With Few New Titles in Sight, Nintendo Bets Big on Its Recent Hits


You'll be able to use Amiibo figurines to unlock new content in Mario Kart 8 on Wii U.

You’ll be able to use Amiibo figurines to unlock new content in Mario Kart 8 on Wii U. Nintendo



Nintendo’s strategy for 2015 might be summed up as: Play it again, Sam.


While the release of big games like Mario Kart 8 and the impending Super Smash Bros. have boosted the dangerously low sales of Nintendo’s Wii U console, Nintendo still has a long-term content problem. Software makers aren’t making many Wii U games (if any at all), and there’s no way Nintendo could hold the line all on its own. In a Nintendo Direct live-streaming presentation yesterday, Nintendo of America seemed to indicate that the sum total of its Wii U lineup for the first half of 2015 consisted of two games.


Perhaps to make up for this, Nintendo is attempting to keep selling the games that are currently available for Wii U, and to keep current Wii U owners occupied with the games already in their libraries. Much of the Nintendo Direct was given over to explaining how Nintendo will continue to add new content for games like Mario Kart, Hyrule Warriors and even 2013′s Pikmin 3 in an effort to sell more of what’s already out there.


It remains to be seen if this will be enough for Wii U owners.


Nintendo’s recent financial reports, which it released at the end of October, were a tiny bright spot in this series of anni horribiles that the Kyoto gamemaker, which celebrated its 125th anniversary in September, has endured of late. Although its sales were down versus the same period last year, profits were higher, indicating that Nintendo is adjusting its expenses to turn a profit even if it’s not selling as many videogames.


The company also released some sales numbers. It sold 1.1 million Wii U consoles over the last six months, a big jump from the same time period last year in which it sold only 460,000 units of its home gaming machine. The release of Mario Kart 8 in May has apparently had a colossal impact all on its own—its attach rate, the percentage of Wii U hardware owners who bought the game, is 47 percent.


That’s astonishingly high in the console game business. Nintendo, it seems, wants it higher—or at least wants more money from the people who already bought it. “Season passes” in which players pay up front for a year-long stream of releases of new downloadable add-on content are nothing new in the games biz, but they’re new to Nintendo, a company that only recently came around to the idea of selling extra levels in a Mario game.


Mario Kart 8‘s downloadable content plan is the most robust we’ve ever seen from Nintendo. On November 13, it will release a package containing three new racers, four new vehicles and eight new courses. In May 2015—that’s one year after the game’s original launch—it will release another similarly-sized content delivery. These are pulled not only from the Mario universe but from The Legend of Zelda and others as well.


Additionally, Nintendo is using Mario Kart to sell Amiibos, the Skylanders-style interactive figurines that it will launch at retail stores later this month. Placing certain Amiibo figures on the Wii U’s GamePad controller, which has near-field communication functionality that connects it to the figures, will unlock special racing suits themed to those characters. Want all 10 of the suits? Well, then you’d better buy all 10 figurines at $13 a pop.


Mario Kart isn’t the only game getting a retroactive Amiibo boost. Buy the Link Amiibo and you can unlock a special weapon in Nintendo’s recently-released Hyrule Warriors . Placing any Amiibo other than the series’ main character will give you a random reward, too. Hyrule Warriors also has an extensive DLC plan that stretches at least into February 2015.


And Nintendo is stretching even further back into the Wii U’s past. It’s releasing a free demo version of its 2013 game Pikmin 3, in an attempt to get new Wii U owners to pick that up as well.


Can Kirby carry Wii U?

Can Kirby carry Wii U? Nintendo



There is reason to believe that Nintendo can continue to sell these games. It has always enjoyed remarkable sales of its back-catalog games. Nintendo games have legs that other publishers would kill for. To name just one example: The 14th best-selling game of March 2009 was Mario Kart DS… a game that was released in November of 2005.


The difference between now and Nintendo’s glory years is that it now it must sell the heck out of these games. Sales of four-year-old games were a nice bonus for Nintendo in 2009, but it was also enjoying robust sales of new games as well as tons of money from third-party licensees that were publishing game after game on Wii and DS.


Today, the “Coming Soon” section for Wii U on Gamestop’s website is almost empty. At E3, Nintendo itself promised a great many first-party titles for Wii U in 2015, but in its Nintendo Direct presentation this week it only named two of them as becoming available in America in the first half of the year: Kirby and the Rainbow Curse in February and Splatoon during the second quarter.


Both of these games look great (I’m especially looking forward to Rainbow Curse, a long-overdue sequel to one of the best early Nintendo DS games). But by omitting everything else, does Nintendo truly mean to say that this is the extent of the games that will be making it out in the first six months of 2015?


If so, then it’s got a lot riding on its plan to keep its previous releases relevant.


Don’t just take my word for it—ask Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata, who said this at a Q&A session with investors a few days ago:



On the other hand, what our consumers are looking forward to is not merely a great number of games. What is critical to us is that each consumer feels that the content of the games he/she plays is sufficient, and when the player has completed one game, the next one is offered at the right time. We don’t believe that simply increasing the number of games or just containing the development costs per game are necessarily good for our company, because if we try to simply decrease the per-software development costs just for the sake of minimizing overall costs, the final product will become less-appealing and it will not sell over a long period after its release. On the other hand, when there is software that sells for a long period of time, or is talked about for a long time, this can increase consumers’ motivation to continue playing these games and invite new purchasers. Even if we increase the total number of games, it does not make sense if each one of them becomes less compelling for the consumer. Nintendo offers new downloadable content to increase the number of karts, courses and characters in “Mario Kart 8.” Our primary objective is to have “Mario Kart 8” played continually by consumers. Since many players have already played “Mario Kart 8” with energy and enthusiasm, we realized that we would need a certain level of reinforcement to make people want to play it again. Technologically speaking, this is now possible. When we compare making a new “Mario Kart” game and digitally distributing new courses and characters as add-on content, the required number of developers, development costs and development terms are very different. We believe it is important to create triggers for our consumers to frequently play their favorite games while minimizing development costs on our side. We can now include amiibo to our arsenal, which can also be a trigger to excite people to once again play games they might have already finished. All of these additions are crafted to extend the life of key software, which is very important to us.



This seems to be a combination of truth, spin, and wishful thinking. It is true that Nintendo can create a virtuous cycle by keeping players engaged with Mario Kart and Hyrule Warriors, which will result in those players spending more money and then attracting new players to buy the base game. On the other hand, it doesn’t sound coincidental that Nintendo would discover that its players don’t really want new games just at the moment that Nintendo needs to reduce its development costs.


Nintendo’s first-party lineup, especially this year, is almost unquestionably the best of the three big console hardware makers’. But Sony and Microsoft have big third-party games that are carrying their platforms for them. Nintendo’s missing out on that, and must create all its own tentpole releases.


If you’re the sort of person who will play Mario Kart for ever and ever, you’re the sort of player that Nintendo looks more likely to appease over the next few years. If you’re the sort of person who jumps from title to title always looking for a new experience, you may find yourself waiting longer and longer for that next hit.



