Sony exec hints at PlayStation 4 announcement in spring

Perhaps tipping his hand a bit about Sony's "big secret," VP Hiroshi Sakamoto directs our gaze toward the 2013 edition of the big E3 games conference.


Sony's vice president of home entertainment, Hiroshi Sakamoto, has hinted that the next-generation PlayStation 4 console may be announced in the coming months.
In an interview with Chilean Web site Emol, Sakamoto implied that the Playstation 4 may be ready for formal introduction by the time 2013's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) appears on the calendar, or perhaps even sooner.
When asked whether a next-generation playstation console will be seen within the new few months, the VP told the publication:
Sakamoto went on to say that there would "probably" be a big announcement at E3, but consumers will have to wait until May at the earliest. Even if the hardware is revealed at E3 -- an event comparable to CES for gamers -- it is unlikely we will get our hands on the console, reportedly being developed under the project name "Orbis," until later in the year.
Whenever it arrives, Sony's next console will be contending for consumer dollars against the likes of Microsoft's yet-to-be-introduced next-generation XBox.
Rumors surrounding Sony's next console have suggested that the PlayStation 4's specifications will include a customized chip based on AMD's A8-3850 with a quad-core 2.9GHz processor and a 1GHz graphics card with 1GB of dedicated memory. Hardly the cutting edge of technology, but as other reports have suggested that the console has been designed for affordability, these kinds of facilities aren't surprising.
Most console manufacturers have generally kept to the tradition of a five-year shelf life for their devices. However, Sony has always gone against the grain, saying that its products have double the lifespan -- and as long they remain commercially viable.

Office 2013 pricing: What to expect

Microsoft's Office 2013 lineup should be launching soon. Here's what we know so far about prices and packages.



As expected, Microsoft is pricing its next-generation Office 2013 lineup in a way to try to convince users to pay an annual subscription fee -- with multiple device-installation rights as a carrot -- instead of buying the Office 2013 software outright.
Microsoft is believed to be ready to launch its next-generation Office product within the next few weeks, possibly before the end of January. The newest version of Office -- known both as "the new Office" and "Office 2013" -- will be commercially available on that date. In preparation for the launch, Microsoft has been educating its reseller and integrator partners as to what to expect, pricing- and packaging-wise.
A chart detailing some of the expected Office 2013/New Office prices leaked in October 2012. When I asked Microsoft at the time (and a few times later) to confirm the prices, company executives declined to do so, leading some to speculate that the leaked pricing might not be final.
However, it turns out these prices for some of the "hero" Office 365 and Office 2013 SKUs, were, indeed, accurate. Microsoft shared this slide with some of its partners this week:



Everything here that is labeled as an Office 365 SKU will be priced on a subscription basis. The SKUs listed along the bottom are non-subscription, buy-once/install-on-a-single-device prices.  (Microsoft officials disclosed the planned pricing for a few of its upcoming Office 365 SKUs last year.)
But as of now, we know for sure that Office Standard 2013 will be priced at $369 and Office Professional Plus 2013 at $499, based on this week's partner disclosure. (We already knew Home & Student 2013 would be $139 and Home & Business 2013 would be $219.)
The packages listed on the slide above are not an exhaustive list of the coming Office 2013/Office 365 SKUs. This looks to be the complete Office 2013 lineup, based on what I've seen updating lately as part of Patch Tuesday:

• Microsoft Office Home and Business 2013
• Microsoft Office Home and Student 2013
• Microsoft Office Home and Student 2013 RT
• Microsoft Office Personal 2013 (available in Japan only)
• Microsoft Office Professional 2013
• Microsoft Office Professional Academic 2013
• Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 (for volume licensees only)
• Microsoft Office Standard 2013 (for volume licensees only)

Microsoft released to manufacturing (RTM'd) its latest Office client and server products on October 11, 2012. Since that time, the Softies have made the final bits available to subscribers on MSDN, TechNet, and its volume licensing center. The products still are not available commercially to those without access to those channels. But as of the upcoming launch, the new Office will be preloaded on certain new PCs and available for purchase commercially.

Microsoft also will start making its new Office services -- its updated Office Web Apps, Office 365, and its Microsoft-hosted Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online offerings -- at that time, executives have said.
The company is putting a heavy emphasis on convincing not just business customers, but also consumers, to go the subscription/service route, rather than purchasing a single copy of one or more Office products with perpetual-use licenses. On the consumer front, the Office team is trying to make it more enticing for users to pay a "rental" fee for the new Office, allowing them the right to download Office products locally on up to five PCs and Macs and use them for a year. This is what's known as Office 365 Home Premium.
On the business front, Microsoft also is trying to convince customers to go the service/subscription route. Microsoft officials said late last year the company would be offering a number of new Office 365 SKUs and pricing plans. These should become available simultaneously with the Office launch in late January.
In addition to the aforementioned Office 365 Home Premium, the new Office 365 SKUs, last we heard, includes:

• Office 365 Small Business
• Office 365 Small Business Premium
• Office 365 ProPlus
• Office 365 Midsize Business
• Office 365 Enterprise

Microsoft began preparing some of its Office 365 partners in earnest for the upcoming launch last week, providing them with guidance about how the company plans to update its cloud-hosted suite that competes with Google Apps.
This story originally appeared at ZDNet's All About Microsoft under the headline "Microsoft Office 2013: What to expect on the pricing front."

Movie-accurate HAL 9000 bosses you around the house

Bring one of the most famous space personalities into your home with a life-size HAL 9000 replica based on the movie's original blueprints.



ThinkGeek boasts that the HAL 9000 life-size replica is the "most movie-accurate HAL 9000 replica ever created." Let's hope it's only movie-accurate enough to be entertaining and not deadly.
If you're a fan of HAL 9000 and want to bring a little bit of that relentless robotic terror into your home, you can plunk down $500 for a sentient computer of your own (minus the actual sentience.) This HAL 9000 is better-behaved than the real thing. You still get the menacing red LED eye, but he won't try to kill you.
There's a reason for the hefty price tag. The replica is machined from aircraft-grade aluminum. It's based on blueprints and studio files from the original movie. There's a glass lens over the LED eye and the whole thing is hand-assembled.
Of course, this wouldn't be HAL 9000 if he didn't talk back. You can trigger him by talking to him for longer than 1.2 seconds. He can also be triggered by IR remote. He comes back with one of 15 phrases taken from the film. He might even sing "Daisy Bell" to you if you're lucky.
Unlike movie-HAL, replica-HAL can be shut off when you're tired of him calling you "Dave." It's recommended that you don't taunt the HAL 9000 replica as you don't want to hurt his feelings. There's probably nothing he could do about it if you did, but I think we all want to be on the safe side with this particular product.

Twitter heads to Brazil

 The social network is opening an office in Latin America's largest city -- Sao Paulo -- in a move the company says will help it get closer to its Brazilian customers.

Paulistas, as the residents of Sao Paulo, Brazil, call themselves, like to refer to their home town as "the city that works." Time to update that description to the city that also tweets.
Twitter is opening up an office in the largest city in South America, Reuters reports.
"We believe our new office in Brazil will allow us to get closer to the users and show the value of our platform," the company's new country manager for Brazil, Guilherme Ribenboim, told Reuters.
"Brazil has rather mature Internet and advertisement markets. Our audience is very big and active," he said. "We are going to try to monetize it." Reuters quoted statistics provided by the Paris-based market intelligence firm Semiocast, which ranked Brazil as Twitter's second-biggest market after the United States in terms of accounts, and fifth in terms of usage.
Although that growth is slowing, Ribenboim referred to the approach of the World Cup and the Olympic Games -- both of which will be held in Brazil -- as offering "huge opportunities to leverage and show the potential of Twitter."
"It is already happening. We are talking (to advertisers) looking for opportunities, strategies," he said.

