Ericsson network equipment called the Web Communication Gateway, Ericsson said in its announcement.

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Pentagon grounds entire F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fleet

A crack in an engine blade has suspended airborne testing on the $396 billion Joint Strike Fighter program.

(Credit:
Department of Defense)

The U.S. Department of Defense has suspended airborne testing of its Joint Strike Fighter because of a crack in an engine turbine blade discovered during routine inspection, the Pentagon said this week.

The grounding covers every one of the three versions of the F-35 involved in the $396 billion program -- 51 fighter jets that had hitherto been active for testing and training and have been described by the Pentagon as "the most affordable, lethal, supportable, and survivable aircraft ever to be used."

Just 10 days ago, one of the three versions of the fighter, the F-35B, designed for the Marines, was cleared to resume tests after a monthlong suspension having to do with a fuel line defect.

To understand the specific cause of the current issue -- the cracked turbine blade discovered February 19 -- the engine is being returned to the manufacturer: United Technologies unit Pratt & Whitney. The Pentagon said it hopes to return the fleet to the air as soon as possible.

Eventually, there will be more than 2,400 of the next-generation fighter jets, which will come in three models: the Air Force's agile F-35A, the Marines' VTOL model F-35B, and the Navy's F-35C, which has a larger wing surface and reinforced landing gear to withstand catapult launches and deck landings on an aircraft carrier.

The Pentagon stressed yesterday that the grounding is precautionary and that it's not possible to know the impact of the crack on the low pressure turbine blade until the investigation is complete.

Additional delays aside, the warplane is currently expected to formally take to the skies and be battle-ready in 2018 or 2019.

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Crave giveaway: Kanex Sydnee four-port recharging station

Congrats to Johnal L. of Costa Mesa, Calif., for winning a pair of Aperio Audio Verus Forte speakers in last week's giveaway. This week's prize is sure to get the winner all charged up.

We're giving away a Kanex Sydnee recharging station, which charges up to four iOS devices at once through its four 2.1-amp USB ports. It works with all iPhones and iPads, and would be quite happy in any iFriendly home, office, or classroom looking to keep its gear organized and powered up.

A side view.

(Credit:
Kanex)

The unit plugs into a wall socket and comes with three USB cables so you can start multi-charging right out of the box. While the Sydnee's configured and marketed as a charging station for iDevices, it'll work with just about any USB-powered gadget.

Normally, a Kanex Sydnee would cost you $149, but you have the chance to score one for free. How do you go about doing that? Well, like this:

• Register as a CNET user. Go to the top of this page and hit the Join CNET link to start the registration process. If you're already registered, there's no need to register again.


• Leave a comment below. You can leave whatever comment you want. If it's funny or insightful, it won't help you win, but we're trying to have fun here, so anything entertaining is appreciated.


• Leave only one comment. You may enter for this specific giveaway only once. If you enter more than one comment, you will be automatically disqualified.
  


• The winner will be chosen randomly. The winner will receive one (1) Kanex Sydnee, with a retail value of $149.


• If you are chosen, you will be notified via e-mail. The winner must respond within three days of the end of the sweepstakes. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.


• Entries can be submitted until Monday, February 25, at 12 p.m. ET.

And here's the disclaimer that our legal department said we had to include (sorry for the caps, but rules are rules):

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. YOU HAVE NOT YET WON. MUST BE LEGAL RESIDENT OF ONE OF THE 50 UNITED STATES OR D.C., 18 YEARS OLD OR AGE OF MAJORITY, WHICHEVER IS OLDER IN YOUR STATE OF RESIDENCE AT DATE OF ENTRY INTO SWEEPSTAKES. VOID IN PUERTO RICO, ALL U.S. TERRITORIES AND POSSESSIONS, AND WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW. Sweepstakes ends at 12 p.m. ET on Monday, February 25, 2013. See official rules for details.

Good luck.

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Social pollution masks? Winning wearable tech ideas

The Tree Voice concept lets anyone walk up and interact with a tree and get updates on the local environment.

(Credit:
Frog Design)

While anyone could dream up a spinning virtual GPS globe constantly updated with a slideshow of global Flickr photos emanating from a hat, competitors in Frog Design's contest for new wearable technology concepts had to keep their designs within the realm of feasibility.

The key requirement that keeps all the designs within reason is that they have to be able to come to market within three years. That doesn't necessarily mean they will come to market, but at least there's a chance.

The global design firm ran its internal competition for new wearable technology concepts last year and just unveiled the results (PDF). They include some fun and fascinating ideas that explore everything from communing with trees through technology to an urban compass that leads you into discovering unexpected parts of a city.

