Microsoft's Elop: Nokia brand soon to vanish from smartphones

Microsoft's new head of devices, Stephen Elop, says he doesn't see the Nokia brand sticking around when it comes to his smartphones.

"Nokia as a brand will not be used for long going forward for smartphones," Elop said in a Q&A on its Conversations blog (recently rebranded to Microsoft from Nokia). "Work is underway to select the go-forward smartphone brand."

When pressed again, he said he wasn't yet ready to share details of the plan to create a new brand.

"It will not be Nokia Lumia 1020 with Windows Phone on the AT&T LTE network," he said. "Too many words! That somehow doesn't roll off the tongue."

On Friday, Elop proclaimed that "We're one Microsoft," after Microsoft closed its acquisition of Nokia's devices and services business. With the deal done, Elop officially returned to his old employer, now as the head of its devices business. The deal's closing marked the end of a significant chapter in Nokia's history, and the start of a new one under Microsoft. But Nokia will survive through its network infrastructure business, mapping services, and advanced technology group.

Elop also answered some of the harsher critical remarks about him, including the conspiracy theory that he was a"Trojan horse" sent by Microsoft to sink Nokia.

"I have only ever worked on behalf of and for the benefit of Nokia shareholders while at Nokia," Elop said.

Likewise, his "Burning Platform" memo galvanized workers and instilled a sense of urgency into the company, allowing it to move quickly to produce Windows Phone smartphones, he said.

A Year with Google Glass Will Turn You Into an Obnoxious Monster

What happens when you spend a year wearing Google Glass? People find you awkward and weird, and you learn to hate your phone.

Wired's Mat Honan spent the last year wearing Google's wearable technology at every available opportunity, and his biggest takeaway was that people find wearable technology very, very weird. "Again and again, I made people very uncomfortable. That made me very uncomfortable," says Honan.

Honan found Glass was inappropriate for all manner of social situations, like eating dinner, commuting, and helping his wife give birth to their second child. Even his coworkers at Wired, the geekiest magazine on the newsstand, made fun of him for wearing Glass.

Glass was also not welcome at his oldest child's school, "because sometimes it scares children," which is exactly the kind of press Google wants you to read.

That's why, for now, defeating the social and economic obstacles of wearing an ugly $1,500 computer is nearly impossible. "Glass is a class divide on your face," according to Honan. Despite the splashy launch, Google has had to fight the social backlash against wearable technology since Glass debuted earlier this year. Besides the undeniable aesthetic problems, sometimes people threaten to beat up Glass users.

But Honan's year with Glass did yield one significant benefit. Disconnecting from the Internet was a popular trend story in 2013, and now there's a backlash brewing against our addiction to phones. "Backlash against cell phones won’t arrive until we understand the real problem," Robert Lanham wrote for the Awl recently. "Cell phones have made us dull." Which is precisely what Glass did for Honan. Glass helped Honan realize "what a monster I have become," for spending too much time on his phone:

Glass kind of made me hate my phone — or any phone. It made me realize how much they have captured our attention. Phones separate us from our lives in all sorts of ways. Here we are together, looking at little screens, interacting (at best) with people who aren’t here. Looking at our hands instead of each other. Documenting instead of experiencing.

Glass sold me on the concept of getting in and getting out. Glass helped me appreciate what a monster I have become, tethered to the thing in my pocket. I’m too absent.

We are all guilty of this now — standing in a group at a bar where everyone has a drink in one hand, phone in the other, and there are routine breaks in the conversation for everyone to check Twitter. Friends checking out to send an email or a text message, or just to check Instagram, Snapchat, Tinder or anything else we can do on these little wonders of technology

Though Honan isn't entirely sure that Glass is the answer to this problem. "Can yet another device make me more present?" he asks. "Or is it just going to be another distraction? ... I have no idea." But the important thing is Honan acknowledged he was spending too much time on his phone instead of interacting with humans.

Is a reckoning against smartphones coming? Probably not. There are too many phones now, and they're too integrated into every part of our lives. But expect the "I abandoned my smartphone for a dumb phone and got my groove back in the process" to be the regressive tech trend story of 2014.

