Why You'll Fall in Love With the Xbox Kinect - Fox News

I just lost 100 calories playing a video game! 

Microsoft's brand-new, much-hyped Kinect for Xbox is finally out -- in all of its motion-controlled glory. Forget the Nintendo Wii. Kinect is sure to be the biggest family-fun hit of the holiday season.

When Microsoft unveiled Kinect two years ago, I wondered to myself: Could a system really abandon the joystick controller and rely on the movement of our bodies to play games? The answer is a resounding yes! 

I've been testing Kinect -- or should I say, kickboxing, dancing, and rafting Kinect -- for about a week now, and I'm more than impressed. Remember how cool it was when you first used Nintendo's Wii controllers? Multiply that impression by a factor of 10 and you come close to the experience of Kinect. 

Kinect isn't a new system. It's an add-on to the existing Microsoft Xbox gaming console, one which plugs into any of the systems. It uses four microphones and three video lenses to locate your body. The setup is fairly simple. Once it scans your body to identify your height and facial features, you're off and running ... or jumping.

Kinect uses microphones to recognize your voice, letting you speak commands and navigate menus. Microsoft is really proud of this feature; I am not impressed. It sounds like a great idea but it's too clunky. Even in a small room Kinect had difficulty recognizing commands such as "Xbox: Play Kinect Adventures" or "Xbox: Sign In." Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I ended up getting frustrated and often gave up, going back to using my arms in midair to navigate menu settings.

Nintendo hit a home run by including Wii Sports in the box with the Wii console. Microsoft took a page from Nintendo's playbook, including a copy of Kinect Adventures -- a series of five incredibly addictive games that are fun for the whole family.

Rally Ball is a lot like dodgeball, Reflex Ridge is an Indiana Jones-styled obstacle course, and Space Pop forces you to pop bubbles in midair. In 20,000 Leaks, you try to keep fish away from your undersea boat; in the amazing River Rush, multiple players control a white water raft through wild river rapids.

But my favorite game for Kinect is from MTV and Harmonix: Dance Central. It tracks your body's movement while you attempt to dance alongside professional dancers to some of today's hottest songs. Notice I said attempt to dance. The way I play this game can only loosely be interpreted as dancing -- let's just say I made sure the shades in my house were drawn before I started. 

If you want to lose weight, Microsoft Kinect has you covered too. Your Shape includes workouts created by Men's Health and Women's Health. I've been doing cardio kickboxing, yoga, and tai chi. While you're exercising you receive feedback from a personal trainer on the screen. And because Kinect is tracking all of your movements, it'll know whether or not you're doing the exercise correctly.

Beware, however, if you're thinking of getting one: Your existing layout may no longer work. You may need to mount your Kinect sensor bar on top of the television for best results. But for many people that's not an option, thanks to modern thin televisions that the sensor bar simply won't sit on. 

My television was too thin for the sensor bar, for example. I had to put it underneath the TV, and that's a problem because Kinect requires about 6 feet of space from the television to where you're standing in order to scan your body from head to toe. I live in a New York City apartment -- it's as small as you've heard such places are -- so the backs of my legs kept hitting my couch. 

I imagine this would be a problem for college kids in a dorm room, as well. My advice is to put your Kinect console in an area where you have plenty of space to move around.

But ignore those few annoyances. Kinect is a major advancement in gaming technology and one that's sure to be on millions of kids' Christmas lists this season. And adults' lists too! 

Clayton Morris is a Fox and Friends host and the tech godfather behind the Gadgets and Games show. Follow Clayton's adventures online on Twitter @ClaytonMorris and by reading his daily updates at his blog.

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Lifting of blogger's story triggers online furor - CNET

A magazine accused of publishing a blogger's story without permission has seen a dramatic rise in the number of its Facebook friends, although they're not all that friendly.

The tale of writer Monica Gaudio hit the Web on Wednesday after she reported that her story, "A Tale of Two Tarts," was apparently lifted and published by the print magazine Cooks Source with her byline, but without her knowledge or any compensation. After tracking down the editor at the magazine, Gaudio asked for an apology on Facebook and in the magazine, as well as a $130 donation to the Columbia School of Journalism.

