Google’s conversational search arrives with new Chrome

Google is enabling a more naturally spoken question-and-answer interface to its search service for people with a new version of Chrome, CNET reports. Google demonstrated conversational search at Google I/O a week ago, a style of search designed to be more like natural human speech than the technically constructed search queries that people often use today to retrieve information from a search engine…

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Schoolgirl tries science experiment, arrested for felony

Who among us hasn’t — just once in our lives — put a couple of things in a test tube, a bottle, or our mouths and wondered what might happen? Occasionally, this might have difficult consequences. But rarely does someone try to arrest us for it, CNET reports. 16-year-old Kiera Wilmot wasn’t so lucky. This student at Bartow High School in Florida allegedly thought she’d put a couple of household chemicals in an 8-ounce water bottle, just to see the reaction…

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Intel’s next CEO: Manufacturing chief Brian Krzanich

Intel has named Chief Operating Officer Brian Krzanich as its next CEO to succeed Paul Otellini as head of the chip giant in a couple weeks, CNET reports. In addition, Intel appointed Renee James to the role of president. She previously served as the executive vice president overseeing Intel’s software and services group. Krzanich joined the Santa Clara, Calif., company in 1982 and has worked in many different technical areas since that time. He now runs the company’s manufacturing operations and also oversees supply chain, human resources, and information technology operations following his appointment as chief operating officer in January of last year…

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Samsung reveals 7-inch Galaxy Tab 3

Samsung revealed the Galaxy Tab 3, a 7-inch tablet, a slim mobile device which may be able to directly compete with the smaller tablet ranges offered by rivals Apple, Amazon, and Google, CNET reports. The South Korean electronics maker’s latest tablet offering sports a 1024×600 pixel screen — although perhaps underwhelming at today’s standards — but is able to support full 1080p HD playback. The Galaxy Tab 3 is powered by a dual-core 1.2Ghz processor, and is available with either 8GB or 16GB of storage and 1GB of RAM…

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Google’s Earth Day doodle reflects planet’s complexity

Google is marking Earth Day 2013 on Monday with what might be its busiest yet more subtle animated doodles. In fact, its level of involvement has led Google to provide a checklist to make sure you don’t miss anything, CNET reports. Highlighting the Earth’s complexity on the 43rd Earth Day, the doodle offers a snapshot of the four seasons our fragile planet experiences, as well as some of its flora and fauna. “Today we are celebrating Earth Day with an interactive doodle that captures a slice of nature’s subtle wonders,” Doodler Leon Hong wrote. “We hope you enjoy discovering animals, controlling the weather, and observing the seasons. Use the sightseeing checklist below to make sure you do not miss anything!”

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Social media as breaking-news feed: Worse information, faster

If speed is the currency of the modern information era, misinformation is the increasingly high cost, CNET reports. Some argue that journalism is made better by multiple sources. And certainly, high profile mistakes (and occasionally laughable coverage) by the likes of CNN, and downright irresponsible journalism by the New York Post, might seem to suggest that’s true. It’s not. We have more information, but it’s a morass of truths, half-truths, and what we used to call libel. It’s fast, but it’s bad. And bad information is a cancer that just keeps growing. I’d argue the opposite of Ingram: that the hyperintense pressure of real-time reporting from Twitter, crowdsourcing from Reddit, and constant mockery from an online community that is empirically skewed toward negativity and criticism is actually hurting journalism. It’s making all the news worse…

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Construction of world’s largest optical telescope approved

If you love eye-popping images of space, here’s welcome news: the Hawaiian Board of Land and Natural Resources has backed building what’s to be the world’s largest, most powerful optical telescope above the clouds atop the volcano Mauna Kea, CNET reports. The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will have a primary mirror of 492 segments measuring some 100 feet across, giving it the power to image objects 13 billion light years away, near the beginning of the universe. It may also photograph planets outside our solar system with unprecedented detail…

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Apple could unveil ‘killer app’ this summer, says analyst