Boosted Rolls Out Cheaper, Even More Dangerous Electric Skateboards


Boosted Boards

Boosted



Boosted Boards has made it faster and cheaper to kill yourself with a brand new electric skateboard that hits 22 mph and costs a measly 1,500 bones.


Earlier this year, we took the original Boosted Board for a ride. Zooming around—even uphill—on a $2,000 Bluetooth-controlled motorized longboard was as fun as it was prohibitively expensive. So here’s some good news for prospective e-sk8rz: The company’s range of remote-control motorized longboards has expanded with two new models, and the additions cost quite a bit less than the original board. There’s also a reason for those who already bought a Boosted Board at its original $2,000 price to rejoice, as they may be eligible for a $500 rebate.


The original board stays in the lineup, and it’s now the flagship offering in Boosted’s arsenal. It’s been renamed the Boosted Dual+, and it has a software update that pushes its top speed up to 22mph; the original maxed out at 20mph. Beyond that, it has the same 38-inch deck, Bluetooth remote, six-mile range, and 2,000-watt twin brushless motors as the original Boosted board.


But while the original board went for two grand, the Dual+ will go for $1,500. There are a couple of incentives for existing owners, too. They’ll be able to get the speed-boosting software upgrade for free in early 2015, and customers that bought the original Boosted board from mid-September onward are eligible for a $500 refund.


There are two new skateboard models under it in the lineup. The $1,300 Boosted Dual has a slightly slower top speed of 20mph, thanks to a less powerful system (1,500 watts) driving its twin motors. And while the Dual+ is rated to chug uphill on grades of up to 25 percent, the Boosted Dual is only rated for 20-percent inclines.


The new low-end model is the Boosted Single, which is a bit lighter than the other two models (13.5 pounds vs 15 pounds). Unlike the other two, it’s driven by a single 1,000-watt motor that tops out at 18mph, and it’ll only climb 15-degree inclines. For its $1,000 price, you do get a bit more range: 7 miles instead of 6 miles per charge like the other two boards. While the Dual+ and Dual are available now, the Single is currently on pre-order mode with a January ship date.



Not Just Silk Road 2: Feds Seize Two Other Drug Markets and Counting


dark-web-2-inline

Getty



A full-blown dark web drug crackdown is in the works, and it’s not stopping with the Silk Road.


On Thursday the FBI along with other law enforcement agencies including the Department of Homeland Security and Europol announced that it had seized the Silk Road 2, perhaps the most well-known drug market to appear on the Dark Web since the takedown of the original Silk Road last year. What it didn’t announce is that at least two other drug market sites have also been busted, and more takedowns are likely coming. The drug markets Hydra and Cloud 9 now both display the same “This Hidden Site Has Been Seized” notices as the Silk Road 2, emblazoned with the logos of the FBI and Europol. Several other popular dark net markets were down Thursday morning, as well, though they didn’t display that banner. An FBI spokesperson tells WIRED that there will be more than three market seizures in total, with the full extent of the operation set to be revealed by Friday.


The string of drug market busts appears to be part of Operation “Onymous,” a global law enforcement effort that has already led to the arrest of three people. Yesterday the FBI arrested Blake Benthall in San Francisco and accused him in a criminal complaint of running the Silk Road 2 drug site under the pseudonym “Defcon.” Two other suspects were arrested separately in Dublin, and cops say they’ve seized from them $250,000 worth of drugs and as much as $2.5 million worth of bitcoin. An FBI spokesperson confirms that the arrests are part of a “coordinated law enforcement action,” but not part of the same case.


The Silk Road 2, which launched a year to the day before its takedown, took on the branding of the original Silk Road drug market to attract hundreds of thousands of users. According to the criminal complaint against Benthall, it was making $8 million a month in bitcoin-based sales before the takedown. Cloud 9 and Hydra, by contrast, were smaller sites but with loyal followings. In a count by the Digital Citizens Alliance in August, Cloud 9 offered 1,600 drug listings, and Hydra listed 1,151.


Both smaller sites attracted users by implementing a bitcoin feature known as multi-signature transactions. When coins were spent on the site, they were put into an account controlled jointly by the buyer, seller, and site administrators, and two out of three of them had to sign off on that transaction to move the funds. That feature was designed in part to prevent law enforcement from easily seizing the sites’ bitcoins, and may in fact limit the losses suffered by their users following these takedowns.


As of Thursday afternoon, the two largest drug markets—Agora and Evolution—were both still online.


Just last week, New York Senator Chuck Schumer called for a renewed crackdown on all dark web drug trade in an open letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. That trade, after all, has more than doubled in size by some measures since the takedown of the original Silk Road a year ago.


On the Reddit forum devoted to dark net markets, users expressed a mixture of dismay, panic, and gallows humor.


“Please no, Agora is like my Walmart for drugs [but Cloud 9] was the ma and pa store that I grew to love,” wrote one user named hellokittycustomer.


“NEW GAME,” wrote another called xanaxxanaxxanax. “One hit of any drug of your choice every time another market goes down.”


“I predict that we will bounce back, stronger than before,” added another user named Infinite. “But at this point I’m pretty freaked out.”



With Few New Titles in Sight, Nintendo Bets Big on Its Recent Hits


You'll be able to use Amiibo figurines to unlock new content in Mario Kart 8 on Wii U.

You’ll be able to use Amiibo figurines to unlock new content in Mario Kart 8 on Wii U. Nintendo



Nintendo’s strategy for 2015 might be summed up as: Play it again, Sam.


While the release of big games like Mario Kart 8 and the impending Super Smash Bros. have boosted the dangerously low sales of Nintendo’s Wii U console, Nintendo still has a long-term content problem. Software makers aren’t making many Wii U games (if any at all), and there’s no way Nintendo could hold the line all on its own. In a Nintendo Direct live-streaming presentation yesterday, Nintendo of America seemed to indicate that the sum total of its Wii U lineup for the first half of 2015 consisted of two games.


Perhaps to make up for this, Nintendo is attempting to keep selling the games that are currently available for Wii U, and to keep current Wii U owners occupied with the games already in their libraries. Much of the Nintendo Direct was given over to explaining how Nintendo will continue to add new content for games like Mario Kart, Hyrule Warriors and even 2013′s Pikmin 3 in an effort to sell more of what’s already out there.


It remains to be seen if this will be enough for Wii U owners.


Nintendo’s recent financial reports, which it released at the end of October, were a tiny bright spot in this series of anni horribiles that the Kyoto gamemaker, which celebrated its 125th anniversary in September, has endured of late. Although its sales were down versus the same period last year, profits were higher, indicating that Nintendo is adjusting its expenses to turn a profit even if it’s not selling as many videogames.


The company also released some sales numbers. It sold 1.1 million Wii U consoles over the last six months, a big jump from the same time period last year in which it sold only 460,000 units of its home gaming machine. The release of Mario Kart 8 in May has apparently had a colossal impact all on its own—its attach rate, the percentage of Wii U hardware owners who bought the game, is 47 percent.