Instead, she said she received a rather unexpected response from the editor, Judith Griggs, quoted in-part below:

"But honestly Monica, the Web is considered 'public domain' and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offense and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me... ALWAYS for free!"

After Gaudio went live on her blog page with details of the transaction, and other blogs picked it up, it didn't take long for the viral nature of the Internet to take hold. Cooks Source's Facebook page, which had only around 100 "friends" beforehand, took on a whole new popularity, though probably not in the way the magazine wanted.

(Credit: Facebook)

From among the more than 3,800 friends who have since "liked" Cook Source's Facebook page in order to vent their comments, many have been telling the magazine just what they think of it, while others have attacked Griggs both personally and professionally. Beyond the Facebook page, stories about the incident have hit top news sources and a host of blog posts.

Faced with the torrent of nasty comments, Griggs or at least someone with access to the magazine's Facebook page, offered a response that just seemed to anger people even further:

"Well, here I am with egg on my face! I did apologize to Monica via email, but apparently it wasn't enough for her. To all of you, thank you for your interest in Cooks Source and Again, to Monica, I am sorry--my bad! You did find a way to get your 'pound of flesh...' we used to have 110 'friends,' we now have 1,870...wow! ...Best to all, Judith"

The frenzy has apparently forced Cooks Source to set up a new Facebook page after claiming that its old one was hacked. The magazine is also cautioning that any posts on its new page considered libelous will be removed.

Beyond the harm to the magazine's reputation, what legal issues does the incident raise? Does Gaudio have a case if she decided to take legal action against Cooks Source?

"The author does have a copyright in her work. That's without question," New York copyright attorney Alex Chachkes told CNET. "The question then is whether the magazine has an argument that their copying is fair use. Fair use is actually a pretty complicated analysis."

But Chachkes took issue with Griggs' claim that anything on the Internet is considered public domain. "It's not correct to say that just because something is on the Internet, it's public domain," he said. "Time Magazine publishes things on the Internet. I don't think anyone's going to say that you can take a Time Magazine article and republish it with or without the byline and then sell it in your own magazine."

Still, Gaudio might face a tough time if she did want to pursue a legal case against the magazine, according to Chachkes. "You know the saying 'Don't make a federal case out of it.' She would have to make a federal case out of it. It would have to be an action of copyright infringement."

Ultimately though, the magazine's trashing on the Internet is likely to be far more damaging than any legal or civil action it might ever face. "You know, the Internet's a funny thing, Chachkes said. "You tell people 'Imagine you're speaking simultaneously to your friends and to your grandmother.' Everything's published to everybody."

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Keith Olbermann is partisan? Say it ain't so! - Washington Times

NATCHITOCHES, La. — Nov. 6, 2010 – Stop the presses: Keith Olbermann is politically biased. It seems that surprising news escaped the notice of his bosses at MSNBC for several years. They only perceived a problem this week, when they learned he’d given money to three Democratic political campaigns.

Olbermann’s suspension is silly and bizarre. News organizations obviously want to preserve the illusion of impartiality. Who’s going to believe a reporter’s story about candidate Jones when we know the reporter gave money to Jones’ opponent, Smith?

But then, who believes that what Olbermann does is news reporting and analysis? The cable news network schedules are full of shows that serve particular political ideologies. So is talk radio. I don’t watch Olbermann, Maddow, Hannity or Huckabee because I want an objective analysis of the day’s events. I watch them because I want their partisan savaging of the other side. Their partisanship is essential to what they do. If I want faux-objective, I’ll mosey on over to CNN to watch their gray men.

If Anderson Cooper is caught handing out political donations, CNN should fire him. If Olbermann hands out donations, it’s the least that he does for liberal Democrats. He can’t afford to buy real access with cash, and the coverage and microphone he provides to Democrats and the scorn he heaps on Republicans are worth more than his measly donations. Not much more – his audience is tiny compared to Bill O’Reilly’s – but it’s better than the $2,400 in each of his donations.

