Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “GO App Lets You Anonymously Share Photos, Videos or Comments [PICS]”

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• GO App Lets You Anonymously Share Photos, Videos or Comments [PICS]
• StyleSeat Is OpenTable for Beauty Appointments
• Restore Your Faith in Humanity at the Nicest Place on the Internet
• The Week That Killed SOPA: A Timeline
• Advertisers, This Is What an NFL Fan Looks Like [INFOGRAPHIC]
• Wear a Wi-Fi Hotspot With These Cutting-Edge Cufflinks [VIDEO]
• Megaup-Lord of the Rings and 4 Other Hilarious Viral Topics
• Who Did the Most to Bury SOPA? [POLL]
• What Megaupload Teaches Us About the Cloud, SOPA and Backups
• Google Pulls the Plug on Picnik, Sky Map and More
• Twitter Reacts to SOPA’s Burial
• It Only Takes a Click to Be Part of an Anonymous Attack [VIDEO]
• Why 2012 Is the Year of Mobile Advertising
• Google Algorithm Changes Downgrade Sites With Too Many Ads [VIDEO]
• Twitter Releases 2012 Sundance Film Festival Must-Follow List
• The Pixel Renaissance: Pixel Art’s Place in 21st Century Expression
• How Kodak Squandered Every Single Digital Opportunity It Had
• The Facebook Bed: Slumbering for Social Networking Fanatics
• Could SOPA Rise From the Dead?
• Talk Tech With Fellow Gadget Enthusiasts at a Mashable Meetup
• Is Megaupload Back? [UPDATED]
• RIP SOPA: The Internet Kills Its Attackers
• FindTheBest Mobile Will Instantly Compare Anything
• Obama Sings Al Green at the Apollo Theatre [VIDEO]
• Facebook ‘Relieved’ That SOPA Is Dead
• European Politicians Didn’t Like SOPA Any More Than You [VIDEO]
• Samsung Super Bowl Ad Going for Apple Tackle [VIDEO]
• SOPA Is Dead: Smith Pulls Bill
• Apple’s Hidden Museum Reveals Clashes in the Jobs Interregnum
• Is too Much Texting Giving You ‘Text Neck’?

GO App Lets You Anonymously Share Photos, Videos or Comments [PICS] Posted: 20 Jan 2012 09:03 PM PST If you’ve ever wanted to post a photograph, video or brief comment without your real name or online moniker attached to the content, a fresh mobile app now gives you that option. GO, which rolled out Friday for Android and in November for iPhone, allows you to capture, share and discover media and text snippets anonymously (see gallery below). The slick-looking app tags your device’s location and a subject to your content and plops it on a map for other users to find within the app or at GO’s website. You don’t have to register for an account to use the service, although you are given the choice to add a username. Users now “can hold the future of personal mobile broadcast in their hot little hands," GO’s creative director Justin Dionisio told Mashable. They can also share GO content on Facebook and Twitter. To discover what’s happening around the world, just click any location on the global map under the “GO” tab. A pop-up will list all of the items uploaded in that area, and then you can choose to view by subject or everything at once. You can also search for specific tags or learn what’s trending under the “FIND” tab. Occupy Wall Street demonstrators with iPhones have used the geo-based app to coordinate protests. Additionally, GO let them avoid any unnecessary attention from police or media, Forbes reported in November. Just in time for GO’s launch into the Android Market on Friday, the app’s creator — Hollr — has partnered with Verizon and Casio, which have included GO as part of their new marketing initiatives for the G’zOne Casio Commander smartphone in Aspen this year, Dionisio says. GO App GO, which rolled out Jan. 20 for Android and in November for iPhone, allows you to capture, share and discover media and text anonymously. Click here to view this gallery. More About: Android apps, location-based, mobile apps, sharing

StyleSeat Is OpenTable for Beauty Appointments Posted: 20 Jan 2012 08:20 PM PST The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: StyleSeat Quick Pitch: Find and book beauty salon appointments online. Genius Idea: Robust marketing tools that bring salon owners and stylists onto the platform. Like many promising startups, StyleSeat began with a problem. When Melody McCloskey — the tall, conspicuously pretty San Franciscan who cofounded StyleSeat three years ago — wanted to book a salon appointment, she struggled to find someone who was skilled at cutting curly hair within her budget. Friend recommendations only took her so far, and salon receptionists declined to make suggestions about which of their stylists would be best suited to her. So she persuaded Dan Levine, a former colleague and VP of digital product development at EMI, to become her cofounder. The pair did their field work, interviewing salon owners, wellness experts, and hair and beauty stylists to ascertain their needs. They found that professionals book 70% of their available appointment times on average, but lack the resources, particularly online, to further grow their businesses. StyleSeat launched in May 2011, and has since expanded to more than 20,000 professionals in 4,300 cities. Two hundred fifty thousand appointments have been booked through the service altogether. The site is designed to make it easy for consumers to find and schedule an appointment without picking up the phone, just as OpenTable makes it possible for diners to discover and reserve tables at restaurants. Users can filter search results by location, price range, those that offer online booking and those who are running promotions. They can even see who is available for an appointment in the next few hours. Professionals have their own profiles, with which they can introduce themselves over a few photographs and a portfolio of work (see above). Consumers can look through the list of services and prices and easily pull up a stylist’s calendar to pick an appointment time (see below). After an appointment, a stylist can prompt a customer to give feedback through StyleSeat. If the feedback is negative, it gives the stylist an opportunity to address the customer’s issue. If it’s positive, the stylist can post it publicly on his or her profile. As such, McCloskey says the site isn’t a replacement for Yelp or other review sites, but rather complements them. For beauty professionals, there’s also a range of tools for helping them better optimize their businesses. For instance, professionals can view charts that show them the days that they are booked most and least often. StyleSeat might then suggest a stylist run a promotion on his or her quietest day to help bolster bookings. The company has also produced a number of small business guides to help professionals take advantage of online marketing platforms such as Facebook. The site is free for both professionals and consumers. McCloskey says StyleSeat will eventually introduce an online payment option that will charge professionals a fee similar to that of a credit card. The company is also looking into premium marketing packages as revenue opportunities. Beyond developing its business model, StyleSeat is also building apps for iPhone and Android devices, and making it easier for consumers to shop for specialty services such as prom updos and children’s haircuts. Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today. More About: beauty, spark of genius series, styleseat For more Business coverage: Follow Mashable Business on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Business channel Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Restore Your Faith in Humanity at the Nicest Place on the Internet Posted: 20 Jan 2012 07:41 PM PST You catch glimpses of sunny parks, busy street corners and various home dwellings as smiling faces step up to offer friendly hugs and a lullaby voice sings lightly. Sound nice? It is. And you might be surprised to learn that it exists, of all places, on the Internet. “It doesn't ask any questions,” explains Jeff Lam, one of the creators behind the nicest place on the Internet. “It doesn't want to know why you're sad or why you need a hug. I think that's the nice thing about it.” Lam and his co-creator Lauren Perlow had the idea for the site after a rough day at their ad agency jobs. They spent that weekend collecting about 30 video hugs from the streets of San Francisco — a process that strangers were surprisingly willing to participate in — and posted the site in November. About 300,000 people have visited it since. Some of those visitors have contributed their own hugs to the project. There are about 200 on the site, which is the most videos Lam and Perlow can put on its YouTube playlist. They get about 10 new video hug submissions a day. And miraculously, all of them have been nice. Lam says there hasn’t been a negative comment yet. “When we uploaded the videos onto YouTube, we thought we should disable the comments because we don't want people to write mean things,” he says. “But we forgot to turn off the comments. A couple of days later we realized, but it was quite the opposite. People couldn’t say a bad thing about it.” As someone who regularly reads about cyber-bullying and is required to attach an open comment thread to everything I produce during the weekday, I tend to think of the anonymous Internet as a terrible, soulless place. But the nicest place on the Internet has leveraged that same anonymity for an eloquent group hug. It’s an oddly comforting project. More About: the nicest place on the internet For more Entertainment coverage: Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Entertainment channel Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