The eight winners came from around the world. There's Mnemo, an interactive friendship bracelet from Amsterdam that records times, locations, people, media, and music to create a record of an event. These digital memories can be shared with friends and combined into a collective memory, all wearable on a bracelet.

The Tree Voice concept hails from Austin, Texas. It involves attaching a display to a tree. The display communicates data gathered from sensors to share information on pollution, noise, and temperature levels. Anyone can walk up and interact with the tree and get updates on the local environment.

My personal favorite of the top eight designs is the CompassGo from Milan. It's a round device that fits in the palm of your hand. You tell it what you're interested in (like boutique shopping, history, independent restaurants, or culture) and it leads you through a city with visual cues. There's no guidebook to shackle you down, you just follow and discover the lesser-known parts of a city. It could add a real spark of adventure for tourists.

The other top designs include an interactive tool for the blind to navigate their environments, a device that harnesses the energy of physical movement, a wristband that helps wearers navigate the New York subway system, a pollution mask that monitors and shares air quality information, and a maker kit to get girls into creating their own wearable technology.

With so much attention being paid to smartwatches, it's encouraging to see designers branching out with creative ideas in other wearable spaces. Knowing that all these designers believe their concepts could be made real within just a few years, we may soon be welcoming some of them into the world. I, for one, can't wait to get my CompassGo.

HelloWorld is a wearable tech creation kit geared for preteen girls.

(Credit:
Frog)

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Google's electronic eyewear gets 'OK Glass' voice commands

A Google glass video, taken without the need to hold a camera, that's part of a video-chat hangout.

(Credit:
screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

"OK Glass."

Those are the two words that Google showed today will initiate a variety of commands for its Glass computerized eyewear.

In the Google Glass "How it feels" video, people speak the words "OK Glass" to send a message, record a video, take a photo, launch a video-chat hangout, conduct a search, check the weather, and get driving directions.

The demo is a concrete illustration of how Google is evolving its technology from a mere search engine to a constant personal companion that augments your own mind.

When Microsoft introduced Windows 95, its Start menu became the gateway for just about anything you could do with the operating system. Google, hoping to advance computing beyond the era of PCs and even smartphones, no doubt hopes "OK Glass" will become as familiar.

The Glass eyewear perches a screen just above a person's ordinary field of view; the device itself is equipped with a processor, camera, head-tracking orientation sensors, and other electronics drawn from the smartphone industry. Google began selling Glass developer prototypes called Explorer last year for $1,500 that are due to ship this year.

Google's site shows off Glass's GoPro-like videocamera abilities, showing first-person views of table tennis, swordplay, trapeze acrobatics, jumping rope, sculpture carving, hot-air ballooning, and more. The company is trying to show it as a sort of real-time video Facebook you can use to share life with others as you experience what's going on.

Google's video and "what-it-does" explanation is very much from a first-person perspective, showing what it's like to wear the device. It makes for a very personal experience, reproducing what a person would see and adding an unobtrusive transparent Glass interface in the upper right.

But that's not the whole story of Glass, of course. Wearing the devices might be very personal for the user, but wearing Glass makes you look a bit cyborg. Surely many folks talking to a Glass-wearing person will be put off by the knowledge that there's a microphone and camera pointed right at them. Think of how differently people behave when the camera comes out for a photo op.

In time, people will adjust, as they have to people talking on phones as they walk down the street, especially if Glass becomes more mainstream, as Google expects Glass will be ready for consumers in 2014.

Google also announced a Glass promotion in which people who share interesting ideas about what to do with the device will get the Explorer model.

Google's Project Glass electronic eyewear is "strong and light," Google said.

(Credit:
Google)

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For an iWatch to kick butt, Apple must innovate in batteries

If Apple is hard at work on an "iWatch," it will have to overcome battery issues bedeviling existing smartwatch makers.

This new crop of wrist devices has a lot more in common with smartphones than your old Timex. They have increasingly large displays, and can ferry over notifications and other data, acting as a second screen of sorts for your smartphone. For many of the latest models, that extra utility is not without a compromise: You've got to plug it in at the end of the day.

Charging a smartphone every day can be an annoyance, but most people are used to it. Watches are a different beast. Today's digital watches are designed much the same way they were 20 years ago, to last years at a time between battery replacements. That's held true for so long because they do little besides tell time.

While companies are doing all they can to reduce the power consumption of chips and screens, the fact remains that batteries haven't undergone the same technological sea change as other major portable device components. There haven't been the kind of advances in capacity that would let devices be used for days or even weeks on a single charge while keeping things small.

Bigger is better
On the smartphone front, manufacturers have responded to the power problem by increasing the capacity of the batteries that are shipped in phones, said Satoru Rick Oyama, a principal analyst at IHS Global. Companies have gone from 1,000mAh batteries to 1,500mAh, and will soon go with 2,000mAh as the standard, Oyama said. These higher-capacity batteries come at a price -- the packs often are larger.

