Steve Jobs: The Agony and the Ecstasy
A new play about tight-ship-running Apple CEO Steve Jobs is set to be staged at California's Berkeley Theatre early next year, penned by one of America's leading playwrights.
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is to be staged in Berkeley in January 2011, with writer Mike Daisey having been praised by the New York Times in the past as being "the master storyteller" and "one of the finest solo performers of his generation."
Daisey will not be performing his monologue, however, with another performer still to be charged with that daunting role.
Real-life Willy Wonka
Berkeley Rep describes that play as Daisey diving "into the epic story of a real-life Willy Wonka whose personal obsessions profoundly affect our everyday lives—and follows the trail to China where millions toil in factories to create iPhones and iPods.
"With his wry eye and eccentric intellect, Daisey delivers [an] adventure story that cuts deep with hilarious social critique," adds the blurb on the theatre's website.
No word from Apple, as is to be expected, although we would love to be a fly on the wall when Mr Jobs is informed about the play, particularly the bit where he is described as a 'real life Willy Wonka'!
And Jobs is sure to be unimpressed at any further investigations – journalistic, artistic or otherwise – that serve to highlight the questionable practices of some Apple contractors and factories in China, following a recent slew of news stories about the issue of child labour in those same factories.
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Microsoft cracks down on Xbox Live homophobia
Microsoft has made a small but vitally important step forward in improving the overall tone of the online chat and gaming banter within its Xbox Live community
If you have ever played against strangers on Xbox Live then you have most likely been exposed to a whole array of homophobic insults, regularly blasted out by frustrated teens on the gaming service.
And while it is difficult for Microsoft – and its millions of gaming customers on Live – to effectively police the service to weed out this widespread homophobia, the fact that the company has now announced a change to its Code of Conduct for the service, whereby you can describe your sexual orientation as gay, straight, bi, lesbian or transgender - is a major step in the right direction towards trying to inform and educate the many ignorant gamers out there.
Improve the tone
"Under our previous policy, some of these expressions of self-identification were not allowed in Gamertags or profiles to prevent the use of these terms as insults or slurs," Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten wrote on the Xbox press blog.
"However we have since heard feedback from our customers that while the spirit of this approach was genuine, it inadvertently excluded a part of our Xbox LIVE community. This update also comes hand-in-hand with increased stringency and enforcement to prevent the misuse of these terms."
"Other terms regarding relationship orientation are not allowed. In addition you may not use these terms or any other terms regarding relationship orientation to insult, harass, or any other pejorative use against other users," the document adds.
"I truly believe that our diversity is what makes us strong: diversity in gaming and entertainment options, and diversity in the people that make up this amazing community. I look forward to seeing you on LIVE soon," Whitten said.
So the next time some 14-year old Texan kid abuses you with a torrent of homophobic nonsense, remember to take a note of his gamertag and let Microsoft know about the incident.
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In Depth: Is the internet making us stupid?
Since we came out of the caves, every new technology has been greeted with alarm and disdain.
When we invented fire, people moaned that we'd forget the art of making salads. When we invented the wheel, people moaned that we'd forget how to walk. And when we invented the internet, people moaned that we'd forget how to think.
The difference is, the internet moaners might be right. The 2008 report Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, commissioned by the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee, found clear evidence of the negative effects of internet use.
"Deep log studies show that, from undergraduates to professors, people exhibit a strong tendency towards shallow, horizontal, 'flicking' behaviour in digital libraries. Society is dumbing down."
If that's true, things are only going to get worse. The endless amusements of the internet are no longer limited to desktop PCs. Thanks to smartphones, we're online whenever we're out and about, too – and convergence means we'll soon be tweeting from our TVs. So what is browsing doing to our brains?
Pavlov's blogs
For all our fancy shoes and flat-screen iMacs, it turns out that we're not that different from Pavlov's dogs: we race from link to link because our brains have been conditioned to associate novelty with pleasure.
The more we do, the faster we think; the faster we think, the better we feel about ourselves and about the world around us.
In a series of experiments conducted at Harvard and Princeton universities, people were asked to think as quickly as possible by brainstorming ideas, speed-reading things on computer screens or watching video clips on fast-forward.
As Scientific American reports, "Results suggested that thinking fast made participants feel more elated, creative and, to a lesser degree, energetic and powerful. Activities that promote fast thinking, then, such as whipping through an easy crossword puzzle or brainstorming quickly about an idea, can boost energy and mood," says psychologist Emily Pronin, the study's lead author.
