garykoelling

Anthony Moore, known as Romanthony, has died at age 46.

Romanthony provided legendary vocals for Daft Punk's Discovery. The album opens with his voice, and closes with it. He helped shape the sound of house music in the early nineties and his influence is still heard in electronic music today.

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Marco Arment / Marco.org:
The One-Person Product  —  In 2006, I moved to New York and started working for David Karp doing web development for various media companies.  That fall, in a brief gap before starting a new client, David said that we were going to make a prototype of an idea he'd had for a while.

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
Flickr Gets A Huge Revamp With Hi-Res Image-Filled UI, New Android App, And 1TB Of Free Storage  —  The new Flickr is live.  —  Smack-dab in the middle of Yahoo-Tumblr aqcuisition day, Yahoo is holding a major press event here in NYC.  But announcements coming out of this event aren't related …

Markus Spiering / Flickr Blog:
A better, brighter Flickr  —  In the beginning, Flickr innovated the way people share and discover photos.  Today, we are shifting the photo-sharing landscape again.  We're releasing a Flickr that's more spectacular, much bigger, and one you can take anywhere.  —  Biggr.  A free terabyte of space

Marissa Mayer / Yahoo!:
Your World, in Full Resolution  —  Photos tell the stories — stories we're inspired to relive, share with our friends, or capture simply to express ourselves.  Collecting these moments is a part of our everyday.  Since 2005, Flickr has become synonymous with inspiring imagery.

Yahoo’s already had a busy Monday, what with that little $1.1 billion Tumblr acquisition, but the company had a few more announcements to make at a press conference Monday afternoon in New York. It’s revamping its photo-sharing service Flickr, which has largely been left to languish since Yahoo acquired it in 2005. “We want to make Flickr awesome again,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said.

Flickr is getting three big updates. All users will get 1 terabyte of photo storage for free. The site’s s interface is also being redesigned to focus on full-resolution photos — both in photo browsing and in search — rather than words and links. Users will be able to share the full-resolution photos by email, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr. And, in addition to the iOS app Flickr launched last December, Yahoo is launching an Android app.

Flickr Pro, which had allowed users to pay for more storage space, is going away. “There’s no such thing as Flickr Pro today because [with so many people taking photographs] there’s really no such thing as professional photographers anymore,” Mayer said (though she acknowledged that there are “different skill levels”). There are still a couple of paid options: Users can pay $49.99 a year for an ad-free interface, and can add a second terabyte of data for $499.99 per year. It’s unclear what will happen with existing Flickr Pro memberships that users have already paid for.

On an investor call on Monday morning, Mayer had noted that there are “obvious synergies between Flickr and Tumblr,” but that it’s too early to say what those opportunities will be.

The choice of location for the press conference — a hotel in Times Square — became clear as Mayer announced that Yahoo has taken out a lease for office space at 229 West 43rd Street — the old New York Times building — and will be moving all 500 of its New York-based employees there. Tumblr’s employees, however, will stay downtown at their Union Square office.

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg took the stage to say the move reflects “what a big player New York has become in the tech industry,” with Yahoo becoming “one of the largest tech presences in the city.” He noted that Tumblr is a “New York-grown company” and that NYC was the first city government to have its own Tumblr.

“Twenty years ago, if you looked out the window, there were plenty of yahoos in Times Square,” he said. “Now the Yahoos here will make an honest living … and help us grow and make our economy stronger.”

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Disney’s research arm has solved a problem that you probably didn’t even know robots have — their inability to accept objects from people in a natural way. The Disney Research team, working with funding from the International Center for Advanced Communication Technologies (interACT) at Carnegie Mellon and the University and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), believe that robots who can’t naturally accept “handoffs” of objects from people are creepy. In a paper presented this month, Disney and its partners detailed how they used several motion-sensitive cameras, a database of gestures and some fancy algorithms to solve this handoff problem.

From the press release announcing the findings:

“If a robot just sticks out its hand blindly, or uses motions that look more robotic than human, a person might feel uneasy working with that robot or might question whether it is up to the task,” Katsu Yamane, Disney Research, Pittsburgh senior research scientist explained. “We assume human-like motions are more user-friendly because they are familiar.”

