Category: Tech news

Best Buy and Samsung are going to move a few more Galaxy Tabs next week. Starting on Sunday, if you buy a top-tier Samsung 3D HDTV for $1500 or $2000, you’ll also go home with a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. So, in other words, if you buy an over-hyped HDTV, Best Buy is going to unload a GalTab on you. Sounds great for the buyer, but the one-week promotion speaks volumes about the current state of the Android tablet market.

The move is smart, though. Consumers aren’t latching onto Android tablets partly because they don’t know about them. Outside our silly little word, the iPad is the only tablet most consumers have ever heard about. This bundle will at least get the tablet into the hands of a slightly different demographic.

Buyers have the choice of either a 46-inch or 55-inch Samsung 3D HDTV. Both feature LED backlighting, 240Hz motion, and, of course, 3D technology. They’re rather pricey options, and a good deal more than competing TV sets from LG or Panasonic — but you get a free $500 tablet with the Sammies.

This signals that Best Buy, and maybe the manufacturers, are starting to realize that non-iPad tablets aren’t an easy sale. This comes after Best Buy redesigned its computer department to better feature and display Android tablets. They now have the same placement as notebooks, but that might not be enough to cycle through inventory quick enough. The retailer reportedly has a massive back-stock of unsold HP TouchPad tablets after only selling 25,000 of their 270,000.

The promotion starts this Sunday, August 21 and runs through August 27.

Dating sucks. Nine out of ten times, your suitor is a jerk. The other ten percent of the time, they pretend not to be a jerk only to show their true jerk-like colors a few weeks later. This is the world we live in, and there’s really nothing we can do about it.

Oh wait… That’s right. There’s an app for that. Straight ladies and gay gentlemen: Wet Productions proudly introduces the My Virtual Boyfriend app. Yep, you can now find love through a simple App Store download, which is equally weird and hilarious. There won’t be any fun sexy time like there would be with a physical boyfriend, but at least you know you’ll be 100 percent STD-free.

The app is described as a “game” by the developer, where you work to get the virtual boyfriend to fall in love with you by relating to his personality. There are over 100 guys to choose from, all of which are based on various male stereotypes like the alpha male, the geek, the urban male (not sure what that implies?), the metrosexual, and the nice guy. From there you can customize his hair, clothing, face and even change his name.

Then the game begins. Your virtual boyfriend starts things up by saying something awesomely cheesy like “There must be a light switch on my forehead because every time I see you, I’m turned on,” or “They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but obviously they haven’t seen my sword.” Saucy. You are then given a number of different reactions to give him, ranging from smiley-face-thumbs-up to angry-face-thumbs-down to confused and disgusted faces.

You also have the option to choose dates and activities, or perform actions like giving him a compliment or holding hands. If you select the interact option, you’ll be able to perform certain gestures through touch like poking him in the belly, caressing his cheek, or my personal favorite, a nice slap across the face. The device’s built-in accelerometer detects when you are holding it at an awkward angle, and makes your new BF stumble all over the place like there’s an earthquake in his little virtual world.

But don’t think that just because your boyfriend’s virtual that he’s not an ass. Depending on what criteria you give at the beginning of the game, your virtual boyfriend could be a total tool (check out the screen grab to the right). Luckily, you can swap him out for a better one with a few taps. If only you could do that in the real world.

The app is available for $.99 on the Apple App Store and works with the iPad, iPod, and iPhone. There is also a free Lite version of My Virtual Boyfriend if you’d like to get a feel for the boy toys before paying up. Check out the video after the break.

A few days ago, traffic analysis firm Experian Hitwise shared the results of a study of over 10 million online users, and concluded from its findings that Google’s new social network, Google+, was headed into mainstream territory.

While not entirely disputing that data, social media monitoring firm SocMetrics, comes to a slightly different conclusion today by examining one particular vertical: moms. Says SocMetrics, the group containing the “moms” influencers is a key segment for Google+ to focus on growing, especially considering that one of the social network’s key differentiators is the ability to post privately or semi-privately via its user-created “Circles” (friend lists).

But the moms group is “substantially less engaged” on Google+ than others, SocMetrics found.