Pronin and her colleagues suggest that we may associate fast thinking with being in a good mood, and that "thinking quickly may unleash the brain's novelty-loving dopamine system, which is involved in sensations of pleasure and reward".
MMMM... DOPAMINE: Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that makes you feel good
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a chemical that's released whenever we do anything pleasurable such as enjoy food, have sex or take drugs. It's long been implicated in various forms of addiction and may explain why some people are so keen on risky behaviour such as extreme sports or high-stakes business decisions. It could be the reason why we're constantly distracted.
Dr Gary Small is a professor of psychiatry at the UCLA Semel Institute, directs the Memory and Aging Research Center and the UCLA Center on Aging and is the author of iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. As he explains, what many of us do on our PCs isn't multitasking. It's something rather different, which he calls Partial Continuous Attention.
GARY SMALL: Dr Gary Small, UCLA, says searching online is a form of brain exercise
"With Partial Continuous Attention or PCA you're scanning the environment, looking for new bits of information that might tweak your dopamine reward system and be more exciting [than what you're doing]," he says.
Dr Small and his colleagues at UCLA have found positive results from using technology, particularly with older people. As Dr Small puts it, "Searching online may be a simple form of brain exercise that might be employed to enhance cognition in older adults." But there's an important caveat.
"The problem is that it tends to create this staccato quality of thought, where you jump from idea to idea as you jump from site to site. You get a lot of breadth of information, but you sacrifice depth."
The British Library study focused purely on scholars – that is, people with an interest in the things they were researching – but even they had magpie minds. "The figures are instructive," the report says.
CIBER STUDY: The British Library's CIBER study found that short attention spans weren't just for kids
"Around 60 per cent of e-journal users view no more than three pages and a majority (up to 65 per cent) never return … It's clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense, indeed there are signs that new forms of reading are emerging as users 'power browse' horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense."
The British Library study revealed another concern: "The speed of young people's internet searching indicates that little time is spent in evaluating information, either for relevance, accuracy or authority. Researchers have similarly found young people give a consistent lack of attention to the issue of authority. In one study, many teenagers thought if a site was indexed by Yahoo it had to be authoritative."
Good tech, bad tech
So are we raising a generation of internet-addled kids with zero attention spans? Perhaps not. The study of 3,001 English and Scottish schoolchildren by the National Literacy Trust found that children who blog or post on social networks "have higher literacy levels and greater confidence in writing", with 61 per cent of bloggers and 56 per cent of social networkers claiming to be "good or very good at writing" compared to 47 per cent of nonblogging, non-networking children. "Pupils who write online are more likely to write short stories, letters, song lyrics or a diary," it reports.
ANOTHER STUDY: The National Literacy Trust found that children who write blogs and get involved in social networking tend to be more literate and more likely to write for fun
Technology isn't good or bad; it just is. When we use it wisely it improves our lives, and the very distractions that ruin our attention span also make us amazingly good at juggling massive amounts of information.
"That's why we love it and use it," Dr Small says, "because it really enhances our lives … for the most part it's not going to harm us as far as we know, but I do think there are these subtler effects to which some people are more sensitive.
Some people do have problems, some people are addicted, and some people find it interferes with their lives. The issue is: how do we maximise the benefits and avoid some of the potential risks?"
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Review: Foursquare
With the internet fragmenting and every community becoming alienated from its peers, specialist social networks have been springing up to act as a kind of glue and arbitrarily stick all our disparate groups of friends together.
Flickr has photos covered, Last.fm deals with music, SocialPicks gives stock tips, LinkedIn serves people who like wearing ties and Facebook reconnects you with people you don't really want to know... and then they all plug into each other.
The ostensible focus of free social network Foursquare is finding 'stuff to do'. So if you're at a loose end in, say, Greenwich village, you boot up the app on your mobile phone (it supports BlackBerry, Android, iPhone and Palm Pre) and it will find activities in that area based on what other people have done there.
More advanced versions of the app – in particular the iPhone edition – integrate with other elements of your phone, pinpointing your location using GPS or the phone network or importing contacts from your address book. If your phone doesn't support these features, you can update the application via SMS.
Pints win prizes
Like all social networks, Foursquare is about interacting with friends. It lets you do this in three ways. Firstly, you can invite people or add existing users to your network, as well as finding friends in your local area – something that's very useful in densely populated areas such as Manhattan or London.
Secondly, you can add recommendations and let your friends know where you are. Thirdly, you can see what activities other users have recommended (or avoided) in the area you're investigating.
