Half of U.S. households own at least one Apple product

Apple has taken firm root in America. Just over half of all households in the country own at least one Apple product, a new survey says, showing just how far the reach of the company has come in the last decade.

At the turn of the 21st century, Apple was in rough shape. It had narrowly avoided bankruptcy, and Steve Jobs' return as CEO a few years earlier was turning the company around, but the market share of its products -- then almost exclusively Mac computers -- was dismal, at about 2% worldwide.

Then came the iPod, which begat the iPhone and the iPad. As Apple's gadgets gobbled up market share (and in some cases created new markets), its Macs experienced a rebound, too. Now, according to CNBC's All-American Economic Survey, 51% of U.S. households own at least one Apple product.

Few brands have such a deep reach among American consumers. Certainly, product categories such as refrigerators or evensmartphones have achieved even deeper penetration, but looking at single companies, it's a short list with probable names such as GE (light bulbs) or 3M (Scotch tape). Reducing to just technology companies would make it even shorter.

See also: Sorry, Google: Apple is America's Valentine This Year [study]

Of the households that own Apple products, they own an average of three, making the overall ownership rate of the American public 1.6 Apple products per household. About 25% plan to buy another Apple product in the next year.

Click here to continue reading: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/29/tech/gaming-gadgets/household-apple-products/index.html

'Harry Potter' series finally available as e-books

 Finally, fans of the world's most famous boy wizard can follow his fight against the evil Lord Voldemort on their e-readers.

The entire "Harry Potter" series is now available in digital form atPottermore, author J.K. Rowling's website for all things Potter, ending what was easily the biggest e-book holdout in the literary world.

The books come in a downloadable format that is compatible with all leading e-readers, tablets, personal computers and smartphones -- including Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook. Readers seeking the e-books on Amazon or Barnes & Noble's site will be directed to Pottermore to buy them.

"For years our customers have loved reading Harry Potter books in print, and have made them the best-selling print book series onAmazon.com," said Russ Grandinetti, Amazon's vice president of Kindle content. "We're excited that Harry Potter fans worldwide are now able to read J.K. Rowling's fantastic books on their Kindles and free Kindle reading apps."

"By offering the NOOK editions of this popular series, long-time fans and first-time readers can experience the magic of Harry Potter in a new, exciting way and read what they love, anywhere they like," offered Jim Hilt, Vice President of e-books for Barnes & Noble.All seven books in the series will be available in English, at prices ranging from $7.99 to $9.99, through an agreement with Pottermore.

Click here to continue reading: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/27/tech/mobile/kindle-nook-harry-potter/index.html

Why Netflix's Facebook app would be illegal

Several big-name brands have Facebook apps that instantly blast out users' activity -- the latest song they've listened to, or a story they just read. But in the U.S., there's one notable exception: Netflix.

The video streaming service is blocked from creating a Facebook app in America because of a 1980s law meant to protect consumers' privacy -- and lawmakers are tussling over how to update it.

It's called the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), and it highlights the issue of old legislation lagging new technology. Netflix (NFLX) is lobbying Congress to change what it called an "ambiguous" and "confusing" law in aSeptember blog post.

VPPA arose from strange circumstances surrounding the failed Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork. While Bork's nomination hearings were taking place in 1987, a freelance writer for the Washington City Paper talked a video store clerk into giving him Bork's rental history.

Facebook wants court to dismiss Ceglia lawsuit

The writer, Michael Dolan, later wrote that he was proving a point: "Bork said, Americans enjoy only those privacy protections conferred by legislation." Bork's rentals were unremarkable, but the City Paper published the list anyway -- much to the chagrin of lawmakers.

Click here to continue reading: http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/27/technology/netflix-facebook/index.htm

Super telescope will search for secrets of the universe

It's been billed as an astronomical equivalent of the Large Hadron Collider, offering new insights into the formation of the universe and so powerful that it might even detect alien life.

The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is an international effort to build the world's largest radio telescope, one which will probe the dark heart of space shedding new light on dark matter, black holes, stars and galaxies.

"It will have a deep impact on the way we perceive our place in the universe and how we understand its history and its future," says Michiel van Haarlem, interim director general of the SKA project.

"We know we are going to discover things that we haven't already. It's going to be very exciting," van Haarlem said.

Taking its name from the total size of its collecting area, the SKA telescope will consist of 3,000 dish antennas, each one around 15 meters wide. Construction is slated to begin in 2016.

Collectively the surface area of all the dishes will amount to one square kilometer -- hence the name -- all combining to detect radio waves that penetrate the Earth's atmosphere, emitted by stars, galaxies and quasars.

Two other types of radio receptors -- aperture antennas and array antennas -- will combine with the dishes to provide continuous frequency coverage from 70 MHz to 10 GHz.

 "It's not like an optical telescope where you see an image of the sky directly. What you do is measure signals from the antennas and process them," van Haarlem says.

Around half the antennas will sit in a "central core region" made up of three separate five-kilometer clusters.

The remainder will extend out in five carefully aligned "spiral arms" stretching out ever more sparsely over an area in excess of 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) or more.The configuration, say scientists, will create the most sensitive radio telescope ever built.