That’s astonishingly high in the console game business. Nintendo, it seems, wants it higher—or at least wants more money from the people who already bought it. “Season passes” in which players pay up front for a year-long stream of releases of new downloadable add-on content are nothing new in the games biz, but they’re new to Nintendo, a company that only recently came around to the idea of selling extra levels in a Mario game.


Mario Kart 8‘s downloadable content plan is the most robust we’ve ever seen from Nintendo. On November 13, it will release a package containing three new racers, eight new vehicles and four new courses. In May 2015—that’s one year after the game’s original launch—it will release another similarly-sized content delivery. These are pulled not only from the Mario universe but from The Legend of Zelda and others as well.


Additionally, Nintendo is using Mario Kart to sell Amiibos, the Skylanders-style interactive figurines that it will launch at retail stores later this month. Placing certain Amiibo figures on the Wii U’s GamePad controller, which has near-field communication functionality that connects it to the figures, will unlock special racing suits themed to those characters. Want all 10 of the suits? Well, then you’d better buy all 10 figurines at $13 a pop.


Mario Kart isn’t the only game getting a retroactive Amiibo boost. Buy the Link Amiibo and you can unlock a special weapon in Nintendo’s recently-released Hyrule Warriors . Placing any Amiibo other than the series’ main character will give you a random reward, too. Hyrule Warriors also has an extensive DLC plan that stretches at least into February 2015.


And Nintendo is stretching even further back into the Wii U’s past. It’s releasing a free demo version of its 2013 game Pikmin 3, in an attempt to get new Wii U owners to pick that up as well.


Can Kirby carry Wii U?

Can Kirby carry Wii U? Nintendo



There is reason to believe that Nintendo can continue to sell these games. It has always enjoyed remarkable sales of its back-catalog games. Nintendo games have legs that other publishers would kill for. To name just one example: The 14th best-selling game of March 2009 was Mario Kart DS… a game that was released in November of 2005.


The difference between now and Nintendo’s glory years is that it now it must sell the heck out of these games. Sales of four-year-old games were a nice bonus for Nintendo in 2009, but it was also enjoying robust sales of new games as well as tons of money from third-party licensees that were publishing game after game on Wii and DS.


Today, the “Coming Soon” section for Wii U on Gamestop’s website is almost empty. At E3, Nintendo itself promised a great many first-party titles for Wii U in 2015, but in its Nintendo Direct presentation this week it only named two of them as becoming available in America in the first half of the year: Kirby and the Rainbow Curse in February and Splatoon during the second quarter.


Both of these games look great (I’m especially looking forward to Rainbow Curse, a long-overdue sequel to one of the best early Nintendo DS games). But by omitting everything else, does Nintendo truly mean to say that this is the extent of the games that will be making it out in the first six months of 2015?


If so, then it’s got a lot riding on its plan to keep its previous releases relevant.


Don’t just take my word for it—ask Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata, who said this at a Q&A session with investors a few days ago:



On the other hand, what our consumers are looking forward to is not merely a great number of games. What is critical to us is that each consumer feels that the content of the games he/she plays is sufficient, and when the player has completed one game, the next one is offered at the right time. We don’t believe that simply increasing the number of games or just containing the development costs per game are necessarily good for our company, because if we try to simply decrease the per-software development costs just for the sake of minimizing overall costs, the final product will become less-appealing and it will not sell over a long period after its release. On the other hand, when there is software that sells for a long period of time, or is talked about for a long time, this can increase consumers’ motivation to continue playing these games and invite new purchasers. Even if we increase the total number of games, it does not make sense if each one of them becomes less compelling for the consumer. Nintendo offers new downloadable content to increase the number of karts, courses and characters in “Mario Kart 8.” Our primary objective is to have “Mario Kart 8” played continually by consumers. Since many players have already played “Mario Kart 8” with energy and enthusiasm, we realized that we would need a certain level of reinforcement to make people want to play it again. Technologically speaking, this is now possible. When we compare making a new “Mario Kart” game and digitally distributing new courses and characters as add-on content, the required number of developers, development costs and development terms are very different. We believe it is important to create triggers for our consumers to frequently play their favorite games while minimizing development costs on our side. We can now include amiibo to our arsenal, which can also be a trigger to excite people to once again play games they might have already finished. All of these additions are crafted to extend the life of key software, which is very important to us.



This seems to be a combination of truth, spin, and wishful thinking. It is true that Nintendo can create a virtuous cycle by keeping players engaged with Mario Kart and Hyrule Warriors, which will result in those players spending more money and then attracting new players to buy the base game. On the other hand, it doesn’t sound coincidental that Nintendo would discover that its players don’t really want new games just at the moment that Nintendo needs to reduce its development costs.


Nintendo’s first-party lineup, especially this year, is almost unquestionably the best of the three big console hardware makers’. But Sony and Microsoft have big third-party games that are carrying their platforms for them. Nintendo’s missing out on that, and must create all its own tentpole releases.


If you’re the sort of person who will play Mario Kart for ever and ever, you’re the sort of player that Nintendo looks more likely to appease over the next few years. If you’re the sort of person who jumps from title to title always looking for a new experience, you may find yourself waiting longer and longer for that next hit.



Not Just Silk Road 2: Feds Seize Two Other Drug Markets and Counting


dark-web-2-inline

Getty



A full-blown dark web drug crackdown is in the works, and it’s not stopping with the Silk Road.


On Thursday the FBI along with other law enforcement agencies including the Department of Homeland Security and Europol announced that it had seized the Silk Road 2, perhaps the most well-known drug market to appear on the Dark Web since the takedown of the original Silk Road last year. What it didn’t announce is that at least two other drug market sites have also been busted, and more takedowns are likely coming. The drug markets Hydra and Cloud 9 now both display the same “This Hidden Site Has Been Seized” notices as the Silk Road 2, emblazoned with the logos of the FBI and Europol. Several other popular dark net markets were down Thursday morning, as well, though they didn’t display that banner. An FBI spokesperson tells WIRED that there will be more than three market seizures in total, with the full extent of the operation set to be revealed by Friday.


The string of drug market busts appears to be part of Operation “Onymous,” a global law enforcement effort that has already led to the arrest of three people. Yesterday the FBI arrested Blake Benthall in San Francisco and accused him in a criminal complaint of running the Silk Road 2 drug site under the pseudonym “Defcon.” Two other suspects were arrested separately in Dublin, and cops say they’ve seized from them $250,000 worth of drugs and as much as $2.5 million worth of bitcoin. An FBI spokesperson confirms that the arrests are part of a “coordinated law enforcement action,” but not part of the same case.


The Silk Road 2, which launched a year to the day before its takedown, took on the branding of the original Silk Road drug market to attract hundreds of thousands of users. According to the criminal complaint against Benthall, it was making $8 million a month in bitcoin-based sales before the takedown. Cloud 9 and Hydra, by contrast, were smaller sites but with loyal followings. In a count by the Digital Citizens Alliance in August, Cloud 9 offered 1,600 drug listings, and Hydra listed 1,151.