That capacity ramp-up has worked out because manufacturers like Samsung have started making their smartphones bigger, providing more room inside for batteries. There are also extremes like Motorola's Droid Razr Maxx, which comes with a 3,300mAh battery, an 85 percent increase over the battery that shipped with the standard Droid Razr. That's been fine for something that can go into a pocket or purse, but there's a limit when it comes to a limb on the human body.

Pebble's smartwatch extends its battery time by using an e-paper display.

(Credit:
CNET)

One of the clearest examples of how well that works when scaled down is Apple's sixth-generation iPod Nano, which the company actually marketed as a watch, with built-in watch faces. Inside was a tiny 105mAh battery that was geared for 24 hours of music playback. But in day-to-day use, that ended up being just a few days if you used features like the built-in FM radio and pedometer. The latest model, released last October, did away with the watch idea completely.

Smartwatch upstarts like the Pebble, which raised more than $10 million on Kickstarter, got around this issue by going with a different screen technology that uses less power. Instead of a backlit LCD panel, Pebble went with an e-paper display and low-power Bluetooth, which together require less juice and mean that the watch can be used for up to a week between charges.

In other words, if we're expecting a large, bright LCD screen, constant connectivity, and some of the same capable innards we're getting in iPhones and iPods, we can't ignore the issue of integrating a battery large enough to keep things running.

What's now; what's next
In the world of batteries, lithium ion and lithium polymer remain the most commonly used technologies, though lithium polymer is becoming more popular.

The two technologies are similar, but the polymer version has certain benefits that have made it increasingly attractive for use in portable gadgets. Lithium polymer is more expensive than lithium ion, but is safer, and can be manufactured into a variety of different shapes. By comparison, lithium ion has been limited to cylinders or flat, rectangular boxes. This attribute has led to some of the advances in the types of form factors manufacturers have made.

"For now, the go-to for the foreseeable future will still be lithium polymer batteries," said Allan Yogasingam, a technical research manager at UBM Tech Insights. "The reason for that is that li-polymer has a strong flexibility that allows products like
tablets and notebooks and now ultrabooks to feature lighter and slimmer designs. After that, it's a bit of an 'arms race' to see which battery technology will have the most appeal to consumer electronic manufacturers."

Among the frontrunners in battery technology is lithium imide, Yogasingam said. It has higher density than the lithium polymer batteries, is more durable, and is better at recharging -- two major benefits for something that will be on the go. (Find out more about lithium imide here.)

Down the road there's also the promise of lithium air batteries. IBM has been developing lithium air batteries chiefly to power electric
cars, but such batteries should work in mobile devices after being scaled down, said Michael Karasick, vice president and director of IBM's Almaden Research Lab in San Jose, Calif. He noted that such technology will allow batteries to either be one-tenth their current size or last 10 times as long. The rub? It could take years before they're available, Karasick said.

Further on the horizon are silicon-based batteries and fuel cells, which promise to improve how batteries are built into mobile devices. Both have limitations, but researchers are working to advance the technologies enough that they can eventually be embedded into devices.

Also not to be ignored is a recent effort out of Silicon Valley called CalCharge, an accelerator of sorts that's hooking up companies that make batteries with universities working on battery technologies to come up with breakthroughs. Last week, the nearly year-old group announced plans (PDF) with San Jose State University to offer courses in battery-related technologies.

Changing how we charge
Apple's been an innovator in battery technology before. The company was aggressive in the use of nonremovable batteries in its products, beginning with the iPod, and leading to its use in notebooks, phones, and tablets. The payoff there, the company noted when unveiling its first
MacBook Pro with an integrated battery, was that it could put a larger battery pack into the same amount of space as before. And even though users were no longer able to swap it out, the 40 percent larger battery could keep the machine running longer.

Apple's done the same thing on its smartphones, choosing to make its battery packs nonremovable in the name of saving space. Its latest model, the iPhone 5, is slightly taller and ships with a 1,440mAh battery that's just a hair bigger than the 1,432mAh battery found in the smaller-screened iPhone 4S. Yet, the iPhone 5's ratings for 3G talk time and browsing over Wi-Fi are close to what they were two generations ago.

The company has shown signs of wanting to change that. In the last few years, it's filed a variety of noteworthy, battery-related patents, from hydrogen cells to a universal puck that could be used to juice up both phones and computers alike. Like all patents, it's unclear whether they'll ever end up in products, though it shows Apple is at least investigating the possibility.

The fact remains that there's only so much Apple can do with current battery technology. Industry researchers say new battery types should help extend the life of devices, but it's still likely years before those advancements hit the market.