Tech Firm Fires CEO Convicted of Domestic Violence

The ousted CEO of a San Francisco online advertising company recently convicted of domestic violence says he was fired when he told board members he wouldn't resign.

Former RadiumOne CEO and Chairman Gurbaskh Chahal said in a blog posting Monday he declined RadiumOne board members' request to resign during a special meeting on Saturday.

The 31-year-old pleaded guilty earlier this month to charges of battery and domestic-violence battery, both misdemeanors, in the August 2013 beating of his girlfriend.

Chahal said Monday that he blames social media for becoming "the court of public opinion" in his case. He said he agreed to plead guilty as part of a plea deal at the guidance of the RadiumOne board.

A spokeswoman for RadiumOne did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

#Happy? #Sad? Twitter Selfies May Reveal Our Moods

To see how happy city dwellers are, it may help to look at the photos they post on Twitter, according to researchers who recently won one of Twitter's first #DataGrants.

By analyzing 1 million photos tweeted over a period of one year, researchers are planning to measure the "moods" of some American cities. The team, including researchers at the University of California, San Diego, and the City University of New York, will correlate the Twitter image data with other sources of happiness data, such as the Gallup Poll results.

The project is one of the six winners of the Twitter #DataGrants program, which gives researchers access to Twitter datasets. One of the project's highlights will be an analysis of selfies that people post on Twitter, to see whether, for instance, people who live in "happier" cities tend to post more selfies, and whether they smile more while taking self-portraits. [10 Technologies That Will Transform Your Life]

Amazon shares rise on strong earnings

Amazon reported strong quarterly growth Thursday after making several big announcements over the past few months, including the release of its own media streaming device.
The growth wasn't a surprise, but shares edged higher after hours on the news

The company earned $108 million, or 23 cents per share, meeting the expectations of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. That's compared to a profit of $82 million during the same quarter last year.
"We get our energy from inventing on behalf of customers, and 2014 is off to a kinetic start," said CEO Jeff Bezos in a prepared statement.
Related: HBO shows coming to Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) unveiled the Fire TV, its own media streaming device, earlier this month. At the cost of $99, it's a small black box that enables television sets to access Internet programming, including streaming shows from its Amazon Prime subscription service, and a giant library of video games.

What Apple hopes you didn't notice about iPad 2

Speaking for a little more than an hour, in a voice that has lost little of its calm intensity, Steve Jobs mesmerized the audience Wednesday at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and by extension the world.
His introduction of the iPad 2 did quadruple duty -- it enticed mainstream customers, wowed spec-hunting tech geeks, tweaked his competitors and pleased Wall Street. Future presidential candidates would do well to study it.
Essentially, Jobs was selling a dream that could set your rib cage thumping with desire.
"Technology alone is not enough," he said in one of the day's more lyrical asides. "Technology married with liberal arts, humanities, yields the result that makes our hearts sing."
Full disclosure: Yeah, I want to buy one, too.
Do you think you'll buy the new iPad? Tell us why.
But a dream-made reality comes with limitations and imperfections, especially in the gadget business. Like any good magician, Jobs used sleight of hand to distract from the things we're not supposed to see.
On the morning after, it's time to take leave of our hearts, return to our heads and name them.
Man on wire
Magicians who use wires in their act don't let you see them, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. In this case, the wire is the same old white cable that you'll have to use to sync your iPad to your PC or Mac from Day One.

