Why the NFL and YouTube would make such great teammates

I'm a long-suffering Philadelphia Eagles fan. Not only am I apparently destined to be perennially underwhelmed by the team's on-field results, but as a resident of New York City, I'm forced to make my way down to the local sports bar where I'm subject to the conversational whims of inebriated Giants fans. Since I’m not a DirecTV subscriber and therefore don’t have access to the NFL Sunday Ticket offering, the local sports bar is my lot in life if I ever want to watch my team on television on most Sundays.

But there may be a glimmer of light in the distance: According to reporting from AllThingsD, Google has begun early negotiations with the National Football League about putting out-of-market NFL games on YouTube. This could prove to be a wonderful thing, for both Google and for NFL fans.

First, we must note that these are little more than conversations between two large corporate entities. Companies have conversations all the time, but that rarely means that anything will come of it. Heck, Yahoo was having conversations with Mark Zuckerberg about buying Facebook back in 2006. Still, Google teaming up with the NFL at this particular time would make sense for a variety of reasons.

First, Google has a lot of money—certainly enough to best DirecTV’s $1 billion-a-year deal with the NFL (and Google has been more than willing to engage in billion dollar deals as of late). For its part, the NFL may indeed be interested in teaming up with Google, but at the very least is willing to let DirecTV—whose contract ends at the end of this season—know that it has other pigskin suitors.

Google has been on the fringe of TV for years, but has never been quite able to make its way into the endzone of the American living room. This is something the NFL can help with. Hands-down, professional football is the most popular sport in the United States. And aside from the eyeballs and attention it brings, NFL games carry the cachet of being all-American, mainstream, apple pie. It was arguably the NFL that gave legitimacy to the upstart Fox network (then associated with low-brow fare like Married with Children) when it first won the rights to broadcast NFC games in 1994.

Mainstream cachet—and ubiquity—is something that Google desperately wants right now for its video-on-demand options. This is particularly true now as the Mountain View, Calif., tech giant may have finally discovered the key to America’s collective living room in the form of Chromecast. At only $35, Google’s little TV dongle will give every modern TV access to the Web via Google in a way that Google TV has never been able to accomplish over the past three years. Since its introduction last month, Chromecast has sold at a brisk pace—so much that Google has had problems keeping up with demand.

It is also important to note that Google was represented in its talks with the NFL not only by CEO Larry Page but by YouTube content boss Robert Kyncle as well. YouTube has been steadily building its brand recognition as an original content studio, rather than a mere conduit for adorable cat videos and other meme-ish oddities. In just the past year, YouTube has championed paid subscriptions for its popular channels, established original content events like Comedy Week and Geek Week, and re-vamped its mobile app to make it more Chromecast-friendly (and therefore, friendlier to living rooms as well).

 Whatever happens, Google appears to be making all the right moves to make YouTube a content network, not just a user-submitted video repository.

Easy polyscreen access to America's favorite game might be coming soon.
As consumers lurch over the tipping point of comfort with streaming content, there is increasing competition to become the go-to conduit for streaming-to-TV access with suitors in the form of Microsoft, Apple, Roku, and countless others.

The NFL could prove to be just the product that could tie America’s heart to one preferred medium—as the league did for Fox two decades ago. And as with Fox in the early 1990s, Google may be willing to take a financial loss with expensive NFL rights—at least, at first—as the real return on investments will be further down the line in the form of brand legitimacy.

This is all conjecture, of course, but a theoretical YouTube NFL channel would give fans more affordable access to the out-of-market game across multiple screens. (It's very unlikely the NFL would give up very lucrative in-market network TV deals for now.) Unlike with DirectTV, YouTube would be able to offer access to just the NFL channel. Currently, Direct TV requires users to buy a DirecTV home subscription when available. (The provider does offer online access to Sunday Ticket without a home connection for $300-a-season, but only when DirecTV is not available).

Google could certainly offer a better deal than this. In the process it might sell a lot of Chromecasts and—more importantly—get more eyeballs acquainted with YouTube on the TV.

For the 2013–14 season, Sunday Ticket remains a DirecTV exclusive. So for the next several Sundays, as I’m forced to interact with with drunks recalling all of the Giants’ past Super Bowl victories, I will have at least some hope that in the not-too-distant future, I may yet get access to the NFL in the comfort of my own living room.

Under Code, Apps Would Disclose Collection of Data

A variety of groups, including app developers and consumer advocates, have agreed to test a voluntary code of conduct that would require participating app developers to offer short-form notices about whether their apps collect certain personal details from users — including health and social networking data — or share user-specific data with entities like advertising networks or consumer data resellers.