Apple has an opportunity to do better than other smartwatches if its battery life is spectacular. The company has a track record of thinking outside the box when it comes to powering its devices, something that could help it stand apart from other wearable tech. But if it can't make that happen in time, there's a plan B.

"It's almost more about marketing and retraining the consumer than it is about improving battery life," said Donald Saxman, project analyst at Massachusetts-based tech market research firm BCC Research. "With every technology, we get incremental improvements...but any order of magnitude improvement where there's a double or 10-times improvement in battery life means we have to come up with a new approach."

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LG's 5.5-inch Optimus G Pro to reach U.S. in Q2

LG Optimus G Pro

(Credit:
LG Electronics)

After some earlier teasing, LG Electronics fully detailed its Optimus G Pro Android phone today, a high-end model with 5.5-inch screen, LTE networking, and a quad-core 1.7GHz processor.

LG often sells its phones first in its home market of South Korea, and it looks like that's the plan for the Optimus G Pro, too. But it'll arrive in other areas, too, including North America and Japan in the second quarter of 2013, LG said in an announcement a week ahead of the Mobile World Congress show. That's where the South Korean company will show off the phone and announced three lower-end L-series Android phones, the Optimus L7 II, L5 II, and L3 II.

The Optimus G Pro is a large-screen model that
Android smartphone makers such as HTC and Samsung have embraced in an effort to differentiate products from the smaller iPhone. The Optimus Pro G has a 5.5-inch, 1920x1080-pixel AMOLED screen with a linear resolution of 400 pixels per inch.

Combined with its relatively large 3,140mAh battery, that means people can watch Full HD video "for hours on end," LG said.

The processor is the quad-core 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600, and the phone comes with 2GB of RAM. The phone itself measure 150.2x76.1x9.4mm

The camera has a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with an LED flash and a 2.1MP front-facing camera. A feature called VR Panorama will construct 360-degree panoramas out of an array of horizontal and vertical views around the person holding the phone.

Both of the phones' cameras can be used in a dual-recording mode that "allows users to capture video with both the front and rear cameras simultaneously for a unique picture-in-picture experience," LG said.

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Russian meteorite: The conspiracy theories

A strange time for a military attack?

(Credit:
CNN; screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

A good hearty conspiracy theory can shine a sharp light on two of humanity's most enduring traits.

One, of course, is humanity's boundless imagination. The other is humanity's essential suspicion of humanity.

So while you might be deeply immersed in Bill Nye's explanation of the Russian meteorite, those with darker sensibilities have filled the Web with their fears and hauntings about the phenomenon.

There are few nations with greater awareness of dark sensibilities than Russia. The fact that there seems to be little evidence of meteorite fragments on the ground has encouraged some Russians to offer their own suspicions.

As the Toronto Globe and Mail reports, nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky hasn't been slow to offer something of a Hot War perspective.

"It's not meteors falling. It's a new weapon being tested by the Americans," he was quoted as saying.

We know from our recent experience of North Korea that weapons testing is an imprecise science.

But if you were an American in the mood to test a weapon, would Chelyabinsk, Russia, be your very first choice of place for the experiment?

Perhaps Tallahassee; Area 51; and Bialystok, Poland, were all unavailable due to prior commitments. Or perhaps it wasn't the Americans, but, say, the North Koreans, who mistook Chelyabinsk for, say, Chelsea.

Zhirinovsky's rather emotionally manipulative offering was countered by Russia's Emergency Ministry, which dedicated itself to an extensive rebuttal of his belief (and that of others) that this was some sort of military thing. The rebuttal? "Rubbish."

But that wasn't going to put off the local media, was it? Not only do they have papers to sell, they also have theories to expound to a troubled nation and world.

So, as The Atlantic reports, the local Znak newspaper accepted that this was a meteorite but insisted the explosion was caused by military defense blowing it up.

More Technically Incorrect

Yes, of course it has a source in the military. You thought it didn't?

Though I've watched a few movies in which exciting things happen, I don't find it easy to imagine that some sort of terrestrially created missile-laden aircraft could really explode a meteorite in such a manner.

It is easier to imagine, though, that politicians like Zhirinovsky might take the opportunity to foment a little rage.

Indeed, Alex Jones' infamously well-guarded Infowars site offered that Zhirinovsky insisted that America -- in the person of Secretary of State John Kerry -- had tried to give Russia advance notice of its "attack."

The Drudge Report led me to a piece at Foreign Policy that explained that Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, simply hadn't called Kerry back.

Which all suggests that Russia isn't, after all, living in fear of an attack from the U.S. Especially one over Chelyabinsk.

On balance, I prefer to currently believe Nye. He is the science guy, after all. And science guys know scientific events when they see them.

I hope.