Unlike Hitwise, SocMetrics doesn’t look at visitors to websites –  it analyzes social media mentions. This includes mentions on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube as well as Digg, Reddit and Disqus. In this case, the firm tracked conversations (1 million per day) from July 20th to August 10th, and further broke that down by vertical (industry or group). Generally, there were a few thousand conversations per day about Google+ or Facebook.

Moms Show Up on “Influencers” List

In the chart below, SocMetrics shows that it’s primarily industry types (e.g. tech, marketing, security, developers, etc.) who are talking about Google+. Other more mainstream verticals, like sports, celebrity and fashion, are under-represented on Google+ when using this method for analysis. In fact, out of the top 25 segments talking about Google+, the network has only one which could be considered “mainstream” – the moms.

Still, this group is far more active on both Facebook and Twitter than on Google+, which sees 30% to 50% less engagement based on these conversations.

There are a couple of ways you can interpret this data – either you believe it clearly shows Google+’s struggle to cross over into mainstream groups, or you may think the fact moms even make the list of engaged verticals shows promise for the social networking site.

As far as SocMetrics is concerned, the firm feels its data shows fairly similar curves to Hitwise’s earlier findings. There, Hitwise looked at selected segments called “colleges and cafes,” “kids and cabernet,” “status seeking singles,” and “full pockets empty nests.” (Yes, those are apparently segments.) Regardless of those oddly named groupings, Hitwise’s data shows a general flattening trend in terms of growth (see below).

SocMetrics says none of this means that Google+ won’t eventually reach the mainstream, but right now it’s not on track to do so. Google needs to move quickly to capitalize on the window of opportunity it has with mainstream groups such as moms, the firm concludes, before their attention wanes even further.

Considering Google’s most recent hire, however, it looks like the company is indeed aware of its challenges with Google+ and is rapidly moving to address them.

Foursquare has announced today that people can now check into events officially, which is weird because people have actually (unofficially) been checking into events for a long time. I mean just look at NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s check in to something called Marriage Equalitocalypse. Conceptually the “hack” is easy enough for a politician to do — Just creating an event masquerading as a venue. In fact, I am checked into an unofficial event right now.

So what gives Foursquare, we’ve been checking into events for a while? Well basically what was announced today is more like Foursquare partner events; Foursquare has hooked up with ESPN for sports events, MovieTicket.com for movie tickets and Songkick for concerts to populate its database with official events.

These partner events will offer users more check-in functionality like the ability to drill down into individual movies at a movie theatre and even the inclusion of realtime data like sports scores.  Foursquare says that it plans on offering hundreds of thousands of “official” events at more than 50,000 venues in the next couple of months.

While right now event creation is only limited to those three partners, I’m hearing that in the longer term this will be extended to any venue owner. Foursquare PR representative Erin Gleason tells me, “We’re thinking about venues and users creating events, but we want to make sure we do it right so this functionality isn’t currently available.”

In the meantime, you can keep ghetto checking in to events by searching for your event in Nearby Places, and adding it as a place when it inevitably doesn’t show up.

Online video technology and footage licensing services provider Thought Equity Motion has raised $25 million from Shamrock Capital Advisors, the company announced this morning.

The company delivers video archive management and “smart content” metadata tools as a cloud service, as well as rights development expertise. Through its Web platform and global sales force, the company licenses a wide range of sports, news, entertainment, editorial, and creative content.

Thought Equity offers its video technology and management infrastructure solutions to media companies, news organizations, sports right holders and video production companies worldwide. Customers include BBC, Paramount, National Geographic, Sony Pictures Entertainment and the NYT.

The company says ‘tens of thousands’ of video producers use its video licensing platform on a daily basis.

Thought Equity’s new investor, Shamrock Capital Advisors, is an independent Los Angeles-based private equity firm focused on the media, entertainment, and communications industries.

In 2010, Shamrock’s private equity activities were formally separated from Shamrock Holdings, the family office for the late Roy E. Disney, a longtime senior executive for The Walt Disney Company, which his father Roy Oliver Disney and his uncle Walt Disney founded.