The Week That Killed SOPA: A Timeline Posted: 20 Jan 2012 07:11 PM PST Ladies and gentleman, bid farewell to the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. They’re both being tabled and sent to legislative limbo. How did that happen when just a few days ago it seemed like debates about the bills only existed online? Join us for a trip through time as we examine just how SOPA and PIPA were taken down. First, some background: SOPA and PIPA were both billed as anti-piracy bills, designed to combat digital copyright theft. Detractors argued that the twin pieces of legislation would do more harm than good, destabilizing the Internet and stifling online freedom of speech. By the mid-November, the legislation was opposed by such tech heavyweights as AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo and Zynga. Fast forward to last week when things really got interesting: Friday, Jan. 13: SOPA and PIPA Authors Remove DNS Provisions On lucky Friday the 13th, support for SOPA and PIPA seemed as sturdy as ever. A few days earlier, SOPA’s author, Rep. Lamar Smith (R.-Texas) said that fears of the bill were “unfounded.” Media Matters reported that the bills had been mentioned during prime-time evening news broadcasts only once, suggesting that most people just weren’t talking (or hearing) about the anti-piracy bills. For the anti-SOPA crowd, the threat was real and the challenge intense. But there were a few weak spots in the armor. Even if most Americans weren’t in the know about SOPA and PIPA, the Internet community certainly was. The Go Daddy boycott and anti-SOPA activity on Reddit started to catch the public’s attention. On Friday, the first pieces of the SOPA and PIPA wall began tumbling down. The authors of both bills, Smith for SOPA and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.) for PIPA removed the Domain Name System (DNS) blocking provisions of their legislation. DNS acts as a sort of “phone book” for the Internet. When you type an address into your browser’s address bar, DNS translates that address from a website name (like www.google.com) to an IP address (like 192.168.2.1), which your computer then uses to find the server you’re looking for. Many critics of SOPA and PIPA claimed that interfering with DNS would destabilize and slow down the Internet while failing to prevent online piracy. After all you could always type 192.168.2.1 into an address bar to bypass the blockade. The removal of the DNS provisions was a small victory for SOPA detractors. It was the first indication that Congress was listening to the bill’s critics. Monday, Jan. 16: The White House Takes a Stand Over the weekend, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press and called for continued debate on PIPA. However, Congress was still on its winter break so the debate was put on hold. The White House was not on break and on Monday, and it took an official position by responding to an online petition posted on We the People. In a blog post, the White House said online piracy was a real problem but that SOPA and PIPA were too imprecise and too dangerous to American cybersecurity. It wasn’t a complete victory for SOPA and PIPA opponent, but it was another headache for its supporters. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), a major supporter for the bills, responded with a press release: “While we agree with the White House that protection against online piracy is vital, that protection must be meaningful to protect the people who have been and will continue to be victimized if legislation is not enacted.” Tuesday, Jan. 17: Wikipedia Announces Blackout, Google Plans to Censor Logo On Tuesday, the anti-SOPA movement gained some serious steam. Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, announced that Wikipedia English (which gets 25 million visitors every day) would be going dark on Jan. 18, leaving only information about SOPA/PIPA and methods to contact elected officials. And Google decided they would be using their front page to protest the bill on the same day. They would be joining a long list of sites who promised blackouts or changes on Jan. 18. Tuesday was shaping up to become the eve of “the day the Internet went dark,” the calm before the digital storm. SOPA’s author called Wikipedia’s blackout a “publicity stunt” that did a “disservice” to its users. He announced a new markup session for February, when the bill would be opened up for debate in the House Judiciary Committee. Meanwhile, Hollywood reassured everyone that DNS blocking was “off the table.” Wednesday, Jan. 18: The Day The Internet Went Dark On Wednesday, millions of people awoke to an Internet which just wasn’t quite right. Wikipedia visitors were greeted with blacked out screens and calls to actions for fighting SOPA and PIPA. Visitors were encouraged to learn about the bills and call their elected officials to voice their opinion about the legislation. By the end of the blackout, Wikipedia actually saw above-average traffic as people flocked to the site to see what all the commotion was about. Googlers could still use the site normally, but the company’s logo was “censored” with black bars. The company launched an anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA public petition, which went viral and gained more than 7 million signatures in one day. Reddit was dark for 12 hours but, like Wikipedia, users could access information about SOPA and PIPA and find out how to contact their elected officials. On Facebook, users could read all about SOPA and PIPA on a tab featured on the site’s politics portal. Mark Zuckerberg took the opportunity to break his silence on the bills and publicly decried the legislation. During “The Day the Internet Went Dark,” almost all of the online conversation around the bills was in opposition to them. According to Twitter, people tweeted about SOPA a total of 2.4 million times throughout the day. In the offline world, approximately as many as thousand people took to the streets of New York City to protest the bills. But did the coordinated blackout have any impact? Congressional websites were flooded by people looking to contact their representatives. By the day’s end, PIPA and SOPA’s co-sponsors were beginning to abandon ship, while approximately 30 elected officials who were previously on the fence took the opportunity to announce their opposition to the bills. Thursday, Jan. 19: SOPA and PIPA Enter the Mainstream Did the Internet blackout change minds? Thursday night, we had our answer. During the CNN Southern Republican national debate, every Republican presidential candidate took a stance against the bills. When SOPA and PIPA were mentioned during the debate, it was an indication that the issue had gone mainstream. Thursday also saw an Anonymous attack on several pro-SOPA organizations. There was no word from Congress on the status of either bill. That would come on Friday morning. Friday, Jan. 20: Congress Tables SOPA and PIPA If Wednesday was the day that the Internet spoke, then Friday is the day that Congress listened. Friday morning, Reid canceled a PIPA vote that would’ve moved the bill forward in the Senate. Hours later, Smith announced he was tabling his bill as well. With those decisions, both bills were cast into Congressional purgatory. Could they be resurrected? Perhaps. But for now we can say “adieu.” The Fallout SOPA and PIPA are off the table, but is there any one event or day that turned the tables? Was Wednesday’s Internet blackout the true victor? Let us know in the comments below. SEE ALSO: Who Did the Most to Bury SOPA? [POLL] May 12: PIPA introduced The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011), better known as PIPA was introduced into the Senate by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). The act's goals were described by its sponsors as protecting intellectual property and punishing foreign sites who post copyrighted material. If a site was discovered doing so, the U.S. attorney general could order U.S. based Internet service providers, search engines, payment systems and advertising networks to suspend doing business with the website. Photo courtesy Mikedish on Flickr Click here to view this gallery. Here’s how people on Twitter reacted to Friday’s tabling of SOPA. 1. @PatrickRuffini This tweet by technologist Patrick Ruffini became a Politico headline. Click here to view this gallery. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, PashaIgnatov More About: congress, internet, PIPA, stop online piracy act, trending, US Congress

Advertisers, This Is What an NFL Fan Looks Like [INFOGRAPHIC] Posted: 20 Jan 2012 06:24 PM PST Just two NFL teams will remain after Sunday’s league semifinals, setting up a final showdown for Super Bowl XLVI glory. But the Super Bowl isn’t just a huge event for the players, coaches and fans involved. It’s also make-or-break time for the television advertisers who pay a premium for the right to reach an audience of more than 100 million rapt viewers. But exactly who will these advertisers target? And what will they spend to do it? The infographic below shows that sales professionals, fans of science-fiction movies and people interested in buying Sony and Vizio products are “very likely” to tune into the game. Golfers and owners of sport utility vehicles have an even higher likelihood of watching, and people looking to buy an Amazon Kindle are probably big fans of the Super Bowl as well. But reaching those football buffs won’t come cheap — 30-second spots are expected to top out at around $3.5 million each for the 2012 Super Bowl. Last year, advertisers spent some $200 million to run their messages on Fox during breaks in the action. The record, however, was set two years prior when companies spent a total of $213 million to advertise during NBC’s broadcast of the game. From 2001 to 2010, total ad spending on Super Bowls topped a reported $1.6 billion. During that period, the parent company of Budweiser beer led the rush by shelling out a whopping $235 million, while PepsiCo was well over the $100 million mark as well. Check out the infographic below for more details on who makes up the Super Bowl audience and what advertisers spend to reach them. Infographic courtesy of BlueKai More About: Advertising, infographics, Super Bowl

Wear a Wi-Fi Hotspot With These Cutting-Edge Cufflinks [VIDEO] Posted: 20 Jan 2012 06:01 PM PST Wish Wi-Fi hotspots would grow on sleeves? A set of cufflinks available at Brookstone serves not only as a decorative man-sessory, it features USB storage — and can even be plugged into a PC to create a Wi-Fi hotspot. In what could easily come from a James Bond movie, these polished silver cufflinks will wow the masses at a wedding or business event with the ability to provide instant Wi-Fi access when hooked up to a computer. After downloading accompanying software to the computer, the high-speed hotspot can be used by nearby smartphones, iPads or other wireless devices. No room in your pockets to carry around your latest vacation pictures? The cufflinks also hold up to 2GB for files and pictures. The concept of USB cufflinks isn’t entirely new, but the fact that they also double as a Wi-Fi hotspot sets these beauties a part from others. The cufflinks won’t come cheap, though — these will set you back $250. Expensive? Absolutely. Practical? Of course. There’s also been a recent wave of high-tech formalwear, including a USB wedding ring and a wedding dress with 300 gold-tinted LED lights. SEE ALSO: 12 Tech Toys for Weddings | 10 Marriage Proposals Involving Social Media or Gadgets Would you ever buy high-tech cufflinks like this for you or someone else? What’s the craziest high-tech fashion item you’ve ever seen? Let us know in the comments. More About: Gadgets, wi-fi

Megaup-Lord of the Rings and 4 Other Hilarious Viral Topics Posted: 20 Jan 2012 05:29 PM PST The Mashable Meme Machine is a daily look at five hilarious viral topics spreading across the web right now. Happy Friday! It’s been a long week of battles on the Internet, but the web has prevailed … for now, anyway. The Meme Machine team is celebrating by providing you with some little nuggets of victory and liberty. Today we have Lord of the Rings channeling the takedown of Megaupload, and (former and current) U.S. presidents channeling Ryan Gosling. If that’s not enough, we also have cute, illegal koala bears and Chuck Testa in a zebra costume. Top it off with Christopher Walken reading Where the Wild Things Are and you should be set for the weekend. Discover any funny memes lately? Let us know. Feel free to contact Brian Anthony Hernandez (@BAHjournalist), Christine Erickson (@christerickson) or Lauren Hockenson (@lhockenson). 1. Where the Wild Things Are (Read by Christopher Walken) "Christopher Walken" (or someone who sounds just like him, anyway) reads the popular childrens book Where the Wild Things Are and improvises on the illustrations. One of my favorite lines: "Anyway, he chases a dog with a fork. I don't really think he's going to eat him, but kids are jerks, you know." Click here to view this gallery. More About: Chuck Testa, megaupload, Meme Machine, memes, tumblr, YouTube For more Entertainment coverage: Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Entertainment channel Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Who Did the Most to Bury SOPA? [POLL] Posted: 20 Jan 2012 04:55 PM PST Ding, dong, the bill is dead — or at the very least buried, even if it may well rise again in another form in a year or so. Regardless, the withdrawal of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act and the tabling of PIPA (its equivalent in the Senate) Friday marks a stunning victory for Internet activists over Hollywood lobbyists. Last week, the bills seemed certain to pass. Given the large amount of support from Congressmen who had received funding from the Motion Picture Association of America or the Recording Industry Association of America — Congressmen in both houses, on both sides of the aisle — the speed of the turnabout has us looking for explanations. Naturally, no one person or organization brought this change about on their own. But who is most responsible? Should we thank Wikipedia for going dark and raising awareness? Google or Facebook, for taking smaller steps? Or the GOP presidential candidates who were suddenly united by their SOPA opposition at Thursday night’s debate (and may well have influenced Rep. Lamar Smith, the bill’s sponsor and a Republican)? Or was it more a case of myriad small activists, too numerous to mention, banding together and encouraging the rest of us to call our representatives? Take our poll — and let us know in the comments if there are any more candidates we should add to the list. May 12: PIPA introduced The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011), better known as PIPA was introduced into the Senate by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). The act's goals were described by its sponsors as protecting intellectual property and punishing foreign sites who post copyrighted material. If a site was discovered doing so, the U.S. attorney general could order U.S. based Internet service providers, search engines, payment systems and advertising networks to suspend doing business with the website. Photo courtesy Mikedish on Flickr Click here to view this gallery. Image courtesy of Kimonomania; Flickr. More About: PIPA, SOPA, trending, wikipedia