Hisense teases sexy transparent screens for commercial use

Hisense pushes the bar in digital signage with transparent displays that incorporate touch screen and 3D tech likely to make geeks pause in their tracks.



LAS VEGAS--Digital signage could vastly change in the next decade, especially if companies such as Hisense get marketers to sign on with transparent display technology.
One Hisense display, as seen above, adds 3D to a traditional transparent LCD. The demo illustrates how a real estate company could show off a real-life model town behind the LCD screen, while 3D video (passive glasses required) plays on-screen to show off some of the town's properties for sale.

Meanwhile, a few feet away, another display featured a transparent 2D touch screen with several objects visible through the display. The touch screen worked flawlessly, and seemed to make more real-world sense than the 3D counterpart as it offered more of an interactive element. Retail stores could add a layer of information for each product, such as a history of where an antique came from, for example.
In a conversation with a Hisense representative, the company wasn't keen to share much information about how it creates these see-through displays. However, we do know that Hisense isn't the only company innovating in this field, as Samsung and others continue to make advancements.
I did learn that Hisense's transparent LCD panels pump out 720p resolution and offer about 72 percent transparency while not in use, and about 6 percent transparency when showing an image. The company doesn't have any current plans to offer a consumer-ready version of these transparent screens in 2013, and seems only interested at this time in offering this tech for commercial applications.

AT&T opens FaceTime to all tiered-data customers

AT&T says it will allow all its tiered-data customers regardless of whether they have 3G or 4G iOS devices to use the FaceTime video chat service over its network. But it's still restricting unlimited-data users.

AT&T said today that it will allow any wireless customer with a tiered-data plan to use Apple's FaceTime videoconferencing app over AT&T's cellular network.
This is yet another change to AT&T's policy for this app, which when it was first introduced on the iPhone 4 was restricted to Wi-Fi networks only. In Apple's iOS 6 release of software, all FaceTime enabled iPhones were then capable of operating the app over a cellular network. Initially, AT&T still restricted usage to Wi-Fi.
In August, AT&T started to open the app to its cellular network. And it said FaceTime could be used on its cellular network if customers subscribed to the carrier's new Mobile Share billing plan. While consumers were happy that AT&T had opened the app to its network, many were outraged it was restricted to customers using AT&T's new and potentially more expensive tiered-billing offers. The Federal Communications Commission said it would review complaints on the issue.


Succumbing to public pressure, AT&T once again revised its policy. In November it opened the app to subscribers with any tiered-data plan so long as the device operated over AT&T's 4G LTE network. This meant the iPhone 5 and certain iPads.
Jim Cicconi, AT&T's top executive on legislative and regulatory affairs, argued at the time in a blog post for AT&T that the company is only trying to protect its network. He said AT&T has more iPhone users than any other carrier, and the company has been concerned that its network could be overwhelmed by allowing anyone to use FaceTime over the cellular network before it's been tested.
"In this instance, with the FaceTime app already preloaded on tens of millions of AT&T customers' iPhones, there was no way for our engineers to effectively model usage, and thus to assess network impact," Cicconi explained in a blog post last year. "It is for this reason that we took a more cautious approach toward the app. To do otherwise might have risked an adverse impact on the services our customers expect -- voice quality in particular -- if usage of FaceTime exceeded expectations."
In a blog post on Wednesday to discuss the most recent policy switch, AT&T Senior Vice President Mark Collins suggested that AT&T had always intended to open the service to more customers on its network.
"When FaceTime over Cellular launched in September 2012, we explained that we wanted to roll it out gradually to ensure the service had minimal impact on the mobile experience for all of our customers," he said in the blog.
But the reality is that the FaceTime app is still not available to all AT&T customers. The company still restricts subscribers with unlimited-data plans from using FaceTime over the cellular network. For this reason, consumer advocates say they're still not satisfied. Free Press, which filed a complaint with the FCC in September about AT&T's restrictive policy, said AT&T has taken a step in the right direction. But it still hasn't gone far enough.
"As we've made clear all along, the company has no right to block the application in the first place," Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood said in a statement. "Until AT&T makes FaceTime available to all of its customers, it is still in violation of the law and the broader principles of Net Neutrality. We remain ready to bring our complaint unless AT&T finishes the job and stops blocking this application altogether."

Facebook dials up teens, cheapskates with free calling

In search of its fountain of youth, Facebook gives away voice calls in its Messenger for iPhone app.

Calling all teens and cheapskates, Facebook has updated its Messenger for iPhone application to allow people in the U.S. to make free voice calls to their social network friends.
Facebook members with Messenger for iPhone will find a "Free Call" button located on friends' contact info pages inside the application. A click of the button will dial up the contact in question over Wi-Fi or your phone's data connection.
Facebook started rolling out voice calls to its U.S. members today, according to The Verge. The voice-over-IP feature was first made available to Canadian users in early January as a test but is now deemed ready for phone tag in the states.
The calling functionality makes Messenger into more than just an SMS or iMessage challenger. Now Facebook is potentially a bona fide threat to carriers. But the bigger play here is for teen attention.
With free calling, Facebook has built itself a large enough straw to drink out of the fountain of youth. Teens carry around iPod Touches and smartphones with limited or shared voice and data plans. Even if texting is their first love, they probably still want to make actual phone calls on occasion.
Though similar free-calling services have been available for some time -- through Gmail chat, for instance -- Facebook's offering seems better positioned to reach youngsters where it matters most: on a handset connected to their friends list.
Ultimately, the update could ensure that teens spend more time using Facebook, which skews older than competitors in the social-networking world.
Messenger for iPhone with free calling is available now to U.S. users and does not require an application update through the App Store.

Graph Search highlights Facebook's unwillingness to bend to Wall Street

The "Hacker Way" is alive and well at 1601 Willow Road, and that means focusing first on the demands of business, not the demands of Wall Street.



Facebook bends to no one, particularly not bankers and investors looking for perfection. That's the message Wall Street received with the beta release of Graph Search, the social network's first milestone launch since becoming a public company.
Graph Search is Facebook's experimental take on search and alters the social-networking experience to support discovery through natural language queries on people, photos, places, and interests.
Graph Search is so significant in scope and purpose that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg anointed the product a "third pillar," which makes it as core to Facebook as Timeline and News Feed. The status also makes Facebook's decision to release an unfinished product quite curious. Lest Zuck forget, the company now has investor expectations to live up to.
The puzzling decision is actually an easily decipherable message that reads like this: Facebook intends to hold true to its risk-taking, ship-early-and-ship-often "Hacker Way" mentality.
This should not come as a surprise. Zuckerberg warned investors with a letter in the company's prospectus that this would be the case. On Tuesday, he followed through on the promise with a Graph Search release strategy that seems to closely emulate the pre-IPO launch of Timeline, which debuted in half-baked form before going out to the general public months later.
"Facebook is still the same company post-IPO," Altimeter industry analyst Susan Etligner told CNET. "They're still using agile development. They'll release products the same way. They go to market when they want to."
When they want to is exactly right. Tom Stocky and Lars Rasmussen, Facebook's product leads on Graph Search, told CNET that the rollout will take months, not weeks.
"Part of this slow rollout is so that people can get used to this new world," Stocky said. Wall Street's expectations or possible reactions didn't factor into the company's release strategy, he added.
The we'll-do-it-our-way attitude, which some said would never pass muster in the public market, is already clashing with Wall Street types who have high expectations. Facebook has lost its market momentum since Tuesday's announcement, dropping to $29.85 Wednesday from around $31.50 before Zuckerberg lifted the veil on a piece of still-unfinished software.

Twitter engineers battle page rendering issues

The microblogging site says its users are experiencing "intermittent problems" with the way their feeds appear on browsers.

If your Twitter feed suddenly looks a bit squirrely, it's not your eyes or computer.
The microblogging site announced on its support account that engineers are working to solve rendering issues.
Although Twitter referred to the situation as "intermittent problems," the issue appears to be pretty persistent; a hard reload sometimes succeeds at summoning a normal-looking page.                  