The idea is to allow people to compare the data collection practices of, say, flashlight apps and choose one that does not ingest unrelated material like their photos or contact lists. The determination that the notices are ready for testing is the outcome of yearlong negotiations — convened by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a division of the United States Commerce Department — to increase mobile app transparency for consumers. Participants included app developers, digital marketing, civil liberties, consumer and privacy groups.

On Thursday, many participants in the process voted to support a version of the code drafted by a diverse coalition including the Application Developers Alliance, an industry association, and advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the World Privacy Forum.

Although major mobile app developers like Apple and Google, which develops mobile apps for its Android platform, have not indicated whether they intend to sign on to the code of conduct, groups involved in drafting it say it is a significant advance in mobile privacy for consumers — and an unusual agreement among industry and consumer advocates.

“It’s a victory for common sense,” said Tim Sparapani, vice president for law, policy and government relations at the Application Developers Alliance, a group representing more than 100 companies and 20,000 individual developers.

But other participants in the negotiations said the notices would do little to give individual consumers more insight into or control over the vast piles of information about them that online entities collect and analyze. The notices would display only a limited list of data collection categories, they say, and would not allow consumers to opt out of data-mining or even see the records companies had amassed about them.

“A very modest slice of privacy was put forward,” for the groups to tackle, said Susan Grant, the director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America, a research and advocacy organization representing about 300 consumer groups. “As time went on, that slice became more and more narrowed.”

She abstained from the vote Thursday on whether to support the code.

In the past, the app industry has been heavily criticized by some federal regulators and consumer advocates for collecting personal details from users without their knowledge or consent. A review last year by the Federal Trade Commission of 400 popular children’s apps available on Google and Apple platforms concluded that only 20 percent disclosed their data collection practices.

The code of conduct would require participating mobile app developers to show notices indicating whether their apps collected user-specific details in any of eight categories: biometrics, including fingerprints or facial recognition data; Web browsing history; logs of phone calls or texts made or received; contact list details like e-mail addresses or social network connections; financial information, like credit or banking data; health or medical data; precise location data; and stored text, video or photo files.

Signatories to the code would also have to list any of eight categories of entities with which their apps shared information; these include ad networks; mobile carriers; consumer data resellers; data analytics companies; government entities; operating systems; social networks; or other apps.

Companies that violated a promise to adhere to the code would be subject to enforcement action by the Federal Trade Commission. The code is the first step in a larger plan by the Obama administration to institute a wide-ranging consumer privacy bill of rights that would give consumers some rights to access, control and correct the personal details companies collected about them.

Last year, the White House issued a report proposing that Congress enact such a consumer privacy bill. The report said the bill would rely on codes of conduct, worked out in industry-advocacy group negotiations, to specify how different industries would adhere to those principles. The administration has yet to make public the proposed text for the legislation.

But some participants who helped develop the mobile app transparency notices said the modest gains that resulted for consumers indicated a need for stronger privacy legislation and regulation.

“If we want to move expeditiously through bigger issues, we are going to need some legislative action,” said Christopher Calabrese, legislative counsel for privacy issues at the Washington office of the A.C.L.U. 

What Would the Ideal Hospital Look Like in 2020?

Integrating screens into the architecture makes it easy to put vital information into contextually appropriate locations, rather than being confined to tiny monitors or lo-res printouts. Image: NXT Health While the concept is inherently futuristic this full-sized prototype shows that many of its elements are feasible today.

Photo: NXT Health In the NXT proposal, the patient's dinner table would flip over allowing them to control the lights, review their progress, call for help, and maybe pass the time playing a few games of Angry Birds. Image: NXT Health The hospital room of the future embeds sensors and displays into the furniture and walls reducing the need for manual record keeping, minimizing errors, and optimizing quality of care.

 Photo: NXT Health In addition to traditional lifesaving equipment, the hospital room of the future also addresses a patient's mental state by altering colors of light to improve moods. Photo: NXT Health The shower has two doors that can open wide enough to accomodate a patient in a wheelchair, but look like they belong in a trendy townhouse. Photo: NXT Health The vision of touchscreens surface mounted into the walls was beyond the scope of the prototype room, but the clever folding mechanism keeps them out of sight until needed. Photo: NXT Health Integrated sensors in the bathroom can collect and display vital biometric data that is difficult, or just gross, to capture conventionally. Image: NXT Health

Integrating screens into the architecture makes it easy to put vital information into contextually appropriate locations, rather than being confined to tiny monitors or lo-res printouts. Image: NXT Health

