Microsoft working on Kinect-enabled laptops

It remains to be seen when or if they'll turn into actual products, but The Daily reports that Microsoft is at least working on getting its Kinect technology shoved into laptops. While details are light, the iPad-based publication says that it's seen a pair of prototypes that "appear to be Asus netbooks running Windows 8," but which have had their webcams replaced with an array of sensors that run along the top of the screen (a set of LEDs are said to be at the bottom). The Daily also says that it's confirmed with a source at Microsoft that the devices are indeed official prototypes of a Kinect-enabled laptop, and it unsurprisingly suggests that Microsoft would likely license the technology to laptop manufacturers rather than build its own hardware.

Joystiq

The Daily

 Steam Gets a Mobile App for Droid and iOS

Valve's popular cloud-based PC gaming platform Steam will now be accessible from your iOS and Android-based mobile phone, according to a press release sent out today by Valve.
The app is currently available, though the service itself is in closed beta. From the press release:

With the Steam app, gamers around the world may chat with Steam friends, browse community groups and user profiles, view screenshots and user-generated content for their favorite games, read the latest gaming news, stay up to date on unbeatable Steam sales, and more.
"The Steam app comes from many direct requests from our customers," said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. "Seeing which of your friends are online and playing a game, sending quick messages, looking at screenshots for an upcoming game, or catching a sale - these are all features customers have requested. Mobile is changing way people interact, play games and consume media, and the Steam app is part of our commitment to meet customer demands and expand the service functionality of Steam to make it richer and more accessible for everyone."

To be considered for inclusion in the beta, users should log into their steam account from the app, which is available for free via the Apple App Store and the Android Market. Valve says that more and more users will be signed up for the beta as time passes.
Finally, we can blow tons of cash on Steam sales from the bus!

Steam Mobile App [Steam]

Anonymous: Facebook is next, on January 28

 "While it is true that Facebook has at least 60,000 servers, it is still possible to bring it down."
These are the words of the anonymous voice that purports to represent Anonymous in a video posted to YouTube today.
"An online war has begun between Anonymous, the people, and the government of the United States," the narrator begins. The reason: SOPA, PIPA and other perceived threats to Internet rights.
In order to bring down Facebook, the video asks for everyone who understands and supports Anonymous' position to participate in this online protest. This is a protest that began over the last week, says the narrator, with attacks on the CBS.com, Warner Brothers, and FBI sites.

The narrator suggests that anyone who supports the cause download a program in order to participate in a Facebook attack.
The attack, he says, needs to be coordinated for a specific time in order to bring down the servers. So the time chosen is 12 a.m., January 28.
"Do not fear," continues the narrator. "There is no way you can get caught." He adds: "They cannot take down that large of a group."
What is at stake, he says, is the fate of the Internet.





The YouTube account associated with this threat appears to have some Anonymous connection. There is more than one of the group's videos posted to it.
However, not so long ago, another YouTube video was posted, purporting to be in Anonymous' name, in which the promise was that Facebook would go down November 5. It didn't.
What isn't entirely clear from the video is why Facebook has been singled out. Is it the company's relatively tardy opposition to SOPA? The video seems to simply align Facebook with the government, without offering further explanation.
Between now and Saturday, there will be claims and counterclaims as to the possibilities of this operation.
I have contacted Facebook to seek the company's reaction and will update accordingly.
Can people truly live without status updates? Perhaps Saturday we will see.