                                                                                                                                       

We are experiencing intermittent problems with twitter.com rendering properly. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue.

In the meantime, here's an example of what many users are apparently seeing:

 

 

Google Nexus 7 tops iPad in Japan: Is this a trend?

Google's Nexus 7 is making serious market-share headway against Apple in Japan, according to Nikkei.


Google's Nexus 7 is gaining market share in Japan and topped Apple's iPad in one survey.
Japanese digital device consumers are some of the savviest in the world. So, a report Thursday showing that the Nexus 7 has bested the iPad in market share is worthy of attention.
Based on a survey of 2,400 consumer electronics stores in Japan, Google's Nexus 7 tablet had 44.4 percent of the market versus the iPad's 40.1 percent, according to Nikkei, Japan's largest business daily. The survey was done by market research firm BCN in December.
Not surprisingly, one of the big draws of the Nexus 7 -- which is co-branded with Asus, the manufacturer of the tablet -- is price, according to Nikkei. It's about a $100 less in Japan than Apple's least expensive tablet, the iPad Mini.
The survey did note, however, that there was a shortage of the iPad Mini at stores and that this may have contributed to Apple's market share decline. But the gist of Nikkei's analysis is that the Nexus 7's price is a bigger factor.
Tablet sales in Japan were 3.6 million units in 2012 and this is expected to swell to 4.9 million in 2013, according to figures from IDC Japan that Nikkei cited.

YouTube said to be investing more cash in Vevo

Although Google's video site already invested in Vevo, rumor has it that it wants a bigger stake.



Word has it that YouTube is looking to throw some cash in the direction of the music video site Vevo, according to AllThingsD. If these rumors are true, it shows that YouTube is increasingly moving toward the content market.
ouTube already owns a small stake in Vevo but is reportedly looking to up that investment, according to AllThingsD. If indeed the video giant does partner with Vevo, the way consumers view content on the site will supposedly stay the same -- which means watching big label music videos for free.
Vevo was reported as the third most-watched video site in the U.S. last May, with 49.5 million viewers per month, according to ComScore. No. 1 was Google, with 157.7 million viewers, largely through its YouTube operation, and second was Yahoo. YouTube helped create Vevo's back end, and Vevo's videos are best known for appearing on YouTube.
According to AllThingsD, the investment is reportedly slated to be more than $35 million.

U.S. Attorney defends office's conduct in Aaron Swartz case

Challenging the notion that her office's actions led to the suicide of the Internet activist, Carmen Ortiz said that the conduct of her prosecutors was appropriate.


The Justice Department official who oversaw the criminal case of Aaron Swartz before the Internet activist's suicide last week defended her office's handling of his case.
Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, was prosecuting Swartz on charges of illegally downloading a large number of academic papers. A vocal advocate for open access rights to documents on the Internet, Swartz had faced the possibility of as much as $4 million in fines and more than 50 years in prison if convicted. Critics of the prosecutors in the case accused the feds of unfairly trying to make an example out of the 26-year-old Swartz.
Saying that as a parent she sympathized with Swartz's friends and family, Ortiz challenged the notion that her office's conduct led to Swartz's suicide.
"The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably," Ortiz said in a statement (see below), adding that prosecutors recognized that Swartz's conduct did not warrant the stiffest of penalties allowed under sentencing guidelines. "That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct -- a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting."
In the statement that follows, Ortiz says her office never intended to seek the maximum sentence:

As a parent and a sister, I can only imagine the pain felt by the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, and I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy to everyone who knew and loved this young man. I know that there is little I can say to abate the anger felt by those who believe that this office's prosecution of Mr. Swartz was unwarranted and somehow led to the tragic result of him taking his own life.

I must, however, make clear that this office's conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably. The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his acts for personal financial gain, and they recognized that his conduct - while a violation of the law - did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases. That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct - a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. While at the same time, his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation. Ultimately, any sentence imposed would have been up to the judge. At no time did this office ever seek - or ever tell Mr. Swartz's attorneys that it intended to seek - maximum penalties under the law.

As federal prosecutors, our mission includes protecting the use of computers and the Internet by enforcing the law as fairly and responsibly as possible. We strive to do our best to fulfill this mission every day.

The computer fraud laws used to prosecute Swartz have been targeted for reform by a Democratic congresswoman from Silicon Valley. Rep. Zoe Lofgren said yesterday that she had authored a bill (PDF) called "Aaron's Law" that aims to change the 1984 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the wire fraud statute to exclude terms of service violations.
"The government was able to bring such disproportionate charges against Aaron because of the broad scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the wire fraud statute," Lofgren wrote.
Lofgren is not the first to complain that the wording of the 29-year-old anti-hacking law was overly broad. Last April, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected the government's broad interpretation of the 1984 law, warning that millions of Americans could be subjected to prosecution for harmless Web surfing at work.

Otherworldly Craigslist ad seeks 'Star Trek' role-players

Hitting new levels of hilarity, a personal ad on the classified site asks for women to assist in "The Next Generation" role-playing, while promising that "nothing weird is going to happen."

Those ladies who are fluent in Klingon but just can't seem to find a boyfriend are now in luck. Apparently, a certain someone is seeking women for "Star Trek" role-playing -- strictly "The Next Generation."
A recent Craigslist ad titled "Make It So" is making the joke rounds on Twitter today. The ad promises "no nudity, no touching" but asks for two to three women to get in character with the ad's author as he plays the "honorable" and "intellectual" Captain Picard.
Apparently Make It So has some serious issues with Captain Kirk, who he says "isn't half the Captain that Picard is" and is also a "fat chauvinist ladies man." He says that last time he tried to role-play "The Original Series," it was a "disaster." "There will be no mixing of eras," he proclaims.
Once he finds some suitable women that "know a lot about the show," the roleplaying can commence in his mom's garage where he has built a bridge and a small shuttlecraft. He will provide the scripts. The women have to have their own costumes and a phaser or VISOR would also be helpful.
What's in it for those lady callers? Maybe a lunch made by Make It So's mom and some blank doctor's prescriptions.
"Nothing weird is going to happen," he promises.

AT&T eyes international expansion for growth

Not content with its situation in the United States, the carrier is looking at potential assets to buy in Europe.


 Ralph de la Vega, head of AT&T mobility, speaking at the company's investor conference in New York City in November 2012.

AT&T is interested in buying a European carrier for growth, according to the Wall Street Journal.
With the U.S. market about to get more competitive, AT&T is looking at markets in Europe where it can upgrade technology and roll out new services and pricing strategies, the Wall Street Journal said, citing unnamed sources. It reported that AT&T is studying potential acquisitions, and could strike a deal by the end of the year. In particular, AT&T is looking at the U.K., Germany, and the Netherlands.
While the U.S. carriers have largely remained insular, many of the largest carriers overseas, such as Vodafone and Telefonica, have assets in multiple countries. With growth starting to slow in the U.S., it's natural for AT&T to look abroad.
But a deal isn't without risks, and the markets that AT&T is looking at are already highly competitive in their own right. These aren't fast-growing emerging markets, but fairly mature ones with several competitors already in place. Those issues, as well as the weak European markets, have led to falling valuations and potentially attractive prices for many of these companies.
AT&T, of course, isn't a stranger to doing business with a major European player. The company two years ago attempted to acquire T-Mobile USA, a unit of Germany's Deutsche Telekom. That deal fell apart amid regulatory scrutiny, and the company has been focusing on smaller deals since then.
It's unclear how such a deal would interfere with or complement the company's extensive network upgrade plans. AT&T is spending an additional $14 billion to upgrade its wireless and wireline networks as it looks to new sources of growth in the U.S.
But AT&T is also looking at a market that will get more competitive in the coming months. Softbank is poised to come in and inject capital into Sprint, and its leadership has already warned that it would introduce new pricing schemes to shake up the market. Deutsche Telekom has recommitted itself to T-Mobile, which is planning to merge with MetroPCS and likewise promised to introduce new competitive plans.
AT&T does have an international presence in the form of a business arm that provides services to multinational corporations, but it doesn't yet serve consumers.
An AT&T representative declined to comment on the report.