Thought Equity CEO Kevin Schaff told The Denver Post that a small portion of the funds from Shamrock Capital Partners has been used to pay off an old investor.

Exclusive – Zoove has raised $15 million in Series D funding, led by new investor Panorama Capital, TechCrunch has learned. Existing investors also participating in the round, including Cardinal Venture Capital, Highland Capital Partners and Worldview Technology Partners. Zoove is the company behind StarStar Numbers, an exclusive registry of memorably phone numbers (e.g. **WEATHER or **SUZUKI) that lets brands connect with consumers on any mobile phone.

Zoove exclusively provides said vanity StarStar Numbers for the largest wireless operators in the United States, serving more than 250 million people.

StarStar Numbers enable consumers to call the name of brand being promoted, e.g. **ESPN and get to its mobile app, website, coupon, video and whatnot, without the need to use QR code readers or unbranded text message short codes.

Zoove also powers the National StarStar Registry, in cooperation with the four major mobile operators in the US. Through the Registry, companies can lease branded, vanity StarStar Numbers that are available to the majority of US mobile subscribers.

The company explains that for consumers, there is no extra charge to call a vanity StarStar Number. After the initial phone call, users typically receive a text message or voice mail prompting them to engage further, and at that point they can opt in, based on their phone’s capabilities, to view websites, download apps, and so on.

Brands pay Zoove an annual fee for their StarStar Number, which varies based on the length and ‘scarcity’ of the number.

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) this morning said Google has taken “reasonable steps to improve its privacy policies”, following a consensual audit of the company’s privacy processes held at its London office last July.

The ICO’s audit was agreed upon as part of the terms of an undertaking that Google signed (PDF) in November 2010 after the company reported that its Street View cars had collected WiFi payload data alongside the location mapping information that was the stated aim of the project.

In May 2010, it was revealed that Google had collected and stored payload data from unencrypted WiFi connections as part of Street View.

Google has repeatedly stated that the WiFi payload data collection was an unintended mistake and in October 2010 announced that it would examine how to strengthen its internal privacy and security practices by hiring experts and enhance training covering privacy and the protection of user data.

The ICO audit consisted of an extensive review of relevant documentation, an on-site visit (including interviews with Google staff) as well as an inspection of selected records.

ICO found that the company has taken action in all of the agreed improvement areas, yet asked Google to go further to enhance privacy, including ensuring that users are given more information about the privacy aspects of Google products.

Google has responded to the results of the audit on its European Public Policy Blog.

Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, commented:

“I’m satisfied that Google has made good progress in improving its privacy procedures following the undertaking they signed with me last year. All of the commitments they gave us have been progressed and the company have also accepted the findings of our audit report where we’ve asked them to go even further.

“The ICO’s Google audit is not a rubber stamp for the company’s data protection policies. The company needs to ensure its work in this area continues to evolve alongside new products and technologies. Google will not be filed and forgotten by the ICO.”

The executive summary of the Google audit can be found here (PDF).

Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets:

Giant Gundam Robot Statue Returns To Tokyo – In Parts
PrimeSense Positioning Itself For Integration With Next-Gen TVs
Microsoft Reader E-Book System Comes To Its Conclusion
Glorious Minecraft-Themed Xperia Play For Sale On eBay
$200k Fundraiser Means SETI Can Listen For Aliens Again

Tax the rich. Those bastards.

I get why people who aren’t rich hate those that are. No one really cares what they have, they only care what they have relative to others. When there is inequality, and there always is, even the hyper intelligent call for a redistribution of wealth. It’s an enduring longing for us as a species, and no evidence to the contrary will convince people it just doesn’t work in any large group.

What I really didn’t understand until recently though is why so many rich Americans seem to loathe their richness as much as everyone else does. Many in Silicon Valley want to tax the rich into the middle class and let government spend and spend and spend. The super rich tech elite flock to Obama, joining in the call to screw the rich as loudly as all the rest.

Then I figured it out. As I wrote then, the super rich won’t mind at all if we “tax the rich” as it’s currently defined. That’s because people who are super rich don’t really pay taxes. They pay taxes on this year’s income, and capital gains on accumulated wealth. But the only “tax” that can ever touch what they’ve already made is inflation.