What Megaupload Teaches Us About the Cloud, SOPA and Backups Posted: 20 Jan 2012 04:31 PM PST The raid and subsequent shutdown of file-sharing service Megaupload not only hacked off members of Anonymous, it also underscores one of the inherent vulnerabilities in storing data in the cloud. Beyond just providing easy TV access to college students without cable, Megaupload and the other sites in its network helped encompass the largest digital locker service in the world. While we suspect that the majority of Megaupload users were not storing family photos and personal documents, the site was exceedingly popular with users. Ars Technica reports that Megaupload consumed more bandwidth in corporate workplaces than cloud-storage and collaboration services like Dropbox and Box.net. Since the Megaupload shutdown, users with non-infringing content served on Megaupload’s servers have expressed outrage at no longer having access to their content. According to the federal indictment, the data center that housed Megaupload’s servers had more than 1,000 different computers and contained more than 25 petabytes (25 million gigabytes) of data storage. That’s a lot of data. The fact that Megaupload stored so much information — and for so many potential users — got us thinking about the bigger implications of the cloud, online storage and the rights of law enforcement. Could a Service Like Dropbox Get TKO’ed Megaupload Style? Although cloud storage and backup services have existed in various forms for well over a decade, few companies have managed to make the concept easy to understand and use. Dropbox is one of the few companies that has managed to present a concept — and a service — that is easy to understand and invaluable to use. I’m a Dropbox Pro user myself and I gladly pay $99 a year for 50 GB of storage. I use Dropbox with Mashable colleagues, friends and family members. I also use Dropbox as a way to back up my music and video libraries. In most cases, these are files that I have digitally purchased or ripped from a CD. Still, the nature of Dropbox and its ability to easily share files with others means that hypothetically, I could share my Amazon MP3 library with someone else. That opens up the question: If the district court could shutdown charge Megaupload and its employees with “conspiracy to commit copyright infringement” (amongst other crimes) and shut down the service (including access to non-infringing files), could a much more legitimate service like Dropbox be next? Right now, the answer is “no.” Megaupload’s problems go far beyond the content its users uploaded to the service. The government case against the company and its employees alleges money laundering, trafficking and a blatant disregard for copyright, even in the face of takedown notices. A court will make the final determination as to the validity of these charges, but suffice to say this isn’t just about copyright infringement. Moreover, current safe harbor rules don’t hold Internet services accountable for the the actions of their customers. In other words, if I commit copyright infringement by using Dropbox to share music and movies with my friends, Dropbox as a service isn’t liable for my actions (provided it kicks me off when presented with my misdeeds). One of the major problems with the SOPA and PIPA legislation was the restriction of these safe harbor legislations. Web services — and even websites including Mashable — could be held responsible for the actions of users, even if the services themselves were unaware of those actions. While SOPA in its current form is dead — or at is on hiatus — it’s important to remember that if it or similar measures pass, what has happened to the (few) legitimate users of Megaupload could happen to other services as well. The Cloud Isn’t Always Forever As I’ve read accounts of users who actually used Megaupload for work or personal file storage, I’ve been struck by two things. Why would you choose Megaupload over Skydrive, Dropbox or YouSendIt? I mean, really. The cloud isn’t a panacea or a total replacement for off-site backups. This isn’t the first time that a cloud service has gone offline and taken user files with them, and it won’t be the last. In the mid-2000s, a rush of online storage services raced on the scene, only to go belly-up a few years later. Cloud storage and online backup is a wonderful thing, but it cannot — and should not — be the sole backup solution for a person’s most important files and documents. Instead, I advocate a combination of backup policies that combines local backup (preferably on a RAID setup) and cloud backups. For truly important files, an offsite local backup (in a firesafe box or safe deposit box) is also a great idea. Even if you pay a service money for backup and storage space, disasters do happen. Proper backups at multiple locations is the best way to protect yourself from the pain of losing important files. Also — if you’re using a service that is best known as a pirates paradise to store and transfer work or personal files — it might be time to switch to a provider with a bit less heat. More About: cloud, Dropbox, megaupload, Opinion, SOPA

Google Pulls the Plug on Picnik, Sky Map and More Posted: 20 Jan 2012 03:55 PM PST Google just rained all over Picnik’s picnic. The photo editing site got the ax on Friday and will shut down in April. Picnik — which said via its site that its last day will be April 19 — will be moving to Google+ in the future. Google also announced that it is shutting down other services including Needlebase, Social Graph API, Urchin and Google Sky Map. “As we head into 2012, we've been sticking to some old resolutions — the need to focus on building amazing products that millions of people love to use every day,” Google said via its blog. “That means taking a hard look at products that replicate other features, haven't achieved the promise we had hoped for or can't be properly integrated into the overall Google experience.” Google said it will use Picnik staffers to "continue creating photo-editing magic across Google products." In the post to its site, Picnik cast the move in a positive light. “Since joining Google in 2010, we have been creating editing magic in Google products while continuing to keep Picnik awesome. But now we get to focus on even awesomer things,” the post said. Picnik also hinted that its photo editing features will be headed to Google+ and other Google products sooner than later. The news comes just a few days after Flickr cut various features — including Picnik — from its site as part of a re-organization effort. Picnik’s tools were integrated not only into Flickr, but also Picasa, Google’s photo-sharing platform, as well as Facebook. To smooth the transition to Google+, Picnik has added a feature called Picnik Takeout that downloads images to the desktop as zip files. Photos can also be copied to Google+, where they can then be stored and shared. Picnik also informed its premium members that they will be refunded as a result of the change. And until the site closes, all members can be granted access to its premium privileges for free. Will you miss Picnik? What photo-editing services do you use? Let us know in the comments. More About: Google, picnik

Twitter Reacts to SOPA’s Burial Posted: 20 Jan 2012 03:09 PM PST 1. @PatrickRuffini This tweet by technologist Patrick Ruffini became a Politico headline. Click here to view this gallery. The Internet rejoiced Friday after Rep. Lamar Smith (R.-Texas) said that he would indefinitely pull the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) from consideration “until there is wider agreement on a solution.” Smith’s announcement came two days after a web-wide blackout protest in which some of the Internet’s most popular and prominent websites censored content, calling attention to SOPA’s potentially devastating effect on Internet freedom and creativity. Twitter users declared victory after Smith’s retreat on Friday, crediting the mass action by activists and ordinary web users alike for the change in course. While similar legislation will undoubtedly set off future rounds of contentious debate in Congress and among the public, Friday was nonetheless a moment of optimism for SOPA’s opponents on Twitter. SEE ALSO: RIP SOPA: The Internet Kills Its Attackers | Could SOPA Rise From the Dead? “SOPA Is Dead” trended nationally on the network. Politicians, digital advocates, artists, celebrities and popular parody accounts joined the celebration. Many simply expressed joy, but others emphasized the need for sustained vigilance and continued pressure on elected officials. It was the culmination of an extended public battle over SOPA since the bill was introduced in October. GoDaddy felt the wrath of Internet users in December when it was included on a Congressional list of official SOPA supporters; the company soon reversed its position after vociferous backlash. Support for the bill quickly eroded over the past week, and the growing momentum was regarded as a powerful example of the web’s populist reach. Then Smith’s significant backtrack on Friday signaled SOPA’s ultimate demise — at least for the foreseeable future. What do you think about the death of SOPA as we knew it? What were your favorite tweets from Friday? Let us know in the comments. More About: News, Social Media, SOPA, Twitter

It Only Takes a Click to Be Part of an Anonymous Attack [VIDEO] Posted: 20 Jan 2012 02:38 PM PST Anonymous‘s distributed denial of service attacks on the U.S. Department of Justice website and others Thursday were a new type of blitz, according to security firm Sophos. Previously, DDoS attacks happened when someone installed a low orbit ion cannon program that lets computers blast a website with unwanted traffic, causing the target site to crash. In this week’s attack, though, Sophos said simply clicking a link would do the damage. So unsuspecting Internet users could have participated in the DDoS attack without any indication. “We’ve seen many links posted on Twitter, and no doubt elsewhere on the Internet, pointing to a page on the pastehtml.com website,” Sophos said in a blog post. “If you visit the webpage, and do not have JavaScript disabled, you will instantly, without user interaction, begin to flood a website of Anonymous’s choice with unwanted traffic, helping to perpetuate a DDoS attack.” SEE ALSO: What Is Anonymous? [VIDEO] As Sophos reminds us, DDoS attacks are illegal. “If you participate in such an attack you could find yourself receiving a lengthy jail sentences,” the blog post says. Check out the video above to learn more about the attack and how it worked. More About: anonymous, ddos, mashable video, megaupload, sophos For more Tech coverage: Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Tech channel Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Why 2012 Is the Year of Mobile Advertising Posted: 20 Jan 2012 02:27 PM PST Ernie Cormier is the CEO and president of Nexage, the leading mobile advertising exchange. You can follow Nexage on Twitter @Nexage and read Nexage's blog here. Mobile advertising is coming of age. In many ways, it has been driven by the sheer force of the consumer’s insatiable appetite for all things mobile. More to the point, mobile is becoming a substantially more capable vehicle for driving brand awareness, affinity and purchases. Advertisers see this pattern taking shape, but there is still a disconnect between the avid mobile consumer and potential advertising dollars. This is caused by several factors, including the sufficient difference between mobile and standard web. Similar to the relationship between offline and online, it simply takes time to adjust to a new market, and credibly, there have been gaps in the mobile ad ecosystem that one can expect in any earlier stage market. SEE ALSO: The Evolution of Advertising: From Stone Carving to the Old Spice Guy But this distance is rapidly narrowing as advertisers and publishers employ the building blocks that will expand mobile advertising effectiveness in 2012. Mobile Advertising in 2012 1. Demand and Liquidity Is Increasing Although advertisers are concerned that total ad revenue (including digital) may decrease, mobile advertising is growing rapidly. Two factors are driving the change: First, more buyers are coming to the market and growing their purchase volumes, and second, there is a heavier focus on executing mobile-native campaigns that translate to better consumer engagement and improved ROI. 2. Location-Based Advertising Is Taking Flight Mobile-driven, location-based services are becoming a staple in nearly all parts of our lives, including mobile advertising. Advertisers are using local and hyperlocal campaigns to promote events and drive in-store sales, and an ever-increasing number of consumers respond to deal-, coupon- and event-based advertising. Mobile Media’s SMART Report stated that “49% of all targeted audience campaigns used local market audience targeting, as advertisers are often turning to mobile as an effective way to reach local consumers." 3. Real-Time Bidding (RTB) Creates Powerful Mutual Value for Buyers and Sellers RTB provides real-time auctions that enable buyers to compete for and buy individual impressions that best serve their campaigns. The value is shared by buyers and sellers alike — buyers purchase only the impressions they want, and publishers and developers benefit from a higher price and increased demand for their ad spaces. The resulting powerful and mutual value pushes RTB onto center stage as the strategic foundation for mobile advertising. 4. Rich Media Is Dramatically Enhancing Ad Quality and Consumer Engagement The ads themselves have held back mobile advertising. Banner ads were uninspiring, or in some cases, dull. Rich media ads — including video ad units and interstitials — are more artistic and animated, which fit better within today's highly visual games, apps and mobile web content. In 2010 banner ads saw a 0.09% click-through rate, while rich media ads saw 1.1% CTR, a significant difference. 5. Mobile Private Exchange Is Catalyzing Premium Publishers and Developers Premium publishers see the immense value in mobile advertising, but they also must avoid price erosion that has been attributed to automated markets. This friction has previously limited the financial value for the publisher; it has also limited the high-value audience available to advertisers. Mobile private exchange changes that equation, enabling premium publishers to create exclusive markets in which they select only those buyers they want to sell to, and prescribe the terms of how they sell. This can be particularly important for premium publishers who need to consider how to combine the liquidity of automated markets with brand sponsorships and their direct sales forces. With private exchange and the associated pricing and brand controls, publishers are able to shift from avoiding channel conflict to managing integrated (and productive) channels. Brands, ad agencies and publishers are allocating more time and money to mobile advertising; even with all of its imperfections, the sheer scale and energy of this market is unavoidably persuasive. And in 2012, building blocks are now in place to marry extraordinary opportunity with real capability, and to translate market confidence into revenue and ROI. Images courtesy of Flickr, samgranleese, iStockphoto, DamirK More About: 2012, Advertising, contributor, features, Mobile, Tech