Smartphone Prices Slashed in CES Aftermath

For those looking for a good deal on smartphones like the Nokia Lumia 710, now's a great time to buy. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired

The holidays are over, and the slew of smartphone debuts at the Consumer Electronics Show have come and gone. It’s now safe for retailers and carriers to start dropping prices on 2011 and early 2012 smartphone inventory, and that’s great news for those looking for a good deal.
Since CES has ended, a number of smartphones are now available at very affordable prices. You’d be safe, nay, smart to pick up one of these options if you’re looking to make the big switch from a feature phone to a smart device, or perhaps you recently bore witness to the death of your Droid in a wave of spilled beer.
If you’re itching to try a Windows Phone for the first time, you’re in luck. The Nokia Lumia 710 went on sale Jan. 11 for a budget-friendly $50, and is now available for only a penny from Costco, with the purchase of a T-Mobile data plan (which can be had for as cheap as $50 a month). The 3.7-inch, more spec-ed out Lumia 800 hasn’t had a U.S. launch date announced yet, and the new 4.3-inch Lumia 900 will land sometime “in the coming months,” representatives said.
Motorola dropped the price of its ultra-thin 16GB Droid Razr from $300 to $200, with contract from Verizon. The cheaper price tag dumps the 16GB microSD that previously came bundled with the phone, but if you still need that extra storage, you can pick up your own microSD for around $10.
Why the price cut on a phone that just launched in November? In Motorola’s case, it’s time to make room for the new kid in town, the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx, which will be available starting Jan. 26. It’s essentially the same phone, only the Maxx has way better battery life.
The Samsung Infuse 4G, which launched this summer with a brilliant 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus screen, is on sale at AT&T for a mere penny through Jan. 24. And Apple’s iPhone 3GS is always just 99 cents (with contract) on AT&T. At Verizon, the Droid Pro and Droid 3 are also on sale, priced at $0 and $100, respectively.
With the Sony Xperia S rumored to arrive Jan. 30, it wouldn’t be surprising if prices on 2011 Sony handset prices start dropping soon.
If you’re in the market for a new smartphone, and none of these models tickle your fancy, keep your eyes open: There will definitely be more smartphone steals over the next few weeks as 2012 smartphone models start landing on store shelves.

Protesting SOPA: How to Make Your Voice Heard

This week, “call your Congressperson” is not just a cliché. It’s one of the most important things you can do to make your voice heard.

As Ars readers know, Wikipedia, reddit, Craiglist, and others are blacking out their sites today in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), antipiracy bills that protestors believe would give far too much power to rightsholders at the expense of the Internet as a whole.

Members of Congress are already backpedaling on some of the provisions in SOPA and PIPA, and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said Tuesday that he expects to have more co-sponsors for his alternative (and much saner) OPEN Act than “than SOPA has in the House.”

SOPA opponents say it is critical to block the bill now, because if it is turned into law website owners will be at risk of having payments blocked, or forced into lengthy and expensive litigation even if they’re not trying to enable piracy or profit from it.

“Scribd could not have come into existence in a world governed by SOPA,” said Scribd co-founder Jared Friedman during a conference call yesterday. Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of reddit (which shares a parent company with Ars Technica), said much the same thing about Internet entrepreneurs. “I’d hate to be the Congressperson who has to go back to his or her district and say, ‘You know what, maybe this is not the industry for you. Maybe you can try your luck in Canada.’”

Video hosting site Veoh found out the hard way what litigation can do to an Internet business, even when the law is on your side. Veoh was “litigated to death” before being finally cleared in a lawsuit filed against the site by Universal Music Group. “The lawsuit dramatically impacted our company,” said founder Dmitry Shapiro. “It cost us millions of dollars to litigate. It took up a tremendous amount of executives’ time. More importantly, it dramatically demotivated our 120 employees who were constantly concerned about what this meant and what would happen to them and their families.”

Veoh’s defense, that it was eligible for safe harbor protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,was upheld on appeal. But it was too late—Shapiro laid everyone off and sold the company in a fire sale.

Friedman said he’s grateful to Shapiro, because Veoh’s “success” in defending itself helped Scribd fend off its own legal threats. But SOPA would weaken safe harbor protections and give copyright owners a “private right of action” to go after money and ad networks, making it even more difficult for future Veohs to gain traction.