That’s why a man worth $47 billion dollars can pay just $6,938,744 in federal income taxes and not be accused of a crime. In fact, he can boast about how little he pays, and ask to be charged even more.

That man is Warren Buffett. And his article in today’s NY Times, titled “Stop Coddling The Super Rich” is a huge pile of manipulative garbage.

The super rich love to talk about higher taxes on the rich because it’s a competitive barrier protecting them from competition. If the people making a lot of money today have to pay much higher taxes, they probably won’t ever accumulate enough wealth to be “super rich.”

Now if you really want to screw the rich, start talking about a wealth tax. It won’t save the economy but it’ll certainly serve to even everything out. Buffett wants a higher tax rate on himself and anyone making $1 million or more per year. If you doubled the tax rate on these people, someone making $1 million a year would lose another $380,000 to the government.

Buffett calls for an increase in all types of taxes – income, dividend and capital gains. That would be a nice triple layer of protection against any newcomers, and still preserve all – 100% – of the $47 billion he’s accumulated until now.

Buffett is just fine with big new taxes on the rich because those taxes never touch all the under-taxed wealth he’s accumulated over the decades. He talks about how he’s benefited for decades by being under taxed, but is only willing to pay more in the future. That’s like a steroids-ridden baseball player declaring that steroids are bad and from now on no one gets to take them. But paying for past sins? Shhh.

I say if Buffett wants higher taxes, Buffett should get higher taxes. Take 50% of his wealth immediately. And everyone else who’s super rich. Hell, take 100% of everyone’s wealth over $1 million. That’ll even the playing field. We’ll do it again in ten years. Some sneaky people will figure out a way to cheat the system and accumulate more wealth than everyone else, but we’ll knock ‘em back down to earth again.

Think that’s crazy? In the late 90s Donald Trump proposed a one time 14.25% tax on the net worth of individuals and trusts worth $10 million or more. The goal? To pay down the national debt, and shore up Social Security.

Wealth taxes aren’t new, they’re just new here in the U.S. So the next time some super rich person stands up and says they must pay more taxes, ask them how serious they are. And then ask them how they’d feel about a wealth tax every year.

Rich people are very good at staying rich. And Warren Buffett is the smartest rich person I know. That’s why he’s able to say feel good bullshit about how he should be paying higher taxes when he has absolutely no intention of letting the government anywhere near his real money.

As for me, I think the government should be starved of income and be forced to spend money where it’s supposed to – defending the border, establishing a trusted currency, and protecting property rights. Whenever they muck around with the other stuff everyone gets poorer. We need to let people dream of getting disgustingly rich, and then let them go out there and do it. After that, we celebrate them so that more people get the idea of getting rich, too. It’s what makes Silicon Valley work. And everyone benefits, even the people who don’t end up rich.

ps – If you like the image above, buy the tshirt here. Although really, they’re charging way too much. They’re probably getting filthy rich selling those tshirts, the bastards.

Bravo Google, well played.

There’s no denying that Google’s maneuver this morning to acquire Motorola for $12.5 billion in cash is remarkable. Everyone is talking about every possible angle of the deal, as they should. The summertime is usually the doldrums when it comes to tech news. Not this year. Google is pulling off an acquisition that is larger than any that Microsoft, Apple, or any of their other main competitors ever have. Larry Page, wartime CEO. Larry Page, maverick.

As the resident Apple enthusiast around these parts, many of you want my take on this — and many of you probably don’t want my take on this, but will end up reading it twice as much as those who do. But don’t worry, I’m not going to go all Dan Lyons and immediately run my mouth without thinking. I actually took the entire day to think about this, read over the insane amount of coverage (though I didn’t get through even half of it), and form some thoughts.

But my main thought is the same as my initial one: this is either the smartest thing Google has ever done, or the dumbest. There is no in-between.

Many people seem to be tripping over themselves trying to explain why this is not just about patents. Okay, yes, there are some interesting potential side effects of this deal, such as in the broader consumer electronics space. Motorola could help Google turn around the disaster that has been Google TV. Motorola makes a huge percentage of the set top boxes that the cable companies use to push their over-priced content at you. And those cable boxes are absolute pieces of shit. But they’re highly profitable pieces of shit. While Google TV is a nightmare, it’s still a considerable upgrade from almost all set top boxes. The two sides could help each other here.