Google Algorithm Changes Downgrade Sites With Too Many Ads [VIDEO] Posted: 20 Jan 2012 02:16 PM PST Got a lot of ads on your website? Google‘s new search algorithm, which looks for sites that maintain a good balance of content and ads, could automatically filter it out of search results pages. The change comes after complaints of searches regularly turning up sites that favor bulky ads over the content. The search engine will show more high-quality websites by downgrading pages that display too many ads, according to a blog post from Google engineer Matt Cutts. High-quality sites will also be rewarded, encouraging “a healthy web ecosystem.” Google, though, is already coming under fire for the changes. Some say its own site sometimes favors ad results. One example — see the video above — shows how a search for “Blu-Ray DVDs” turns up sidebar links to stores, supported personalized ads, shopping results, plus advertisement links that deflect from real content that users may be looking for. The change, Google’s Cutts notes, will affect less than 1% of global queries or less than 1 in 100 searches. The new algorithm will reduce rankings for low-value ads and sites deemed less useful. SEE ALSO: Google Promises Consumers Greater Ad Transparency Afraid your site will be affected? Google suggests cleaning up obscure content with the help of its Browser Size tool, plus screen resolution emulators to see how users will see your webpage on different devices. Tell us in the comments what you think of Google’s latest algorithmic tweak, and if you think it’ll impact your website. More About: advertisements, Google, google search, mashable video

Twitter Releases 2012 Sundance Film Festival Must-Follow List Posted: 20 Jan 2012 02:04 PM PST Twitter is getting into the Sundance Film Festival buzz with a list of must-follow accounts from top filmmakers, critics and interesting voices that will be at this year’s movie extravaganza. The Twitter list is a way to promote the festival’s growing social media presence as well as allow movie fans who can’t travel to Utah to participate in the festivities from afar. The list, called Sundance2012filmmakers, includes filmmakers such as @SpikeLee (Spike Lee, Red Hook Summer), @Birbigs (Mike Birbiglia, Sleepwalk With Me) and @EricWareheim (Eric Wareheim, Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Move). It also includes other festival-goers including actors such as @hitRECordjoe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), rappers-turned-actors like @Common (Common) and film critics including @aoscott (A.O. Scott, the New York Times). The list is curated by Basil Tsiokos, a programming associate for the Sundance Film Festival (@sundancefest). If you want to get behind-the-scenes video and exclusive content, the Sundance Twitter account or Tsiokos’ Twitter list can be a bit of a chore. Go to Sundance’s Facebook page to get easy access to videos such as director Alison Klayman speaking about her documentary about Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, or catch an ongoing livestream of interviews and features from the festival. The movie industry is becoming more social. Studios and filmmakers are realizing social media is a great way to promote their movies, especially for smaller films that may not be able to buy TV spots. One such movie, Indie Game: The Movie is making its debut at Sundance. The documentary used Kickstarter to help raise more than $100,000 — all while building an engaged and loyal audience. Will you be following the 2012 Sundance Film Fesitval on Twitter? How important is social media for modern films? Image courtesy of Calvin Knight and Sundance Film Festival More About: Film, movie, Social Media, Twitter For more Entertainment coverage: Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Entertainment channel Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

The Pixel Renaissance: Pixel Art’s Place in 21st Century Expression Posted: 20 Jan 2012 01:47 PM PST My first experience with pixels occurred in second grade. During the rainy months, our teacher allowed us to stay inside, where we replaced recess with video game tournaments. Huddled over old Apple II monitors, we maneuvered game hero Panama Joe through endless levels of Montezuma's Revenge. Panama Joe’s image featured an incredibly low pixel count, which made him vaguely reminiscent of Indiana Jones in that Joe wore a dapper hat, but that's about where the resemblance ended. Otherwise, Joe sported a red jumpsuit with three pixel buttons; and one black eye pixel poked out from under his hat. Pixels didn't leave much room for detail, yet we loved Panama Joe nonetheless. Montezuma's Revenge was limited in its pixel techniques by the technology of the time. Developed in the late '70s, people mostly associate 8-bit pixelation with video games of that era. However, today's high-resolution technology hasn't stopped fans from continuing to create pixel games and art. What's more, artists are referencing pixels using non-digital mediums, like paint and Rubik's Cubes. Most admit that nostalgia is part of what makes pixel art so successful, that despite all of the amazing digital innovation out there today, people haven't ended their love affair with the tiny bit-characters of their youth. But pixels are also appealing to a broader, modern audience – especially to a generation that can't tell an Atari from a typewriter. "I was really surprised," says pixel artist Rich Grillotti, 39. "I thought it was mostly going to be the kind of people who…would have a nostalgic memory of gaming from their childhood that would resonate with what we were doing." Instead, his company Pixeljam's main audience is eight to fourteen-year-olds who send fan art in appreciation of his work, much of which involves creating retro-style 8-bit video games. Grillotti studied fine art at Florida State University. He currently lives in Eugene, Oregon, where he wears locally created hemp pants, watches movies like Joe Versus the Volcano and plays pinball on his iPad. Artists and animators like Grillotti have been playing around with pixelation techniques since the early naughts. In the mid '00s the producers of a fashion show asked him to create accompanying pixel art — thus, the Model Series was born. Inspired by the models in fashion photography, Grillotti created pixel versions of beautiful (often nude) women. "I kept getting more and more minimal," he says, "and started getting excited with how good they looked in so few pixels, these little pixel women." Grillotti remained fascinated with pixel characters in general. "A lot of people comment on how amazing it is that these minimal pixel folks have some sort of character, personality to them," he says, "even though there's not much information there to convey it." What Is a Pixel? Pixel characters like Grillotti's can be created on the computer in a number of ways. Some people pixelate digital photos in Photoshop, where they choose filter options like "pixelate" and "mosaic" to distort all or part of a picture. In Photoshop, the user can select a "cell size," which increases or decreases the number of pixels that comprise a photo. However, many artists refuse to admit Photoshop pixelations come anywhere close to art. Others worry about the possible copyright issues associated with pixelating someone else's photographs. Simply put, a pixel is the smallest point that can be represented on a screen, and can appear in the form of small squares, dots or lines. Pixels are organized into a grid system, which then formats to everything from a computer screen to a printed page. Measured in pixels per inch (ppi), the more pixels to appear in an image, the more closely that image will resemble real- life (think high-def television). To put pixels in context, today's iPhone 4S boasts a 326 ppi display, whereas Panama Joe in Montezuma's Revenge couldn't have been made from more than 30 pixels total. Eight-bit pixel technology continues to thrive through digital art, game graphics and "chiptune" music, electronic beats often produced using vintage sound chips. Meanwhile, artists also create "pixel" art outside the digital space by arranging items like painted tiles and Rubik's Cubes to evoke a digital image – in the physical world. Toronto artist Josh Chalom used 12,090 Rubik's Cubes to recreate The Hand of God, originally painted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. "With 12,000 cubes, each cube has nine pixels," Chalom explains, pointing out that only one 3 x 3 side of each Cube shows in the piece. "You have over 100,000 pixels that you have to adjust and make sure that one's correctly next to the other." Chalom is a middle-aged, kind-voiced and broad-shouldered man who sports a graying goatee and shimmering neckties. He was born in Israel, raised in the Dominican Republic, and after working in life insurance for many years, eventually moved to Canada in 1990. As current creative director of a company called CubeWorks, Chalom and his team are currently working with Guinness World Records to re-create the entire Sistine Chapel ceiling in 2012, which would take 250,000 Rubik's Cubes and would measure 156 feet long and 56 feet wide, almost half the length of a football field. In the end, Chalom says the piece will be 130% of the size of the real Sistine Chapel. Although created entirely of Rubik's Cubes, Chalom's Sistine ceiling will rely heavily on a digital process. He first digitizes and pixelates a series of images. Then, he must simplify the infinite palette of the original work of art into six colors: the blue, red, yellow, orange, white and green of a Rubik's Cube. "There is no flesh tone on the Rubik's Cube, so you have to manipulate it to make sure that the white dots are near the yellow dots which are near the orange dots," he says. "It's almost like you have to go and do a complete makeover." He has help to do so. A team of eight "cubers" not only helped to "play" the cubes into strategic color combinations, but also to assemble the entire piece in cube order. Oddly enough, the pixel and the Rubik's Cube are actually close cousins in the design family. In fact, the Rubik's Cube was invented in 1974, right around the same time pixels caught on. Chalom sees a connection between the nostalgia of the Cube and a continued fascination for pixel art. "There are people coming in today that are tech-savvy — they just love the sheer pixel art," he says. "So it really is a combination of the Cube, the iconic imagery, the optical illusion. It all forms a beautiful blend, which serves to make people smile." "I think people are surprised that only a couple of color cards can represent an image or icon. It’s about the essence of an image," says Roel Vaessen, founder of Dutch design firm ixxi. The company contracts artists who piece together dozens of tiles into giant pixel-like artworks. Vaessen encourages customers to "create their own ixxis." For example, a couple can celebrate a new puppy or their daughter's wedding by uploading a photo. Then, ixxi enlarges the photo, pixelates the image, and breaks it into dozens of individual tiles. Finally, the recipients assemble the "pixel ixxi" on their wall. The company also sells pixel ixxis of Elvis and Pac-Man that, when assembled as floor-to-ceiling wall art, resemble "digital," pixel characters. These pop art (and even fine art) interpretations are quite popular. When on a wall, they appear cloudy and distorted, yet instantly recognizable for their iconic silhouettes and colors. Copyright Issues On the other hand, evoking nostalgia can be tricky, especially when an artist re-creates an existing work of art. People continue to question the possible copyright and fair use issues surrounding this practice. Essentially, when a recreation of a piece of art is considered fair use, it is an exception to copyright law. There are various qualifiers to determine whether something is covered by fair use. For instance, if it can be proven that a new piece of pixel art affects the value of the original art it imitated, it is not protected by fair use. While the Sistine Chapel falls under fair use due to its age and iconic universality (in the U.S., art is in the public domain if it was created prior to 1923), other artists have experimented with pixelating more recent art – and some have run into trouble. Computer programmer Andy Baio licensed the rights to create chiptune cover songs from Miles Davis' Kind of Blue album. However, Baio ran into legal trouble the summer of 2011, when he pixelated the photograph on the album cover. The original photographer, Jay Maisel, claimed copyright infringement and sought damages of up to $150,000 for each violation. Baio settled out of court by paying $32,500. "I think this settlement raises some interesting issues about the state of copyright for anyone involved in digital reinterpretations of copyrighted works," writes Baio on his blog. Baio juxtaposes pieces of original art next to those same pieces reinterpreted by another artist. For instance, he compares the Jim Morrison Doors album cover with a Rubik's Cube recreation by French artist, Invader. By posting such permissible artistic interpretations, Baio questions how his pixel art, in fact, violated fair use law. Apart from legal concerns, pixel re-creations face ethical questions as well. Ixxi's Roel Vaessen says The Girl with the Pearl Earring is one of the Dutch company's most popular pieces. However, Vaessen is unconcerned with the ethics behind repurposing the famous painting, and favors a more collaborative approach to art. "A pixel ixxi with a Space Invader [is] a combination of the original piece and the ixxi system. I think that’s just a good cooperation." Neither did Italian designer Nicola Felaco feel moral regret when creating his digital interpretation of The Mona Lisa. By organizing and layering geometric shapes, Felaco pieced together his Monalisa from the ground-up by assembling various sized earth-toned and green triangles to evoke an image of the famous seated woman, one that unarguably carries his own signature style. He toys with an offshoot of pixels known as vectors, which he explains are "based on forms, usually geometric, on primordial patterns," whereas pixel art is more about the process of creating on a digital platform. "I’m curious," he says, "always in constant search for innovation, artistic movements, social and technological experiments." Developer Tim Wesoly encourages people to experiment with pixels using a pixel editor tool like his Qubicle Constructor, a Windows program with which artists can build their visions from scratch. Artists using Qubicle can sculpt, organize and edit pixels on a 3D grid, then layer or export the resulting creations to game or animation projects. Since they're building from scratch, artists don't struggle with the fair use or ethical issues that arise when manipulating copyrighted photographs or art. "If you simply use a filter in Photoshop (like mosaic) on a photo, then it’s not pixel art, and therefore no unique interpretation," says Wesoly, who describes himself as more of a voxel artist, the 3D version of 2D pixel art. He shares a guideline that artists should keep in mind when re-creating other people's work: "It can’t be too pixelated. That’s impossible. The fewer pixels the better." When asked whether he supports an artist's creative license to recreate iconic works of art, he admitted, "I do that myself, and why shouldn’t I? One big aspect of pixel art is to interpret things everybody knows with as few colors and pixels as possible," he explains. "I don’t look at it as stealing somebody's ideas. It’s more like a homage to the original creator’s work." Pixel Art's Appeal For artists and their fans, that nostalgia continues to be a huge part of pixel art's appeal. In the rapidly changing world of technology, pixel art represents a reminder of simpler times. And they're fun. "Pixel art has got that friendly charm. It’s really hard to make pixel art look brutal or disturbing," Wesoly observes. Plus, pixel art is inherently shareable and format-friendly. Because the pixel is, by nature, digital, the art form lends itself perfectly to web culture. Most every artist mentioned in this article has capitalized on the Internet community, whether that meant taking pixel characters and animating them into video games or filming a colossal Rubik's Cube undertaking and posting the video to YouTube. "The results spread very well on the Internet," says Wesoly. "A lot of people think that those works are cool because they see the amount of work put into it." For artists, they're pleasurable to work with. "One strong trait of pixel art is that it drives the artist to find levels of abstraction. And there’s something very satisfying in transforming an idea or an object into an abstract interpretation," artist Kai Vermehr explains. "Pixels and blocks are really good at this, they are highly modular and very, very easy to handle and understand." Artists at Vermehr's company eBoy "create re-usable pixel objects" and then apply those objects to larger projects with multiple contributors. For instance, they construct individual pixel characters and scenes that the team then assembles into larger artistic representations for magazines like Wired and Fortune, and into advertising campaigns for Yahoo and Coca-Cola. In that way, each piece of pixel art has an element of teamwork. "I’m probably most proud of our object-based workflow that makes eBoy much more efficient, results in almost zero pixel waste and encourages cooperation," Vermehr says. EBoy is modern proof that pixel art is thriving. The company caters to a wide swath of geek culture, one that not only celebrates retro pixel technology, but can also appreciate new pixel iterations. After all, the pixel is not static. Artists can work with pixels of many shapes and sizes, can arrange them in infinite types of grids, and can adapt them according to the tastes of different age groups. That's one reason pixel art has been able to reach across the generations. Ixxi founder Roel Vaessen says his customers cut across age groups. "A lot of them are young and creative, but also the older generation discovered pixel art. They are pixelating their own love portraits and icons," he explains, judging from sales of his company's customizable tile art. In the end, pixel fandom remains strongest among the people who grew up alongside the technology. "Pixel art has that nerdic old school charm," says Wesoly of Qubicle, "A lot of people between 30 and 40 like that style because it reminds them of the good old times before smartphones and Facebook. I do." Sistine Chapel/Rubik's Cube artist Josh Chalom ultimately views art as a great equalizer. For him, nostalgia can surface at any time for any person, whether by means of digital art or a Renaissance painting. "It brings people back. It's a throwback," he says. "What's old is new. What's new is usually old." 1. Pixeljam Click here to view this gallery. Dog image courtesy of Flickr, Brian Hathcock More About: 8 bit, art, features, pixel, pixel art, video games For more Dev & Design coverage: Follow Mashable Dev & Design on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Dev & Design channel Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