Both smaller sites attracted users by implementing a bitcoin feature known as multi-signature transactions. When coins were spent on the site, they were put into an account controlled jointly by the buyer, seller, and site administrators, and two out of three of them had to sign off on that transaction to move the funds. That feature was designed in part to prevent law enforcement from easily seizing the sites’ bitcoins, and may in fact limit the losses suffered by their users following these takedowns.


As of Thursday afternoon, the two largest drug markets—Agora and Evolution—were both still online.


Just last week, New York Senator Chuck Schumer called for a renewed crackdown on all dark web drug trade in an open letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. That trade, after all, has more than doubled in size by some measures since the takedown of the original Silk Road a year ago.


On the Reddit forum devoted to dark net markets, users expressed a mixture of dismay, panic, and gallows humor.


“Please no, Agora is like my Walmart for drugs [but Cloud 9] was the ma and pa store that I grew to love,” wrote one user named hellokittycustomer.


“NEW GAME,” wrote another called xanaxxanaxxanax. “One hit of any drug of your choice every time another market goes down.”


“I predict that we will bounce back, stronger than before,” added another user named Infinite. “But at this point I’m pretty freaked out.”



Boosted Rolls Out Cheaper, Even More Dangerous Electric Skateboards


Boosted Boards

Boosted



Boosted Boards has made it faster and cheaper to kill yourself, with a brand new electric skateboard that hits 22 mph and costs a measly 1500 bones.


Earlier this year, we took the original Boosted Board for a ride. Zooming around—even uphill—on a $2,000 Bluetooth-controlled motorized longboard was as fun as it was prohibitively expensive. So here’s some good news for prospective e-sk8rz: The company’s range of remote-control motorized longboards has expanded with two new models, and the additions cost quite a bit less than the original board. There’s also a reason for those who already bought a Boosted Board at its original $2,000 price to rejoice, as they may be eligible for a $500 rebate.


The original board stays in the lineup, and it’s now the flagship offering in Boosted’s arsenal. It’s been renamed the Boosted Dual+, and it has a software update that pushes its top speed up to 22mph; the original maxed out at 20mph. Beyond that, it has the same 38-inch deck, Bluetooth remote, six-mile range, and 2,000-watt twin brushless motors as the original Boosted board.


But while the original board went for two grand, the Dual+ will go for $1,500. There are a couple of incentives for existing owners, too. They’ll be able to get the speed-boosting software upgrade for free in early 2015, and customers that bought the original Boosted board from mid-September onward are eligible for a $500 refund.


There are two new skateboard models under it in the lineup. The $1,300 Boosted Dual has a slightly slower top speed of 20mph, thanks to a less powerful system (1,500 watts) driving its twin motors. And while the Dual+ is rated to chug uphill on grades of up to 25 percent, the Boosted Dual is only rated for 20-percent inclines.


The new low-end model is the Boosted Single, which is a bit lighter than the other two models (13.5 pounds vs 15 pounds). Unlike the other two, it’s driven by a single 1,000-watt motor that tops out at 18mph, and it’ll only climb 15-degree inclines. For its $1,000 price, you do get a bit more range: 7 miles instead of 6 miles per charge like the other two boards. While the Dual+ and Dual are available now, the Single is currently on pre-order mode with a January ship date.



The Online Identity Crisis


online_anonymous_660

Scott Beale / Laughing Squid via Flickr



The intense identity aggregation of products like Google and Facebook is pushing users towards anonymous services. Whisper and Secret are both making headlines, each promising an escape from the ruthless scrutiny of mainstream social networks. While these services are great for providing a momentary distraction, they are still doing nothing to address the core problem of online identity.


In real life, there are very few situations where it is useful or even desirable to be anonymous outside of explicitly anti-social or criminal behavior. The standard examples of corporate leaks, personal confessions, honest reviews, etc., do not benefit from true anonymity. Instead, people want to expose some subset of their identity and nothing more.


For example, an Apple employee who wants to release a corporate leak does not want Apple to discover who he or she is, but it is still important that others know that the person is an Apple employee and not just a random fan. Likewise, if someone confesses something about their personal life, they want to do it with a supportive community and not to strangers who do not care about or have a lasting relationship with them.


It is not about being anonymous or even pretending to be someone else. It is about controlling which subsets of true facets of a person are relevant in different social contexts. This is fundamentally not deceptive but actually enables one to be authentic.


Outside of the Internet, it is extremely difficult to find out information about a person so that we can easily and naturally compartmentalize our experiences. A person can go to a health support group and discuss issues with their diagnosis, and then later they can go to a car show and discuss their love of 60’s muscle cars. They don’t worry much about someone in the car show reacting poorly to them because they are sick. This person is not a different person in these settings — it is always the same person — but different parts of their identity are relevant.


The Googles and Facebooks (GoogleBooks?) of the world want to aggregate all of these personas into a single identity. They want to do this, not because they think this is good for users or because this is how they think society works, but rather because it helps them monetize user interactions. However, this type of aggregation is a very bad deal for users.


Users’ primary experience with this comes in the form of hyper-targeted ads. A perfect example of this is when someone goes to an online health support group to do some searching or posting, and then navigates to the car community. In the car community, that person will receive ads targeting them as a health support group member. This is a scary proposition. Even though users primarily are reacting to this “Google stalking” factor, there is actually a subtle but much more insidious force at work.


These services are making an extremely strong push to get users to sign in everywhere on the Internet with a single ID. This is initially great for those who do not want to remember many passwords. But when this is done, GoogleBook is able to aggregate an identity into their system, and all activity on that new site is mixed with everything else the user has told them before. Most people are not really aware that this is undermining the trust relationships that they have with those new sites.


When a person decides to share information with a service, they make a trust decision that is between them and that other entity. They can decide to purchase things from Amazon knowing that Amazon will retain their purchase history and use that to create an “Amazon Identity.” Most people are OK with OpenTable knowing where they go out to eat, and they trust their bank with their account information and they trust their fellow health community members with their personal struggles. For each of these entities, they have made a conscious trust decision.


But when a user signs in through GoogleBook, that trust is tossed out the window. They are implicitly granting GoogleBook the union of all of those trust relationships. Through GoogleBook, they give away their identity to all of GoogleBook’s advertisers and other players. So, they are not only suddenly trusting GoogleBook with their Amazon purchase history, they also potentially are trusting OpenTable and Clash of Clans with that information as well. This is a fundamental undermining of these original trust relationships which is certain to lead to very large problems down the road.


Dave Vronay is founder and CEO of Heard.



Exquisite ancient horse fossil preserves uterus with unborn foal

A specimen of the ancient horse Eurohippus messelensis has been discovered in Germany that preserves a fetus as well as parts of the uterus and associated tissues. It demonstrates that reproduction in early horses was very similar to that of modern horses, despite great differences in size and structure. Eurohippus messelensis had four toes on each forefoot and three toes on each the hind foot, and it was about the size of a modern fox terrier. The new find was unveiled at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Berlin.