Click here to continue reading: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/26/tech/innovation/ska-telescope/index.html

New iPad has a smart-cover problem

Magnets: How do they work? Differently on the new iPad than on the iPad 2, it has emerged -- and that's bad news for anyone with an old or third-party smart cover.

A number of users who bought new iPads over the weekend (this reporter included) were dismayed to discover that the smart covers they'd bought for the iPad 2 didn't work on the new model.

Smart covers, which attach to the iPad's built-in magnets, are supposed to turn the tablet on automatically when you flip them open. But as dozens of iPad users in this Apple forum concurred, that was no longer the case with many smart covers on the new iPad.

That seemed odd, as the new iPad is physically no different from the iPad 2 -- on the surface, at least. But it turns out Apple has been messing with the polarity of its magnets under the hood.

Photographer Mark Booth uncovered this when he did some experiments with magnets, iPads and a couple of smart covers. You can see the results in a video on Booth's blog.

"The iPad 2′s sleep/wake sensor wasn't polarity specific," Booth explains. And that apparently led to an issue for iPad 2 users who flipped their smart covers around so that they sat flush with the back of the tablet -- an everyday act that could cause the iPad 2 to switch off unintentionally.

So it seems the new iPad's sleep/wake sensor does require a specific polarity. But in fixing one issue, Apple appears to have caused another for users who want to use their old smart covers with their new tablets. (We've asked Apple to comment, and will update you if we hear back.)  

Click here to continue reading:http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/20/tech/gaming-gadgets/ipad-smart-cover-problem/index.html

Lenovo plans to be first to make a Windows 8 tablet

 Windows 8 won't be ready for consumers until fall, but that's not stopping hardware makers from fighting to be first in line to build hardware for Microsoft's new operating system.

Lenovo is planning to be the "first to market" with a Windows 8 tablet, The Verge reports.

Citing a "source," the report says Lenovo is planning to be ready to ship the device in October and that it will have an Intel chip, so it clearly won't be a Windows-on-ARM device. Other than that, there aren't any details on exactly what the machine will be, although given those basic criteria (tablet, Intel, Windows 8), there's at least one suspect: the IdeaPad Yoga.

Lenovo showed off the Yoga at CES earlier this year, and it got a lot of attention due to its unusual form factor: a laptop with a keyboard that folds over completely to transform it into a tablet.

Mashable: How windows 8 tablets could challenge the ipod

Michael Dell had also said publicly that Dell would offer a tablet when Windows 8 launches, and Nokia recently confirmed months of speculation that it was working on a tablet as well. There have also been reports that HP and Asus are working on Windows 8 tablets as well.

A key differentiator among Windows 8 tablets will be whether they're based on a traditional PC chip or one that uses the ARM architecture.

Click here to continue reading: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/16/tech/mobile/lenovo-windows-8-tablet/index.html

Ex-Google employee says Google+ has ruined the company

Angry rants about the demise of corporate culture aren't reserved only for ex-Goldman Sachs employees. Microsoft-turned-Google engineer James Whittaker -- now once again a Microsoft employee -- fired off a scathing blast Tuesday on a Microsoft blog about why he left Google.

"My last three months working for Google was a whirlwind of desperation," wrote Whittaker, who headed an engineering team for social network Google+. "The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus."

Whittaker, who joined Google in 2009 and left last month, described a corporate culture clearly divided into two eras: "Before Google+," and "After." "After" is pretty terrible, in his view.

Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) once gave its engineers the time and resources to be creative. That experimental approach yielded several home-run hits like Chrome and Gmail. But Google fell behind in one key area: competing with Facebook.

Click here to continue reading: http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/14/technology/microsoft-google-rant/index.htm

Anonymous members speak out at surreal SXSW panel

 When it's revealed that a prominent member of a clandestine movement has been giving information to the FBI for months, you'd think it would intimidate others in the group into backing off.

And that may have been the case when it was discovered that "Sabu," real name Hector Xavier Monsegur, had been arrested in June and provided information that helped lead to the arrest of five other alleged members of the "hacktivist" collective, Anonymous.

For a few minutes, anyway.

"That night, after everyone found out, it was a bit chilling," said Gregg Housh, one of the few people associated with Anonymous who speaks publicly using his real identity.

But in the hours and days that followed, something very different happened.

"That switched. A lot of people we hadn't seen for months, or years, started showing up. An attack [on some sites by Anonymous] happened that night," he said. "It just angered them, not frightened them."

Housh was speaking at South by Southwest Interactive on Tuesday, the annual festival in Austin devoted to Web and digital culture. He appeared on a panel with the director of a documentary about Anonymous, and two people who spoke (one via Web chat) wearing the movement's trademark "Guy Fawkes mask."

The masks, patterned after the one worn by the shadowy anti-hero from the comic book and movie "V for Vendetta," gave an almost surreal air to the panel at a conference where black-framed glasses are a more common fashion accessory.

Click here to continue reading: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/13/tech/web/anonymous-sxsw/index.html

Futurist: We'll someday accept computers as human

Any author or filmmaker seeking ideas for a sci-fi yarn about the implications of artificial intelligence -- good or bad -- would be smart to talk to Ray Kurzweil.