How Kodak Squandered Every Single Digital Opportunity It Had Posted: 20 Jan 2012 01:35 PM PST Kodak has finally formalized what had been expected for years — it’s gone bankrupt. In the past 15 years, digital technology changed photography dramatically, and Kodak, a former heavyweight in the analog film business, got left behind. That’s the story of Kodak in the broadest of strokes, though it doesn’t capture the full (if you’ll forgive me) picture. In fact, Kodak missed the boat on digital not once, but at least three times. Besides never capitalizing on the digital-camera tech it helped create, Kodak also gravely misunderstood the new ways consumers wanted to interact with their photos, the technologies involved, and the market forces surrounding them. “It’s sad because they still have good people there,” says Jeffrey Hayzlett, who was Kodak’s Chief Marketing Officer from 2006 until 2010. “Overall the company has made a bunch of bets on technologies and business models that needed a longer runway than they had.” The recent economic downturn was a factor in Kodak’s demise, though other companies managed to weather it without going bankrupt. The truth is that by the time Kodak had both feet fully in the digital game, it had been outclassed by more nimble competitors with better products. And whenever Kodak took a shot at standing out, it was a swing and a miss. Now that it’s completely struck out, it bears reflecting on how deeply Kodak misunderstood consumer photography today, and the digital and social forces transforming it: Miss 1: Digital Cameras It’s no exaggeration to say Kodak invented digital photography. In 1975 Kodak engineer Steve Sasson created the first digital camera, which took photos with 10,000 pixels, or 0.01 megapixels — about a hundredth of the resolution that low-end cameraphones have today. Kodak didn’t stop there; it worked extensively on digital, patenting numerous technologies, many of which are built into the digital cameras of today. (Kodak’s primary asset is its intellectual property, which some estimates value at $2 billion.) “If you want to point back to the most pivotal moment that caused this,” says Hayzlett, “it was back in 1975 when they discovered the digital camera and put it back into a closet. Some of the same people are still there. I actually had an executive from Kodak come up to me last week and say, ‘I think film’s coming back.’” In 1995 the company brought its first digital camera to market, the DC40. This was years before many others would get into the digital game, but Kodak never took advantage of its early start. Philisophically, the company was steeped in the film business, and to embrace digital meant cannibalizing its own business. Others quickly filled the niche, and Kodak didn’t fully rev up its digital business until 2001, when it launched the EasyShare line of point-and-shoot cameras. “It’s a classic business strategy problem,” says Miriam Leuchter, editor of Popular Photography. “Their whole business was tied up in film and in printing. So while they’re developing this business technology, there’s not a big incentive to push it very far.” While Kodak was slow to get into the digital game, it wasn’t the only one. Perennial rival Fujifilm tiptoed as well, not coming out with the FinePix line of point-and-shoots until 2001, so Kodak still had a chance. However, despite having created the category, Kodak digital cameras weren’t anything special. They didn’t have any standout specs or features, and their designs weren’t as eye-catching other manufacturers’ models. “They just weren’t as good,” says Leuchter. “And the cameras themselves weren’t that appealing. Consumers like products that look cool, and [many] Kodak products just do not look cool. They’re bulky, they’re hunky, they’re dorky looking. They had a couple of good EasyShare cameras a couple of years ago, but they weren’t as good as a lot of the point-and-shoots from other companies.” Those rivals — including Fujifilm, Nikon, Sony, Canon and others — kept innovating over the years with features like face detection, smile detection, and in-camera red-eye fixes, and Kodak, while it put out competent products, was always following feature trends, never leading them. “The fact that Kodak invented the digital camera makes what is happening now particularly tragic,” says photographer Steve Simon, author of The Passionate Photographer. “For the last few years I would see Kodak at photo trade shows and on the big billboard at Times Square and I would wonder to myself, who exactly are they now and what exactly are they doing? If a photographer has to ask that, you know they have a problem.” Miss 2: Photo Sharing Kodak actually had one shot at creating a truly novel and useful feature for digital cameras: The company launched the world’s first Wi-Fi enabled camera in 2005, the EasyShare-One (seen below). The camera came equipped with a special card (separate from the SD card) that, when engaged, could connect to a nearby Wi-Fi network. The user could then email photos to friends straight from the camera. I reviewed the camera for Sound+Vision magazine, and, while it was bulky and had a cumbersome way of using the Wi-Fi, it worked as promised. Emailing photos was a relatively simple task (aside from the initial inputting of addresses), and since few people were securing their Wi-Fi networks with passwords in 2005, finding an open hotspot was surprisingly easy in urban environments. Nonetheless, the camera failed to sell well, and Kodak killed the line. However, if the company had the foresight to realize sharing was going to become the way people interacted with their photos, it might have thought twice. The year the EasyShare-One came out was the same year a group of engineers founded Eye-Fi, which has gone on to create a successful business around Wi-Fi-enabled SD cards for cameras — virtually the exact same concept Kodak abandoned. “Photo sharing is the killer app today,” says Hayzlett. “There’s nothing that beats it. The issue is they built a Wi-Fi camera well before its time, and really the application needs to be on a phone.” Sharing via the Web is by far the biggest way people use their photos, though, and Kodak seemingly got into the game reasonably early with its purchase of the Ofoto service in 2001 (Snapfish, now owned by HP, was founded in 2000). It took Kodak four years to relaunch the service as Kodak EasyShare Gallery, though, a huge amount of time that saw the emergence of Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket and others. Although EasyShare got good reviews for a while, the buzz surrounding its competitors was too loud for it to make any noise. And let’s not forget cellphones, which not only helped murder Kodak’s digital camera business (along with everyone else’s — right, Flip?), but also made photos social. While it would be expecting too much of Kodak to have created novel apps like Instagram or PicPlz, it was a virtual non-presence in mobile apps (no, SmileMaker doesn’t count), which cemented the company’s irrelevance in the way people experience photos today. There are no Kodak moments in mobile. Miss 3: Photo Viewing Kodak bet big on digital photo frames and photo printers, though it didn’t anticipate the market forces at work in each field. When Kodak began pushing hard into frames — with differentiating features like Wi-Fi and batteries (most frames only work when plugged in) — prices were in free-fall, and digital frames were rapidly becoming a commodity market, with thin margins. “That’s a very tough business to make money in, if you can make it at all,” says Hayzlett. “Everybody wants the best quality for free, basically.” At the same time, Kodak frames were still hampered by the necessity to tie into the company’s photo services, and the setup was much more technically cumbersome than the average person was willing to endure (if you’ve ever set up a Wi-Fi frame, you’ve probably wished Apple would enter the market so it would “just work”). Competing against value brands and other heavy hitters such as HP and Sony, Kodak frames only marginally stood out, and the company couldn’t make any substantial money on them. The field of photo printing, which Kodak is expected to emphasize if it emerges from bankruptcy, experienced a total transformation over the last decade. Everyone outside of professional photographers used to get prints of all their pictures out of necessity, but today few print photos in any quantity. Ever fewer want the hassle of owning a photo printer, instead choosing to get prints mailed to them from online services like Snapfish. “They made a big bet on consumer imaging technology — point-and-shoots and photo printers and picture frames — at a time when people increasingly using their phones,” says Leuchter. “And they’re not printing as much. Home printers are nice, but nobody’s printing. They’re only printing the photos they care most about.” A significant number of consumers do print photos, however, and the cheap-printer-as-means-to-sell-ink model is a proven model for companies to make money. If indeed Kodak survives, it makes financial sense for it to try and continue to be a force in the business, though since prints have been demoted to an ancillary way people experience photos, the company will never become the influencer it once was by focusing on it. Lessons Learned The most immediate takeaway from the fall of Kodak is clear: Don’t be afraid to cannibalize your own business in the name of progress. This is seen time and again in the digital revolution: Sony’s reluctance to develop a competent digital Walkman left an opening for the iPod. Blockbuster laughed off Netflix in the early days, then went bankrupt when it couldn’t compete with its Web-based competitor. And iPads may be eating up some Mac sales, but Apple’s bottom line is stronger than ever. But Kodak’s inability to make any of its products stand out over the last decade is demonstrative of an overall reluctance to innovate. Certainly, if you asked Kodak executives in the early 2000s if they were committed to innovation, they would have answered yes, but real innovation requires risk and vision. You don’t kill all Wi-Fi cameras just because the first model got a lukewarm response from the market — that is, if you really believe in the core idea. The story of Kodak’s downfall is an affirmation that true innovative spirit is much more often found in smaller companies and startups rather than old-school behemoths of yesteryear. After all, if you don’t have much to lose, you tend to make many more all-in bets. But, as Kodak has shown, if you do nothing but play it safe, the cost just to stay in the game will whittle you down until you’ve got nothing left. BONUS: A History of Kodak in Pictures "You Press the Button..." High school drop out and bank clerk George Eastman's technological breakthrough in the late 1870s and 1880s was the development of dry film. Previous to Eastman's invention, photography was an expensive, cumbersome and messy hobby. Cameras were enormous and the wet film required processing straight away. In September 1888, New York-based Eastman registered the made-up brand name "Kodak" and offered the first branded camera, a handheld box-shaped model sold with the promise, "You press the button - we do the rest." Further developments during the rest of the century and into the 1900s saw Kodak film improve, cameras get smaller and easier to use and the brand grow into one synonymous with the new medium of snapshot photography. Click here to view this gallery. More About: digital cameras, digital photography, Kodak, photo sharing, point and shoot