Or it could be a case of two wrongs making a very big wrong. We’ll see.

The much more interesting angle is what this means for Google’s control over the Android ecosystem at large. I’ll get to that in a minute.

First, let’s not kid ourselves. This deal is clearly about patents. If Motorola didn’t have thousands of patents, there is no way this deal happens. Zero. This is a company that lost money last quarter, despite revenues of over $3 billion. They have over 19,000 employees. This nearly doubles Google’s workforce (Google has about 25,000 employees). This is a company in the midst of several of their own lawsuits — some of which are by Google adversaries Microsoft and Apple.

This all sounds like a big, logistical mindfuck for Google. A company, which remember, is trying to simplify and focus their business. It’s the equivalent of me saying I’m going to clean my house today, then going out and buying a fraternity house just as I’m getting started. And keeping both.

But those patents. Those glorious, wonderful patents.

In losing the Nortel patent auction to Apple, Microsoft, RIM, and others, Google lost out on 6,000+ patents. With a battle over the InterDigital patents just getting started, there was a pretty decent chance they were going to lose another 8,800+ to their rivals. But with the Motorola buy, Google gains at least 17,000 patents. And if some other applications go through, perhaps as many as 25,000 patents. In one fell-swoop. Crazy.

It raises Google’s patent pool from around 2,000 — over 1,000 of which are from a deal they just did with IBM — to around 20,000. That’s around what Microsoft has. And nearly double what Apple has. Deterrent obtained, right?

Well, not so fast. As FOSS Patents points out, Motorola’s patent pool may not go far enough to cancel out some key patents owned by Google’s main rivals. Remember, both Apple and Microsoft were suing Motorola well before this new deal was born. Those cases remain ongoing, but FOSS’ Florian Mueller believes that Apple and more so, Microsoft, have the upper hand in each.

He argues that this was more of strategic buy for Google in order to exert more control over the Android ecosystem. It’s a compelling argument, but I’m not sure I buy it. At least not yet. Even more compelling is his thought that Google may have bought Motorola to stop them from settling with Apple and/or Microsoft on the patent issues. Such a settlement would have been a big blow to the entire Android ecosystem. Perhaps not quite as bad as Samsung agreeing to license patents from Microsoft (joining HTC and others), but bad.

Would that even be bad enough for Google to spend $12.5 billion? Again, I’m not convinced. But the fact that Motorola was threatening to attack others over IP itself just a few days ago, does suggest something was brewing. They sounded like an animal backed into a corner. (Or, as it turns out, perhaps one just playing some last-minute hardball with a would-be acquirer.)

What we do know is that leading up to Google’s deal, Microsoft was also negotiating to buy at least Motorola’s patent portfolio, as Om Malik reports. Unsurprisingly, Google’s negotiations kicked up shortly after the Nortel loss. Again, patents, patents, patents. If Microsoft had purchased Motorola’s patents, Android would have been at Defcon 2, if not Defcon 1. Google could not let that happen. And they didn’t.

But let’s turn to the broader ramifications here. The antitrust cops are obviously going to scrutinize this deal. But already some are predicting it will go through. Obviously, Google is as well. Motorola? Well, the fact that there’s a $2.5 billion breakup fee — which is absolutely insane — that Google will have to pay Motorola if the DoJ breaks up the deal, doesn’t project too much optimism, to say the least. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume the deal is approved and closes at the end of this year or early next year.

Google says they will continue to run Motorola as a separate business. Again, given its size, that’s about all they can do. Google also says that this will not change their commitment to Android being “open” and to their other OEM partners.

While that will sound like a load of horse shit to some. I actually believe that Google believes that (or at least that many higher-ups at Google believe that). I just don’t believe it will be possible. And I think that eventually, Google will recognize that it won’t be possible. And I think many of their partners are being disingenuous with their positive statements today.