Despite the robot pictured on the Disney page touting this research looking like the mechanical, blue-haired skeleton that haunted my childhood nightmares, its attempts to grab the purse from the person do seem reactive to the human’s gestures, as opposed to the robot just sticking his arm out there and the person having to accommodate it. And that sort of naturalism will be important as we bring more robots into our homes and workplaces.

For example, an MIT group used a dancer’s motions to build a robotic bartender in a quest for naturalism — even though that robot doesn’t interact with people.

Today, designers try to endear robots to us with quirky noises (like R2D2) and maybe light displays or LED faces — anything to help anthropomorphize them. But as robots become more human-looking they can also become more sinister — achieving that same uncanny valley that Disney and other content companies have struggled with in animation. Remember the dead-eyed stars of the Polar Express that you probably couldn’t empathize with? The jerky movements of a home health robot might engender similar feelings — or worse — they may scare people.

Building the natural gestures of the Disney robot took the creation of a hierarchical gesture database that the robot can access as it detects the person passing something to it. In the Disney paper research, the robot is not only able to reach for the handbag, but when the human attempts a fake pass to the robot, the blue-haired monstrosity robot is able to adapt. From the release:

To enable a robot to access a library of human-to-human passing motions with the speed necessary for robot-human interaction, the researchers developed a hierarchical data structure. Using principal component analysis, the researchers first developed a rough estimate of the distribution of various motion samples. They then grouped samples of similar poses and organized them into a binary tree structure. With a series of “either/or” decisions, the robot can rapidly search this database, so it can recognize when the person initiates a handing motion and then refine its response as the person follows through.

Even if you don’t have an opinion on how naturally robots should move, this research brings home the awesome amount of work it takes to build computers and robots that mimic the capabilities of a person. Much like computer visualization, the science of robotic interaction takes a problem the size of a mountain and has to chip it down into grains of sand using a toothpick to find solutions. It’s a testament to human curiosity that people are willing to try.

Also, I expect Disney might be lured by the idea of natural-looking robots roaming its theme parks. My only question is would they be dressed up as characters or working the cash register at the gift stores.

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59 marvelous photographs taken between 1903 and 1920 by Frédéric Boissonnas (1858-1946), a franco-Swiss photographer who loved Greece. This is him being hauled up to the Meteora monastery in a net. Boissonnas was also a mountaineer and was the first to scale Mt. Olympus successfully in 1913. During the first 30 years of the 20th century he became the most influential photographer in Greece, between the two World Wars. Traveling extensively, landscapes, everyday people and life in Greece were photographed in detail for the first time.

Captions in English for those who do not have Google page Translate:

1. Athens, Plaka, 1920
2. Parthenon, 1908
3. Sheep under the Acropolis, 1903
4. View of the Acropolis from the thiseio, 1920
5. Street, Athens Athena, 1920
6. Athens, Ermou 1920
7. Kifissia, 1920
8. Andritsena market, 1903
9. Andritsena, interior house, 1903
10. Men in the way of Andritsainas 1903
11. Crete, smooth, 1911
12. Crete, home interior, 1911
13. Crete, the brothers Mandaka village Laki 1911
14. Crete, interior house in village of Lakki, 1911
15. The picking of the olives in Crete Prevelis, 1911
16. Crete, courtyard house, 1919
17. Meteora, Magadha, 1908
18. Meteora, climb FRED BOISSONNAS with basket, 1908
19. Zemeno Corinth family priest 1903
20. Zemeno Corinth, Fred and Daniel clink glasses with the drivers of their animals, 1903
21. Family at Zemeno Corinth, 1903
22. Zemeno Corinth, the family of the priest 1913
23. Extreme, courtyards 1903
24. Dale Arcadia, 1903
25. Athos, the Great Lavra, 1929
26. Athos monastery of Vatopedi, 1929
27. Itinerary to Mount Athos, 1928-1930
28. Itinerary to Mount Athos, 1928-1930
29. Kerkyra on super, 1903
30. Gastoyri Corfu, the source of the Empress Elizabeth, 1903
31. Celebrations in Corfu Gastoyri, 1903
32. Olympus, the "Pantheon", 1914
33. Olympus camp fodder, 1914
34. KOKKINOPOULOU, minor, 1913
35. Shepherds at the top of Parnassus, 1903
36. Amorgos, women, 1911
37. Mill on Maroneia 1911
38. Ios, the grave of Homer 1918
39. Edessa, 1908
40. Musty Kastoria, inside the mansion, 1911
41. Macedonia, winnowing, 1911
42. Macedonia, sentry outpost in 1913
43. Men and dogs in the street Ioannina Preveza, 1913
44. Delvinaki Ioannina notables 1913
45. Kavalari Zagoria, lad, 1913
46. Metsovo, 1913
47. Metsovo, on tap, 1913
48. Baya (Gardens) Zagoria woman 1913
49. Konitsa Mesogefyra, 1913
50. Mesogefyra Konitsas, villagers 1913
51. Ioannina, the lake with the castle, 1913
52. The bridge of Arta, 1913
53. Parga, 1913
54. Paramithia, butchers, 1913
55. Paramithia 1913
56. Paramithia house Riga, 1913
57. Castri Preveza Priest in war-ravaged church, 1913
58. Filiates, country, 1913
59. Filiates, country, 1913

More photographs by Fred Boissonnas in the Corbis archive | in Wikimedia Commons | in Luminous Lint | on Corfu Benitses | VM designblog Global | on FaceBook.

A collection of his work to be viewed in real life can be found at the Photography Museum of Thessaloniki

Not a single car in sight.

AT&T on Monday said it plans to more broadly enable the use of Apple’s FaceTime for users over its cellular network in the next few weeks, and by year’s end plans to allow video chat apps use over its network by all customers. This latest position on FaceTime and similar apps represents total shift from its position almost a year ago.

AT&T’s statement to the Verge on Monday notes that “by mid-June, we’ll have enabled those apps over cellular for our unlimited plan customers who have LTE devices from [Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry].” Besides FaceTime, Samsung and BlackBerry’s pre-installed video chat apps will also be included.

And more will be coming for all of its customers before the end of the year: “Throughout the second half of this year, we plan to enable pre-loaded video chat apps over cellular for all our customers, regardless of data plan or device; that work is expected to be complete by year end.”

When Apple updated its mobile video chat app to work over cellular last summer, AT&T came under fire when it announced subsequently that only customers who subscribed to one of its Mobile Share plans could use it. Several open internet groups threatened to file complaints with the FCC, calling the carrier’s policy a violation of net neutrality. Several months later, AT&T opened the service to anyone with an LTE device.

Based on broadness of the statement, it sounds like video chat apps like Google’s new Hangouts app, available for both iOS and Android, will also be free to operate over AT&T’s network later on this year.

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Jackie Reses / Yahoo!:
Yahoo! Takes Over Times Square  —  I am so pleased to share that our New York City-based Yahoo! team will soon move into an incredible, four-story space just around the corner from Times Square.  It's thrilling for us - and really an important sign of the new direction of Yahoo! …

"In the past inequality in South Africa was largely defined along race lines. It has become increasingly defined by inequality within population groups as the gap between rich and poor within each group has increased substantially." Is this what's led the BBC to report a growing sense of insecurity among poor (chiefly Afrikaans-speaking) whites? Or are they just blatantly misreading the statistics?

The Australian Protectionist Party last year went so far as to call for the ree-stablishment of sanctions against the South African government for the "increasing disadvantage and persecution" of Afrikaans speakers and other white minorities, not only for the color of their skin but for their language - and the perceived persecution of Afrikaans culture and language has been the cause of past violence.

The Verge:
Live from Yahoo's Flickr press event  —  We're live from Yahoo's Flickr press event in New York City where it plans to make a big announcement.  Tune in at 5 PM Eastern for all the news as it happens.  It's been quite some time since Yahoo revamped Flickr, its popular photo service.