While the concept is inherently futuristic this full-sized prototype shows that many of its elements are feasible today. Photo: NXT Health
In the NXT proposal, the patient's dinner table would flip over allowing them to control the lights, review their progress, call for help, and maybe pass the time playing a few games of Angry Birds. Image: NXT Health
The hospital room of the future embeds sensors and displays into the furniture and walls reducing the need for manual record keeping, minimizing errors, and optimizing quality of care. Photo: NXT Health
In addition to traditional lifesaving equipment, the hospital room of the future also addresses a patient's mental state by altering colors of light to improve moods. Photo: NXT Health

The shower has two doors that can open wide enough to accomodate a patient in a wheelchair, but look like they belong in a trendy townhouse. Photo: NXT Health

The vision of touchscreens surface mounted into the walls was beyond the scope of the prototype room, but the clever folding mechanism keeps them out of sight until needed. Photo: NXT Health

Integrated sensors in the bathroom can collect and display vital biometric data that is difficult, or just gross, to capture conventionally. Image: NXT Health

There is tension between doctors and designers. Architects want to build dramatic structures while doctors need room to deal with traumatic scenarios. Creatives obsess over crafting clean lines, surgical teams operate in highly regulated clean rooms. Nurses shout “Code blue!” while designers ask “Does it have to be blue?” Despite these inherent differences, the non-profit design firm NXT Health has developed a proposal for the nicest hospital room you’ll hopefully never have to visit.

Their project, called Patient Room 2020 presents a vision that fuses the best of the American Medical Association and the Apple Store with a few CCs of Tron thrown in for good measure. The room is filled with curved white panels and brushed aluminum fixtures that make it feel like an iPhone — fitting since backlit displays and touch screens appear on almost every surface to give docs instant access to medical records and vital signs. “Technology has to become the connective tissue that holds together the continuum of care,” says David Ruthven, project co-lead and creative director. “Because there is infinite variability between physical environments.”

In the NXT proposal, the patient’s dinner table would flip over, allowing them to control the lights, review their progress, call for help, and maybe pass the time playing a few games of Angry Birds. Image: NXT Health
Facing increasing competition, hospitals have taken design cues from hotels.

  Faced with increasing competition over the last 20 years, hospitals have taken design cues from hotels and kitted out rooms with wood textures and pastel color schemes. These homey touches might put patients at ease, but make disinfection a challenge and create difficulties integrating new technology. “We asked ‘How should the room perform?’ and then established the aesthetics based on optimal performance.” says Ruthven and the result is modern while also referencing the sterile palette of hospitals from the 1950s and 60s. Critical health information is displayed where it will be most useful to doctors, not where the IT person set up a monitor. Patients don’t have to fumble with switches and knobs, when they touch surfaces lights turn on automatically.

The minimal aesthetics of the proposal belie thoughtful interactive details embedded below the surface. When caregivers enter a room LED lights make the sink glow red reminding them to wash their hands, when properly disinfected the sink turn green. A simple modification, but the failure of health care professionals to wash their hands contributes to over 100,000 deaths per year and $30 billion in costs every year.
Patient Room 2020 also brings gamification to the hospital with a leaderboard that tracks stats for caregivers to see who covers the most ground and helps the most patients in a given day. As if saving lives and upholding their Hippocratic oath wasn’t enough, notoriously competitive doctors will now be motivated by how they stack up against their peers.

New regulations penalize hospitals that have to readmit patients so the proposal also addresses care after discharge. Medical peripherals like blood pressure cuffs would be detached from the room and sent home with patients. Software tools embedded in the room would be translated into a friendly quantified self app that will allow patients to check in with a care manager remotely. The goal is to have patients and doctors using the same basic tech tools no matter where they are located to optimize the level of service that’s provided.

The hospital room of the future embeds sensors and displays into the furniture and walls reducing the need for manual record keeping, minimizing errors, and optimizing quality of care. Photo: NXT Health
2020 is right around the corner and Ruthven’s team is already thinking about 2030. He sees change coming on all fronts — he fears terrorism and climate change might increase and alter the patient population, a increased focus on prevention will create requirements for new spaces, and tech advances like Google Glass could fundamentally change the way doctors operate. Fortunately, they crafted the system so components could be switched out as new technology develops and novel use cases emerge.

The design is an impressive prescription for future development, but Ruthven knows getting risk averse and cash-strapped institutions to incorporate these design ideas will be a challenge. “We have thrown a disruptive deep pass with our work on the Patient Room 2020 project,” says Ruthven “But its too early to tell if anyone will catch it and take some of the ideas to the big house.” He hopes others will try and implement some of the ideas, even if a full overhaul is out of the question. “There is a treasure trove of details embedded in that effort that we didn’t have the resources or time to investigate,” he says. “I really think that it can have a halo effect and produce a lot of meaningful content, we just need the right partners in place to make it happen.” Paging Dr. Ive.