Kurzweil, the acclaimed inventor and futurist, believes that humans and technology are blurring -- note the smartphone appendages in almost everyone's hand -- and will eventually merge.

"We are a human-machine civilization. Everybody has been enhanced with computer technology," he told a capacity crowd of more than 3,000 tech-savvy listeners Monday at the South by Southwest Interactive conference. "They're really part of who we are.

"If we can convince people that computers have complexity of thought and nuance ... we'll come to accept them as human."

A pioneer in the field of speech recognition, Kurzweil is perhaps bestknown for his bestseller, "The Singularity is Near," which predicts that in the future we will augment our bodies with technology, including robotics and artificial intelligence.

"We created these tools to extend our reach," he said -- something we've been doing as humans "ever since we first picked up a stick to reach a tree branch."

Asked by interviewer Lev Grossman whether artificial intelligence will lead to malevolent machines that will come to dominate humans, he said he was more concerned about what humans will do to themselves. "I don't see it as 'us vs. them.' I see it as 'us vs. us.' "

Click here to continue reading: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/12/tech/innovation/ray-kurzweil-sxsw/index.html

Instagram hits 27 million users, says Android app coming 'soon'

Austin, Texas (CNN) -- Instagram, the iPhone photo-sharing app that turns almost anyone into an artful photographer, is growing at an astonishing rate.

The app now has 27 million registered users -- up from 15 million in December, its co-founders announced Sunday. And a long-awaited version of Instagram for the Android platform is coming soon.

"We've been able to put together one of the most incredible Androidapps you will ever see," said CEO Kevin Systrom told audience members during a session at the South By Southwest Interactive conference, waving an Android phone with a prototype on it. "It's extremely fast."

Systrom said he's been using the Android phone since shattering his iPhone while climbing out of an Austin pedicab.

Systrom said the Android app is in private beta but will be released to the public "really soon." Instagram also is looking at WIndowsPhone 7 as another possible future platform, he said.

"It's a very exciting time for us. We're growing faster more quickly than anyone right now," he said.

Launched by Systrom and partner Mike Krieger less than two years ago, Instagram already has more users than location-based network Foursquare, despite only being available on Apple's iOS.

Click here to continue reading: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/11/tech/mobile/instagram-sxsw/index.html

Dropbox redesign brings photo viewer, better file management

 Dropbox has launched a major redesign, simplifying many file management tasks and bringing a new video and photo viewer.

The first thing you'll notice in the new Dropbox UI is the action bar which lets you sort files by name, date, size and type.

Click on a file, and the action bar will get new options -- for example, you can download, delete, rename, move or copy a file from there.

You can also perform these actions by right-clicking on a file, which makes Dropbox more similar to Microsoft's Windows Explorer than ever.

Dropbox now also has a new video and photo viewer, which lets you view these types of content on your entire screen. Photos and videos (this includes Photoshop and Illustrator files) now also have thumbnails, which makes them easier to preview.

Finally, new Dropbox supports drag-and-drop, simple multiple file selections, and keyboard shortcuts (hit "?" for a full list). Dropbox search now also instantly pulls results as you type.

According to Dropbox, this redesign is only the first step in a complete overhaul of the service, with more new stuff coming in the "next few months".

How do you like the new Dropbox? Share your opinions in the comments!

Click here to check it out: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/09/tech/web/dropbox-redesign-mashable/index.html

The new iPad: A video-game changer?

Since the iPad first appeared in 2010, video gaming has been one of the key features Apple has touted for the device, alongside video viewing, electronic reading and Web browsing.

But on Wednesday, as it unveiled the latest version of its iconictablet computer, Apple clearly set out to be a game changer in more ways than one.

"This new device actually has more memory and higher screen resolution than an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3," said Mike Capps, CEO of Epic Games. "So, these guys [Apple] are redefining mobile gaming again."

Dubbed a "graphics powerhouse" by Apple CEO Tim Cook, the new iPad's chief selling point is its high-resolution screen -- leaping from the iPad 2's 1024 by 768 pixels to a hefty 2047 by 1536 pixels

That was a feature Capps noted at Apple's media event as he displayed "Infinity Blade: Dungeons," the new version of his company's fantasy-adventure game that runs on Apple's mobile operating system.

"[Infinity Blade: Dungeons] looks so amazing on the Retina Display on new iPad," Capps would say later on Twitter. "I'm stupid psyched about future of mobile gaming."

 He's not the only one.The burgeoning popularity of mobile devices like tablets andsmartphones has given birth to so-called casual gaming. But while titles like "Angry Birds" and "Fruit Ninja" have been downloaded millions of times, self-styled "hardcore" PC and console gamers remained largely unimpressed.Mark Walton, host of the "Appetite for Distraction" podcast on Gamespot.com, said the new iPad, with its graphic capabilities and speedy A5X quad-core processor, could begin changing that."I think the line between the two is increasingly becoming blurred," he said.

Click here to continue reading: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/07/tech/gaming-gadgets/new-ipad-video-gaming/index.html