Often times, the best way to to get a sense of your data is to look at it. A bunch of of numbers or words might not mean anything sitting within a table, but they start to make a lot more sense when they’re turned into a chart. In fields like mass cytometry, though, where doctors might want to analyze dozens of biological markers for each of tends of thousands of cells in a tissue sample, creating an easy-to-understand chart is easier said than done.

That’s why a group of researchers from Columbia University and Stanford University developed an algorithm that can do just that, turning those cells into something that resembles your social graph. This lets researchers see how the various cells are related to each other so they know , for example, where to focus cancer treatment and what to track as that treatment progresses.

The idea of representing large or complex data as a graph is nothing new, but it has taken on more prominence thanks to the rise of social media and those ubiquitous social graphs that map out who’s connected to whom. As we highlighted recently, however, graph analysis is becoming more popular outside the realm of social networks, and is being applied to problems that are more complex than just figuring out simple relationships within a network. In cases such as medical research, especially, graphs can provide a very effective way of seeing how potentially hundreds of thousands of data points spanning perhaps hundreds of variables are similar to each other.

That’s exactly what the team at Columbia and Stanford has done with a new algorithm that they’ve demonstrated within the realm of mass cytometry. According to a press release announcing the research (which is available via paid download at Nature Biotechnology):

“The method, called viSNE (visual interactive Stochastic Neighbor Embedding), is based on a sophisticated algorithm that translates high-dimensional data (e.g., a dataset that includes many different simultaneous measurements from single cells) into visual representations similar to two-dimensional ‘scatter plots’ ….

“The viSNE software can analyze measurements of dozens of molecular markers. In the two-dimensional maps that result, the distance between points represents the degree of similarity between single cells. The maps can reveal clearly defined groups of cells with distinct behaviors (e.g., drug resistance) even if they are only a tiny fraction of the total population. This should enable the design of ways to physically isolate and study these cell subpopulations in the laboratory.”

I assume they say similar to scatter plots because the algorithm is analyzing data across more than two dimensions, although the resulting chart is essentially the same (i.e., data points with similar characteristics will form clusters).

The results of viSNE, showing cell densities in diagnosis and relapse samples.

Whether or not they’re technically similar, this research seems similar to what Ayasdi is doing with its new data-analysis software based on a technique called topological data analysis. In both cases, though, the algorithms aren’t necessarily concerned with how data points interact with one another (like in network graphs), but rather what similar characteristics the points share. Ayasdi’s software has been used in cancer research, too, including on datasets spanning hundreds of patients and tens of thousands of variables.

In theory — although not likely in practice considering the complexity of the datasets medical researchers are dealing with — these approaches are similar to clustering approaches that are also popular among data scientists working with web companies. In areas such as e-commerce or email management, for example, where there isn’t a strong social element, companies can broadly break customers into distinct groups based on their behavior or interests.

A sample cluster of MailChimp subscribers.

Of course, curing cancer is a slightly more compelling — and difficult — goal than targeted advertising. The algorithms have to be precise so as not to miss similarities hidden within the mass of data. In the case of viSNE, the researchers say they’ve been able to spot small groups of cells (like 20 out of tens of thousands) that might be able to survive chemotherapy and increase the likelihood of a recurring tumor.

But we probably shouldn’t bee too quick to discount the work that web companies do as somehow less valuable than that of cancers researchers, for example. The big data era arguably started with the web, and web companies have generated some of the most important data-analysis techniques and technologies around today (see, for example, Google’s Jeff Dean, with whom I’ll be speaking at our Structure conference next month). As medical researchers start generating more and more data via cytometry, genome sequencing and even electronic medical records, it will be critical for individuals in all fields to keep track of what data scientists in other fields are doing and figure out how that might apply to their own work.

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Jim Edwards / Business Insider:
Tumblr's Ad Sales Pitch Deck Says Brands Will Now Be ‘Front And Center’  —  Tumblr is wasting no time in ramping up the amount of advertising it serves now that its $1.1 billion acquisition by Yahoo has been announced.  —  Tumblr will launch a test of “in-stream” ads on its desktop users' dashboards …

With a concrete monetization strategy for Tumblr still in the works, digital marketers will likely have a wait ahead of them before they see more advertising opportunities on the platform.