The Patient Room 2020 is on display at the DuPont Corian Design Studio.

Oliver Stone on NSA Leaker Edward Snowden: 'I Would Give Him Asylum'

KARLOVY VARY – It doesn’t give Edward Snowden options, but director Oliver Stone wants to grant the National Security Agency leaker asylum.

"If I were a country, I would give him asylum. I wish I could be a country," Stone told The Hollywood Reporter from the Karlovy Vary Film Festival where he is to receive a lifetime achievement award.

The filmmaker added that he can do no more to protect Snowden from prosecution by the United States than joining fellow Hollywood stars like John Cusack, Roseanne Barr and Danny Glover to sign a petition that urges President Rafael Correa to grant Snowden’s asylum request.

Having fled the U.S., Snowden remains holed up in the transit zone at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport as a raft of international asylum requests so far go unanswered.

Stone said he was especially disappointed by leaders in Europe, and in Brazil and India, after they rejected Snowden’s asylum bids outright.

"I'm disappointed by Europe’s reaction, considering they are among the targets for the eavesdropping,” he said.

STORY: Edward Snowden: Hollywood Joins Asylum Petition to Ecuador

The director recalled the 1950s and 1960s, when an earlier generation of leaders like Indian prime minister Jawahartal Nehru, Ghanian president Kwame Nkrumah and French president Charles De Gaulle were more “neutral” about U.S foreign policy., and did not hesitate to voice criticism.

"That kind of independence has been lost in Europe,” Stone complained.

He was especially critical of German chancellor Angela Merkel who, while reacting angrily to claims of U.S. spying in Europe, has followed U.S. foreign policy as her country increasingly controls a beleaguered European Union framework.

"I do feel it has not been good for Europe," Stone said of the EU.

“It has led to the creation of a German financial empire. Now it’s just one big government out of Germany,” he added.

Stone, no stranger to political critique, is also in Karlovy Vary to introduce screenings of two episodes of The Untold History of the United States.

The 10-hour documentary series on Showtime was co-written by Peter Kuznick.

Stone said The Untold History captures an unrevealed history of the U.S. during the 20th century.

"It's all about 70 years that we have forgotten. When you see it in one piece – 10 hours – you get it," he argued.

The Bohemian spa town festival will also screen a new director’s cut of Stone’s Alexander, which expands on the original 2004 version from Warner Bros. that was two hours and 45 minutes.

"It's thre hours, 20 minutes now. I'm very happy with this version. It has a different flow,” Stone said.

The Karlovy Vary Film Festival continues through July 6.

Bank rescue would hit investors

In the event of a future banking crisis, European finance ministers agreed there would be bank 'bail-ins' instead of 'bailouts' where investors would be forced to rescue struggling financial institutions.

The new framework requires bondholders, shareholders and large depositors with over 100,000 euros to be first to suffer losses when banks fail. Depositors with less than 100,000 euros will be protected. Taxpayer funds would be used only as a last resort.

Shielding small depositors from losses is a top priority in Europe, especially after the public outrage over initial plans to bailout Cypriot banks using money from both large and small depositors.

Commissioner Michel Barnier called the agreement a "balanced compromise" between the 27 finance ministers.

"The EU has made a big step towards putting in place the most comprehensive framework for dealing with bank crises in the world," Barnier said in a statement.

Related: 5 reasons the Cyprus bailout matters

The new plan outlines a hierarchy of who will have to rescue struggling banks, with bondholders taking the first hit. Shareholders will be next, followed by large depositors.

Even within the large depositor category, there is a specific order detailing which depositors will have to kick in money first, with small and medium-sized businesses receiving preferential treatment.

The plans also outline that European banks must contribute toward "resolution funds," which can be drawn upon during a banking crisis.

"During the financial crisis, there was no single set of tools available to member states to deal with failing banks," said Ireland's finance minister, Michael Noonan, who chaired the talks.

"This agreement will effectively move us from ad hoc 'bail-outs' to structured and clearly defined 'bail-ins'," he said. "In the event of future banking failures taxpayers will be protected."

The framework will now have to be considered by the European Parliament before it is approved. The goal is to have the plans finalized by the end of the year.

What Would A 2013 Voting Rights Act (Section 4) Look Like?