"Almost all of the bones of the fetus are still articulated in their original position. Only the skull is crushed," said Dr. Jens Lorenz Franzen of the Senckenberg Research Institute, lead author of the study. The study's co-authors are Dr. Jörg Habersetzer, also of the Senckenberg Research Institute, and Dr. Christine Aurich of the University of Veterinary Medicine at Vienna and head of the Graf Lehndorff Institute of Equine Sciences.


The specimen was discovered by a team from the Senckenberg Research Institute nearly 15 years ago, but its extent was not fully appreciated until it was studied using micro x-ray. The micro x-ray analysis revealed a structure known as the broad ligament that connects the uterus to the backbone and helps support the developing foal. Remnants of the wrinkled outer uterine wall became visible after the specimen was prepared, a feature shared between Eurohippus and modern horses. The placenta in this specimen is only the second one that has been described for a fossil placental mammal.


The oil shales at Grube Messel have long been known for their marvelous fossils. These oil shales formed at the bottom of ancient Lake Messel and preserve the remains of mammals, birds, and other animals that were living near what is now Darmstadt, Germany about 47 million years ago (the Eocene epoch). No oxygen was present at the bottom of the lake when the dead animals sank down and finally became embedded in the muddy sediments. There, anaerobic bacteria immediately began to decompose skin, muscles, and other soft tissues. As a result, the bacteria produced carbondioxid, which in turn precipitated iron ions present in the lake water. In this way, the bacteria petrified themselves, developing only a very thin bacterial lawn depicting the soft tissue as black shadow. Consequently, Messel fossils preserve these remains not directly, but as images.


The size of the fetus and the presence of fully developed milk teeth indicate that it was close to term when it and its mother died. Nevertheless, its position in the uterus indicates that the two did not die during the birthing process. The fetus was upside down rather than right side up, and its front legs were not yet extended as they should be just before birth.




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The above story is based on materials provided by Society of Vertebrate Paleontology . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.



Bats identified as hosts of Bartonella mayotimonensis

The modern sequencing techniques have shown that bats can carry a bacterial species previously been shown to cause deadly human infections in USA.



When the research group of Arto Pulliainen at the Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, Finland, analyzed an array of bat samples from Finland and UK, one class of identified bacteria turned out to be exceptionally significant. Multilocus sequence analyses of clonal bat Bartonella isolates demonstrated that bats carry Bartonella mayotimonensis. This species has previously been shown to cause deadly human infections in USA.


"We have barely scratched the surface of bat pathogens. Our group and our collaborators are currently focusing on pathogen hunting, environmental toxicology and bat immune responses. We have also identified a novel class of microbial toxins via our Bartonella studies and we are going to continue that line of research, too," says Dr. Pulliainen.


There are more than 1,100 species of bats on Earth. The numbers of bats are estimated to outnumber every other group of mammals.


"Bats are also highly mobile and long-lived, so they are ideal as pathogen reservoirs. A plethora of pathogenic viruses such as Ebola are known to colonize bats," Dr. Pulliainen says.


On the other hand, humans are extremely dependent on bats. Bats play a vital role in natural ecosystems. They pollinate flowers, disperse seeds and eat pests that damage forests and crops. They also play an important role in arthropod suppression.


So what to do when you for example have to move out a bat that has accidentally flown in your apartment? "Use thick leather gloves when carrying the bat out. Also avoid touching bat faeces or their ectoparasites such as fleas."




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The above story is based on materials provided by Helsingin yliopisto (University of Helsinki) . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.



Star Wars: Episode VII Gets a Real Title: Star Wars: The Force Awakens


Star-Wars-The-Force-Awakens

Walt Disney Pictures/Lucasfilm



Star Wars: Episode VII isn’t called Star Wars: Episode VII anymore. The title for director J.J. Abrams’ revival of the space opera franchise was announced today on social media: Star Wars: The Force Awakens.


Oh, yes, Abrams has also apparently finished shooting his chapter of the Star Wars saga. Quite why the title was announced with such little fanfare, at this time, or why the Force was asleep in the first place remains to be seen, of course. But at least we can rest assured that the Force will be with us once again in 2015 … and always.



Zynga Founder Launches New Startup Incubator


Zynga CEO Mark Pincus. Photo: Ariel Zamblelich/Wired

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus. Photo: Ariel Zamblelich/Wired



The home screen on Mark Pincus’s smartphone is pretty empty. Not because there aren’t a ton of interesting apps out there. It’s just that there aren’t that many he can’t live without.


That why the Zynga founder is launching a startup incubator called Superlabs, hoping to unearth some of those can’t-live-without-it ideas.


Pincus, who stepped down as CEO of Zynga in 2013, announced the new project on stage at Web Summit in Dublin on Thursday. In a video streamed across the web, he explained that despite the frenzy of activity in tech today—which some might call a bubble—there are still only a handful of truly transformative apps. Pincus held up his empty home screen as proof of that. “It means it’s a great time for all of us to be entrepreneur-ing and trying to invent some of those new services to fill up that home screen,” he said.


With Superlabs, Pincus joins a growing cohort of entrepreneurs who have moved on from the companies that made them famous only to launch their own startup factories. Uber co-founder Garrett Camp and Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai, for instance, recently launched Expa, a so-called “startup studio,” which has attracted high profile investors like Richard Branson and Meg Whitman. PayPal founder Max Levchin’s HVF incubator has spun off projects like the financial services startup Affirm and the fertility app Glow. Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg, has done it twice, first with Milk and most recently, with a new initiative called North Technologies.


And yet, so far, none of these incubators have turned out any runaway successes. Pincus is hoping for a different result. That said, on stage, he admitted that at Superlabs, he’ll probably strike out a lot before finding one homerun. In fact, he said, the biggest mistake an entrepreneur can make is getting overly attached to a single idea. “I think you’ve got to give yourself a lot of space and permission to fail, so I’m going to launch products, experiment, try stuff, and be ready to look stupid. It’s ok,” he said. “My hope is I can get to a single product that really matters to people and resonates and that’s a big hope.”


As for what types of products they may be, Pincus was light on details. But if his goal is to create something lasting, something people truly can’t live without, it seems unlikely that more mobile games are in the cards. If there’s anyone who knows just how fleeting the lifespan of even the hottest games are, it would be him.



Facebook Joins the Fight Against Ebola


zuckerberg-china

Facebook



The world’s largest social network is joining the fight against Ebola.


On Thursday, Facebook announced three initiatives that aim to help curb the recent outbreak of the deadly virus: a fund raising drive for aid organizations, an informational campaign, and donation of internet and telecommunications infrastructure to support remote areas affected by the disease.


Authorities have confirmed four Ebola cases in the U.S.–including one death—and the disease is ravaging certain parts of West Africa. There have been over 13,000 recorded cases of Ebola—with nearly 5,000 deaths—in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Facebook’s efforts are squarely focused on helping people in the countries most affected by the disease.


The most visible of Facebook’s projects is a button that will appear at the top of your news feed urging you to donate to one of the organizations selected by Facebook: West Africa: International Medical Corps, the Red Cross, and Save the Children. Using the button, you’ll be able to easily donate directly to any of the three organizations and, if you want, tell your friends that you donated.