You don’t have to be a digital pirate to oppose SOPA, Issa added. “We don’t want people taking brand-new movies and putting them online and prospering while the actual creator of the art is denied,” Issa said. But OPEN, by focusing on the money supply through the International Trade Commission, would target the vast majority of abuses that SOPA intends to prevent without resorting to censorship, he argued. “We think we can do 80 percent of the good with almost no trauma.”

“It is a great time to contact your members of Congress, make sure they know there is an alternative, and that there is a reason to slow down and get it right,” Issa added.

Contact your senator or representative

Sending a message to our elected leaders’ underlings has never been easier. Old-fashioned phone calls count for a lot; they take effort to make, and so they indicate opposition in a way that a mass form e-mail never will. The official Senate site lists the phone numbers and links to contact forms for all senators, while the House has a handy tool that lets you search for your representative by ZIP code and state.

If you’re having trouble thinking of something to say, various anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA organizations can help. Public Knowledge has a form for sending letters to senators describing why PIPA is “overbroad … ripe for abuse … [and] speeds fragmentation of the Internet.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation is providing asimilar service for contacting both senators and representatives, as is AmericanCensorship.org.

You can also sign several petitions. This one urges President Barack Obama to veto SOPA should it ever come to his desk and has more than 51,000 signatures; it led to the Obama administration criticizing portions of SOPA, saying that the administration “will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

Another petition backed by Craigslist and reddit is aimed at Congress and has 117,000 supporters. Want to go further and convince your fellow humans that SOPA is bad? If you’re already an expert on SOPA or PIPA, another site lets you volunteer to to explain it to newbies on the phone or in person.

Black out your website

Many of you have your own personal websites. Just because you’re not as big as Wikipedia and reddit doesn’t mean you can’t join the blackout brigade or “SOPA strike,” as some are calling it. On GitHub, one SOPA opponent is providing HTML that can be used to change a website’s homepage to a black screen which lights up when you move your cursor over the middle, revealing a message of protest:

Your own website could look like this today—if you download a bit of code from GitHub

If you have a WordPress site, you can choose from several plugins to make your point, including one thatlets you customize which dates the blackout message appears and whether users see it on only their first visit or on all visits. Widgets can also direct visitors to anti-SOPA or anti-PIPA petitions. For those who can’t or don’t want to go completely dark, there are “Stop PIPA” bars to put at the top of your site, while one “SEO-friendly” protest tool created by CloudFlare blacks out any word longer than five characters, making your site look like a redacted government document. Mucking with a site carries some danger of Google’s web-crawling bots not seeing it properly, but luckily a Google employee has posted a handy guideon what not to do.

Boycott SOPA supporters

If you’ve contacted your Congressperson, blacked out your website, and are still itching for more protest action, you can identify SOPA supporters and take the fight to them directly—or boycott their goods and services. One extension for Google Chrome, called No SOPA, warns you when you visit the website of a company that supports the legislation. “Boycott? Nasty letter time? You decide,” writes the maker of the extension.

There’s also quite an extensive list of SOPA supporters on the website of chief SOPA backer Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). (GoDaddy was removed from this list after it was the victim of a successful boycott of the company.)

The Internet speaks

“This is the first time we’ve seen an Internet-based action,” Ohanian said yesterday. “There were no leaders of this movement.” But people from numerous political persuasions lined up in agreement that “this was terrible legislation that looked a lot more like lobbyist dollars at work. If you don’t believe this is an election issue already, it is already happening.” In fact, several “real life” protests and rallies are happening today in the streets of San Francisco, New York City, Seattle and perhaps other cities. 

Just because SOPA and PIPA have plenty of opponents doesn’t mean they can’t pass. The bills still have sizable support from music and movie industry groups. Former US Senator Chris Dodd, now CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, fired off a press release yesterday calling the SOPA blackout “yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals.”

If you’re among those who disagree with Dodd, what are your plans now that SOPA blackout day is upon us? If you have any interesting protest ideas, feel free to share them in the comments