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How Apple got serious about style

Humble beginnings -- an early conceptual modular Apple tablet from 1982.

(Credit:
Harmut Esslinger, Frog Design)

When Frog Design founder Hartmut Esslinger met Steve Jobs in 1982, it sparked a chain of events that monumentally changed Apple's design philosophy forever. It wasn't just a change in how future products would look -- Esslinger ushered in a change of mindset and a unified design language across products. Esslinger's new book, "Design Forward: Creative Strategies for Sustainable Change," available today in the U.S., delivers some fascinating insights into those crucial early years at Apple.

The dialect that emerged from that period, known as the Snow White design language, influenced dozens of Apple devices starting with the Apple IIc in 1984 and lasting until the Macintosh IIfx in 1990.

Our gallery below starts off with a range of computers that earned Frog Design a hefty annual contract and a role as a leader in Apple's product design process. The two companies didn't just create computers, however; they went beyond and created a mock
tablet, computer phone, flat-screen devices, and more.

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Crave giveaway: Aperion Audio Verus Forte speakers

Congrats to Michal H. of West Lafayette, Ind., for winning a copy of Nuance Dragon Dictate for
Mac 3 in last week's giveaway. Now, get ready to pump up the volume. This week we're giving away a pair of satellite speakers from Aperion Audio.

Aperion -- whose home theater speakers have been called "spectacular" by CNET contributor and Audiophiliac Steve Guttenberg -- went petite with its Verus Forte speakers. Intended for small spaces, they measure 9 inches by 5 inches wide by 5.7 inches deep and weigh 6.5 pounds.

The callout feature on these stylish speakers is Aperion's PhaseSync driver, which takes advantage of the company's own patent-pending radiator tweeter design. Combined with an integrated woofer, it all adds up to a big, detailed sound from a compact speaker that can be used for a basic stereo setup or as a satellite for your home theater system.

Normally, two Aperion Audio Verus Forte speakers would run you $450, but we're giving them away for free. How do you go about winning them? There are a few rules, so please read carefully.

• Register as a CNET user. Go to the top of this page and hit the Join CNET link to start the registration process. If you're already registered, there's no need to register again.


• Leave a comment below. You can leave whatever comment you want. If it's funny or insightful, it won't help you win, but we're trying to have fun here, so anything entertaining is appreciated.


• Leave only one comment. You may enter for this specific giveaway only once. If you enter more than one comment, you will be automatically disqualified.
  


• The winner will be chosen randomly. The winner will receive one (1) pair of Aperion Audio Verus Forte speakers, with a retail value of $450.


• If you are chosen, you will be notified via e-mail. The winner must respond within three days of the end of the sweepstakes. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.


• Entries can be submitted until Monday, February 18, at 12 p.m. ET.

And here's the disclaimer that our legal department said we had to include (sorry for the caps, but rules are rules):

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. YOU HAVE NOT YET WON. MUST BE LEGAL RESIDENT OF ONE OF THE 50 UNITED STATES OR D.C., 18 YEARS OLD OR AGE OF MAJORITY, WHICHEVER IS OLDER IN YOUR STATE OF RESIDENCE AT DATE OF ENTRY INTO SWEEPSTAKES. VOID IN PUERTO RICO, ALL U.S. TERRITORIES AND POSSESSIONS AND WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW. Sweepstakes ends at 12 p.m. ET on Monday, February 18, 2013. See official rules for details.

Good luck.

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JavaScript expert: WebKit, get your bug-ridden house in order

It was a good day for the WebKit browser engine yesterday when Opera Software adopted it in place of its in-house Presto. But yesterday's developments also became an opportunity for a high-profile JavaScript programmer to lodge criticisms about WebKit.

"Each release of Chrome or
Safari generates excitement about new bleeding-edge features; nobody seems to worry about the stuff that's already (still!) broken," complained Dave Methvin, president of the jQuery foundation and a member of the core programming team that builds the widely used Web programming tool, in a blog post.

"jQuery Core has more lines of fixes and patches for WebKit than any other browser. In general these are not recent regressions, but long-standing problems that have yet to be addressed."

WebKit is a browser engine used initially in Apple's OS X and later in iOS and Google's Chrome products. It dominates in mobile, though there are variations among the versions from Apple, Google, and others using the software.

Browser engines are used to process Web page programming written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. jQuery is a very widely used package of prewritten JavaScript code that lets programmers take advantage of advanced Web features, and jQuery's own coders must be sure jQuery works with all browsers.

Methvin fretted that Opera's arrival in the world of WebKit will mean only a different set of shiny new browser features without any new attention to the bugs.

"I can't be optimistic without some evidence that things are really going to change," he said.