Archos 80 Titanium tablet has same resolution as iPad Mini for $169

Archos announced an 8-inch member to its Elements family of tablets. The Archos 80 Titanium runs Android 4.1 and will be available in March for $169.
The tablet houses a 1.6GHz dual-core processor, a quad-core graphics processor, and 1GB of RAM. It sports a stylish aluminum back casing and a 1,024x768-pixel resolution IPS screen.
The 80 Titanium also comes with 8GB of internal storage with a microSD expansion slot, a 0.3-megapixel front camera, and 2-megapixel rear camera. It also has Micro-USB and Mini-HDMI ports.
The Archos 8-inch tablet will possibly compete against the iPad Mini. Its stylish, lightweight design and 1,024x768-pixel-resolution IPS screen are comparable with the iPad Mini's, but the 80 Titanium costs considerably less.

Regulators Around the Globe Ground Boeing 787s

Regulators around the globe ordered the grounding of Boeing 787s on Thursday until they could determine what caused a new type of battery to catch fire on two planes in recent days.

The directives in Europe, India and Japan followed an order Wednesday by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration grounding the planes operated by U.S. carriers.

The decisions are a result of incidents involving a plane that was parked in Boston and one in Japan that had to make an emergency landing Wednesday morning after an alarm warning of smoke in the cockpit.

In Japan on Thursday, the transportation ministry issued a formal order to ground all 787s indefinitely, until concerns over the aircraft’s battery systems are resolved. All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines had already voluntarily grounded their 787s on Wednesday, leading to more than two dozen canceled flights.

European safety regulators also said they would ground Dreamliners, affecting LOT of Poland, the only carrier that operates the jets in that region. In India, the aviation regulator grounded all six of the 787s operated by the state-owned carrier Air India.

LAN Airlines of Chile said it was following suit, acting in coordination with the Chilean Aeronautical Authority.

And on Thursday, Qatar Airways said it would follow the F.A.A.’s decision and ground its five 787s, effective immediately.

The F.A.A.’s emergency directive, issued Wednesday night, initially applies to United Airlines, the only American carrier using the new plane so far, with six 787s.

Boeing, based in Chicago, has a lot riding on the 787, and its stock dropped nearly 3.4 percent Wednesday to $74.34. The company has outlined ambitious plans to double its production rate to 10 planes a month by the end of 2013. It is also starting to build a stretch version and considering an even larger one after that.

“We are confident the 787 is safe and we stand behind its overall integrity,” Jim McNerney, Boeing’s chief executive, said in a statement.

The grounding — an unusual action for a new plane — focuses on one of the more risky design choices made by Boeing, namely to make extensive use of lithium-ion batteries aboard its airplanes for the first time.

Until now, much of the attention on the 787 was focused on its lighter composite materials and more efficient engines, meant to usher in a new era of more fuel-efficient travel, particularly over long distances. The batteries are part of an electrical system that replaces many mechanical and hydraulic ones that are common in previous jets.

The 787’s problems could jeopardize one of its major features, its ability to fly long distances at a lower cost. The plane is certified to fly 180 minutes from an airport. The U.S. government is unlikely to extend that to 330 minutes, as Boeing has promised, until all problems with the plane have been resolved.

For Boeing, “it’s crucial to get it right,” said Richard L. Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at Teal Group in Fairfax, Virginia. “They’ve got a brief and closing window in which they can convince the public and their flying customers that this is not a problem child.”

In Japan on Thursday, government investigators examined the 787 that made the emergency landing. Footage on the public broadcaster, NHK, showed officials removing a charred and swollen lithium-ion battery pack from the front of the plane.

Corrosive liquid appeared to have leaked out of the batteries, leaving streaks on their blue casing, said Hideo Kosugi, a safety official who is head of the inquiry. Investigators also found black discolorations outside exhaust vents on the plane, which suggested that there had been smoke inside the aircraft at one point.

“The batteries have retained their basic shape, but are black all over,” Mr. Kosugi said. Something caused the battery to overheat and spew liquid, he added, “but we still do not know what is the cause.”

The 787 uses two identical lithium-ion batteries, each about one and a half to two times the size of a typical car battery. One battery, in the rear electrical equipment bay near the wings, is used to start the auxiliary power unit, a small engine in the tail that is used most often to provide power for the plane while it is on the ground. The other battery, called the main battery, starts the pilot’s computer displays and serves as a backup for flight systems.

The maker of the 787’s batteries, GS Yuasa of Japan, has declined to comment on the problems.

Boeing has defended the novel use of the batteries and said it had put in place a series of systems meant to prevent overcharging and overheating.

Deep Under Antarctica, Looking for Signs of Life

Three major scientific projects set out this season to seek evidence of life in lakes deep under the Antarctic ice — evidence that could provide clues in the search for evidence of life elsewhere in the solar system, perhaps in Mars’s past, or even now under the surface of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. But only one of the projects, a $10 million expedition from the United States, has a chance of identifying long-hidden microbes before the weather on the frigid continent puts an end to drilling in about a month.

One of the projects, a British effort, ran into technical trouble and had to be called off for this season. An expedition from Russia will be returning samples to be analyzed later.

The American effort, financed by three federal agencies and a private foundation, is about to start drilling into a lake half a mile below a glacier called the Whillans Ice Stream and will analyze samples on the spot in a field laboratory. An announcement of what it finds could come in the next few weeks.

John C. Priscu of Montana State University, a leader of the project, said there was no guarantee. “We don’t know; there are going to be surprises,” he said in a conference call in December with the two other members of the project’s executive committee, Ross D. Powell of Northern Illinois University, and Slawek Tulaczyk of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Dr. Priscu and Dr. Tulaczyk were getting ready to fly to Antarctica; Dr. Powell was already at McMurdo Station, the American scientific base there.

Dr. Priscu is hopeful, he said, given that “10 years of circumstantial evidence” suggest that “there should be a viable microbial community that’s living in the dark and the cold.” The project is called Wissard, for Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling.

Both the Russian and British projects aimed to reach waters under two or more miles of ice. Lake Whillans lies under a half-mile of ice. For all three, there is no sun to power living cells, only minerals and heat from the earth’s interior. While life is known to survive in the deep ocean without photosynthesis, nothing like these cold, freshwater depths have ever been explored. Robin Bell, a senior research scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, who studies the behavior of ice sheets with radar and other techniques, said the subglacial Antarctic lakes hold “whole ecosystems that have never really been looked at.”

Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA Ames Research Center, said that exploring extreme environments offered practical lessons for efforts on other planets, “learning how to make measurements in places where there’s not much life.” And, he said, of the possible candidates for past or present microbial life in the solar system, “none of them have environments near the surface that are habitable.”

The Lake Whillans research is also aimed at understanding the flow of water beneath glaciers into the Southern Ocean and the rate of melting of Antarctic ice, which could provide important information for climate studies.

The Russian project, at Lake Vostok, breached its surface last February after a decade of struggling to get through more than two miles of ice to water that had been sealed away for millions of years. That was at the very end of the Antarctic field season, and weather at Vostok, the site of the coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth (minus 128.6 Fahrenheit), forced a quick departure.

The Russians are back at Lake Vostok this year to retrieve samples of the water that flowed from the surface of the lake up the drill’s bore hole, but they will not know what they have until they return with it to Russia for analysis there. One limitation of the project is that the samples are from only one spot on the surface of a body of water that is the size of Lake Ontario.