You've probably heard the news. But just in case it was a crazy day at work, you just came home from a backpacking trip in the remote wilderness, or you couldn't pull yourself away from a Keeping Up with the Kardashians
marathon — the Supreme Court has ruled that a key provision of the Voting Rights Act (Section 4) is unconstitutional.
To follow me, you have to know five things:
What the Supreme Court just invalidated is a formula first defined by Congress 50 years ago. The formula determined which jurisdictions had a demonstrable history of African-American voter disenfranchisement.The formula originally looked at whether the jurisdiction required voters to pass a test (such as a literacy test) and whether fewer than 50 percent of the eligible voters in that jurisdiction were registered.Jurisdictions covered by the formula were subject to something called "pre-clearance." That meant they had to get approval from the Department of Justice before making any voting changes.The number of places subject to pre-clearance has shifted a bit since 1965. Places that went 10 years without a record of voter discrimination could apply to "bail out" of the requirement. (Places could also be added to the list.)Congress last reviewed the pre-clearance formula in 2006. The Supreme Court looked at the Voting Rights Act in 2009 and foreshadowed that it would be taking a hard look at the requirements in the future.
Ryan P. Haygood, director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, talks outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday about the court's opinion in Shelby County v. Holder.

Now the Supreme Court has said the formula is unconstitutional. If Congress deems it necessary to focus higher scrutiny on some jurisdictions, the court said, Congress must come up with a revised one. Champions of the Voting Rights Act have consistently made the point, on our air and elsewhere, that it is critical for Congress to come up with something.

Let's set aside, for a quick second, the fact that it seems like Congress is having a hard time agreeing on much of anything these days. Voter discrimination doesn't come in the form of literacy tests anymore. So how would a modern formula determine places that are prone to voter discrimination? If Congress did do something, what might that something look like?

"It looks like Congress' last reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 2006," said an audibly frustrated Nina Perales, civil rights litigator with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "Look at the Congressional Record.
"
Perales told me Congress proved with 15,000 pages of documentation in 2006 that discrimination was still happening in the jurisdictions the coverage formula designated for pre-clearance. In other words: No need to fix what isn't broken
.
Perales said every redistricting attempt in Texas (a state that was subject to pre-clearance) over the past five decades has been deemed discriminatory toward Latino voters. Perales had to rush off the phone because shortly after the SCOTUS ruling, Texas' attorney general announced that the Lone Star State's controversial voter ID law would take effect immediately. "Now we're in meetings, figuring out how to respond to that!" she said.

I asked a law professor.

"It's going to be difficult to write a 'modern formula,' " said Justin Levitt, associate professor of law at Loyola Law School, who focuses on redistricting. Levitt highlighted a phrase Chief Justice Roberts used to refer to the formula: "strong medicine." Levitt said SCOTUS wants modern examples of racial discrimination that justify taking that medicine.

Levitt mused that Congress could look at places with the most lawsuits brought under Section 2 of the voting act. He said legislators could examine national surveys on attitudes about race or other metrics of discrimination. Or Congress could look at regions where elected officials rarely match racial demographics. (Over at the Huffington Post, Spencer Overton raised similar ideas.)

But clear-cut modern examples of overt, intentional discrimination would be hard to find in a world where pre-clearance is working, Levitt said. To continue the medicine metaphor, he likened it to asking a patient three-quarters of the way through a prescription to stop taking it, and then hoping to find outward signs of sickness.

I talked to Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Center at NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, which recently produced a report, "If Section 5 Falls: New Voting Implications."

"Certainly we have thought about a variety of options," said Weiser. "But I don't want to prematurely zero in on one or many options available. There are several ways that Congress can restore what was lost; we just want to keep an open mind and promote that process." Weiser called the SCOTUS decision "a sad day for American democracy" but said she was cautiously optimistic that Congress would find a solution to reignite the power of pre-clearance. She was very careful, however, not to outline what a reconfigured solution might include.

As you can see, the answers weren't conclusive. (For more speculation on what might go into a revised formula, check out this New York Times graphic.) Although Voting Rights Act champions agree that Congress must do something, no one I spoke to would point to a formula Congress could adopt if legislators were to find the political will.

So I open it up to you. What do you think a modern coverage formula should look like?

 

Most Android threats would be blocked if phones ran latest Android version, report says

Over three quarters of Android threats are malicious apps that send SMS messages to premium rate numbers and could be mitigated by a protection feature present in Android 4.2, according to researchers from networking vendor Juniper Networks.

 

However, because manufacturers and carriers fail to update Android end user devices in a timely fashion, only 4 percent of devices currently run Android 4.2, even though this version was released more than six months ago.

 

From March 2012 to March 2013 the number of mobile threats grew by 614 percent to reach a total of 276,259 malicious samples, researchers from Juniper Networks’ Mobile Threat Center (MTC) said in a report released Wednesday. Of those malicious applications, 92 percent target the Android operating system, they said.

 

The surge of Android malware in the past two years is consistent with the findings of other security vendors that track mobile threats. This growth is primarily driven by Android’s “commanding share” of the global smartphone market, the Juniper researchers said.