How to ensure food and drink water safety during a flood or other natural disaster, courtesy of the FDA and the USDA.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is going before Congress on Tuesday to defend his company’s tax-paying practices. On Monday, the company published his planned testimony, including his recommendations for “a dramatic simplification of the corporate tax system.” Cook will argue that his general suggestions for an overhaul will benefit the economy by encouraging U.S.-based companies like his own to bring more of their foreign profits back to their accounts in the U.S.

Cook will call for a revenue-neutral reform of the corporate tax code that does away with all tax expenditures, lowers tax rates and establishes a “reasonable” tax on companies’ earnings from overseas. It’s not in the planned testimony, but in an interview last week, Cook made it clear that he does not believe that a tax rate of zero is a reasonable number. In his testimony before the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Investigations, he will say that Apple supports this simplification of the tax code despite the likelihood that it will mean Apple’s overall corporate taxes will go up. The current corporate tax system “applies industrial era concepts to a digital economy” and “undermines U.S. competitiveness,” Apple believes.

Before Cook gets into his specific suggestions for fixing how U.S. businesses are taxed on foreign earnings, he’s going to spend most of his time going over why he’s being called to testify in the first place: Apple’s accounting methods. Apple keeps at least $100 billion in foreign earnings outside of the IRS’s grasp because it doesn’t wish to pay the 35 percent tax it would incur by bringing that money home. Many other businesses follow similar practices.

According to the published testimony, Cook will going into detail about how the company accounts for profits earned in the U.S., how investment in its foreign assets is taxed, how it shares R&D costs with an Irish subsidiary and more. (It’ll probably be a snoozefest for everyone except those who get a thrill out of spreadsheets.) Most of it is Cook on the defensive, explaining how what Apple does is within legal limits. Cook plans to assure the committee it’s not cheating on its taxes with any special tricks and “does not have a bank account in the Cayman Islands.”

He will underscore his point about Apple being on the up and up by laying out how much the company pays in taxes. Last year it paid $6 billion in taxes to the U.S. and this year, Cook has said it will pay $7 billion.

Tuesday’s testimony will be Cook’s first appearance before Congress. The company’s tax practices came to light a year ago when the New York Times highlighted some of the methods Apple has used to keep its overall taxes at a minimum.

Update 2:43 p.m. PT: Later on Monday the Senate released the results of its own investigation into the Apple’s tax-paying practices. It found that Apple’s convoluted system of subsidiaries has allowed it to avoid paying $44 billion in U.S. taxes over the last four years. However, it also noted that Apple did not break any U.S. law in doing so, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. Expect many questions during Tuesday’s hearings about how the company uses its subsidiaries in Ireland to do this.

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If Marissa Mayer is on a mission to teach kids about her company, which was founded before some of them were even born, buying Tumblr isn’t a bad way to do it. But in all the discussion of Yahoo’s new deal, too many people are writing about Yahoo buying a blogging site, comparing Tumblr to WordPress, when in fact Tumblr is more of a photo site for the youngs.

While buying Tumblr isn’t necessarily a bad deal for the two companies, as my colleague Mathew Ingram wrote, there’s another photo site out there that might have been an even better deal: Pinterest.

In many ways, Pinterest is also building a mobile-friendly photo site just like Tumblr, but Pinterest is also in the midst of constructing the underpinnings for a potentially much more lucrative native revenue experience. Pinterest is oriented around commerce and consumers craving particular items. That’s good for business.

No, buying Pinterest wouldn’t help Yahoo discover its inner tween. It’s a well-known fact that Pinterest is populated mainly by adult women — not exactly the demographic Yahoo needs to attract. And no, considering Pinterest’s valuation as of its last funding round, such an acquisition probably wouldn’t have come cheap. Acquiring the company would require a much bigger departure from Yahoo’s current mass-market advertising into the world of e-commerce and affliate links. It could be a harder sell to the company’s investors, and a bigger transition for everyone.