On the contrary, he's worried that WebKit's success and priorities means that some aspects of Web programming are sliding back into the dark days when old versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer ruled the Web:

When we started our jQuery 2.0 cleanup to remove IE 6/7/8 hacks, we were optimistic that we would also be able to remove some bloat from lingering patches needed for really old browsers like Safari 2. But several of those WebKit hacks still remain. Even when they have been fixed in the latest Chrome or Safari, older WebKit implementations like PhantomJS and UIWebView [which third-party iOS use to handle Web code] still don't have the fix. We've had to put back several of these as users reported problems with the beta. It's starting to feel like oldIE all over again, but with a different set of excuses for why nothing can be fixed.

Methvin is not the only angst-laden Web developer. Several others lamented Opera's diminished independence as a supplier of an alternative browsing engine.

Opera will debut its first WebKit-based product, a version of its browser for
Android phones, at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Spain, later this month.

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Expert advice for online dating (podcast)

Cyberdating specialist Julie Spira

(Credit:
Cyberdatingexpert.com)

"It's never been easier to find a date," said CyberDatingExpert.com's Julie Spira, and when it comes to online dating, "the stigma is gone." She credits Facebook with helping to make people feel comfortable about sharing online and joining an online dating site. And, said Spira, "there are thousands of online dating sites to pick from," including niche sites aimed at Democrats and Republicans, as well as different religions, and even vegans and vegetarians.

Spira is a fan of "truth in advertising," and recommends that people be authentic both in terms of their age, their photos, and what they enjoy. If you're looking for marriage and children, "don't be afraid to say so," said Spira. "Sometimes they think that they'll be scaring a guy away thinking he's gong to have to go ring shopping immediately, and I absolutely disagree." Instead, she added, "you're chasing away the guys that could be the players that would be wasting your time anyway."

She said to be "very specific and avoid the cliches" like "I want to go on a romantic beach walk and like watching sunsets." She said to come up with a catchy screen name and something "very specific about what your favorite song is rather than 'I like music.'" She also said it's best to post three to five photos of yourself, including a close-up shot, a full-length body shot, and an activity shot such as "hiking, a travel trip where you have the Eiffel Tower behind you, sailing, anything that makes you unique to show that you have an interesting life."

For more, click below to listen to my podcast interview with Spira.

Subscribe now: iTunes (audio) | RSS (audio)

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Blue and black boxes and whistles, oh my. The history of phone phreaks

Imagine a day when it cost an arm and a leg to use the phone, especially for long-distance calls. Then imagine that buried deep within the telephone network infrastructure was a flaw -- a hole that allowed those who were aware of it, and capable of exploiting it, to make all the free calls they want.

'Exploding the Phone' author Phil Lapsley

(Credit:
Margaretta K. Mitchell)

These days, phone calls are free -- or nearly so -- and hackers put their energies into computer networks, jailbreaking iPhones, and other more modern pursuits. But back in the 1950s and 1960s, a new group of people emerged, people who were fascinated by phones, telephone networks, and who often just wanted to see how many free calls they could make. Over the years, the roster of the so-called "phone phreaks" grew to include some very famous people: Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and John Draper (aka Captain Crunch).

Their tools also became part of the lexicon -- blue boxes and black boxes -- despite the fact that today, the number of people who know what those devices could do is rapidly dwindling.

Just in time to ensure that the tale of the phreaks is told before it's too late is Phil Lapsley, who has just published "Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who hacked Ma Bell." A deep dive into how the telephone network evolved, and how the phreakers came to launch their assaults on the integrity of the networks, the book is at once enjoyable and educational. Especially in an era where hackers are among the biggest stars around. Yesterday, Lapsley sat down with CNET for a 45 Minutes on IM interview about the storied history of the phreaks.

Q: Why did you want to write this book?
Phil Lapsley: I learned about phone phreaking in 1978 or so, and it seemed to me that it was the predecessor to computer hacking. Later, when I became an electrical engineer and computer person, I always felt there was this interesting and unexplored history out there.

In 2005 I was reading the Wikipedia entry on phreaking and I was sure half of it was wrong. So, I started doing research. My main curiosity was, who were the first phone phreaks, when did they start showing up, and what made them want to do it?

What is phone phreaking?

There are two definitions of phone phreak. One is somebody who is obsessively interested in learning about, exploring, and playing around with the telephone system. The other is somebody who is interested in making free phone calls (think back to when phone calls were actually expensive and this makes more sense).

When I talk about phone phreaks, I'm generally talking about people who were exploring the telephone system out of curiosity and figuring out how it worked. This was particularly true of the early phreaks (say in the 1960s); it became less true as time marched on, and more phreaks were interested in just making free phone calls.

You begin with a reference to the "Fine Arts 13" notebook. What was that? And why was it important?

