Sound-Triggered Smartphone Ads
December 10th, 2011The really terrifying aspect of this is not the technology itself, but that some group of troglodytes will actually install this on their phones on purpose.
Related: shewhomeasures.com:
How about genitalia couplers (like in the video above—yes, watch closely) that communicate with the phone via Bluetooth? You know, for those extra special notifications, like when you walk by the Nebuchadnezzar sized canisters of aerosol cHeEz at CostCo without realizing that you can buy two and get one free!
Bargains.
Bargains.
Via: AdWeek:
You can pack all kinds of marketing goodness into a smartphone app, but no app is worth the space unless consumers remember to actually, you know, open it. Trouble is, the likelihood that users will download your app and then promptly forget about it is all too high.
New York digital agency Densebrain hopes its new program, Sonic Notify, will remedy the problem. Using technology initially developed for an app that tracks buses, Sonic Notify uses bits of audio code to deliver messages, ads, and more to smartphones.
Jonathan Glanz, Densebrain’s founder and technical director, says the idea surfaced unexpectedly during a meeting with Procter & Gamble this year.
“[They] wanted to know how to differentiate themselves in aisle,” he said. “We said we wished we could just set people’s phones off when they’re standing in front of [a] product.
And all of a sudden, we thought, ‘We have something that can do that.’ ”
Repurposing the bus-tracking technology, Densebrain devised small beacons—designed to be hidden from view—that can be attached to shelves, and which emit inaudible, high-frequency sounds that trigger smartphone messages. The audio code can also be overlaid onto an existing audio track. As long as consumers have downloaded an app integrated with the technology, the smartphone will respond to the sound without user activation.
In-store, the system could alert shoppers to special promos. At home, it could provide interactive content cued to TV shows. It could even have uses for live concerts and sports events.
Sensitive to notification fatigue, the software does allow people to opt out of messages.
Glanz says conversations are under way with drugstore chains in key U.S. markets as well as some TV networks, major sporting events, and music festivals. In February, Sonic Notify will share the spotlight with runway models at the MADE Fashion Week event at Milk Studios in New York.
This past October at the CMJ music event in New York, music tech incubator Cantora Labs, as well as companies like Spotify and Turntable.fm, partnered with each other and with Sonic Notify to deliver content about the bands and on-site promotions, triggered by the music. Attendees were asked to download a Sonic Notify-powered app; of those who did, says Cantora Labs co-founder Jesse Israel, 85 percent engaged with it.
Cryptogon Readers Sign Up for Hosting with BlueHost
December 10th, 2011Thanks to the owners of psynaptec.com and thepeoplesbook.com for signing up for hosting with BlueHost. Cryptogon received $180 as a result.
Cryptogon Readers Send Support in December
December 10th, 2011Thank you.
Pookie $75
mercout.com NZ$100
November Earnings
December 10th, 2011Cryptogon earnings in November totaled $1501.06, which is a great result! Amazon commissions totaled $998. That component alone was just $2 short of the minimum earnings goal ($1000) for the month. The variety of things being ordered through Amazon is just incredible. Many people are obviously making very conscious efforts to keep Cryptogon on the air by clicking through to Amazon from here.
Thank you to everyone who sent funds directly and/or conducted business via Cryptogon’s affiliate relationships.
Learning High-Performance Tasks with No Conscious Effort
December 9th, 2011Via: Medical Express:
New research published today in the journal Science suggests it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort. It’s the kind of thing seen in Hollywood’s “Matrix” franchise.
Experiments conducted at Boston University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, recently demonstrated that through a person’s visual cortex, researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks.
Think of a person watching a computer screen and having his or her brain patterns modified to match those of a high-performing athlete or modified to recuperate from an accident or disease. Though preliminary, researchers say such possibilities may exist in the future.
…
“The most surprising thing in this study is that mere inductions of neural activation patterns corresponding to a specific visual feature led to visual performance improvement on the visual feature, without presenting the feature or subjects’ awareness of what was to be learned,” said Watanabe, who developed the idea for the research project along with Mitsuo Kawato, director of ATR lab and Yuka Sasaki, an assistant in neuroscience at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“We found that subjects were not aware of what was to be learned while behavioral data obtained before and after the neurofeedback training showed that subjects’ visual performance improved specifically for the target orientation, which was used in the neurofeedback training,” he said.
The finding brings up an inevitable question. Is hypnosis or a type of automated learning a potential outcome of the research?
“In theory, hypnosis or a type of automated learning is a potential outcome,” said Kawato. “However, in this study we confirmed the validity of our method only in visual perceptual learning. So we have to test if the method works in other types of learning in the future. At the same time, we have to be careful so that this method is not used in an unethical way.”
At present, the decoded neurofeedback method might be used for various types of learning, including memory, motor and rehabilitation.
Microsoft Can Remotely Kill Purchased Apps
December 9th, 2011Microsoft has had this capability for years, but it was related to pirated software and they would just kill certain functionality (see Office Genuine Advantage program).
What you’ll be reading below is Microsoft taking another page out of Apple’s locked-down-vending-machine playbook.
Via: PC Magazine:
Microsoft’s terms of service for its Windows Store allows the company to remotely “kill” or remove access to a user’s apps for security or legal reasons, it said.
As noted by Computerworld, Microsoft’s terms of service for the Windows store will technically allow the company to cut off access to apps, even if the user purchased them.