There's a system of rewards that serves as an incentive for adding activities and venues. This is implemented in quite a slapdash fashion, a bit like the achievements in Steam or Xbox Live. Some of the badges reward regularity, such as checking into several venues in one night or the same venue for multiple nights (which might also make you that venue's 'mayor').
Others are awarded for a particular type of behaviour, like attending CES or checking in with friends. Some of the prizes are just plain bizarre, like the one awarded for checking into places tagged with 'douchebag'. As anyone who's used Xbox Live will know, achievements such as these provide their own motivation to some people.
Parallel to the achievements is a points system that rewards participation, especially initial or original activity. However, there's no real-life purpose to doing this.
Foursquare used to make donations to charity as well as issuing points, but it no longer does so.
Cheating the system
These reward functions and the slightly confusing nature of the network are derived from Foursquare's previous incarnation. The developers, Crowley and Rainart, previously worked on Dodgeball, the venue- and friend-locating social network that Google bought and turned into the so-so Google Latitude.
There's obviously a coherent technology behind all of these apps – the ability to track nearby friends – but the additional elements are all a bit primitive.
Uptake has been much higher in the US, however, where some restaurants are providing discounts to their most regular customer – the Foursquare 'mayor'. It's also easy to cheat the system, claiming you're at a venue when you're not, and there's always the danger of vendor capture, where a venue creates multiple fake accounts to manipulate review scores (something we've already experienced with the otherwise excellent TripAdvisor).
The technology is solid, and its Twitter and Facebook integration make it useful for people (your correspondent included) who for some reason believe that the rest of the world is vaguely interested in their current whereabouts and activities, or might want to join in.
However, Foursquare is currently a social network in search of a purpose. A larger userbase in the UK would certainly help it here, but it would also put it in danger from those seeking to corrupt the system – which it currently has no effective way of combating.
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Review: Google Buzz
Much like Google Wave, the first problem with Buzz is trying to neatly encapsulate just what it is.
It's a dash of Twitter, a bit of FriendFeed, a smidgen of Google Reader plus several other services – most notably Foursquare's location check-in system for mobile devices.
At its heart, though, the idea is for Gmail to be your social hub rather than just your mailbox, with friends' status updates, videos, photos and more, all presented in one handy list.
The service rolled out literally overnight, giving Buzz user numbers that other budding networks can only dream of. It seems like a good idea. And yet…
The problem with Buzz is that it's designed for a world where everyone spends all day in Gmail chatting to friends, not one where we all have different mail accounts, use multiple networks and already have social profiles on services such as Facebook.
It's not a tool that we want or need so much as one that Google wants us to need, letting it consolidate all that yummy data in a new walled garden under its own control.
It's already committed several privacy sins, including auto-following contacts and, by extension, creating public lists of everyone you communicate with on a regular basis. You can opt out of this, but it's enabled by default.
Join the network
Had Buzz been a separate service (still using Google Profiles as your central hub, but with Gmail/Google Reader as viewer applications), everything would have been fine. As a dedicated Gmail feature, it simply doesn't feel right at the moment.
It's a one-size-fits-all solution to the open question of how much we all want to publish and share online, and a worryingly arrogant one.
Microsoft has something similar in Live, which hasn't rocked the world either. No matter how cool Google finds the idea of Buzz, it's tough not to feel like it's mostly been forced on us because of the company's past failures to make any real headway in social networking – Dodgeball, Jaiku and Orkut spring to mind.
There is, of course, a chance that Google knows what's best for us, but for the time being we'd rather it just focused on quietly delivering the mail and finding us stuff.
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Guide: The five-minute guide to Google Squared
Traditional search engines direct you to web pages that may contain the information you want, rather than the actual information itself.
These Google tools are different because they look for the actual information you're searching for and present it to you in an organised format.
Google Squared is useful when you're researching a subject that has a lot of facts or figures associated with it. It creates a table with headings corresponding to the vital statistics associated with a given topic, and uses the web to fill in the data.
For example, if you make a Square by entering "top grossing movies", it's automatically filled with data such as release date, director and so on. You can add your own columns and Google will search the web to fill them.
If it isn't confident of the data found, a list of possible entries is displayed and you can click through to the sources and select the right one.
It's a great tool for product comparison, since it brings together information from lots of different sites.
Sometimes, Squared won't be able to find information to fill a heading you've devised and will give strange results, so experiment to get the best out of it.
1. A new Square
Head to Google Squared, enter a topic and click Square it. The buttons on the right enable you to save the Square to your Google account or share with others. You can also export to a Google Spreadsheet or CSV file.
2. Add columns
Click the Add Columns box to see a list of suggested column headings. You can type in your own headings and have Google attempt to retrieve the information. If this doesn't work, click "Start with an empty Square".