Apple may shake up the next version of iOS with the introduction of a mobile wallet, forecasts Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty, CNET reports. Dubbed a “killer app” by the analyst, the mobile wallet feature would surface as part of iOS 7, which Apple is expected to preview at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Huberty’s prediction echoes that of fellow Apple analyst Gene Munster, who also thinks a digital wallet is in Apple’s future. However, Munster believes the technology won’t surface on iOS devices for another year or two…

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Google declares end of YouTube in April Fool’s prank

The best April Fool’s pranks are absurd but also have a kernel of believability at their core just big enough to reel people in, CNET reports. While the notion that YouTube has been a 8-year-long contest and Google is finally choosing a winner and shutting the site down tonight is pretty hard to swallow on its face, Google did shock many people by announcing the shutdown of Google Reader recently. Perhaps Larry and Sergey are beginning to go all Howard Hughes on us?

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Google closes the book on Reader, announces July 1 sunset

The day long feared by fans of Google Reader has come: the service will shut down, the company said, CNET reports.

“We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites,” the company said. “While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.”

Google Reader lets users subscribe to and read feeds from all manner of publishers, in a format that resembles an e-mail in-box. Loved by information junkies, the nearly eight-year-old service was once among the most popular ways of tracking large numbers of news sites, blogs and other publishers. It was also an early experiment for Google in social networking, as the service’s sharing features inspired friendships and even marriages. Diehard fans of the service called themselves “sharebros,” as was detailed last year in a lengthy, definitive feature on Buzzfeed…Read More

IETF: AT&T’s net neutrality claim is ‘misleading’

The head of the internet’s leading standards body said Sept. 2 that it is “misleading” for AT&T to claim that its push to charge customers for high-priority service is technically justified, CNET reports. Internet Engineering Task Force chairman Russ Housley told CNET that AT&T’s arguments to federal regulators, which cited networking standards to justify “paid prioritization” of network traffic, were invalid. “AT&T in their letter [to the Federal Communications Commission] says the IETF envisioned this,” Housley said. “That’s not my view.” This particular debate began earlier this week, when AT&T sent the FCC a letter arguing that telecommunications providers need the ability to set different prices for different forms of internet service. Paid prioritization, AT&T said, was a form of network management that was “fully contemplated by the IETF” more than a decade ago. Everyone agrees that, in the late 1990s, the IETF revised its networking standards to allow network operators to assign up to 64 different traffic “classes,” meaning priority levels. That concept of “differentiated services” is referred to today as DiffServ, which allows high-priority communications like videoconferencing to be labeled with a higher priority than bulk file-transfer protocols that aren’t as sensitive to brief slowdowns. The disagreement arises from what happens if Video Site No. 1 and Video Site No. 2 both mark their streams as high priority. “If two sources of video are marking their stuff the same, then that’s where the ugliness of this debate begins,” Housley says. “The [IETF standard] doesn’t talk about that. … If they put the same tags, they’d expect the same service from the same provider.”

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Facebook pokes start-up Teachbook with lawsuit

Facebook is concerned that a start-up social network for teachers with the word “book” in its title is infringing on its own trademarks, CNET reports. The company on Aug. 25 filed a complaint in a California district court against Teachbook, a networking site geared toward teachers. Claiming that Teachbook is “riding on the coattails of the fame and enormous goodwill of the Facebook trademark,” the complaint asserts that the start-up, which is headquartered in a suburb of Chicago, shouldn’t be using the “-book” suffix. “If others could freely use ‘generic plus BOOK’ marks for online networking services targeted to that particular generic category of individuals, the suffix ‘book’ could become a generic term for ‘online community/networking services’ or ‘social networking services.’ That would dilute the distinctiveness of the Facebook marks, impairing their ability to function as unique and distinctive identifiers of Facebook’s goods and services,” the lawsuit claims. Teachbook, which has not yet commented on the matter, doesn’t appear to imitate Facebook’s design or feel, but Facebook’s whole argument is that it doesn’t want the “-book” suffix to become a social-networking term independent of the Facebook brand. The complaint brings up, among other things, that Teachbook markets itself as a social-networking option for teachers whose schools might have blocked or forbidden access to social networks such as Facebook…

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