Microsoft unveiled an app store for Windows 8 apps, on Tuesday. The key ingredients of the Windows Store are easy app discovery from within and without the online marketplace, built-in app trials with quick upgrade paths, support for both x86 and ARM-based hardware, and a flexible business model, Microsoft’s Antoine Leblond said then.
Microsoft addresses the possibility that it might remove apps under the heading, “Can Microsoft remove apps or data from my device?”
“We may change or discontinue certain apps or content offered in the Windows Store at any time, for any reason,” the company says. “Sometimes, we do so to respond to legal or contractual requirements. In cases where your security is at risk, or where we’re required to do so for legal reasons, you may not be able to run apps or access content that you previously acquired or purchased a license for.
“In cases where we remove a paid app from your Windows 8 Beta device not at your direction, we may refund to you the amount you paid for the license,” Microsoft added. “Some apps may also stop working if you update or change your Windows 8 Beta device, or if you attempt to use those apps on a Windows 8 Beta device with different features or processor type. You are responsible for backing up the data that you store in apps that you acquire via the Windows Store, including content you upload using those apps. If the Windows Store, an app, or any content is changed or discontinued, your data could be deleted or you may not be able to retrieve data you have stored. We have no obligation to return data to you. If sign in information or other data is stored with an expiration date, we may also delete the data as of that date.”
Related: Microsoft’s Desperation to Catch Apple in the Crackpad Race to the Land of Dumb and Dumber
Inside Romania’s Secret CIA Prison
December 8th, 2011Via: AP:
In northern Bucharest, in a busy residential neighborhood minutes from the heart of the capital city, is a secret the Romanian government has long tried to protect.
For years, the CIA used a government building — codenamed “Bright Light” — as a makeshift prison for its most valuable detainees. There it held al-Qaida operatives Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and others in a basement prison before they were ultimately transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006, according to former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the location and inner workings of the prison.
Japan Expands Rice Ban
December 8th, 2011Via: Bloomberg:
Japan will extend a ban on rice shipments from a third city in Fukushima prefecture after local authorities found more tainted grain, deepening food-safety concerns nine months after a nuclear disaster.
The ban will likely cover the Shibukawa area of Nihonmatsu City, about 55 kilometers (34 miles) from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, as rice samples from the area contained 780 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium, said Shinji Uchida at the grain division of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. The maximum allowed by the government for human consumption is 500 becquerels.
The discovery came after authorities increased rice testing for cesium after tainted supplies were found in Fukushima City and Date City. Some of the contaminated grain was sold to local buyers after Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato said in October that rice produced in the prefecture was safe to eat.
Australian Journalist Wins Prestigious Award for Exposing Flu Vaccine Scandal
December 8th, 2011Via: The Refusers:
Natasha Bita, a journalist for The Australian has just won a Walkley Award (the Australian equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize) for an in-depth article series on the CSL Afluria flu vaccine, a shot that caused convulsions in one percent of Australian infants who received it.
To put this vaccine scandal in perspective, the CDC states that ‘seizures can occur after vaccination,’ 33% of infants who have a first seizure will have more seizures and 10% of infants who have one seizure can develop epilepsy. According to the Merck Manual (the largest-selling medical textbook), seizures are a symptom of encephalitis, which the Merck Manual defines as a vaccine adverse reaction. Vaccine-induced encephalitis can leave a spectrum of permanent brain damage in its wake – post-encephalitic syndrome (aka epilepsy and autism). In other words, kids that have convulsions from Afluria can have lifelong neurological disabilities.
Incredibly, the defective CSL flu vaccine Afluria is still on the market in the US: FDA-approved and CDC-recommended. The only concession US vaccine authorities have made to this Afluria scandal is to raise the recommended age for this vaccine, but even that feeble response is colored by a direction to give Afluria to young kids anyway if no other flu vaccine is available.
This vaccinate-at-any-cost mentality displays the utter depravity of US vaccine authorities. They really don’t care about vaccine adverse reactions or the victims of defective vaccines. When vaccine regulators are so transparently irresponsible, it is up to individuals and families to defend their own health by rejecting the gung-ho vaccine recommendations of the CDC, FDA and medical profession.
This award is a smack in the face to asleep-at-the-wheel US journalists, who are being instructed by the National Press Foundation (at the behest of Seth Mnookin, Gates’ GAVI vaccine alliance and minions of Paul Offit) to censor all negative reports on vaccine issues and stick to big pharma’s and the CDC’s party line.
Rod Blagojevich Sentenced To 14 Years In Prison
December 8th, 2011Heaps of scorn and a long prison sentence can be meted out to this Blagojevich scumbag, but U.S. Presidents who have used the military as an international terrorist organization (and other culpable regime members) go on book tours and are paid large fees to speak at events.
Via: CBS:
Ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison on Wednesday, after apologizing for making “terrible mistakes,” capping a nearly three-year saga for Illinois.
The sentence is the longest ever handed down to a convicted Illinois governor and one of the longest for any political corruption case in state history.
“His abuse of the office of governor is more damaging than the abuse of any other office in the United States except president,” U.S. District Judge James Zagel said in announcing Blagojevich’s sentence for 18 corruption charges, including his attempt to sell or trade an appointment to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama.
“When a state senator takes a bribe, that’s one person out of 59. … You are not to be compared with those who hold lesser positions in government. You, as a governor are seen to control all of them, though I concede in practice you don’t,” Zagel added. “When it is the governor who goes bad, the fabric of Illinois is torn and disfigured and not easily or quickly repaired.”