But if Yahoo is looking to shell out the big bucks for a site with viral growth, visuals to compete with Facebook, and a devoted community of users, Pinterest might have been the better choice. According to a Pew report in December, out of all online adults (which is basically anyone with an internet connection), just six percent of those people visited Tumblr on a regular basis, compared with 13 percent on Instagram (which isn’t exactly for sale), and 15 percent on Pinterest — only Twitter comes in at 16 percent ahead of the others and behind behemoth Facebook at 67 percent.

Less than a year out of beta, Pinterest is a dominant force on the web; a place where women of all ages collect photos of things that inspire them or things that they want to remember or create. For many, it’s a digital wish-list. And because of that, Pinterest sends huge amounts of traffic to online retailers. To be the intermediary between the people and the stores is a good place to be — you’re a crucial link that drives the sales, without any of the hassle of shipping or orders or user acquisitions that come with e-commerce.

Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann at the company’s new offices in San Francisco.

Pinterest has no business model in place right now — the site is free to join and for brands to integrate with — but that’s just right now, and it likely won’t last. The company just announced yesterday that it is starting to connect photos of items back to the brands who sell them, and it’s not hard to image how this could play out.

Tumblr does have a business model right now based on ads, and it just started rolling them out on mobile users in April. But the company has been reportedly burning through cash and not yet making a lot of revenue, hoping to bring in $100 million this year. But people are usually pretty unhappy about a free product suddenly peppering them with ads — especially if those ads are dropped into a feed that users have created (just ask anyone how they feel about Facebook ads.) CEO David Karp said at our paidContent event just last month that he wants advertising on the site to be native and unobstrusive.

“We focused on higher up in the funnel, the type of advertising that creates intent,” Karp told us in April. “It gives room for the most creative advertisers to create their best work. I think we’ve started to prove it, and see really good examples of it.”

But that’s a hard nut to crack.

Suddenly, the possible Pinterest model of taking a cut on sales and traffic resulting from users creating digital shopping lists looks a lot less disruptive to the core experience, and potentially more lucrative, than trying to solve mobile display ads for the Tumblr feed. Making money off traffic and sales wouldn’t disrupt Pinterest’s core product, and would generally fit in with the company’s existing user experience, just as promoted tweets are fitting with Twitter’s on both desktop and mobile (a profitable venture so far estimated to bring Twitter $528 million in ad revenue this year.)

So no, buying Pinterest wouldn’t make Yahoo all that hip. But buying the site that has potential to become a strong force in modern, social retail? Seems like a good bet — especially since teens might leave you once Mom joins and you become mainstream.

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A judgmental survey of America's state birds, with suggestions for improvements.

Although last week’s Google I/O event overflowed with new feature debuts, I noted on Thursday that one key Google service was absent: Google Voice. Instead we heard about Google’s new Hangouts app, a unified messaging service for the web, Android and iOS devices.

Hangouts has taken the place of Google Talk, which is what I use daily to make phone calls via Google Voice. Or at least I used to.

At the moment, users who upgrade to Hangouts on the web lose the ability to make voice calls through the old Google Talk. Incoming Google Voice calls can still be accepted through the new Hangouts, however. It turns out that Google Voice actually is a big part of Hangouts, it’s just not ready yet. Nikhyl Singhal, a product manager for all of Google’s real-time communications services said this on his Google+ page on Monday:

“Hangouts is designed to be the future of Google Voice, and making/receiving phone calls is just the beginning. Future versions of Hangouts will integrate Google Voice more seamlessly.”

Singhal notes that from within Gmail, users can still place outbound Google Voice phone calls, so the functionality is still available; just not yet in the new Hangouts app or the Chrome extension for Hangouts.

On a related note, Hangouts still doesn’t use the open source WebRTC, or Web real-time communications, API that will allow for video, voice and file sharing without the need for plug-ins. Instead, the service is still built upon technology from Vidyo, which clarified the WebRTC situation in a blog post today. Google has confirmed the same to my colleague, Janko Roettgers.

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