The Facebook Bed: Slumbering for Social Networking Fanatics Posted: 20 Jan 2012 01:25 PM PST For those so obsessed with social networking, behold the Facebook bed. This concept by Croatian designer Tomislav Zvonarić is only in model form right now, but his creative vision mixes comfort with functionality. The “F”-shaped bed touts a Facebook-logoed pillow and a comforter with familiar icons, such as Facebook’s birthday notification image. The logo also appears three times on the bed itself — one on each side, as well on the flat part of the upper curvature of the “F.” A work area is also built into the space, allowing users to check Facebook updates on their computer while sitting in the upper section of the letter. Other amenities include a keyboard holder, a shelf for a mouse and a slight indentation for a computer screen. In addition, a chair — with a red-colored cover, also featuring a Facebook logo — is nestled into the upper part of the “F.” The exact size of the model (as seen in the picture) is unknown as of now. If Zvonarić tried to actually produce and sell the beds, it would likely have to be approved by Facebook. As Facebook continues to pick up popularity — in fact, it’s on target to reach a billion users by August — more businesses are looking to somehow capitalize on the trend. Earlier this week, it was announced that a nightclub in Brazil called “Facebook” would be coming to the town of Epitaciolândia, near the Bolivian border in the Brazilian Amazon. "The Facebook concept is about sharing ideas, adventures, friendships, parties and photos with your friends," the club's 30-year-old founder Humbert Camacho told The Guardian. "So what we wanted to do was to build a nightclub with this concept, where people could come and share things with their friends, spend a cool night, sharing pictures, experiences and have fun." Are you surprised products and businesses are capitalizing on the Facebook brand? And most importantly, would you ever sleep in a bed like this? More About: Facebook, mark zuckerberg

Could SOPA Rise From the Dead? Posted: 20 Jan 2012 01:02 PM PST The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act may have been the two most hated bills in recent legislative history and now they're dead. Or are they? Congressman Lamar Smith "postponed consideration" of SOPA after the Senate postponed the similar PIPA legalization. Does a postponement mean death? Is tabling a bill the same as sealing it in a mahogany box and burying it six feet underground? "I think that it is dead," said SUNY Geneseo Political Science Dept. Professor and Chair Jeffrey Koch, Ph.D. But then he added, "It's dead for the rest of the year. Especially in an election year; anything that generates this level of controversy." To understand the legislative process, Koch explained, one needs to know that most bills fail. They're assigned to committees and then they die a rather quiet death. In fact, most legislators who introduce bills already know this, though Koch thinks its unlikely the authors of SOPA and PIPA thought their bills would die right away. So the bills are dead and unlikely to return in 2012. What makes Koch think they could rise from their murky graves in 2013 or beyond? “There are bills that do come back," he said. In fact, "Many bills that do become laws were introduced in many previous Congresses." He cites health care as an example: Congress has been wrangling over health care legislation for almost a century. And as we all know, a health care bill did finally pass both chambers; President Obama signed it into law in 2010. It's simply not unusual for bills on certain issues to get "introduced again and again and again over time," Koch told Mashable. Similarly on the topic of these SOPA and PIPA bills, he said it's unlikely that they're dead for all time. The reality is that while most people enjoy the openness and ubiquity of the Internet, piracy is real, is costing people money — and this means, Koch said, "I can't imagine that it's going to go away so easily." Still, legislating a global entity like the Internet is no simple task. Piracy can start far outside U.S. jurisdiction and, Koch told us, "U.S. law can only reach so far." Professor Koch offered no opinion on the contents of the bills — but agreed that they were hard to read, and needed a simplified version. "They're written in a very technical legalese,” he said. “That has been the case for quite a while. Most bills these days are that way. Particularly if they do deal with something that is a technical issue, and there are a lot more bills like this as society has become more technical and the issues become more technically complex." To review, then: SOPA and PIPA are dead, but only in the way a zombie is dead. They or something like them will rise up again in 12 months. The new bills may even start dragging themselves around the halls of congress right after the November's presidential election. Future versions will likely try to address the same persistent issue of piracy, and they will be just as hard to read and understand as today's "dead" versions of SOPA and PIPA. SEE ALSO: Facebook 'Relieved' That SOPA Is Dead May 12: PIPA introduced The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011), better known as PIPA was introduced into the Senate by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). The act's goals were described by its sponsors as protecting intellectual property and punishing foreign sites who post copyrighted material. If a site was discovered doing so, the U.S. attorney general could order U.S. based Internet service providers, search engines, payment systems and advertising networks to suspend doing business with the website. Photo courtesy Mikedish on Flickr Click here to view this gallery. More About: congress, internet, PIPA, piracy, SOPA, trending

Talk Tech With Fellow Gadget Enthusiasts at a Mashable Meetup Posted: 20 Jan 2012 12:50 PM PST Tech enthusiasts have a lot to be excited about right now. A plethora of new and innovative technology entered the arena during CES 2012, and we’re still trying to digest what they will do to the industry as we know it. What better time for the Mashable community to get together offline to discuss all the new gadgets from CES, and the ones they had gotten — or wish they had — for the holidays? We are declaring a Mashable Meetup Day for February 22nd where our community can show off their own gadgets and discus the new technology that has come out in recent weeks. A Mashable Meetup can take just about any shape you'd like depending on what best suits your social community. For planning tips, check out our how-to guide. Technology Talk Meetup Ideas Here are suggestions for planning a Mashable Meetup event: Show and Tell: Share your favorite tech gadgets with the community. Debate: Android lover? Apple fan? Windows Phone addict? Take a side! Learn: Check out some of Mashable’s videos from CES to learn about emerging technology. Invite Speakers: Is there a someone in your are who you would love to learn from? Invite them to teach others! Find a Mashable Meetup community in your area: How to organize a Mashable Meetup More About: community, mashable meetup, meetup