The first chapter in the book follows the path of a Harvard sophomore named Jake Locke (a pseudonym; he's a guy who has gone on to greatness since that time and didn't want his real name used in the book). Locke ends up spotting a classified ad in the Harvard student newspaper that leads him down a rabbit hole, trying to find these kids at Harvard in 1962 who wrote something called the Fine Arts 13 notebook. In that notebook they recorded all of their telephone "researches" (as they called it) as they were trying to figure out how the telephone system worked, just by dialing numbers and talking to people and putting clues together.

One thing that seemed so strange, given today's corporate paranoia, is how open AT&T was with the technical details of their network. How odd is that, from today's perspective?

One of the challenges I had in writing the book was conveying a sense of what things were like back then. For example, today, if you want to learn how the phone system works, you just do some Googling and bang, it's there for you to read about. It simply wasn't like that in the 1960s and 1970s: information was vastly harder to come by. But there's a flip side.

Today, we assume anything a company does will be a trade secret, and there will be non-disclosure agreements and such to protect intellectual property. While that was generally true back then, too, it wasn't quite the case for AT&T, the telephone company. AT&T was a private company but was a government-regulated monopoly, and didn't really have any competitors. In that environment, you don't need to be quite as careful with your secrets. Indeed, some of AT&T's published journals (The Bell System Technical Journal, Bell Labs Record) were partly for well-deserved bragging rights -- hey, look at the cool stuff we did! It's a very different world. Maybe there is a Google Labs Technical Journal, but if there is, I suspect you have to work there to read it.

You wrote in the book about AT&T building the largest machine on earth, which extended to the entire surface of the planet. Can you explain that idea?

In the 1920s and 1930s, AT&T had a manually-operated long distance network requiring multiple operators plugging cords into jacks on a switchboard to get your call through. Then AT&T started pushing for automation, first with local calls -- so you could dial a local number and automatically connect -- and eventually spreading to long distance dialing.

This was an incredibly tough problem to solve in the 1930s and 1940s: the idea of building an automated switching machine that could somehow figure out how to automatically route your call across the country. It needed to be able to route through intermediate cities, and it needed to figure out back up routes if the first route it tried failed. And it needed to automatically bill you for it. It was a network of machines made up of relays and vacuum tubes. The computer hadn't even been invented yet, much less the transistor.

But AT&T and Bell Labs persevered and built this giant network of automated switching machines. And that's why the phrase "the largest machine in the world" is so apt: all of these thousands of switching machines, strung out all over the U.S. (and later the rest of the world) really did form one giant machine, one of the earliest special purpose computers.

You write about a lot of different phreakers. Was there one who was considered the most important?

Probably that would be Joe Engressia. This was a guy who had been obsessed with phones since he was three or four years old. Engressia was born blind and kind of eccentric but was also just incredibly gifted and bright. He learned everything he could about the telephone system and by the time he was 8 or 9 years old was confounding adults who worked for the phone company with his knowledge.

In college in 1968, he got famous for getting in trouble for whistling -- yes, whistling, like with his lips -- free phone calls for his classmates. He almost got kicked out of school. The news media picked up on the story and he became a focal point for a network of phone phreaks that was forming. Engressia was a natural person to be the center of the network because he was smart, knew a whole lot about phreaking and telephones, and was simply a nice, easy to talk to, open guy. Ron Rosenbaum wrote an article for Esquire Magazine about phone phreaks in 1971 describing Engressia as the 22-year-old "Grandaddy of the phone phreaks." I think that's apt.

Clearly, some of what the phreakers were doing was either illegal, or borderline illegal. But at the beginning, at least, courts were fairly lenient in phreaking cases. Why do you think?

Playing around with the phone wasn't (and isn't) illegal. But making free phone calls was. And a lot of these phone phreaks, even the ones who were "just curious," crossed the line into illegality when they made free phone calls to talk to their friends. At the start, in the 1960s, AT&T mostly just slapped these kids on the wrist and tried to scare them into stopping -- the term they used was a "deterrent interview." I.e., "Knock it off, kid, or we'll send the FBI after you." There were a couple of reasons for this.

When AT&T first learned its network was vulnerable, it wasn't sure how widespread the problem was or how seriously to take the threat. It also had a public relations problem: it looks bad when you prosecute college students who just seem clever and curious. And especially so when some of them are blind. Plus, every time it did something publicly about the phone phreaks, there would be newspaper articles and that generated more phone phreaks. Finally, it often wasn't clear what law the kids were breaking. AT&T really wanted a clear federal law that made this stuff illegal, but it wasn't clear (at least during the 1960s) that any such law existed.

But by 1972 there was a federal law that did apply, and AT&T had tested it in court. Phone phreaking was out in the mainstream, so in the early 1970s the phone company became much more serious about criminal prosecution.