The company is also working with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to provide information about ebola symptoms, prevention and treatment to people in both affected countries and areas neighboring those countries. It’s not clear how Facebook will be delivering this information.


Perhaps the most ambitious part of Facebook’s plan is its collaboration with NetHope, a consortium of 41 non-government organizations from around the world. The company is donating 100 mobile satellite communication terminals for the consortium to deploy in remote areas of the three affected countries to provide both telephone and mobile internet service, enabling medical and aid workers to communicate and gather information. There are of course echoes of Facebook’s plans to bring internet access to the rest of the world in this project.


This isn’t the first time Facebook has tried to use its massive platform to help people in times of crisis. Last month, the company announced a simple tool that helps people in crisis zones let their friends and families know they’re safe.



Angry Nerd: Big Hero 6 Is More Than Just a Disney-fied Comic


When Disney announced the launch of Big Hero 6, Angry Nerd thought Disney would turn it into a watered-down, kid-ready version of a beloved Marvel property. Turns out the Mouse House was able to adapt the classic comic (albeit with a few major changes) into an entertaining animated feature that’s not just another Disney dud.



Feds Seize Silk Road 2 In Major Dark Web Drug Bust


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Screenshot: WIRED



A year after the Silk Road 2 came online promising to revive the Dark Web drug trade following its predecessor’s seizure by the FBI, the sequel has suffered the same fate.


On Thursday international law enforcement agencies including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and Europol took down the Silk Road 2 and arrested its alleged operator 26-year-old Blake Benthall in San Francisco. Benthall, who is accused of running the new Silk Road under the handle “Defcon,” has been charged with narcotics trafficking, as well as conspiracy charges related to money laundering, computer hacking, and trafficking in fraudulent identification documents. The criminal complaint against him alleges that the Silk Road 2 sold hundreds of kilograms of drugs of every description to hundreds of thousands of buyers around the world, with bitcoin-based sales of more than $8 million per month at the time of its seizure.


“Let’s be clear – this Silk Road, in whatever form, is the road to prison,” Manhattan U.S. attorney Preet Bharara wrote in a statement to the press. “Those looking to follow in the footsteps of alleged cybercriminals should understand that we will return as many times as necessary to shut down noxious online criminal bazaars. We don’t get tired.”


The criminal complaint against Benthall outlines how the Silk Road 2′s staff was infiltrated by at least one undercover law enforcement agent even before the site went online in November of last year. In May of this year, the FBI somehow pinpointed the foreign server that ran the Silk Road 2 despite its use of the anonymity software Tor to protect its location, and obtained records from the server’s hosting provider identifying Benthall.


The complaint also traces Benthall’s proceeds from his alleged management of the Silk Road 2′s bustling sales. Law enforcement officials found that he used a bitcoin exchange to cash out $273,626 between Silk Road 2′s creation in November of last year and October of this year. About $70,000 of that money went towards a down payment on a $127,000 Tesla Model S.


Benthall’s arrest and the Silk Road 2 takedown follows news that Irish police arrested two drug trafficking suspects in Dublin and seized nearly $250,000 worth of drugs in an operation called “Onymous.” An FBI spokesperson confirmed that the arrests were connected, but declined to offer more information. An under


Benthall is accused of taking control of the Silk Road in December of last year, one month after it was created to replace the original Silk Road after the site’s October 2013 bust by the FBI. The Silk Road 2, like its predecessor, was initially run by a pseudonymous figure known as the Dread Pirate Roberts. But after the arrest of three alleged Silk Road 2 staffers who were also accused of working for the original Silk Road, the Dread Pirate Roberts disappeared, allegedly leaving Silk Road two in Benthall’s hands.


WIRED will be updating this post as we learn more. In the meantime, here’s the criminal complaint against Benthall.


Blake Benthall Criminal Complaint



Antibiotics: On-the-spot tests reduce unnecessary prescriptions

Fast, on-the-spot tests for bacterial infections may help to reduce excessive antibiotic use. A systematic review published in The Cochrane Library, found that when doctors tested for the presence of bacterial infections they prescribed fewer antibiotics.



Antibiotics treat infections caused by bacteria but not those caused by viruses. Most patients who visit their doctors with acute respiratory infections are suffering from viral infections like the common cold. However, because doctors usually have no immediate way of knowing whether an infection is bacterial or viral, they may still prescribe antibiotics for these patients. Unnecessary use of antibiotics gives bacteria more opportunities to develop resistance to the drugs, meaning that common antibiotics are increasingly powerless in treating serious bacterial infections when they do occur. One way to tackle this problem is to offer on-the-spot tests that can help doctors to better target antibiotic use in people who have bacterial infections.


The researchers looked at evidence from randomised trials on use of the C-reactive protein test, which is currently the only on-the-spot kit available to general practitioners intended to guide antibiotic prescription. It involves testing a single drop of blood collected by pricking the patient's finger and takes about three minutes. C-reactive protein acts as a so-called 'biomarker' of inflammation and low levels may effectively rule out serious bacterial infection, meaning that use of antibiotics would be unnecessary.


Data on the use of the test was available from six trials involving a total of 3,284 predominantly adult patients. Overall, 631 out of the 1,685 people who took the biomarker test were prescribed antibiotics, compared to 785 out of the 1,599 people who did not take the test. Antibiotic use was 22% lower in the group who took the test. However, the results varied considerably between studies, possibly due to differences in the way they were designed. This makes interpretation of the findings more difficult. The review found no difference between the two groups in terms of how long patients took to recover.


"These results suggest that antibiotic use in patients with acute respiratory infections could be reduced by carrying out biomarker tests in addition to routine examinations," said lead researcher Rune Aabenhus who is based at the Department of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark. "Going forward, it would be useful to see more evidence on the size of the reduction and cost-savings, as well as how these tests compare to other antibiotic-saving approaches."


The researchers conclude that the test seems to be safe in its current form. However, in one of the six trials, based on a small number of cases, those who took the biomarker test were more likely to be admitted to hospital at a later date. "This result may have been a chance finding, but it does remind us that general practitioners need to be careful about how they use these tests" said Aabenhus.


Cochrane is an independent, trusted producer of research in to the effects of healthcare treatments and interventions. Trusted evidence, made available to everyone, can help improve decision-making, reduce treatment costs and drive better health.




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The above story is based on materials provided by Wiley . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.



Engineered for tolerance, bacteria pump out higher quantity of renewable gasoline

An international team of bioengineers has boosted the ability of bacteria to produce isopentenol, a compound with desirable gasoline properties. The finding, published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, is a significant step toward developing a bacterial strain that can yield industrial quantities of renewable bio-gasoline.



The metabolic engineering steps to produce short-chain alcohol solvents like isopentenol in the laboratory bacteria Escherichia coli have been worked on extensively by many research groups, explains Aindrila Mukhopadhyay, director of host engineering at the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, California and senior author on the study.


"Biofuels are one tool in the array of alternative energy solutions that can be used in our infrastructure immediately," she says. Sustainably produced fuel compounds can be added directly into gasoline blends used today to offset reliance on fossil fuels and also lower the net carbon emissions from vehicles.