Is Megaupload Back? [UPDATED] Posted: 20 Jan 2012 12:31 PM PST Megaupload, the file sharing website that was shut down Thursday, may have returned — but without a domain name. This new site appears to be based in the Netherlands. UPDATE: The site appears to no longer be working and could be a phishing tool. For this reason, we have removed the link. Mashable is investigating. After seven people were associated with the file-sharing company were indicted, hacker group Anonymous targeted websites for the Department of Justice, the MPAA, RIAA and UniversalMusic. The federal shutdown of Megaupload came one day after sites like Wikipedia and Craigslist went dark in protest of SOPA/PIPA — legislative proposals that would make it easier for the government to crack down on piracy, or anything that might be deemed piracy. Megaupload was hosted on leased servers in Virgina, giving federal agents the opportunity to intervene. The indictment was issued Jan. 5. The Hong Kong-based Megaupload and the site’s other company Vestor Limited, plus seven individuals who worked for the site, are accused of laundering money and profiting from copyright infringement. Before Megaupload was taken down Thursday, a post stated that allegations that the site massively infringed upon copyright laws was “grotesquely overblown.” Last year, 37-year-old founder Kim “Dotcom” Schmitz reportedly earned $42 million from his site that shares pirated movies, music and other copyrighted content. The indictment states its facilitating of illegal downloads cost copyright holders $500 million dollars in lost revenue. Schmitz, a resident of New Zealand and Hong Kong and three others involved with Megaupload were arrested on Thursday. Of the three others arrested, two are German citizens and one is a Dutch citizen. The three other suspects involved are from Germany, Slovakia and Estonia, respectively, and remain at-large. Yesterday, the four who were arrested appeared in an Auckland, New Zealand, court to begin their trial that could take up to one year and result in up to 20 years in prison. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, leminuit More About: anonymous, file sharing, megaupload

RIP SOPA: The Internet Kills Its Attackers Posted: 20 Jan 2012 12:18 PM PST Be honest: When this week began, how much did you really know about SOPA? Five days ago, the Stop Online Piracy Act was still a relatively obscure House bill. Sure, your average geek knew what was contained within; Mashable, in common with other tech news sites, had been covering it from all angles for weeks. Go Daddy had seen the wrath of the online community firsthand when it tried to support the bill. But the silence from primetime network news, where most Americans still get their information, was deafening. Even if you knew the difference between SOPA and a bar of soap, it was just too easy to gloss over the news. Too easy to think, “OK, it’s got something to do with piracy; it’s probably a bit too tough, but what can be done? Hollywood has too many powerful lobbyists. Congress is too beholden to them. It’ll just be one more bad copyright law on the books. Maybe there’ll be loopholes. They probably won’t send anyone to jail who doesn’t deserve it. I wonder what’s in the sports section?” Then Wednesday happened, and suddenly everyone seemed to understand how serious this was. Wikipedia went dark, and the country wailed; we realized how much we have come to depend on the crowdsourced encyclopedia. Google hung a black sash on its logo. Crowds marched in protest. Facebook issued an uncharacteristically political statement (although we urged it to go further). Network news could not fail to take note. In short: the Internet got its act together, and the world shook. SOPA’s co-sponsors began to withdraw that day. By Thursday night, the GOP candidates for president were trying to outdo each other in anti-SOPA statements. Senate Republicans, also sensing a political opportunity, tried to hang the PIPA bill (SOPA’s sister in the Senate) around the Democrats’ necks. Finally, on Friday, SOPA and PIPA were withdrawn. Given a tight congressional timetable, and the toxic nature of these bills, it’s unlikely we’ll see them again. True, we’re not out of the woods yet. There are few lobbyist organizations as deep-pocketed as the MPAA and the RIAA, and they have a long history of choosing to fight new technology with legislation (even if that technology actually benefits the entertainment industry in the long run). This battle may well have to be fought all over again — hopefully over a less draconian bill. But there is a sense in which these mega-lobbyists are running scared. They woke a sleeping giant, and they don’t like the results. Witness the strange response from Chris Dodd, former senator and new head of the MPAA, who called the actions by Wikipedia, Google et al “stunts that punish their users or turn them into corporate pawns.” Given how many pawns the MPAA effectively owns in Congress, it was hard to suppress a grin at that. So, well done, Internet. You did it. You took a relatively obscure bill and you made the world care. One concerted day of action by you shook Washington to its core. Lobbyists like Dodd who have had too much unquestioned control for too long got served notice. There’s a new power player in town; not one man in a suit, but millions of faces with electronic megaphones. And this power player doesn’t take kindly to bills that threaten its behavior. Take heed, legislators. Want to stamp out online piracy, or regulate any other corner of the new digital landscape? In the future, you’d better come talk to the millions with megaphones first. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, PashaIgnatov May 12: PIPA introduced The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011), better known as PIPA was introduced into the Senate by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). The act's goals were described by its sponsors as protecting intellectual property and punishing foreign sites who post copyrighted material. If a site was discovered doing so, the U.S. attorney general could order U.S. based Internet service providers, search engines, payment systems and advertising networks to suspend doing business with the website. Photo courtesy Mikedish on Flickr Click here to view this gallery. More About: congress, PIPA, SOPA, trending, wikipedia

FindTheBest Mobile Will Instantly Compare Anything Posted: 20 Jan 2012 12:08 PM PST Whether you’re looking for a daycare, ski resort or smartphone, comparison engine FindTheBest can provide the critical stats. On Friday, the startup will give you better access to this info while you’re on the go with the launch of a new mobile site. Since going online in August 2010, FindTheBest has manually put together decision criteria for more than 700 topics. It uses information from data feeds, databases and manufacturer websites to show how each choice performs against them and compiles a “smart rating” based on an aggregation of expert reviews. The FindTheBest main site gets about 4 million visitors per month, according to internal measures. Some topics on the site have criteria similar to those at comparison sites that rely on scraping. The criteria for smartphones, for instance, includes price, screen size, battery life and megapixels. But in other topics, the humans involved in the process shine through. “Key details” for financial planner comparisons include, for instance, a record of the individual’s exam performance. Because people still shop in brick-and-mortar stores, it’s not surprising that about 20% of the startup’s traffic comes from mobile phones. FindTheBest considered iPhone and Android apps, but eventually opted for a platform-agnostic mobile site. “For us, they're just the wrong way to go,” says FindTheBest founder Kevin O’Connor, who is also the cofounder of DoubleClick. “We're a web-based service. If you're Angry Birds and you have to have something tied to the device, great.” Because FindTheBest relies on advertising for revenue, more people being able to efficiently access its site in more places is a good thing. FindTheBest has, however, been exploring another revenue source. After a spiffy redesign in December, its automated comparison charts started to look a lot like those you might find in a magazine or on a website. Now it’s teaming up with content providers such as motorcycleshows.com and VentureBeat to make branded versions for their sites — so you might run into the site’s comparison breakdowns even if you don’t navigate to the mobile site. More About: comparison engine, findthebest For more Business coverage: Follow Mashable Business on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Business channel Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Obama Sings Al Green at the Apollo Theatre [VIDEO] Posted: 20 Jan 2012 11:55 AM PST Each day, Mashable highlights one noteworthy YouTube video. Check out all our viral video picks. President Barack Obama showed off his vocal chords Thursday at New York’s Apollo Theatre, singing some of Reverend Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” “I’m so in love with you,” the commander in chief sang in homage to soul legend Green, who was in the audience at a fundraiser event. Heading into the heat of the 2012 campaign season, Obama’s message to his fundraisers derived from Green’s lyrics: Let’s stay together. Not surprisingly, he was not trying to start a break-away career in music, adding, “Don’t worry Rev. I can’t sing like you, I just wanted to show my appreciation.” This isn’t the first time we’ve heard Obama sing. He’s been caught singing “Hey Jude” live with Paul McCartney (you can find that video in the gallery below). According to reports, Obama likely raised $3.1 million at the event, attended by 1,400 supporters. How would you rate the president’s vocal chops? Have you seen any other candidates on the campaign trail break out in song? Check out the gallery below featuring more presidents singing — or at least having their words strung into song by YouTubers. President Obama sings "Hey Jude" - Live with Paul McCartney Click here to view this gallery. More About: barack obama, viral-video-of-day, YouTube

Facebook ‘Relieved’ That SOPA Is Dead Posted: 20 Jan 2012 11:36 AM PST Facebook has responded to the death of SOPA, expressing its relief that the bill has been pulled and thanking its users for their feedback. Although Facebook didn’t go dark for SOPA, the company has expressed its opposition to the bill. On Wednesday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg expanded on his thoughts, calling the legislation “poorly thought out.” On the Facebook Washington DC Page, the company posted the following message: “We are relieved that Congress has recognized the serious damage the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) could cause to the Internet and are pleased that congressional leaders have decided not to move forward on these bills. We want to thank the millions of Facebook users who shared their views with us, with members of Congress, and with their friends and families on this important issue, and who changed the direction of this harmful legislation. We appreciate that lawmakers have listened to our community’s concerns, and we stand ready to work with them on solutions to piracy and copyright infringement that will not chill free expression or threaten the economic growth and innovation the Internet provides. You can read more about Facebook’s view on this legislation by clicking the “Anti-Piracy Bills” tab on the left side of the Facebook Washington DC page. May 12: PIPA introduced The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011), better known as PIPA was introduced into the Senate by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). The act's goals were described by its sponsors as protecting intellectual property and punishing foreign sites who post copyrighted material. If a site was discovered doing so, the U.S. attorney general could order U.S. based Internet service providers, search engines, payment systems and advertising networks to suspend doing business with the website. Photo courtesy Mikedish on Flickr Click here to view this gallery. More About: Facebook, PIPA, SOPA, trending

European Politicians Didn’t Like SOPA Any More Than You [VIDEO] Posted: 20 Jan 2012 11:29 AM PST European politicians should be happy today. The Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act barely breathing (some would say they’re dead), after both sponsors delayed and withdrew their respective bills. European politicians would likely agree that the bills are finally on the right path, because they wouldn’t support such legislation in Europe either. A group of European MPs sent a letter to Congress last month asking that their U.S. counterparts vote down the bills. “We are concerned that SOPA and PROTECT IP will be detrimental to Internet freedom, Internet as a driver for economic growth and for fundamental rights, not only in the EU, but globally,” the letter said. “Companies should not be held liable for what consumers use a service or product for,” it goes on to say. “Is the owner of a street responsible for an accident on its pavement, or should [it] hold the individual responsible for speeding accountable?” Another European leader made a similar comparison between SOPA and roads, on Twitter, as she and others expressed their disapproval of the bills on the social network. “Glad tide is turning on #SOPA: don’t need bad legislation when should be safeguarding benefits of open net,” Neelie Kroes, a VP of the European Commission, tweeted Friday. She hasn’t yet tweeted a response to this afternoon’s news that SOPA author Lamar Smith has withdrawn the bill. Check out the video above to find out what else European leaders have said about SOPA and PIPA, and how they address online piracy in their own countries. More About: europe, mashable video, PIPA, SOPA