3. Possible values
Sometimes, Google Squared isn't confident of the data it finds, or it discovers more than one value. Click on a box to see the information it found and the websites it came from. You can then select the one you believe is correct.
4. Add to your Square
You can include data about more than one subject in a Square. This works best if the topics share similar properties, such as a Square about netbooks and lightweight notebooks. Type in the search bar and click "Add to Square".
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Review: Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3
You almost have to feel sorry for Corel. PaintShop Photo Pro X3 is a package with a name trying to do many things at once: desperately trying to keep the old PaintShop Pro brand alive, reinforce that it's about photo editing and still avoid treading on Adobe's giant feet.
Still, their fight is our gain. Both companies offer a great selection of tools in their photo-editing packages, and you can't go far wrong with either.
The main differences are the look and feel of the apps, and whichever new functions are taking part in this year's feature hopscotch.
This version of PaintShop Pro is a very worthy upgrade, adding much better support for organising photos and images, plus a number of snazzy new photo-editing tools.
Unfortunately, Corel has chosen to stick with the same horrible interface as last time: a truly hideous black-on-white mess of small icons and endless menus that lurches into standard Windows dialogs and generic, grey boxes. Compared to Adobe's offering, it's incredibly ugly.
Its other weakness is that, after the wizards run out of explanations of the basic stuff, there's no easy way to jump up and make proper use of the more advanced features. Unless you already know what, say, High Pass Sharpening does, you're not going to use it. (If you're wondering: it's a good way of sharpening digital photos, giving you better edges without boosting noise. It's a very useful tool to have on hand when editing.)
Once again, the headlining new additions are a case of once advanced graphics technology stepping down to consumer level.
The Smart Carver is the latest in a long line of Trotsky filters designed to help you get rid of unwanted objects or people in your snaps. Paint the unlucky exile red, mark any areas you want to keep pristine, and at the touch of a button, the software will try to pull the image over the gap.
It works well in outdoor environments with repeating background textures, but the distortion is very noticeable with indoor shots.
Still, it's a good tool for salvaging a photo that could have been, or savagely scrubbing a former boy/girlfriend from your collection of snaps.
Cut it and see
The second big new feature also handles cutting and excising, this time with an eye towards moving elements between images. Again, you draw around the item using a pen, without any particular precision, and the computer works out the twiddly bits.
As with the Smart Carver, it's fine as long as you don't expect miracles and don't mind a bit of zoomed-in tweaking to help the algorithms along.
Most of the other new features of note revolve around refining workflow rather than direct image editing. You can copy and paste adjustments between images in the Organiser, including RAW import settings, and there's file support for the latest cameras.
The cut-down editor tool also has a few more tricks up its sleeve to save you having to load the full program every time, including local tone mapping (fake HDR, which can be very effective but has no middle ground between 'subtle and appropriate' and 'someone stab me in the eyes'), fixing levels and dealing with colour balance. These are all very worthwhile additions, and a good time-saver.
One advantage that PaintShop Pro has over Photoshop is that you never feel like you're getting the cut-down version of a higher-end application.
Photoshop obviously has many more features to justify its high cost, but for digital photography purposes, absolutely everything you realistically need is here – along with a few spins on standard features, such as a saturation control that avoids turning your friends and family into orange-faced fiends, and a well-implemented HDR system for combining different light levels in your photographs.
It's a shame the actual interface isn't better, and that the learning curve is still in need of a quick sandpapering, but if you want to get the best out of your photographs, you need look no further.
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Latest Microsoft Courier details leaked
More details on the much-vaunted Microsoft Courier have arrived, with firm rumours that it is a Tegra 2 powered dual-screen device running Windows CE 6.
Engadget has got hold of the details from a 'trusted source' but with new pictures of the user interface that follow on from the Gizmodo video leaked last year, it's certainly credible.
Apparently the Courier 'digital journal' will be under an inch thick, weigh in at less than a kilo and is around 130 x 180mm.
Tegra 2
Interestingly, the device will be powered by Nvidia's Tegra 2 processor and will sport Windows CE 6 – which is the OS that the Windows Phone series 7 is based on.
The user interface uses a stylus, and handwriting recognition will be a key feature.
The video that surfaced showed off much of the envisioned functionality, but with a Q3-Q4 release date being touted the Courier could well be seen as a viable alternative to the Apple iPad.
Pricing and a more firm date are not included in the leaked information, but the presence of a camera and headphone jack suggest that this is very much aimed at the gap between netbooks and smartphones.
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