 

The majority of Android malware, 77 percent, are apps that earn money for their creators by either requiring users to send SMS messages to premium rate numbers or by surreptitiously sending such messages on their own. These threats usually masquerade as legitimate applications or come bundled in pirated apps.

 

The Juniper researchers estimate that every successful attack using such an app can bring an immediate profit of $10 for the attacker on average.

 

Android 4.2 introduced a feature that detects attempts to send SMS messages to special rate numbers, also known as short codes, and prompts users for confirmation. Unfortunately, due to the Android market fragmentation, only 4 percent of Android devices are currently running Android 4.2.x.



This estimation is based on data collected from Google Playover a 14-day period ending on May 1, 2013, the Juniper researchers said. Based on the same data, the most common versions of Android found on devices are Android 2.3.3 to 2.3.7, also known as “Gingerbread,” with a 36.4 percent coverage and Android 4.0.3 and 4.0.4, also known as “Ice Cream Sandwich,” with 25.5 percent.

 

The lack of regular updates for Android devices contributes to the growth of Android malware, because the latest protections added by Google to the operating systems reach users too late or never, the researchers said.

 

The second most common type of Android threats are spyware applications that capture and transfer sensitive user data to attackers. These account for 19 percent of all malicious samples collected by Juniper’s MTC.

 

Some information-stealing Android Trojan apps discovered during the past year and distributed through drive-by downloads or phishing emails could also pose a threat to enterprise environments, the Juniper researchers said.



Data collected from enterprise mobile devices running Juniper’s Junos Pulse endpoint collaboration and security software showed at least one infection on 3.1 percent of such devices.

 

While that figure is not large enough to raise a significant alarm, it is proof that the threat of mobile malware to corporate devices is not only theoretical, the Juniper researchers said. “We expect the presence of mobile malware in the enterprise to grow exponentially in the coming years.”

 

 

Why Facebook Would Want Its Own News Reader

A Facebook Reader could increase engagement and give the network a sweet ad channel.

 

 

Just as Google is set to put its RSS reader to rest next week, reports of Facebook working on its own news reader are surfacing. According to The Wall Street Journal, the social networking giant is building a mobile app — not-so-uniquely dubbed “Reader” — for browsing news stories on smartphones and tablets. The app supposedly will cull stories from multiple sources, including links shared by your Facebook friends as well as content from partnered publishers, and display them in a Flipboard-like fashion, allowing users to swipe through articles and images.

 

Google Reader has millions of dedicated users (count me in) scrambling to find alternatives before the July 1 kill date, and contenders have emerged from the likes of Digg, AOL and NetNewsWire. The RSS reader Feedly has seen its user base triple since Google announced its reader was going the way of the ghost. For those of us considering the alternatives, is Facebook really the place we want to turn?

 

Probably not. The standard RSS model used by Google Reader, Digg and Feedly doesn’t make sense for Facebook. RSS is for nerds, news junkies and journalists hooked to their computers all day, continuously keeping track of the latest stories from various sites. Facebook’s much more mainstream user base would likely shy away from something as unfamiliar as an RSS .xml file, and would probably not benefit from that type of reader. Therefore, it’s of little benefit to Facebook.

 

But if reports of Facebook’s reader are true, the app will be more visual and closer to gesture-sensitive news-reading apps like Pulse and Flipboard, which encourage browsing and discovery. Filling an app like this with stories interesting to you won’t be an issue. The company has the data on which news stories its users are already sharing, and since Facebook is already a valuable funnel of traffic for news sites, the social network should have little problem ginning up interest among publishers who want to place their own channel into the app. Done right, a Facebook Reader has the potential to increase user engagement, and of course, give the company another outlet to serve up ads, where engagement means everything.

 

This isn’t the first time Facebook has tried to bring news to the forefront of its service. The network used to feature several “Social Readers” from the likes of The Washington Post and The Guardian. In their ideal state, social readers were supposed to show you what your Facebook friends were reading, while also driving traffic to those stories. In reality, they annoyed users with prompts to sign up and “blocks of auto-fed stories with second-class content,” as Buzzfeed noted when discussing the collapse of social readers. In the end, it just wasn’t how people wanted to share or read the news — on Facebook or anywhere else.

 

That doesn’t mean Facebook users are eschewing news on the site. It’s actually quite the opposite. For news websites, Facebook is still the single strongest social traffic driver. Facebook pages for news publications feed users a daily dose of stories, and Facebook users are constantly sharing links as well. The new design of Facebook’s News Feed prominently displays stories that multiple friends have shared in an attempt to surface the most relevant posts for each individual.