Samsung Super Bowl Ad Going for Apple Tackle [VIDEO] Posted: 20 Jan 2012 11:00 AM PST Samsung, which tweaked Apple fanboys and iPhone-mania with a well-received ad last November, will go after the tech behemoth again in an upcoming Super Bowl ad. Samsung’s first Super Bowl ad will build on the creative concept of that ad, according to a report by The Huffington Post. The brand also released the teaser above, which shows Apple fanboys — and fangirls — online at what is meant to look like an Apple Store in Austin, Texas. As in the previous ad, the fanboys are shown up by a suave guy sporting a Galaxy S II. As the largest tech company in the world, Apple represents a fat target for rivals in the category, particularly for Samsung, which has fought Apple in court of late over various patent issues. In Samsung’s case, the approach seems to have worked. The “fanboy” ad, for example, moved the needle on brand perception, according to YouGov’s BrandIndex. However, it’s worth noting that Motorola also bashed Apple in a Super Bowl ad for the Xoom tablet, and that was less of a success. The ad, which tweaked Apple’s famous “1984″ ad introducing the Macintosh computer that year, presented another dystopian environment, but this time the Xoom was presented as the vehicle of choice for personal freedom. Despite being fairly well-received, Xoom did not become a hit and did little to dent Apple’s commanding lead in the tablet market. The Xoom spot was preceded by other would-be Apple dethroners including Microsoft, whose 2009 “Laptop Hunters” campaign portrayed buyers of Windows PCs as savvy consumers. Before that, SanDisk tried to punch a hole in Apple’s brand perception with a campaign presenting iPod users as “iPuppets” and “iSheep.” More About: Advertising, apple, Galaxy S II, iphone, Marketing, Motorola, samsung, Super Bowl, xoom

SOPA Is Dead: Smith Pulls Bill Posted: 20 Jan 2012 10:47 AM PST Lamar Smith, the chief sponsor of SOPA, said on Friday that he is pulling the bill “until there is wider agreement on a solution.” “I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” Smith (R-Texas) said. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.” Smith also released the following statement on Friday: “We need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products. The problem of online piracy is too big to ignore. American intellectual property industries provide 19 million high-paying jobs and account for more than 60% of U.S. exports. The theft of America's intellectual property costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually and results in the loss of thousands of American jobs. Congress cannot stand by and do nothing while American innovators and job creators are under attack. "The online theft of American intellectual property is no different than the theft of products from a store. It is illegal and the law should be enforced both in the store and online. "The Committee will continue work with copyright owners, Internet companies, financial institutions to develop proposals that combat online piracy and protect America's intellectual property. We welcome input from all organizations and individuals who have an honest difference of opinion about how best to address this widespread problem. The Committee remains committed to finding a solution to the problem of online piracy that protects American intellectual property and innovation." SEE ALSO: Who Did the Most to Bury SOPA? [POLL] The move comes after widespread protest on the Internet on Wednesday by Wikipedia, Reddit and others. The sites signaled their displeasure with the bill by going dark. That day, several Congressmen dropped their support for SOPA and its Senate counterpart, PIPA. The latter bill has also been taken off the table for now. SEE ALSO: Could SOPA Rise From the Dead? | RIP SOPA: The Internet Kills Its Attackers “In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday's vote on the PROTECT IP Act," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in a statement Friday morning. Smith’s stance comes just two days after he told The Wall Street Journal that he didn’t plan to back down on SOPA, telling the newspaper he expected to “move forward” with the bill in February. SEE ALSO: Facebook 'Relieved' That SOPA Is Dead 1. @PatrickRuffini This tweet by technologist Patrick Ruffini became a Politico headline. Click here to view this gallery. May 12: PIPA introduced The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011), better known as PIPA was introduced into the Senate by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). The act's goals were described by its sponsors as protecting intellectual property and punishing foreign sites who post copyrighted material. If a site was discovered doing so, the U.S. attorney general could order U.S. based Internet service providers, search engines, payment systems and advertising networks to suspend doing business with the website. Photo courtesy Mikedish on Flickr Click here to view this gallery. More About: lamar smith, PIPA, SOPA, Top Stories, trending

Apple’s Hidden Museum Reveals Clashes in the Jobs Interregnum Posted: 20 Jan 2012 10:39 AM PST The period between when Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985 and the company’s eventual decline forced it to bring him back by buying his startup is a 12-year gap that gets little attention from historians of the world’s most valuable tech company. Walter Isaacson, in his mammoth Steve Jobs biography, barely touches on it. Yet Apple Computer found itself in a fascinating place as the 1980s gave way to the ’90s. Jobs was long gone; the company had been publicly traded for more than a decade. It was still stable commercially, but gone were the days of messianic purpose. Still to come were the company’s nadir and subsequent revival. Mashable recently accessed a series of internal conversations among Apple employees via the company’s “Hotlinks” discussion forum. The records come from a trove of documents that Apple donated to Stanford University in 1997. The materials were originally intended for an official corporate museum, but are now housed in a mysterious off-campus warehouse and available only by special request. SEE ALSO: Apple’s Museum That Never Was: Why Does Stanford Keep it Secret? The discussion threads obtained by Mashable show intra-company tensions between materialistic ambition and counterculture idealism. There was plenty of discord over what it meant to be Apple at the dawn of the ’90s. Should it work with the military? Should it give money to charity? And perhaps most importantly, how were employees coping with their Silicon Valley stardom? Military-Industrial Clashes Stances on politically-charged issues were contentious for some employees. Apple’s military contract work had picked up; in September 1989, engineer Jerry Nairn started a thread opposing it. “I find this development very discouraging,” he wrote. “At every company I interviewed with before coming to Apple nearly two years ago, I made it clear that I was not interested in working for a company which relied on military contractors … How do the rest of you feel about Apple profiting from the use of this system?” Employees who responded fell on both sides of the divide. But engineer Geoffrey Pascoe wrote back the next day to argue that Nairn had neglected the most important argument for military work by Apple. “Helping defend our country and the free world is a morally good thing to do,” Pascoe wrote. “Wake up Jerry, the world is a big bad place and we need to defend ourselves. Most Americans and, I hope, most Apple employees see the need for a strong defense.” Pascoe concluded his post by suggesting that “if you don’t feel comfortable accepting profits on military contracts, maybe Apple can give two levels of profit sharing checks: one for conscientious objectors (minus military derived profits) and one for the rest of us.” The Rockstar “Phenomenon” Apple was the first consumer tech corporation to gain a cult following and harness the level of cache and mystique now enjoyed by popular companies such as Google and Facebook. As with Facebookers and Googlers today, Apple employees were often greeted with amazed looks and gasps of fascination when acquaintances found out where they worked. Diana Whelan, who worked in human resources, raised the still-emerging issue in a thread from May 1989. She recounted the common experience of being at a party or other public place and being “asked THAT QUESTION: DO YOU WORK FOR APPLE?” (All capitals hers.) A series of familiar follow-ups would ensue: how to get a job at Apple, personal tech recommendations and big ideas for future products. “After many years and many such encounters,” Whelan wrote, “it’s become clear to me that EVERY APPLE EMPLOYEE IS POTENTIALLY A SPOKESPERSON FOR APPLE.” She then asked: “Does Apple want to acknowledge this phenomenon and provide tools/information for employees so they can feel more comfortable in this ‘role’?” Other employees supported the idea and echoed her story with their own experiences of the Apple effect — one that would become widespread as technology began to seep into everyday life. Charity: An “Altruistic Cancer”? Apple co-founder Jobs famously straddled the line between hippie idealism and ruthless business practice. But a thread started by engineer Mike Chepponis in January 1990 reflected how that tension played out among the company’s rank and file. He wrote that the company needed to “get focused” and move away from altruism, “a morality diametrically opposed to capitalism.” He believed that a $50,000 holiday charity donation by the company had been a mistake, coming after a year in which its stock declined 12%. “Our present woes are caused by altruistic executives,” he wrote. “But there remains hope! If we rid ourselves of this altruistic cancer, we will be guaranteed a growing, exciting, 21st century company! Let us move forward into the future by creating the greatest value-producing company the world has ever seen!” Chepponis’s over-the-top rant may or may not have been tongue-in-cheek, but it certainly provoked a serious response from co-workers. Some acknowledged the validity of a few of his points, but most lashed back at his naked ambition. An employee called “lcw” represented many when he wrote: “I think your link represents the most disgusting aspect of the 20th century: a money-grubbing, selfish, short-sighted, and inhumane attitude that says to hell with society (and the people who live in it) and up with a bunch of meaningless pieces of green paper.” Some two decades later, Apple became the world’s most valuable company. More About: apple, steve jobs For more Tech coverage: Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Tech channel Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Is too Much Texting Giving You ‘Text Neck’? Posted: 20 Jan 2012 10:27 AM PST 1. Prone Neck Extension Lay face down, arms by your side. Lock the shoulder blades back and down. Extend the head up to look at the ceiling, then lift shoulders and the chest. Hold position for 10 seconds, then lower the chest, shoulders and head -- in that order. Repeat for a set of 10. Click here to view this gallery. Discomfort and muscle pain from texting has become so common that it now has a name: “Text Neck,” and there’s even a medical institute that specializes in treatment. Dr. Dean Fishman adopted the phrase and changed the name and focus of his practice after seeing a huge influx of younger patients visiting his chiropractor facility — complaining of neck, back, arm and shoulder pain. He now runs the Text Neck Institute in Plantation, Fla. “Whenever kids came to the office with pain, I noticed they were always on their phones,” Fishman told Mashable. “They would be positioned at ‘forward head posture,’ but that term wasn’t resonating with parents. After I started calling it “text neck”, we got an emotional response and decided to trademark the name to help change the way people hold their mobile devices.” According to the Wireless Association, Americans sent 196 billion texts in June 2011, compared to 12.5 billion texts in 2006. Not only are more people communicating with others on mobile devices than ever before, smartphone adoption is giving consumers more access to media content on demand, such as using apps, games and even watching movies. This means that more people are finding themselves locked in text neck position for an extended period of time, increasing chances of pain, tendonitis and even arthritis. The good news, however, is that the pain is treatable. In fact, the Text Neck Institute conducted a study with two groups consisting of patients ages 13 to 27 — both groups received chiropractic care, x-rays and exercises. Although both groups said they felt better after one month, one group was asked to hold their mobile devices at eye level instead and reported the most improvement. “Some believe people need put down their devices and walk around more, but it’s more of an issue of proper posture,” Fishman said. “In addition, it’s not just a teenager problem — young kids who play on their parent’s devices to even learn the alphabet should be taught to keep the phone at eye level.” To help alleviate some of the pain, check out some easy exercises suggested from the Text Neck Institute in the above gallery. Do you suffer from text neck? Let us know in the comments. Thumbnail image courtesy ofiStockphoto, Kalashnikov_O More About: Mobile, smartphones, texting

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