The British project also intended to retrieve water samples for later studies, from another, smaller body of water, Lake Ellsworth. But researchers called off that attempt on Christmas Day because the drilling process ran into difficulty at about a thousand feet. The water they had hoped to reach lay almost two miles deep.

The American project is different in several ways. Lake Whillans is smaller and not as deep, and is replenished more quickly from other water sources under the Antarctic ice shelf. It is a basin in a subglacial river where water accumulates to form a lake but keeps flowing, eventually reaching the ocean.

Dr. Priscu said that while the water in Lake Vostok was replaced about every 10,000 years, and the water in Lake Ellsworth every 700 years or so, the replacement rate for Lake Whillans was more on the order of a decade.

The scientific approach is different as well. The Wissard project involves the use of a remote torpedo-shaped submersible, about two and a half feet long. It will operate on a tether about a mile long and will be used to map the three-dimensional space of the underground lake, including its inlets and outlets. Dr. Tulaczyk said that understanding the shape of the lake, and how the water moves in and out, is important for knowing how and why the glaciers above these deep lakes move, “why parts of Antarctica are gaining, and others losing” ice cover.

Glaciologists have a good understanding of how the ice sheets on the surface of Antarctica move, he said, but the nearly 400 known buried lakes affect the movement of ice above them. They can serve as a kind of lubricant between the mountains and valleys of the Antarctic continent’s land mass, and the vast amounts of ice under which it is buried.

The Wissard team will also be taking samples from the sediments at the bottom of the lake, to look for living microbes or chemical evidence of past activity. Subglacial microbes may, for instance, be changing the mineral composition of the water, freeing iron that then flows into the ocean around Antarctica.

Of the variety of approaches the team is taking, Dr. Bell said, “If you’re going to pop a hole through an ice sheet like this, you want to do everything you can.”

The project involved not only developing and testing a hot-water drill with a filtering system to prevent contamination of the buried lake, but transporting the drill — along with the submersible and a laboratory capable of on-site analysis of water and sediment samples — over 500 miles of ice, from McMurdo Station to the Lake Whillans site. Thirteen tractors hauled the equipment from the McMurdo research station over the course of two weeks, arriving at the site on Jan. 12.

Speaking from McMurdo on Sunday morning (McMurdo is 18 hours ahead of New York), Dr. Priscu said flights were planned over the next few days to bring the scientists, drillers and other team members out to the field site. By Jan. 21, when he hopes drilling will begin, there will be about 50 people at the camp.

The cold has not posed any logistical problems so far. Instead, unseasonably warm weather has left the runways so mushy that wheeled airplanes cannot take off. Dr. Priscu said planes that land and take off on skis could be used.

Study Discovers DNA That Tells Mice How to Construct Their Homes

The architectural feats of animals — from beaver dams to birds’ nests — not only make for great nature television, but, since the plans for such constructions seem largely inherited, they also offer an opportunity for scientists to tackle the profoundly difficult question of how genes control complicated behavior in animals and humans.

A long-term study of the construction of burrows by deer mice has the beginnings of an answer. Hailed as innovative and exciting by other scientists, the report, in the current issue of Nature, identifies four regions of DNA that play a major role in telling a mouse how long a burrow to dig and whether to add an escape tunnel.

The research could eventually lead to a better understanding of what kind of internal reward system motivates mice to dig, or tells them to stop. And although humans do not dig burrows, that, said the leader of the three-person research team, Hopi E. Hoekstra of Harvard, could “tell us something about behavioral variation in humans.”

Dr. Hoekstra, an evolutionary and molecular biologist, said the work, largely carried out by graduate students in her laboratory, Jesse N. Weber, now at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, and Brant K. Peterson, showed that “complex behaviors may be encoded by just a few genetic changes.”

While other genes have been found in various species from worms to voles that govern various kinds of behavior, like mating and aggression, Dr. Hoekstra and her colleagues took on an unusually complicated behavior with an approach that involved nearly a decade of work on ecology and evolutionary biology as well as genetics. The result, said Cori Bargmann, who studies the genetics of behavior in roundworms at Rockefeller University, is “really exciting.” She added that “it was done with great intelligence. The genetics are beautiful.”

Robert Anholt, a specialist in behavior and genetics in fruit flies at North Carolina State University, said it was “courageous to undertake this particular work” for Dr. Hoekstra because of the great difficulty of dealing with complicated behavior, and that the approach was innovative and pushed forward what was possible in behavioral genetics.

Dr. Hoekstra started with a species called the oldfield mouse (Peromyscus polionotus), the smallest of the deer mice. For 80 years or more, field scientists have documented its behavior, including excavating characteristically long burrows with an escape tunnel, which the mice will dig even after generations of breeding in cages in a laboratory.

Dr. Hoekstra treated tunnel length and architecture as a physical, measurable trait, much like tail length or weight, by filling burrows with foam that would produce a mold easily measured and cataloged — behavior made solid.

She and her students did this in the field and repeated it in the laboratory by putting the mice in large, sandbox-like enclosures, letting them burrow and then making molds of the burrows. They did the same with another deer mouse species, Peromyscus maniculatus, that digs short burrows without escape tunnels.

The team bred the two species together (they are close enough to interbreed) and measured the burrows of the offspring. Their tunnels varied in length. Further breeding crosses between the hybrids and the original short-burrow species were conducted and the tunnels measured again. They showed a blend of characteristics, varying in length and with and without escape tunnels.

Then the scientists matched variations in tunnel architecture to variations in DNA. What they found were three areas of DNA that contributed to determining tunnel length, and one area affecting whether or not the crossbred mice dug an escape tunnel. That was a separate behavior inherited on its own, so that the mice could produce tunnels of any length, with or without escape tunnels.

All complicated behaviors are affected by many things, Dr. Hoekstra said, so these regions of DNA do not determine tunnel architecture and length by themselves. But tunnel length is about 30 percent inherited, she said, and the three locations account for about half of that variation. The rest is determined by many tiny genetic effects. As for the one location that affected whether or not mice dug an escape tunnel, if a short-burrow mouse had the long-burrow DNA region, it was 40 percent more likely to dig a complete escape tunnel.

Both Dr. Anholt and Dr. Bargmann said that for complex behaviors, which can be affected in ways too small to measure by many other genes, the effects of these DNA locations were very significant.

These are, however, regions of DNA, not actual genes. Next comes the attempt to find the specific genes and then the pathways from genes to behavior. Dr. Anholt said “this is really only a first step,” and that the next phase would be even more difficult. Dr. Bargmann said “the hardest thing about studying natural traits is that end game,” getting from the region of DNA down to a particular gene.

But Dr. Hoekstra is confident and said the research that should lead to identifying the actual genes is already going on.

“We know exactly how to do it,” Dr. Weber said. “We’ve always had the intention of finding these genes.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 16, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the characteristics of tunnels built by the first generation of crossbred mice. They all had escape tunnels; it was not the case that some did not have escape tunnels.

Motorists warned not to travel

Motorists have been warned only to make essential journeys as heavy frost and ice this morning will be replaced by snow for most of the country by midday tomorrow.

  

 

As Britain braces itself it was revealed that a man found dead in the street near his home may have collapsed while clearing snow from his driveway.

Graham Clark, who was in his 70s, was discovered with serious head injuries just moments after neighbours saw him moving snow in the village of Buxhall in Suffolk on Tuesday afternoon.

He was pronounced dead at the scene and police are investigating the possibility that he hit his head whilst trying to clear the path.

Wintry showers will attack the from two fronts tomorrow with the first flurries of snow expected to have landed in the West by rush hour.