Just look at the issues Google has been having keeping their carrier and OEM partners in line when it comes to Android software updates. The issues have gotten so bad that Google had to get on stage at their I/O conference this year and promise everyone that a new initiative is underway to ensure timely updates. You’ll notice we haven’t heard a thing about that initiative since it was unveiled. ”Over the next few weeks, we’ll figure it all out,” Android head Andy Rubin said at the time. It’s been three months.

But with Motorola in their back pocket, Google now has another stick to use when the carrots don’t work. And the carrots rarely do in the Android ecosystem, it seems.

Is an OEM not releasing updates quickly enough? Okay, screw you, we’ll release a Motorola Droid update right now. Are you telling me Google isn’t going to do that? I mean, are they going to hire some new, un-fireable people at Motorola in charge of ensuring that bullshit bureaucracy remains in place after the deal?

What about Nexus negotiations? Andy Rubin humorously seemed to confirm that bidding occurs over who gets to make the next Nexus devices during the Q&A call today. Given the other backchannel deals Google strikes while maintaining the nonsense “open” moniker for marketing purposes, this is not surprising at all. What happens if Google isn’t getting the terms they want on a new Nexus device? Will they also hire someone to thwart Motorola’s Google-backed bid? Ridiculous.

There are dozens of other potential situations like this. One way or another, the existence of Motorola as a Google company is going to affect Android.

Here’s another, more straight-forward scenario for you. What happens when the iPhone 5 launches and everyone wants it? That includes many people currently using Android phones. After a few months of this, Google grows frustrated that none of their OEMs can release a device that matches the build-quality that Apple puts out there. But wait, they now have their own company they can at the very least use to apply to pressure the other OEMs to force them to do better work! Does Google also not play that card? Are you really telling me that they won’t try to get Motorola to make the best products possible? Why the hell wouldn’t they? This is a business, after all.

Maybe the iPhone 5 doesn’t trigger that, but maybe the iPhone 6 does. Or maybe the iPad 3 does. Or maybe a Windows Phone does. At some point down the line, Google is going to run into this scenario. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The tight control over both hardware and software is what allows Apple products to be Apple products. And now with webOS, HP appears to be moving in the same direction.

In the same way that Google used to not care about design, but now is starting to, I suspect they’ll start to care more about full control over their products — both hardware and software. They’ll see that the overall consumer experience is tied to both — they’re not mutually exclusive. And Motorola gives them the opportunity to fully explore this. Why not use it?

All of this is why the partner statements are disingenuous today. I mean, just look at them. They all say the same thing! And what they say is really nothing at all, beyond the positive statement that Google can now defend Android better.

“We welcome today’s news, which demonstrates Google’s deep commitment to defending Android, its partners, and the ecosystem.”

“I welcome Google‘s commitment to defending Android and its partners.”

“We welcome the news of today‘s acquisition, which demonstrates that Google is deeply committed to defending Android, its partners, and the entire ecosystem.”

“We welcome Google‘s commitment to defending Android and its partners.”

“We are positive towards Google’s continued commitment and investment in an open Android for the benefit of all players in the eco-system.”

I won’t even bother including who said what because it doesn’t matter. They’re all the same statement. “Defending Android”, “defending Android”, “defending Android”, “defending Android”, “defending Android”. Every. Single. Time.

In other words, “patent protection”, “patent protection”, “patent protection”, “patent protection”, “patent protection”. These guys aren’t happy Google is buying a competitor, but what are they going to say about it right now? “Fuck you, Google, we’re ditching Android!”? Given their massive commitments already in place, such a move could force any of these companies into the ground.

What will be more telling are the actions taken over the next weeks, months, and years by these guys. Do they warm to Windows Phone as a result? Do they turn elsewhere? Do they force Google to spin off the Motorola hardware division? It’s certainly all on the table right now, I’d imagine.

Google’s acquisition of Motorola today either just saved Android or subverted it. It was either brilliant, or really, really stupid. Unfortunately, the truth is that we simply won’t know the answer for a while.

But credit where credit is due, Google just did something decidedly un-Googley. On paper, as a math equation, you never do this deal. The upside is potentially high, but there’s way too much downside potential. A $12.5 billion deal in cash, with a $2.5 billion collapse clause? Who are you and what did you do with Google?