Rachel Maddow waxed sanctimonious last night about this, explaining that MSNBC’s rules show that there’s no real equivalence between that station and FOX. Nonsense. The bosses at Fox simply realize that if you’re going to hand a partisan talking-head a microphone, you may as well let him play politics. They certainly had no illusions about the impartiality of Palin and Huckabee when they hired them. It would be idiotic to punish them for political activity when you hired them for their political activity.

Likewise it seems idiotic to suspend Olbermann for doing with money what he does with his mouth. But perhaps it’s not. If I were a cynical conspiracy theorist, I’d wonder whether they suspended him to improve his numbers when he comes back. Perhaps they wanted to take up Maddow’s sanctimonious claim about their status as a real news channel. Perhaps they want to establish some centrist street-cred with the new Congress and a TV audience that seems less enamored of Obama’s change.

Perhaps after seeing the rise in Juan Williams’ profile after his firing from NPR, Olbermann asked for the suspension himself.  I doubt it will work - he isn’t really very funny, interesting or smart – but I look forward to his return to the airwaves. Maybe he can get a gig with NPR.

James Picht teaches economics at the Louisiana Scholars' College in Natchitoches, La. From the age of 6, he always knew what he wanted to be. Economist wasn't it. But after accidentally falling in to it, he found that he liked it. Now he also likes raising his two children, being a husband to Lisa and taking pictures of trees in the middle of the night.

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Apple iPhone Considered by Bank of America, Citigroup: Report - eWeek

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By: Nicholas Kolakowski
2010-11-06
Article Rating: / 6

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Apple?s iPhone is under consideration as a BlackBerry alternative by Bank of America and Citigroup, according to a Nov. 5 Bloomberg report. Unnamed sources suggested that both companies were testing the iPhone?s software security, and that Android was also under consideration as a corporate mobile platform.  

Both banking groups were reluctant to comment on any Apple iPhone or Android action, beyond a spokesperson for Bank of America telling Bloomberg: ?We continuously evaluate new and innovative technologies.? The four- to six-week testing at both companies reportedly involve 1,000 employees. 

Research In Motion?s BlackBerry, with its reputation for security, has long been the smartphone mainstay of many large enterprises.

Apple is making a more concerted push into the enterprise space. ?We?ve seen extraordinary growth from 60 percent to 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies,? Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said during the company?s Oct. 18 earnings call. He cited companies such as Procter & Gamble that had ?made iPhone available to their employees.? The iPad is also under heavy consideration by large enterprises? CIOs and IT departments.

To boost that enterprise push, Apple has reportedly struck a deal with Unisys to increase its corporate and government footprint. Under the terms of that agreement, Unisys will provide maintenance and support for Apple products in use by those enterprises.

?Most of those organizations are still heavily PC-based,? Gene Zapfel, a managing partner at Unisys, told Bloomberg in an interview published Oct. 25. ?Apple is going to crack the nut and clients are going to start buying a lot more.? Terms of the deal remain undisclosed; reports suggest, though, that Unisys will also begin constructing more Apple apps for government use.

With the rise of consumer-device use in the enterprise space, security and compatibility concerns among IT administrators has also sharply increased. ?Employees and employers both agree?a Device and App Revolution exists although perceptions regarding extent of that revolution differ,? reads a June report prepared by research firm IDC for Unisys. ?Younger employees (iWorkers) are not demanding change ? they are driving it [through] Consensus Usage (IT Shop and Corp liability issues be damned).?

That report also suggested that around 50 percent of workplace devices end up used in both personal and business contexts: ?Data is freely mingled.?

Which may not be the best situation for institutions such as Bank of America and Citigroup?hence the reported testing.

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Fear of volcanic ash cancels flights to Jakarta - The Associated Press

Fear of volcanic ash cancels flights to Jakarta(AP) – 5 hours ago

MOUNT MERAPI, Indonesia (AP) — International airlines fearful of volcanic ash canceled flights Saturday into Indonesia's capital, while the closure of airports nearest Mount Merapi has delayed the arrival of burn cream and ventilators for those whose skin and lungs were singed by searing gases. The series of eruptions, including the deadliest in decades, has killed 138 people.