Yes, apps such as Audiogalaxy or Air Server let you stream music and video to the iPad via Wi-Fi, but they don't remove the need to hook up to iTunes to back up or sync content for most apps.
In a device that's supposed to be about effortless connecting, and a world that is moving to cloud syncing, this is an increasingly clunky throwback.
Memory man
How much memory will the new iPad have? We don't know, because Jobs didn't tell us. Given that he ticked off all the other major specs of the device, it seems an odd omission. Could it be because its memory is exactly the same as the original iPad -- 256 megabytes?
That would look embarrassingly paltry next to iPad competitors such as the Motorola Xoom or the HP Touchpad, which both boast 1 gigabyte of RAM.
Gadget blog Gizmodo claims an Apple employee quoted 256 megabytes when demonstrating the product, only to have the claim walked back by a PR handler. We'll wait for better proof.
But there is another kind of memory that we know is exactly the same on iPad 2: storage space. The Apple tablet still maxes out at 64 gigabytes. Sure, the competition isn't beating that yet. But given the standard pace of technological improvement, one would expect a 128-gigabyte hard drive by now. Could tablet design have reached some kind of inherent size limit?
Behind the screen
Contrary to what the rumor mill had been expecting, there was no improvement in screen resolution -- meaning the iPad 2 is already lagging behind the iPhone 4, with its much-touted retina display. (An iPhone 5 is expected later this year.)
And while Jobs told us how many frames per second of video the new iPad's cameras would shoot, he didn't mention megapixels. This is not a spec he has been shy about announcing when it came to iPhone models.
Holding back?
In all the hoopla, it's easy to forget that many features announced for iPad 2 were expected -- and were technically possible -- in iPad 1. It was widely remarked at the time that Apple was deliberately holding back built-in cameras, for one, so that the iPad 2 could launch with a larger splash.
Barring some mass outbreak of leaks at the notoriously tight ship that is One Infinite Loop, we'll likely never know the truth. But we do know that one "new" feature touted Wednesday -- the ability to use the mute button to lock the orientation of the screen -- was originally available in iPad 1. The button only changed its purpose when iOS4 was introduced.
So what, if anything, is Apple deliberately holding back for iPad 3? A memory boost? Retina display? Cloud sync? Stereo speakers? (Yes, the iPad 2 is still mono.)
One thing we can be pretty sure of -- there will be another peerless presentation of achingly beautiful tablet technology this time next year.

Facebook launches friend-tracking feature

Facebook is introducing a mobile feature called Nearby Friends that taps into that steady stream of location information so friends can track each other in real time.
The idea is to make it easy for people to meet up in real life, so they can have conversations in person instead of comment threads, temporarily replacing Likes and LOLs with eye contact and actual laughter. A live meet-up is also an excellent opportunity to grab a selfie with your pal and upload it to the Facebook owned Instagram.
In a refreshing change, the new Nearby Friends feature is not turned on by default.

Friends will not be able to see where you are unless you decide live-tracking is something you want in your life and visit Facebook's settings to turn it on. Making a potentially invasive new feature opt-in suggests Facebook has perhaps learned from some of its past mistakes and privacy problems.
You can choose to share your general location with all your Facebook friends, close friends or a customized list of people you feel most comfortable with. Further minimizing the potential stalking factor, your location is only shared with other people who are also using the feature and who have chosen to share their location with you.
When turned on, Nearby Friends shows a list of approved Facebook friends who also use the feature and shows their approximate location. A push notification can tell you how many of your friends are nearby. Open the app to see a list of pals, the neighborhood or city where they are, how many miles away that is from your current location, and a time stamp of when they where there.
There is an option to share your exact location with specific friends, which can be handy for coordinating large groups at concerts or finding someone in a crowded area. Your friends will see a little image of your face on a map for a set period of time.
Nearby Friends will be available on Facebook's iOS and Android apps, but will only work for select locations at first.
Facebook, Instagram and many other apps already include features that let people "check-in" to locations, but those location features are different because you decide if and when to share each specific location. You might check into a Starbucks downtown, but never into your home or other spot you'd rather keep private. Nearby Friends is continuously gathering details about where you are in the background instead of waiting for a manual check-in.
This is not the first time an app has used location information to physically connect friends. Similar apps such as Highlight, which got a flurry of attention in 2012, mapped out the locations of nearby strangers. Facebook also purchased a startup in 2012 called Glancee that also connected strangers. That technology evolved into this new, more private feature.
If you turn on the Nearby Friends feature, Facebook starts collecting data on your exact location and keeps details on where you've been in the past, not just places where you've used its app to check in. It also collects location information even when the Facebook app is closed.
But you can turn off this location history in the Facebook app's settings. It's possible to delete individual locations from a history, or clear the whole thing and start from scratch.