But as I’ve argued for months, Google has been in need of a wake up call. They needed something to shake them out of a state of malaise. With this Motorola deal, they just got something. It won’t make them any new friends, but this is business, not personal.

And it is a shit-ton of patents.

Since shutting down cell service on Thursday to try to quell rumored protests which never came to fruition, the Bay Area Transit Authority (BART) has had an interesting weekend and Monday.

Aside from getting investigated by the FCC as to whether it exceeded its authority in shutting off cellphones, the myBART website has been hacked by collective Anonymous on Sunday, with Anonymous claiming that the hack was motivated by the fact that BART’s actions were anti-free speech. The breech exposed identifiable contact information of over 2,000 employees and passengers.

While the original protests were planned in response to the shootings of Charles Hill and Oscar Grant by transit police, Anonymous also took their anti-BART campaign to real life by organizing more protests against the cell service disruption, starting today at San Francisco’s Civic Center startion at 5pm. This resulted in a sort of dual protest, both for the cell service issue and the deaths.

According to local reports, the movement was at its height around 100 people, chanting slogans like “No justice, no peace, disband the BART police.” All in all four subway stations, Civic Center, Powell, Embarcadero and Montgomery were shut down and reopened within an hour’s period. Perhaps having learned its lesson the hard way, BART did not interfere with cell service this time, although it had threatened to.

Today’s protests ended quietly and aside from the vague “We do not forgive” threats in this  video none of Anonymous’ many mouthpieces have given inkling on what they plan to do next. As with anything these days you can follow the protests on Twitter at #OpBart and #MuBARTek (a reference to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who unsuccessfully tried similar tactics to quash protests).

Image: SF Appeal

Analysts and pundits have been predicting an iPad 3 with a late 2011 launch for some time now, but if accounts from suppliers in Asia are to be believed, there just is no way that’s going to happen — if the rumors of the high-DPI screen are correct in the first place (and we think they are).

A 9.7″ display sporting 2048×1536 pixels, four times more than the current iPad and three times more than the HD displays on many Android tablets, is quite simply at the very limit of LCD panel manufacturing capability. Apple previously had hoped to have at least five or six million units by the end of the year and placed orders to that effect, but Digitimes is reporting that those orders have disappeared.

The chatter around the display industry water cooler is that Sharp is the only company capable of making these panels with any kind of real reliability; Samsung and LG apparently can’t reach a good yield. If these companies wanted to throw away money, they could invest despite poor yields, as Microsoft did in order to bring the Xbox 360 to market early, but we all know how that turned out. Samsung has actually demonstrated an alternative type of high-resolution display, but it’s unlikely Apple would use it even if it were ready for market.

These screens would be among the highest performing in the world, yet must be manufactured by the millions for relatively low cost. Apple doesn’t make its own displays (among other things), so it’s at the mercy of OEMs like Sharp. And if Sharp says “if anybody could do it, we could — but we can’t,” then Apple has no choice but to take that hit and delay the product.

Meanwhile, the same sources estimate as many as 30 million iPad 2s will be shipped in 2Q11; with no “rare” parts, they can be made as fast as the millions of hands in vast factory towns can put them together.

Of course it has to be said that a product that is not announced can’t, strictly speaking, be delayed. And I’m sure Apple was prepared for this eventuality, likely being informed while collaborating with Sharp that yields might just not hit targets in time. So: a revised launch schedule. January, anyone?

Researchers at UCLA have created a twist on traditional LCDs that would allow displays to reclaim wasted photons from the backlight, or even act as a normal solar cell. Normal LCDs rely on an always-on backlight, but because of the way LCDs work, most of that light never escapes. This inherent inefficiency hasn’t stopped us from getting bright displays, but the power necessary to make them so is usually what runs down your battery.

Enter UCLA materials science professor Yang Yang and his team of engineers. Among the layers of the LCD are two polarizing sheets that block unwanted backlighting depending on their configuration. The team at UCLA has designed a new type of material for these layers called a polarizing organic photovoltaic film. Instead of simply blocking the light, it would act like a photovoltaic cell and reabsorb some of the light’s energy — whether it’s coming from inside or outside the device. Essentially it would recycle the light from the backlight while simultaneously acting as a solar cell.