Even areas which normally avoid the white-out could see up to four inches by lunchtime as Britain braces itself for the worst snow of the winter.
Until then we can expect the freezing temperatures, which hit as low as minus 12 in East Anglia overnight, to continue. London commuters were forced to make their way to work in temperatures of -3C this morning.
For most of the country today, including in the capital, the mercury will struggle to get above freezing throughout the day whilst the warmest temperatures will be in the South West with highs of 7C expected in Plymouth.
Areas where freezing fog has lingered overnight and which still have snow on the ground, including Yorkshire, will see lows of around -3C.
The Highways Agency said that their gritters were out in force across most of England last night and are warning motorists to take extra care and only travel if they have to.
The weather is also threatening weekend sporting events include the races at Ascot and Haydock.
Met Office forecaster Emma Sharples said: “Unless you really have to make a journey it is worth putting it off for a while, we have got a weather warning out.
“People shouldn’t travel unless they absolutely have to.”
The agency has issued an amber alert warning that “severe weather action” is needed.

Ms Sharples said: “Overnight tonight the first rain coming in from the West will quickly turn to snow and with a strong wind it is going to feel quite raw.
“That will push its way eastward and large swathes of the country, apart from possibly South West Wales and Cornwall, will see between five and 10cms (two to four inches) of snow.”
While the main weather front will push its way in from the West a second band of wintry showers is also coming in from the East to “sandwich” the country in snow, Ms Sharples said.
The snow will begin around rush hour and areas will see a covering by around midday, with even London and the South East experiencing between one and two inches.
“The front will still be there by Saturday but it will have lost its oomph by then and will have become patchier.
“But we can safely say that the very cold weather will continue into next week," Ms Sharples said.
A spokeswoman for the Highways Agency added: “The gritters have been out in force all night and we currently have no reported incidents because of the weather.
“We are advising drivers to take extra care and to listen to the local forecast, to drive appropriately and to make sure they are prepared for the journeys including taking suitable clothing. If they can they should make alternative plans.”
One person died today in a pile up between a car and three lorries on the A14 near the junction with the A1303 near Bottisham in Cambridgeshire at 7.10am.
The person who died was travelling in the car along with another who suffered serious injuries. Police said there was no suggestion that the accident was weather-related.

Miranda Kerr and Emily Blunt’s stylist hits out at fashion ‘critics’

Jessica Paster, the stylist to Miranda Kerr and Emily Blunt, has made her thoughts on untrained fashion critics known, saying they are "not fashion people" so don't have the right to judge.


Hollywood stylist Jessica Paster, whose clients include actress Emily Blunt and Victoria's Secret model Miranda Kerr, has made her views on untrained 'fashion critics', such as Kelly Osbourne and Joan Rivers, clear in an interview with Fashionista . 
Asked what she thought of Osbourne and Rivers' E! channel critique show, Fashion Police , Paster said: "These are not fashion people. If Kelly Obsourne didn't have Fashion Police , what is she going to do? Did she go to school to be a lawyer? Did she go to school to be a stylist?"
READ: Golden Globes 2013: The thigh-high split makes a red carpet comeback
She was similarly scathing of Rivers, saying: "What gives Joan Rivers the right to talk about what people are wearing when she looks like she's being injected by god knows what?"
79-year-old Rivers has become known for acerbic comments on celebrity style, such gems include "I've seen better coats on stray dogs with mange" and, "The nice thing about this hat is that it covers up the head wound that made her think it was a good idea to wear it in the first place."
Paster has been known as one of Hollywood's foremost stylists for over 15 years, and past clients include Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Aniston and Rachel Weisz.
IN PICTURES: The many faces of Miranda Kerr
Paster also criticised the selectiveness of young designers when it comes to dressing celebrities for the red carpet, saying many of them are too picky. Speaking of the Golden Globes (for which she dressed Blunt and Kerr) she commented that "You didn't see Jason Wu or Prabal Gurung on the red carpet last night, because instead of them being a little open-minded, they're waiting to get these other people that they think they deserve."
Paster believes this unwillingness to dress actresses who aren't necessarily the most famous on the red carpet means they are losing the chance to get their work shown all over the world, and, as a result, sell more garments.

This story cannot fail to leave you mooved

A farmer who led his cows on a long walk to freedom is the subject of an award-nominated film

 

Hollywood’s latest starlet is gazing enigmatically into the camera lens with her huge melting brown eyes, framed with lashes long enough to catch snowflakes. She radiates an air of serenity amid the flashbulbs and satellite dishes and is the very epitome of poise – until an enormous rough pink tongue emerges from the side of her mouth and flicks into her nostril.

“This is Ration, she’s our Red Carpet Cow,” says her owner, East Sussex dairy farmer Steve Hook, as he massages her neck. “A handful of cow nuts and you can do anything you like with her.”

That pretty much makes her every director’s dream, but she won’t be accompanying him to Sundance Film Festival this weekend, where her screen debut – The Moo Man – has been chosen to compete in the prestigious World Cinema category.

The Moo Man is ostensibly a documentary about Longleys Farm, Hailsham, where Steve and his father, Phil, have turned around their loss-making dairy business by thumbing their noses at the supermarket big boys and marketing and selling their own raw, unpasteurised and organic milk.

But this fascinating, unsentimental yet tender film is much more than a classic David-and-Goliath clash of values; it is a moving portrait of the ancient relationship between a farmer and his animals, set against a backdrop of changing seasons, changing fortunes, birth, death and, of course, milk. Gallons and gallons of the white stuff.

 

Hook, 47, and his wife Claire have four sons aged 12 to 20. Not so long ago, the future of their inheritance looked decidedly bleak.

“We converted to organic milk in 2000 because back then there was a 10p premium on every litre,” says Hook. “As we use traditional methods on the farm already, it was a natural step. But then milk prices – organic and standard – fell away and we were being paid below the cost of production, which was completely untenable.”
For five years Hook struggled to stay afloat, relying on family tax credits to meet his bills. Then he took the risky decision to cut himself adrift and sell his milk, cream and butter direct to the public. Moreover, his USP would be that the milk was raw and unpasteurised, something that’s not available through large retailers as, for legal reasons, it can only be sold by the farm that produces it.
“Raw milk is an entirely different product from the homogenised stuff you buy,” says Hook. “It’s full of health-giving properties that make it more valuable, and people are willing to pay more.”
An ordinary pint of milk costs from 25p to 45p. A pint of Hook’s finest fetches anything from £1 to £2; much of it is sold via the internet and dispatched, by courier, in insulated boxes to addresses across the country.
In February 2010, Hook was sending out 700 pints of Hook & Son a week. By 2013, that figure has risen to 3,500 pints, enabling him to employ six full-time and eight part-time staff, and reinvest in the farm.
Unpasteurised milk is creamier and has a more distinctive, “milky” taste than the pasteurised version, but there are other reasons for its resurgence.
“Raw milk lowers 'bad’ cholesterol and can be drunk by people who are lactose-intolerant because it contains active enzymes,” says Hook. “There is also evidence it effectively treats asthma, hay fever and eczema.”
It was this health dimension that drew local documentary makers Andy Heathcote and Heike Bachelier to the farm. They had been ordering the milk from their delivery man and were so astonished when it successfully treated their eczema that they were keen to know more.
“Something else we found funny and intriguing were the little anecdotes and pictures of cows featured on the milk bottles and on the website,” says German-born Bachelier. “I had never thought about the process by which milk gets from the animal to me and I initially thought it was odd to claim cows had their own personalities and idiosyncrasies.”
She was rapidly disabused of the notion that all cows are identical, not least by the film’s leading lady, Ida, aged 12, who steals the show.
The average lifespan of a dairy cow is six years, but Hook’s cows live at least 10 years, a testament to high welfare standards and the fact they aren’t stressed by overmilking.
As befits a grande dame of any species, Ida comes across as bold, opinionated and happiest when centre-stage. There is footage of Steve taking her to the beach at Eastbourne to drum up publicity, only to discover she likes it so much she refuses to leave. Little wonder, then, that her story arc rivals that of Anna Karenina.
And so what began as a fly-on-the-milking-parlour-partition look at Hook’s business – of 10,000 dairy farmers in Britain, only 100 or so sell raw, unpasteurised milk – became a rather more reflective, even spiritual, examination of the dynamic between man and beast.
There’s Clever Kate, a born escapologist able to find a hole in even the best-maintained of fences. Jill is prone to get a bit antsy and kick out; Rowena is highly prized for her superior butterfat milk; and Kitty is loved no less for her friendly nature.
For to call the bond Steve has with all 70 of his pedigree Holstein Friesians love is no exaggeration. Far from it.
“I love my animals,” he says simply. “I rear them from calves, I watch them thrive and grow. I milk them, watch over them and I respect them.
“Cows have a great dignity about them; they’re noble and graceful and very expressive. They will shake their heads if they’re fed up with you or push their foreheads into you, nudging you to do more of what you’re doing.”
To her credit, Ration – nobody can recall why she’s called that – is still obligingly showing off her best side out front. She is heavily pregnant, which bodes well for the future herd.
But back in a pen behind the barn, where the animals are wintered, a lone cow stands over a lifeless calf, endlessly licking its cold body. The calf died in utero and was “born” earlier in the day – hauled out of its mother with a rope by Hook. He has left her the body so she can come to terms with the loss; she licks and licks, trying to stir her offspring, refusing to eat or to drink. No-one could doubt that she is grieving.
Meanwhile, the cycle of nature continues around her; fat hens scratch in the silage, the farm cat slinks by, the twice daily ritual of milking begins.
In a few days, Steve Hook and his father will be at Sundance, where their quietly profound story will vie for attention among performances by Hollywood A-listers such as Ashton Kutcher and Scarlett Johansson.
The farmers have been invited to brunch with festival founder Robert Redford. It’s a fair bet they will raise a toast to The Moo Man. Let’s hope it is with a glass of raw, unpasteurised milk.