 

In Facebook’s current state, news links appear within the great News Feed jumble of baby photos and personal status updates. There’s no way to organize it so you see only news links. Because of that, Facebook is less a destination for news, rather than a place where you happen to stumble upon stories shared by friends. A dedicated reader, however, could change the way people engage and view news on Facebook, especially in a mobile format. According to a Pew Research poll, browsing and reading the news is one of the most popular activities on tablets and smartphones, and social sites like Facebook are a growing channel for news discovery. Put the two together, and Facebook can earn itself a good chunk of news-hungry readers.

 

Don’t, however, expect Facebook Reader to be anything revolutionary. The company has already witnessed the success of visual reading apps like Flipboard and Pulse, and will most likely bank on a similar service. It’s also not the first social networking site to attempt to engage users through news-sharing. Professional social networking site LinkedIn has been redefining itself as a content platform, by launching its own blogging tool and purchasing Pulse for $90 million in April. LinkedIn’s smartphone and tablet apps also prominently display a News tab, where you can read, like and comment on stories.

 

That said, Facebook’s biggest struggle with its own reader app will be getting its users to actually see Facebook as a vital source for getting their daily news dose. Unlike Twitter and LinkedIn, Facebook has grown up as a destination for personal networking of the “Here’s my adorable dog,” and “I just went to the beach” variety. But if Facebook can reshape its image and begin being taken seriously as a news hub, then it has what no other reader does: A huge, 1-billion-plus strong user base, ready to “like” the whole internet.

 

 

What would Superman do?

What would Superman do about tax evasion, economic downturn or the G8? There's only so much anyone can achieve with x-ray eyes or being able to fly, or even (and this was a stretch even for Clark Kent) spinning the Earth backwards to turn back time.

But it was question raised on Radio 4's Thought for the Day on Wednesday by Rhidian Brook, who meshed the worlds of global politics with that of Kryptonite and capes.

When General Zod, Superman's nemesis in the latest film, complains that lawmakers have led Krypton to ruin with endless debates, he demands action. And Brook says it's possible to hear similar complaints coming out of the G8 summit.

"In the world of comic-books, when the powers-that-be fail to save us, a superhero flies in to do what the government, the law or the army are unable to do. They usually have cool superpowers - invisibility, a huge hammer, x-ray vision - and come fully armed with quasi-religious justifications such as: 'With great power comes great responsibility'; 'it's not what I am underneath, it's what I do that defines me.' Or 'I'm here to fight for truth or justice.' In the end, it doesn't matter what the colour of their cape is, the solution to whatever problem they face is nearly always the same - it's violence."

And for Brook, an author and screenwriter whose work has examined faith issues, the parallels with religion are clear.

"The promised deliverer - the Messiah or God's anointed one - was expected to appear with superpowers as standard," he says, before concluding that Jesus would have been a terrible superhero. The story of his origins is unpromising, he has special powers but uses them on the wrong people, and when he is tempted by Satan to jump off a tall building, "instead of donning the suit and letting the angels catch him, he refused to demonstrate his powers and used words instead".

Brook is not the first to notice the parallels. In 2006, just after the last big Superman film was released, there was debate about how director Bryan Singer had used much religious symbolism, including Superman falling towards the Earth in a pose echoing the Crucifixion (the Magazine wrote about the debate here).

As we noted then, it may be that there is no one religion that has a monopoly on Superman allusions - Rabbi Simcha Weinstein's book Up, Up and Oy Vey examines the Jewish influence on the development of comic books.

But for Zack Snyder, the director of the new film, Man of Steel, it's clear that the story of the man in blue is a powerful enough narrative in its own right.

"When we started to examine the Superman mythology, in the most classic sense, I really wanted to press upon the film the 'why' of him, which has been 75 years in the making,"

"The Christ-like parallels, I didn't make that stuff up. We weren't like, 'Hey, let's add this!' That stuff is there, in the mythology. That is the tried-and-true Superman metaphor. So rather than be snarky and say that doesn't exist, we thought it would be fun to allow that mythology to be woven through."

 

Why Would Ecuador Want Edward Snowden?

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (left) and Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino appear on a window of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on June 16. Assange has been living at the embassy for the past year. Patino announced Sunday that Ecuador would consider giving asylum to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino appear on a window of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on June 16. Assange has been living at the embassy for the past year. Patino announced Sunday that Ecuador would consider giving asylum to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Ecuador says it is considering Edward Snowden's request for asylum.

This is the second high-profile case involving leaks of classified information, asylum and the South American country. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, to prevent being extradited to Sweden where he is wanted for questioning over allegations of sexual assault. It's worth mentioning here that WikiLeaks in a statement Sunday said it is giving Snowden legal help.