No guarantees are made regarding things like battery life and power draw, since these depend on many other factors, but Intel’s Youssry Botros commented that it could “potentially harvest 75 percent of the wasted photons from LCD backlight and turn them back into electricity.” Make your own calculations. He later uses the word “synergetic,” by which I think he means synergistic, but to be honest his version sounds better.

Yang hopes to work with manufacturers to make this mainstream, and says that the method is “simple.” All the same, don’t expect your phone to charge itself using this method any time soon. The research, published in the journal Advanced Materials, was conducted with money from Intel and the Office of Naval Research.

[via Hot Hardware]

First Facebook, then Twitter and now Foursquare; Obama sure gets around (social platforms). As announced today on the White House blog, Obama will be checking in to the location-based service as he hits stops on his economic bus tour in the Midwest. Of course.

Users who want to follow Barack can check out the White House Foursquare page here, where they can now subscribe to White House Tips as well as check in to the White House when they visit as well as Presidential events. And Barack has already left his first “Tip” linking to a blog post about the tour’s first stop at Lower Hannah’s Bend Park in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. Eh, someone should tell him that’s not exactly how they’re used.

One wonders how much of this social media outreach is the doing of newly brought on Obama campaign CTO (and former Threadless CTO) Harper Reed who is hep to these things, and how useful the location-based service will be in getting the word out to supporters. In any case it seems like you need to follow the President through his page to actually find him — searching for “Barack Obama” on the mobile app got me a guy in Salt Lake City Utah and a Barack Obama in London.

While probably the service’s most famous, Barack isn’t the only politician on Foursquare. Mayor Bloomberg famously checked into the Marriage Equalitocalypse earlier this summer and Mitt Romney and Cory Booker are also sharing their checkins with fans. *Insert joke about Obama automatically being the mayor of everything he visits here.*

Also: It seems like Foursquare has set up the White House Page to automatically follow people back, otherwise Obama would be fielding A LOT of friend requests. I personally can’t wait until he joins Instagram.

If you’ve ever tried to trudge through an SEC filing (or most financial filings, for that matter), you know that it can be a tedious and sometimes confusing process hampered by excessive legalize and unnecessarily small font sizes. Now MarketBrief, a Y Combinator-backed company that’s relaunching today, has a solution: it looks through these SEC filings for you, then culls the key data to automatically generate a plain-English (well, almost plain) version that sounds more like a newspaper article than a legal document.

You may already be familiar with the startup if you deal with a lot of SEC documents — the company originally launched as SECWatch back in 2009, when it served a fairly simple function: it would monitor public SEC filings for new updates, and would make those documents easy to access.

This new version goes much deeper. It still lets you quickly find any recently-added SEC documents, but instead of simply presenting you with that document in its original form, MarketBrief will automatically generate a more easily-digestible article based on the important data. The reports are generated in a matter of seconds after they’re uploaded to the SEC, though MarketBrief sometimes has a human look them over to ensure accuracy (presumably the need for this will decrease over time).  MarketBrief lets users access 10 articles for free, then charges $9 per month.

And this isn’t just a service for amateurs either — cofounders Jason Zucchetto, Chris Auer, and Michael Shafrir point out that some professionals have to deal with the same headaches.

For now the company supports auto-generating articles for around half of the SEC’s 500 or so filing types, and it’s continuing to ramp up to support the rest. Beyond those, the company hopes to eventually branch out into other filings, like those from the FCC, FDA, and other government agencies. In the longer term, the company also plans to work out a deal with the AP to supply additional content, so that it can eventually compete more directly with sites like the WSJ and CNNMoney.

Because the site has been around for a while in a more basic form, it’s already drawing some traffic — it had over 110,000 visitors in August with 20% growth month over month. And it has some strong SEO juice, with auto-generated articles sometimes ranking highly in Google search results for their relevant companies (MarketBrief says that they’ve had a couple companies actually complain about public documents that they didn’t want so easily accessed; they didn’t take them down).