Pep Guardiola turns his back on Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich and becomes Bayern Munich manager

Pep Guardiola delivered a resounding snub to Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich on Wednesday, agreeing a three-year deal to become manager of Bayern Munich from next season. 

  

 

Guardiola’s decision to return to management in the Bundesliga despite huge interest from England, led by Abramovich, has implications across the Premier League, where Manchester City, Manchester United and Arsenal were also watching his next move closely.

The move hugely strengthens Rafael Benítez’s position at Chelsea, where he is interim manager. He now has a better chance of persuading the owner, and supporters who have rejected him, that he is the long-term choice.

It also marks a significant victory for Manchester City’s Roberto Mancini, who will now feel more secure in his position at the Etihad, having seen off potential competition from both Guardiola and José Mourinho.

Guardiola, who won 14 trophies in four seasons at Barcelona, including two European Cups, has signed a lucrative deal worth €8 million a year (£6.5 million) and will succeed coach Jupp Heynckes on July 1.
“Guardiola is one of the most successful coaches in the world and we are sure that he can make not just Bayern, but all of German football shine,” said Bayern Munich chief executive Karl-Heinz Rummenigge.
“We are pleased that we have managed to convince Guardiola, who was coveted and contacted by many top clubs, to come to Bayern Munich.”
Bayern revealed Guardiola’s move had been in the pipeline since at least before Christmas, when 67 year-old Heynckes told the club he would not be seeking an extension to his existing contract and would instead retire.
Guardiola has been linked with the Chelsea and City jobs throughout the first six months of a sabbatical that followed his resignation as Barcelona coach last summer.
Chelsea and City appeared to be preparing the ground for Guardiola with recent signings on and off the pitch. Chelsea’s summer transfers, including Oscar and Eden Hazard, appeared tailor-made for the Spaniard.
At City, meanwhile, the recruitment of former Barcelona director Txiki Begiristain to work alongside chief executive Ferran Soriano, formerly general manager at the Nou Camp, appeared significant.
Chelsea insist that Guardiola’s decision does not change their strategy of seeing out the season with Benítez in charge and then reviewing the managerial post in the summer. Neither did it come as a huge surprise to the hierarchy as they were aware of the overtures made to Guardiola by the Bavarian club.
It does represent a personal rejection of Abramovich, however, after the Russian failed three times to persuade Guardiola to come to Stamford Bridge.
His decision to grant Roberto Di Matteo an opportunity to take the job full-time from the start of this season was taken only after Guardiola said he would not take the job immediately.
The Spaniard’s potential availability informed the decision to offer Benítez only an interim post, with a contract that expires in May.
That position may now be reviewed. Despite enduring hostility from Chelsea fans, his success instilling greater tactical discipline on a side in transition has been appreciated by Abramovich’s advisers.
However, Benítez again received a negative reaction from Stamford Bridge after his side tossed away a 2-0 lead to be held to a 2-2 draw by Southampton.
The result leaves Chelsea six points off third place, and left supporters who had largely ignored the manager for most of the game booing him at the end.
The Telegraph revealed last week that Benítez had been the subject of interest from Real Madrid, who appear likely to sack Mourinho at the end of the season. An offer from Madrid could leave Abramovich with a difficult decision to make, and there will be speculation that Benítez and Mourinho could trade jobs.
That would come as a surprise to many at Chelsea given the rancorous nature of Mourinho’s departure in 2007. Sources suggest Abramovich would not consider offering him the job, given their history, and the huge pay-off he received when he left.
Given the field of potential successors, which, if Abramovich continues to favour younger appointments, will be long on potential but short on experience, he still cannot be ruled out.
Borussia Dortmund coach Jürgen Klopp, Michael Laudrup, of Swansea, Germany manager Joachim Löw, Diego Simeone of Atlético Madrid and Everton's David Moyes could all be rivals for the post.
Guardiola’s move also leaves City without their favoured option as Mancini’s potential successor.
Despite signing a five-year contract at the Etihad after guiding City to the title last season, Mancini’s grip on his job had been weakened by the team’s Champions League elimination before the knockout stages.
It is also no secret that Mancini had viewed Guardiola as a serious rival.

White House raises petition signature threshold to 100K

We the People platform quadruples the number of signatures required on petitions before they merit the Obama Administration's attention.



Future petitions to the White House to build a Death Star, have Piers Morgan deported, or fire Aaron Swartz's prosecutor will have to attract more support to merit the White House's attention.
Beginning today, petitions filed on WhiteHouse.org's We the People platform will need to log 100,000 signatures in 30 days to receive an official response from the Obama Administration, quadrupling the previous minimum of 25,000.
The higher threshold will "ensure we're able to continue to give the most popular ideas the time they deserve," Macon Phillips, the White House's director of digital strategy, wrote in a blog post today. "This new threshold applies only to petitions created from this point forward and is not retroactively applied to ones that already exist."
Activity on the petitions platform skyrocketed in late 2012, with the average time that petitions took to cross the 25,000-signature platform being slashed from 18 days during the first 10 months of the year to 9 days for the last two months. More than 60 percent of the petitions receiving 25,000 signatures last year did so in November and December.
"It's wonderful to see so many people using We the People to add their voices to important policy debates here in Washington and bring attention to issues that might not get the attention they deserve," Phillips wrote.
Launched in September 2011, the Obama Administration's online petition platform has become a venue for citizens to make serious policy suggestions, as well as air disapproval of recent events and enjoy a little whimsy. Recent petitions have sought to have the Westboro Baptist Church legally recognized as a hate group and persuade the government to build a Death Star -- a proposal that was met with an equally light-hearted response from the White House on Friday.

From Death Star to Disney, exploring the 'Star Wars' franchise (Q&A)

45 Minutes on IM: Chris Taylor, an editor at Mashable who has covered "Star Wars" since 1997, tells CNET all about his forthcoming book, "How Star Wars Conquered the Universe."