What was Greenstar?

Greenstar was AT&T's toll fraud surveillance system. When AT&T first learned in 1961 that its network was vulnerable, hey had no idea how big the problem was, and so they didn't know how much money to spend to fix it. Was this a thousand dollar problem, or a billion dollar one?

Greenstar answered this question, starting in 1964, and by 1970 it was installed in five cities. It silently monitored long distance toll calls, looking for evidence of fraud -- somebody using a "blue box" or "black box" to make a free call. When it found a suspicious call, it silently recorded it, and trained human operators had to decide if the call was fraudulent. Greenstar monitored some 33 million American telephone calls, and secretly tape recorded 1.5 million of them.

Was it legal?

We'll never know for sure, because that would have required a court case involving it. AT&T very carefully keep Greenstar out of the lime ight (and out of court). Greenstar came to light in 1975 and there were congressional hearings. AT&T offered a vigorous defense, saying it was legal and was the only way they could get a handle on the fraud problem. The Congressional Research Service studied the matter and the best they could do was conclude that it was "unclear" if the system was legal or not.

And what was the Telephone Crime Lab?

The Telephone Crime Lab was a small department at Bell Laboratories that dealt with crimes involving the telephone. This was something that AT&T and Bell Labs initially provided as a service to the government and FBI in the 1960s, since Bell Labs had the best telephone engineers and technicians in the country, and the FBI was increasingly seeing high tech crimes that involved the telephone, or in some cases, audio recordings. One of the people I interviewed for the book, Ken Hopper, was a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Labs. He recalled that the Telephone Crime Lab started off as a "5 percent job" (i.e., something that would take up 5 percent of one employee's time) and within a few years was close to 100 percent of several employees' time. They did everything from helping out with de-noising audio tapes to investigating phone phreaks.

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Apple and the iWatch conundrum

Will Apple ever make an iWatch?

(Credit:
Sarah Tew/CNET)

Ever since the sixth-generation iPod Nano, lots of people have thought that Apple making its own branded watch is not merely a smart potential move but simply a matter of time. No matter what some have recently argued, I doubt, however, that today's Apple is hungry enough to create the fabled iWatch device.

I've been covering the technology beat long enough to feel, no, smell certain shifts in the gadget market. I'm talking about those cycles when a new product category springs up from nowhere and first seems like a completely goofy notion. Soon after, the segment really heats up with scores of companies jumping into the fray to make a quick buck.

Traditionally, if Apple senses a legitimate opportunity it steps in at the right moment after figuring out the secret to success and sucks the air right out of the market.
Tablets and MP3 players existed well before Apple launched the
iPod and iPad, but their arrival completely transformed the playing field. Remember music players from Creative Labs, Rio, or even Microsoft's clunky Windows Tablet PCs?

I'm getting the same tingling sensation right now from smartwatches. At
CES in January the sleeper hit of the show was wearable tech, essentially devices you could strap or clip to yourself as you would an accessory or article of clothing. A lot of smartwatches, fitness bands, or some hybrid of the two, were talked up at the conference.

These included everything from the long-awaited and crowd-funded Pebble and the Dick Tracy/007-inspired Martian Passport Watch to the Fitbit Flex fitness tracker and the Basis Band. When you factor in the success of the Nike FuelBand, Nike being a company Apple has partnered with in the past to create fitness products, I'd say the time is ripe for Apple to swoop in for the kill.

Chat through the Martian Passport like a speakerphone.

(Credit:
Brian Bennett/CNET)

This is a move the Cupertino company used to accomplish without breaking a sweat. Apple has the knack of catching the competition completely flat-footed, surprising since many already had a big head start. The iPhone is a perfect example. Smartphones had existed for years but the iPhone sounded the death knell for Microsoft's struggling Windows Mobile products -- trust me, I was saddled with a T-Mobile Wing at the time. The Sidekick and a legion of keyboarded feature phones suffered the same fate.

I'm afraid Apple hasn't demonstrated its signature ferocity in recent years. We haven't seen a truly disruptive product from the company since the first iPad. Every noteworthy hardware release since then has been evolutionary and incremental, not transformative. The iPad Mini is simply a smaller iPad, while the iPhone 5 essentially increased the screen from 3.7 to 4 inches. Its A6 processor is also dual-core where many Android CPUs have gone to full quad-core and it received 4G LTE well after its rivals.

What Apple needs here is true out-of-the-box action to quell the doubters at large and on Wall Street. A serious example of nonlinear thinking that matches the creation of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Something that would merge multiple gadgets and applications into something entirely new or perhaps clean up the confused mess other manufacturers tout as useful gadgets. Something like a fabulous, shiny Apple iWatch.

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