So why would the Andean nation consider giving refuge to Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor accused of leaking classified surveillance information?

"It becomes the center of attention. [Ecuador's] President Rafael Correa enjoys that," says Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington, D.C. "He likes needling the U.S. This satisfies that impulse. It also gives them a sense of consistency and commitment to principles by linking it to the Assange case."

Carl Meacham, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, adds: "Correa is interested in inheriting the mantle of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. To be able to do this with Julian Assange and Mr. Snowden puts him, in his view, as a protector of freedom of information."

But, Shifter notes, Correa probably hopes that by granting refuge to Assange and considering asylum for Snowden he can shift the focus away from Ecuador's own record of press freedom.

Human Rights Watch has criticized the country's new Communication Law, saying the measure "seriously undermines free speech."

"To some extent, Correa can try and use this [incident] to point to the hypocrisy and double standards of everyone else who's coming down hard on him," Shifter says.

As a small country, Ecuador could be vulnerable to U.S. pressure, though its oil gives it a buffer.

Ecuador is the smallest member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and one of the top sources of crude oil imports to the U.S. West Coast. It's also a beneficiary of the massive Chinese investment in South America.

"There are going to be implications and consequences" to granting Snowden asylum, says Laura Powell, a research associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington.

She adds: "Diplomacy is not going to get very far. The U.S. has to rely on trade sanctions" and similar measures to achieve its goals.

Shifter of IAD says that at most the U.S. won't renew the Andean Trade Preference and Drug Eradication Act that covers Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia and Peru; Ecuador would like that deal to continue.

"But it's not going to be a fatal blow," he says.

CSIS's Meacham doesn't see it that way.

"It's pretty bad for them," he says. "Their trade benefits from the Andean Trade Preference and Drug Eradication Act are important. Forty-two percent of their goods are sold to the U.S. So on paper, it's not in their interest."

Ecuador and the U.S. do have an extradition treaty, but as Meacham of CSIS notes: "Snowden is charged with espionage/treason, neither of which is covered by the extradition treaty."

Pending law would block Tesla sales in New York

Elon Musk and Tesla are battling dealership associations throughout the country for the right to sell vehicles directly to customers.

Tesla said in a statement Friday that if the bill passes, it will be "put out of business in New York," with all employees in the state losing their jobs.

"The bottom line for New York consumers and New York suppliers is that if this bill passes, special interests in Albany will once again have gotten their way while robbing New Yorkers of choices in the marketplace," Tesla (TSLA) said.

The current legislative session was originally scheduled to conclude on Thursday, but work continued in both the Senate and Assembly on Friday, and it is unclear when it will end.

Related: Tesla unveils 90-second battery-pack swap

CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter Friday as legislators were considering the bill, urging New Yorkers to call their representatives and ask them to vote it down.

The New York State Automobile Dealers Association did not respond to a request for comment, though the association is also urging supporters to contact their representatives, saying the pending bill is "designed to maintain the health and vitality of New York's retail automobile industry."

Tesla has tangled with dealership associations in a number of states in its effort to sell its Model S electric sedan directly to consumers rather than using franchised car dealers.

General Motors (GM, Fortune 500), Ford (F, Fortune 500), Toyota (TM) and others don't sell cars to customers. They sell to independently owned and operated dealers or distributors who, in turn, sell them to the public, usually after some negotiation over the final price.

Tesla's showrooms, by contrast, are owned and operated by the company. Most are in shopping malls, with only enough cars on hand for display and test drives. Every Tesla car sells at full sticker price, and service on the cars is performed at separate garages owned by Tesla.



Auto sales are mostly regulated at the state level. In some states, Tesla has had little or no problem opening its stores. In others, auto dealers and their allies in government have resisted Tesla's plans, fearing they could ultimately undermine the system of franchised dealers.

Earlier this month, legislators in Texas failed to vote on a bill backed by Tesla that would have loosened the state's restriction on dealerships owned by automakers. Virginia rejected the electric-car maker's dealership application earlier this year.

Dealers argue that the traditional franchise system is best for car buyers because it preserves competition between dealerships selling the same products.

But Tesla worries that traditional franchised dealers, who also have gasoline cars to sell, won't represent its products properly or aggressively enough. Dealers pressed to make quick sales will likely be tempted to steer customers to gasoline cars rather than explain the benefits of the Model S, Diarmuid O'Connell, Tesla's vice president for business development, told CNNMoney last month.

"From the beginning, Tesla's goal has been to catalyze the market for electric vehicles, and selling through intermediaries at this stage of the company will not work," Tesla said Friday.