"But the solvent-like compounds inhibit microbial growth and that was an aspect that we realized would come up sooner rather than later," says Mukhopadhyay, who holds a joint appointment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "We wanted to look at that aspect with a systems biology approach -- could we engineer bacteria to also tolerate the solvent it is producing?"


Improving tolerance is key to moving production toward levels that are industrially relevant. Industrial production requires a robust strain that can stably produce for longer periods of time and withstand the accumulation of the solvent-like biofuel.


To address this challenge, the team, which also included researchers from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, National University of Singapore, and the University of California, Berkeley, treated a non-producing E. coli strain with isopentenol by adding it to the culture. As the bacteria responded to the solvent-stressor, the team measured which genes were shifted up or down by looking at messenger RNA transcripts across the entire genome.


They chose 40 genes that the bacteria cranked up in response to isopentenol -- presumably because their actions helped mitigate the toxicity in some way. Next, they overexpressed each one in a bacterial strain actively producing isopentenol to see which ones might improve the strain's growth.


Of the eight genes that rescued growth, two stood out as promising -- MetR, a biosynthesis regulator, that improved isopentenol production by 55%, and MdlB, a transporter, that improved production by 12%. If the researchers bumped up the levels of the MdlB transporter protein inside the cells even further, they saw production improve by as much as 60% over the original strain.


"Finding a transporter really appealed to us because it has the potential to export the final solvent product out of the cell," says Mukhopadhyay. "And in this case, once enough alcohol gets outside the cell, it might phase separate and not even be accessible to the organism anymore." In other words, the biofuel would separate away to sit atop the watery broth the bacteria live in.


As an added bonus, the MdlB protein is a good candidate for directed evolution experiments that could improve the performance and specificity of the transporter for shuttling isopentenol out as quickly as possible. Combining a more efficient transporter with other genes that improved tolerance might produce a strain that can generate bio-gasoline for the gas pump in the near future.




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The above story is based on materials provided by American Society for Microbiology . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.



Why does red meat increase risk for cardiovascular disease? Blame our gut bacteria

New research provides details on how gut bacteria turn a nutrient found in red meat into metabolites that increase the risk of developing heart disease. Publishing in the November 4th issue of the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism, the findings may lead to new strategies for safeguarding individuals' cardiovascular health.



Previous research led by Dr. Stanley Hazen, of Lerner Research Institute and the Miller Family Heart and Vascular Institute at Cleveland Clinic, revealed a pathway by which red meat can promote atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries. Essentially, bacteria in the gut convert L-carnitine, a nutrient abundant in red meat, into a compound called trimethylamine, which in turn changes to a metabolite named trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO), which promotes atherosclerosis. Now Dr. Hazen and his team extend their earlier research and identify another metabolite, called gamma-butyrobetaine, that is generated to an even greater extent by gut bacteria after L-carnitine is ingested, and it too contributes to atherosclerosis.


The researchers found that gamma-butyrobetaine is produced as an intermediary metabolite by microbes at a rate that is 1,000-fold higher than the formation of trimethylamine in the gut, making it the most abundant metabolite generated from dietary L-carnitine by microbes in the mouse models examined. Moreover, gamma-butyrobetaine can itself be converted into trimethylamine and TMAO. Interestingly, however, the bacteria that produce gamma-butyrobetaine from L-carnitine are different from the bacterial species that produce trimethylamine from L-carnitine.


The discovery that metabolism of L-carnitine involves two different gut microbial pathways, as well as different types of bacteria, suggests new targets for preventing atherosclerosis -- for example, by inhibiting various bacterial enzymes or shifting gut bacterial composition with probiotics and other treatments.


"The findings identify the pathways and participants involved more clearly, and help identify targets for therapies for interventions to block or prevent heart disease development," says Dr. Hazen. "While this is into the future, the present studies may help us to develop an intervention that allows one to 'have their steak and eat it too' with less concern for developing heart disease."




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The above story is based on materials provided by Cell Press . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.



Scribd Rolls Out the Internet’s First All-You-Can-Listen Audiobooks Service


Apple EarPod headphones

Ariel Zambelich/WIRED



The rise of the Subscription Economy continues.


Little more than a year after launching its all-you-can-read ebook service, the San Francisco startup Scribd has announced that the service now offers more than 30,000 audiobooks, including titles from big-name publishing houses HarperCollins and Scholastic as well as audiobook-specialist Blackstone. For $8.99 a month, you can not only read as many books as you can find on the service, but also listen to as many audiobooks as you can find.


According to HarperCollins chief digital officer Chantal Restivo-Alessi, this is the first subscription service to offer unlimited access to audiobooks, and though that may seem like a minor distinction, it represents a much larger shift in the way digital content is consumed over the net. Companies like Spotify offer unlimited access to music for a flat monthly fee. Netflix and Amazon do much the same for movies. And after companies like Scribd and Oyster pioneered similar services for ebooks, the subscription model is now pushing into the audiobook market as well.


With these services, you don’t buy am individual movie or a song or a book and store it on your machine. You pay for the right to access a massive online catalog whenever you like.


More and more, it seems, this is the way people prefer to pay for digital stuff online. Scribd CEO Trip Adler declines to say how many people are using the company’s service, but he claims about 50 percent growth every month. And as the likes of Spotify and Netflix expand their reach, they’re eating into services that ask you to pay for discrete items.


Just recently, Amazon CFO Tom Szkuta told the world that more of the company’s customers now prefer to rent rather than buy, seeking to explain a recent slowdown in the sale of media on the site. Rather than forking over dough to own books, music, movies, and games, these customers are opting for subscription services and other similar services. Apple has also seen this change, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, with iTunes music sales declining 13 to 14 percent since the start of the year.


It’s no wonder that both Apple and Amazon are now shifting towards the subscription model. Apple recently acquired the Beats music subscription service, and Amazon is now pushing services like Prime, which offers unlimited access to music and video, and Kindle Unlimited, which offers ebooks.


For the customer, the new model makes good sense. Why pay to own something when you can so easily and so cheaply revisit it on the net at any time? Part of Scribd’s pitch is that its service lets you not only revisit books, but also sample them. “We make it a lot easier to just start a piece of content,” says Scribd CEO Trip Adler. “You can simply try out different books and audiobooks until you find what you want.”


The question is whether the economics will ultimately make sense for those who produce the content. But in some ways, subscription services can actually end up boosting additional sales. According to Restivo-Alessi, after HarperCollins joined forces with Scribd on its ebook service, the publisher has seen “incremental growth” in sales and “increased exposure” for its back catalog. “We believe the world will continue to be a mixed world. A la carte retail and subscription. Physical and digital,” Restivo-Alessi says. “Our job is to offer choice to consumers and allow them to access our content in as many ways as possible as long as its value is recognized.”


That may be true. But subscriptions are on the rise. Very much so.



The New Office Apps for iPhone Could Make Microsoft Relevant Again


microsoft

Jim Merithew/WIRED



This is not Steve Ballmer’s Microsoft.