It's one of the biggest film franchises of all time. It's also one of the biggest merchandising franchises of all time. It's spawned dozens of novels, countless comic books, spoofs, video games, and even was responsible for the name of a controversial military defense system.
We're talking about "Star Wars," of course, George Lucas' mammoth empire that started back in the early-1970s as a much, much smaller creation. But don't think that Lucas didn't have big ideas. From the earliest days of working on the script of his sci-fi space opera, the "American Graffiti" director had broad ambitions, beyond even just the nine films he hoped to make.
Yet all these years and billions of dollars later, no one has ever really told the complete story tying together how the "Star Wars" universe fits into popular culture, how it impacts the economy, and how it inspired so many fans to create their own fiction.
Until now, that is. Today, Basic Books announced that Chris Taylor, the deputy editor at Mashable, has agreed to write "How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The business and culture of a $4 billion franchise -- and where it's going next," an in-depth look at the culture and economics of the "Star Wars" ecosystem, from its earliest days to its future as part of Disney. It's expected to be published sometime in 2014, just when the whole world will be getting worked into a frenzy over the 2015 release of "Star Wars Episode VII."
Earlier this week, Taylor, whose "Star Wars" reporting goes back to 1997, sat down with CNET for a 45 Minutes on IM interview about his project. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation.



Q: The title of the book is "How Star Wars Conquered the Universe." What does that mean to you?
Chris Taylor: Like many things "Star Wars," it works on two levels -- one for casual fans, one for the uber-geeks. For the first group, it's a poetic way to answer the question, How did George Lucas do it? How did this movie take over our childhoods, create a franchise that sold for $4 billion, spawn the summer movie blockbuster and modern special effects, and transform merchandising? Or, the slight variation for parents: How come my kids know every "Star Wars" character's name without even seeing the movies? The uber-geeks will notice the reference to "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe" -- a 1930s serial Lucas was consciously basing his science fantasy on.
A big part of your narrative riffs on a catchphrase from the 2012 presidential election, right?
Taylor: "Lucas didn't build that?" Well, obviously Lucas was the originator, and sweated blood over the original movie -- to the point where he said he'd never direct again. He retained unprecedented control over how his creations were marketed. But, a lot of people think he did it alone and that it sprung from his head fully formed. It didn't happen like that. There was a lot of early input on key decisions, such as how to include the concept of "the Force of Others," from his producer Gary Kurtz. And the first movie was a kind of perfect storm, where he was able to use the input and creativity of a whole generation of model makers who'd been ignored by Hollywood, a bunch of talented unknown actors who were able to tweak their lines, John Dykstra's camera, John Williams' music, Alan Ladd, his champion at the studio, and even Steven Spielberg, who introduced him to a lot of people. The list goes on and on.
Does the metaphor extend to the ecosystem as a whole?
Taylor: Absolutely. In 1978, you get the Expanded Universe, which starts with Alan Dean Foster's book "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" and is the first sign that other writers can take the bare bones of this myth, and create new tales. Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan write the second film, and the ecosystem really takes off with Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy in 1991. After that, and picking up steam in the 2000s, there's this tremendous groundswell of writers creating content for what appears to be a bottomless pit of fandom. I like to think of Walt Disney and the hordes of animators who learned to draw like him, and outdid him quickly.
What's the book's main takeaway?
Taylor: Ultimately, it's about the astonishing power of creativity -- how if you think you have something, and hammer away at it, you can create an entire galaxy of characters and make billions, something that people will flock to and help you flesh out. I'd also want readers to think about the question of whether this can happen again in a culture as diverse as ours.
What was it about "Star Wars" that made this all possible?
Taylor: Maybe this was a perfect storm that could only have happened in 1977, when everyone was still capable of watching the same thing to the point where it is universally known. Also, in 1977 there was nothing like it, nothing that escapist and optimistic. Sci-Fi cinema was all post-apocalyptic melodrama with far cheesier acting and relatively poor effects. The subtext was always "we're doomed," but couldn't even sell that convincingly. Look at "Logan's Run," which was "we're all doomed," but we're going to be wearing silver jumpsuits.
Then all of a sudden there's this epic fairy tale that says, with the first words, this has nothing to do with us or our future. It's complete escapism, so relax. So it had carte blanche to be optimistic and naive, a huge relief in the post-Vietnam era.
Plus, "Star Wars" looked more realistic than anything, especially because of the whole "used future" concept. The spaceships were dirty, the bar at Mos Eisley looked like a real dive bar in the desert with aliens. You could totally picture yourself there. And then with "Empire Strikes Back" being even better than "Star Wars," especially with its dramatic reveal, we all knew this really was something special that would last. We had permission to get invested, because it seemed like this was just getting better and better.
There have been a million "Star Wars" books, but you had several big publishers interested in your project. Why is that? What unfilled niche does the book fill?
Taylor: Strangely, it seems there has never been a business/culture book on "Star Wars." There have been biographies of Lucas; there have been dozens of "making of" books, many more sumptuously illustrated encyclopedias, and hundreds of novels. But no one has taken a book-length view of the whole franchise from the outside and asked: How did this succeed? Where did it make its money? What was the cultural impact? What went wrong with the prequels, and how come they still minted money if they were so bad?
Do you think "Star Wars" will succeed under Disney?
Taylor: Like any other fan, I hope it will. And there's good reason to think so. Disney has proven itself to be a good steward of other people's brands. It bought Pixar; it bought Marvel; it bought the Muppets. The first Marvel-Disney movie ("The Avengers") was arguably the best Marvel movie of all. Ditto with "The Muppets."
Will there be a full-scale "Star Wars" land theme park?
Taylor: The success of Star Tours (both the old version and the new one) would certainly suggest that's possible. If there can be an entire Harry Potter theme park, there can be an entire "Star Wars" one. I can't wait to wander around the Death Star.
What can Disney learn from your book as they take over the "Star Wars" franchise?
Taylor: That story counts, first and foremost. If they have a great story and not a single frame of CGI in Episode VII, I don't think they'd get any complaints. With Michael Arndt as the writer, I don't think they're going to have any trouble on the plot front.
How prominently do you think Disney's name will be on future "Star Wars" films? It might be weird to see the Magic Kingdom at the start of a "Star Wars" movie.
Taylor: It's going to be very, very weird to hear "When you wish upon a star" in place of the Fox fanfare in the new movies. But I think we'll get past that. We're big boys and girls.
How hard will it be for Lucas to let go?
Taylor: Lucas has said he'll be a "Yoda on the shoulder" of (new Lucasfilm boss) Kathleen Kennedy. It may come down to how much she can say "Thanks, George, but this is my show now." She strikes me as the kind of person who is fully able to do that, and I suspect that may be exactly why Lucas chose her.
Who is the reader of this book?
Taylor: Hopefully, just about anyone who has even the slightest interest in "Star Wars". But I like to think it'll appeal mostly to fans of Malcolm Gladwell and the Freakonomics series -- the kind of readers who like narratives that uncover the surprising truth about an industry.
You're going to spend the year immersed in "Star Wars" culture. How hard is that going to be?
Taylor: I'm sure a lot of people reading this are going to be quite jealous of that part, but it's like anything else -- once it becomes work, it's different. I'm trying to read (and reread) my way through every "Star Wars" novel written, for example, and every comic book. It's probably not going to happen, but I've set that goal for myself. And I won't be able to fully relax into each book without thinking: How does this relate to the larger picture? What does this say about the franchise?
You probably can't avoid thinking that about every single "Star Wars" thing that pops up on your radar, which must happen nearly constantly?
Taylor: Four or five times a day, I find something "Star Wars"-related on Twitter and think "that absolutely has to go in the book!"
So the book will be 25,000 pages long?
Taylor: That would be nice. But at some point in the process, I'll have to switch to editor mode.
Most importantly, how disappointed are you that the U.S. government won't be building a Death Star?
Taylor: I am so happy that they said no in the way they did, displaying a lot of love for the series and for science in the process. Now, if they also refuse to build a Millennium Falcon, I'll be really bummed.