Newspapers Cling to Life Despite Online News Trend

Print media is limping along and TV news has gained some strength, even though the trend toward getting news online continues to grow, Pew Research reported this week.

It all boils down to economics, said Mark Jerkowitz, associate director of the Pew Research Center Journalism Project.
Advertising revenues for newspapers have fallen about 50 percent from 2006, forcing some smaller publications to close. Others have reduced their publication schedules.
Still, newspapers "are going to be around awhile ... because they're supplying most of the print revenue," Jerkowitz told TechNewsWorld.
The allure of print publications is fading only in North America and Western Europe, Mukul Krishna, digital media senior global director at Frost & Sullivan, told TechNewsWorld. "Print is still thriving across much of the world."
Digital news now dominates, with 82 percent of Americans getting news on a desktop or laptop, and 54 percent on a mobile device, based on survey results.

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Facebook May Soon Know If You're Lying; Researchers Develop Social Media Lie Detector

Researchers at a U.K. university are developing a lie detector that will be able to tell if information posted on social media is true or false. (Photo : Reuters)

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter will soon be able to accurately determine if users are spreading false information.
Researchers at the University of Sheffield are developing a lie detector system for social media that can determine if a post or comment is true, the BBC reported. The lie detector will also be able to tell if the online account was set up for the sole purpose of spreading rumors.

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The project was inspired from the way social media was used during the London riots in 2011.
"There was a suggestion after the 2011 riots that social networks should have been shut down, to prevent rioters using them to organize," lead researcher Kalina Bontcheva told the BBC.

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Joyent offers Canonical-customized Ubuntu as a cloud service

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for the IDG News Service

Joyent wants to bring Linux into its fold of advanced computing cloud services, and has started offering an enterprise-supported version of the Canonical Ubuntu distribution that has been modified to take advantage of Joyent’s infrastructure.
“The two companies actually complement each other, from an engineering perspective,” said Bryan Cantrill, Joyent senior vice president of engineering, speaking of Joyent and Canonical, which manages the Ubuntu distribution.
Joyent already offers stock editions of Ubuntu, as well as another Linux distribution, CentOS. Joyent support for these images, however, is limited. The new version of Ubuntu, however, will be fully supported by Canonical.
“If you have an Ubuntu related issue on the Joyent cloud, you can be assured that someone will support those images,” Cantrill said.
The idea behind the specially crafted distribution is to allow Joyent users to take advantage of the many tools and software programs available for Linux, as well as for Ubuntu users to fully utilize the Joyent infrastructure.
To date, Joyent has primarily offered an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) through its own SmartOS

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HTC smartwatches and music-based wearables to arrive at MWC 2014

HTC, after being rumoured to make the Nexus 10 device, is once again being rumoured to be working on wearable devices tipped to be introduced in the upcoming Mobile World Congress 2014 event in Barcelona, which starts from 24 February.
Bloomberg reports the Taiwanese smartphone-maker is getting ready to showcase three of its wearable devices at MWC 2014, of which two will be smartwatches and one will be a wristband focusing on playing music tracks.
Of the two rumoured HTC smartwatches, one is said to be a prototype based on the existing Qualcomm Toq smartwatch. The device is expected to come with Qualcomm's Mirasol display technology and Bluetooth connectivity, while the other one will be featuring Google Now voice command service and an AMOLED screen. The smartwatches are said to get released by Christmas this year.

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Microsoft Announces New Xbox One Media Remote

Microsoft is releasing a new Media Remote for its Xbox One video game console this March.The new remote will let you “control video playback for Blu-ray movies and streaming video on Xbox One.”Microsoft also notes that there are “dedicated Back and OneGuide buttons” the latter of which “provides one-touch, quick access to your favorite TV shows and movies through the Xbox program guide.”

In a very real sense, the remote is a tangible replacement for the bundled Kinect voice and motion sensor. People who aren’t comfortable navigating with a gamepad or via voice commands have an even more traditional tool at their disposal now.
Does this suggest that the Kinect should have perhaps not been bundled with the Xbox One? That a remote would be sufficient?

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