On Thursday, Microsoft released Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as three distinct apps for the iPhone. The company already offered an iPhone app called Microsoft Office Mobile—which combined those three classic applications—but this is different. The relaunch of the company’s most iconic software on its archrival’s most iconic mobile device marks a turning point. Instead of trying to cram mobile computing into a shape that fits its old model, Microsoft is reshaping itself to fit what mobile computing already has become.


The company also has released new versions of its three main apps for iPad and a preview version of Office apps for Android tablets, and it has integrated its iOS apps with Dropbox, as promised earlier this week. But there’s a larger point illustrated by these many announcements, and it lies with the operating system that isn’t part of the news: Windows.


This change in attitude, as represented by its mobile strategy for Office, could resurrect Microsoft’s fortunes as a consumer tech company.


During a recent meeting with WIRED, Microsoft Office director of product management Michael Atalla said new touch-optimized versions of the big three Office apps would reach Windows around the same time the company releases the latest incarnation of its flagship operating system: Windows 10. In the meantime, Microsoft is barreling ahead on iOS, a decision that effectively means that the most advanced versions of its mobile Office apps are only available on Apple devices. “They’re the best reflection of our mobile-first strategy,” Atalla said.


But that doesn’t mean Microsoft is bowing to Apple’s mobile primacy. Instead, Atalla said, Microsoft is seeking to make Office as uniform as possible across all devices, right down to creating a common code base—an acknowledgement that the most important change ushered in by mobile devices is the expectation that every screen should be a portal to the same information. “We want people to experience that unmistakeable Office look and feel everywhere.”


Office Props


The night of the midterm elections, some CNN anchors were spotted using their Microsoft Surface 3 tablets as stands to prop up their iPads. The nationally televised indignity pretty much summed up Microsoft’s (lack of) success in mobile so far.


Screen Shot 2014-11-05 at 4.00.37 PM

Presenter View in PowerPoint for iPhone. Screenshot: Microsoft



Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer might have thrown a chair over the incident. But under new CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has become much less uptight about how people want to use their own devices, and whose they want to use. This change in attitude, as represented by its mobile strategy for Office, could resurrect Microsoft’s fortunes as a consumer tech company.


The most striking first impression made by Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on the iPhone is how great they look on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. On these big, crisp screens, working on documents doesn’t feel like a kludgy compromise anymore. Microsoft’s designers have figured out how to minimize the intrusion of menus without dropping the functionality that desktop users take for granted. Cribbing from responsive web design, users can “reflow” documents to make them easy to read on the phone. At the same time, PowerPoint presentations on the iPhone screens are so vivid and legible that you could sit beside someone at a table, pluck your whole deck from Dropbox, and make your pitch—no projector or even laptop needed. Microsoft has seen the potential in a piece of hardware it doesn’t make or run and said, let’s make something really good for that.


Why Not Try?


Full disclosure: I’m an iPhone user, and I’ve hardly opened Office for years. But if that makes me biased, that should give what I’m about to say even more weight: Given what I saw, I might start using Office again. On top of the design itself, the apps are also free for basic authoring and editing. So I’m thinking, why not give them a try?


The way Microsoft is thinking about Office suggests a company no longer fixated on getting people to buy its devices or even its software, at least in the consumer market. Instead, Microsoft appears to be banking on the idea that you’ll use the new versions of Office so much that you’ll pay to make them more useful. While the basic apps are free, Office 365 subscribers get access to premium features like “track changes.”


Instead of treating users like pests who won’t get with the program, Microsoft appears to be trying to get them to actually like its products. That strategy won’t turn Microsoft back into the company that made Bill Gates the richest person in the world. But it could make Microsoft a company that’s relevant to consumers again in the 21st century.



The End of the Throw Away Appliance


i_photo

Rhett Allain



I went to press the “start” button on the dishwasher. Nothing happened. There was no sound, there were no lights. Nothing. It didn’t start. I convinced my daughter to help me take out all the dishes and wash them by hand. It really didn’t take too long, but I still love having a dishwasher.


When I had time, I started trying to troubleshoot and figure out the problem. The first step is always to turn off the power and turn it back on. You never know, that might fix it – but not in this case. After a couple more tests, it seemed clear that the washer was indeed getting power. I had narrowed the problem down to either the control board (the computer for the dishwasher) or the front control panel.


Here is the real problem. I wasn’t exactly sure which part was broken. The control panel costs about $100 and the control board has a price around $120. On a gamble, I could order the control panel (pretty sure that’s where the problem was), but what if I’m wrong? I could possibly return the piece but the whole process could take a significant amount of time.


Are there other options? Yes, there are two things to consider. First, I could call the repairman. These guys charge about $150 to come out and then you would have to pay for the part on top of that. No, that’s not a good option. Could I just buy a new washer? Yes, a new washer would cost between $250-$300.


Now you can see why we are in the age of the throw away appliance. Why would you repair an appliance if it is just a little bit more to buy a new one? Even if I did spend $100 to fix my washer, who knows – something else might break next week. In too many cases it’s just simpler to buy a new thing than to repair. I think this sucks.


What ever happened to Luis and Maria’s Fix It Shop on Sesame Street? You just don’t see places like this anymore. It’s not a good business plan since people just buy new appliances when they break. I miss Luis and Maria.


Maybe the companies that make appliances don’t really mind that you have a throw-away dish washer. Maybe they are even happy that you have to buy a new one. However, I think the future is near. In this future you will once again be able to repair your appliance. Why? I’ll give you three reasons.


Youtube. Even though we have devices that aren’t so easy to figure out, we have help (by we I mean people that want to repair their own stuff). Let’s go back to my dishwasher. If I do a quick search, I can find several videos showing exactly how to fix it – like this one. How awesome is that? And if you can’t find it in a video, you can probably find your answer in some DYI appliance forum. This is what makes the internet so great.


Arduino. The Arduino is an inexpensive and open source processor. Think of it as a tiny programmable chip, that’s essentially what it is. You can build all sorts of awesome stuff and it isn’t even that complicated. I have a group of kids that meet each week to work on building simple things.


i_photo1

Rhett Allain



But could you replace the control board in your dishwasher with Arduino? Yup. In fact, someone already did. So, the Arduino can solve the problem of replacing an expensive control board. What if manufacturers just used Arduino to begin with? It might be cheaper for them to create and it would be easier for you to fix. Also, just imagine all the cool upgrades you could add to your Arduino-based appliance.


Why does an oven need a computer in it anyway?


3D Printers. But what if you break a gear or some moving part in your appliance? You are pretty much done for, right? Oh, no – not right. What about the 3D printer? These things are becoming both cheaper and more accessible each day. Even now, I think you could print out any part you would need for a repair. Ok, I suspect there will be some problems ahead. The manufacturers are probably going to have a fit over people sharing parts data. They will claim that the parts for their washing machine are copyrighted and you can’t print out your own. They might even be legally correct (I have no idea). Whether they want it to happen or not, parts will be printable in the near future. And by “near future”, I mean now.


This will be the end of the disposable appliance. I, for one, welcome our 3D printed Arduino powered appliance Overlords.