In the area's only burn unit, one patient lies mummified in thick, white bandages from neck to toe, his face a patchwork of black and ashen splotches. He never blinks his milky gray eyes. The only sign of life is the shallow rising and falling of his chest.

He has little company: Of the 31 burn victims taken to Sardjito hospital, at the foot of the volcano, the burn unit has room for just nine. Of those, only eight get a ventilator.

With nearby airports closed because of poor visibility, hospital officials said lots of supplies — including burn cream, oxygen masks and saline solution for IVs — were stuck in Jakarta. Dr. Ishandono Dahlan said he needed at least four more ventilators to protect the delicate, inflamed lung tissue of patients from the ash hanging in the air. In the meantime, nursing students were pumping emergency respirators — normally only used in short ambulance trips — by hand.

Indonesia's most volatile mountain unleashed nearly two billion cubic feet (50 million cubic meters) of gas, rocks and ash Friday that raced down its slopes at highway speeds, mowing down a slope-side village and leaving a trail of charred corpses in its path. Photos taken by a disaster management team afterward showed bodies frozen in their last moments, covered in a thick charcoal-like ash. Several showed bodies welded together, as mothers and fathers clutched their children.

The number of people killed by Mount Merapi in the last two weeks climbed to 138, according to Sigit Priohutomo, a senior hospital official. The volcano continued to rumble and groan Saturday, at times spitting ash up to five miles (eight kilometers) in the air, dusting windshields, rooftops and leaves on trees hundreds of miles (kilometers) away.

Just days before President Barack Obama's visit to Indonesia, international carriers canceled flights to the capital, Jakarta, over concerns about the volcano, 280 miles (450 kilometers) away.

"The volcanic ash presence in the airways surrounding Jakarta could cause severe damage to our aircraft and engines which could impair the safety of our operations including passengers and crew," said Azharuddin Osman, director of operations for Malaysia Airlines.

Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, Lufthansa and Etihad Airways also temporarily suspended flights, taking the national disaster international. Flights to Frankfurt, Abu Dhabi, Tokyo and Hong Kong, as well as many regional destinations, were among those affected.

Domestic flights were running normally, except for those going to airports near the volcano that shut.

The eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokul volcano in April forced the closure of most European airports for a week and led to the cancellation of over 100,000 flights.

Tia Wanti, an information officer at the Jakarta airport, implied Saturday's move by airlines was premature, saying the dust wasn't causing problems either in the skies above the airport or on its runways. About 10 percent of the 1,200 flights Jakarta handles a day were canceled.

The Indonesian government, meanwhile, has expanded a "danger zone" to a ring 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the peak, bringing it to the edge of the ancient royal capital of Yogyakarta, which has been put on its highest alert.

The biggest threat is the Code River, which flows into the city of 400,000 from the 9,700-foot (3,000-meter) mountain and could act as a conduit for deadly volcanic mudflows that form in heavy rains.

Racing at speeds of 60 mph (100 kph), the molten lava, rocks and other debris, can destroy everything in their path. People living near the river's banks have been advised to stay away.

With the deaths of at least 94 people, Friday was Merapi's deadliest day in decades. More than 200 others were injured with burns, respiratory problems, broken bones and cuts, leaving the tiny hospital of Sardjito — the most sophisticated in the area — overwhelmed.

The hospital's tiny burn unit has been forced to turn away all but the most severe cases, officials said. Those with the worst smoke inhalation — which scorches and inflames lung tissue, making breathing difficult if not impossible — get top priority. Next, the severity and extent of burns is considered.

Sudarjo is one of the worst cases. He was burned over 60 percent of his body while trying to return to his house to rescue his 100-year-old mother, who was later saved by a relative. He had ferried his wife, Saminah, to safety and now she keeps watch over him, talking to him by his bed when she's allowed into the ward and keeping vigil in the hallway when she isn't.

"I will stay here (until he's discharged). Who else if not me?" said Saminah, whose face crinkles when she smiles, indicating her age, though she cannot remember when she was born.

The unit is supposed to be the most sterile in the hospital since burns are essentially open wounds and prone to infection. While a pass code restricts entry, Dahlan, a plastic surgeon, said it's a struggle to keep the unit hermetic.

The air conditioning frequently breaks, so someone opens a window. The entryway has double doors, but the interior set are often left open, meaning the whole unit is exposed whenever anyone enters. Visitors are asked to come in one at a time, and to don cotton gowns and masks, but the rules are easily broken and the gowns have begun to feel grimy.

Still, conditions on the unit are far better than in the rest of the hospital. Many wards are not sealed off at all, with only a swinging door to the outside. Families crowd the hallways, sleeping on mats, and a sprinkling of dust covers everything, from the stretchers to the doctors' white coats.

Conditions were also deteriorating at emergency shelters in the shadow of the volcano that were crammed with more than 200,000 people evacuated from the mountain.

With muddy floors, flies landing on the faces of sleeping refugees, many complained of poor sanitation, saying there were not enough toilets or clean drinking water.

Merapi's latest round of eruptions began Oct. 26, followed by more than a dozen other powerful blasts and thousands of tremors.

Indonesia, a vast archipelago of 235 million people, is prone to earthquakes and volcanoes because it sits along the Pacific "Ring of Fire," a horseshoe-shaped string of faults that lines the Pacific Ocean.

Associated Press writers Irwan Firdaus, Ali Kotarumalos and Niniek Karmini in Jakarta contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Black Ops Features You Might Not Know - Just Push Start

Here’s a bunch of new features in Call of Duty: Black Ops that many players will not have heard about. They range from things about equipment to perks and all make me personally look forward to Black Ops even more. So lets kick of this list of features!

Re-Use Equipment

Like in Modern Warfare 2 players will only get one claymore to use but in Black Ops players will have the ability to pick up their own claymores. This will work in the same way that players can pick up camera spikes, motion detectors and jammers. It is currently unknown whether players will also be able to pick up C4 but as it seems most of the equipment can be it would be a safe bet too.

Mistakes Were Made

Rather than just saying that a player has committed suicide Black Ops has the rather different approach and say Mistakes Were Made next to the player in the killfeed. Ways to get this range from the normal falling to running through a mine field on the multiplayer map Jungle.

Zooming Scopes

Black Ops hosts a scope which players can actually zoom in and it seemed that it was possible to zoom in 4 times, allowing for some rather long range sniper action. The name of the scope is currently unknown but the game is just around the corner so we will find out very soon.

Invisible Walls

Unfortunately these make their unwanted return in Call of Duty: Black Ops; while it isn’t yet proven how many will be inside the maps, at the edge of all the maps there are a number of entrances for the Attack Dogs. This means a big gap in a fence that looks possible to crawl through has an invisible wall stopping players. While I can see why they have added these I hope they haven’t plastered them all over the maps stopping players getting on the top of buildings when it seems possible.

Depth To Maps

On most if not all levels there is something going on around the map or even on the map in the case of launch. Like with launch where the rocket goes up other maps also include moving sections from a moving belt over a crusher to a train outside of the map. This is a feature which helps add depth to the maps which hasn’t really been seen as much in Call of Duty as other shooter titles.

How To Unlock Pro Perks

On Call of Duty: Black Ops regular perks will be brought using the Cod Point system but the Pro version of each will still be only available by completing challenges for that perk and that is also where it differs from Modern Warfare 2. Instead of just one challenge players will now have to complete three separate challenges to unlock the Pro version of a perk. For example to unlock Marathon Pro players will have to run 26 miles using marathon, get 10 first bloods kills and capture 15 flags in Capture The Flag mode. Clearly this is a way of making them slightly more specialised for the players that use them and could possibly make them slightly harder for players to get.

Well hopefully you are now even more clued up on Call of Duty Black Ops and it will make you even more pumped for the launch on November 9th.

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