October 2013

Google offered new proposals to address European Union concerns that the company unfairly uses its search engine to promote its own services.

The bloc gave Google's rivals four weeks to review the proposals, which change the way the company displays results, particularly for specialized shopping and local searches. The company also lowered from an earlier proposal the prices it charges rivals to appear in results. If the EU accepts Google's proposals, they will be binding on the company for five years. A trustee would be appointed to monitor compliance. The binding offer marks a new step for a company that earlier in 2013 was able to exit a similar investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission after making only voluntary commitments. If the European Commission doesn't accept Google's proposals, it can ask for further changes or begin formal legal antitrust proceedings. The commission has sent a request for information to 125 companies, including all the complainants and rivals who responded to earlier Google proposals.

"We're seeking targeted feedback on specific points," a senior EU official said. Google proposed displaying three sets of results from rival search engines in a box under its own shopping results. The rivals still would have to pay through an auction mechanism to be featured, as proposed earlier, but the minimum price for search terms has been cut to three European cents from 10 European cents (to four US cents from 14 US cents).

[Commentary] Americans who want answers and guidance on how to stop the political dysfunction in our lives need to be focusing on the dangers of the media's false equivalency.

False equivalency is the media's way of criticizing both political parties by exaggerating the mistakes and flaws of one party so when they have to criticize the obvious sins of the other party, they can do it without appearing to have a bias for one side or the other. Not buying into this false equivalency should be a major building block to fixing the current disaster we call our government. If the US electorate continues to swallow the lies of the media's false equivalency our government's ability to function will continue to deteriorate. The latest cost of false equivalency is 24 billion dollars. This is the estimated cost of the government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis. What is the silver lining of a 24 billion dollar that was just lost from this latest debacle? The truth can be a bitter pill but swallowing, it is better than for example enduring another financial disaster. The self-evident truth of the Tea Party's fight to destroy Obamacare is that the Tea Party wants power at any cost even if it means greatly damaging our country let alone the world. Now that the latest possible financial disaster has opened many eyes, it’s time for the blogosphere, the anti-enablers of the media, activists, and anyone who cares about righting the good ship USA to use this crystallizing moment to let the world know that the media's use of false equivalency has played a key role in systematically dismantling what was once a functioning democracy.

Noting that tablet computers like the iPad are increasingly the “first screen” for pre-school-age viewers, Disney executives said they would make the first nine episodes of a prominent new series available on mobile devices first.

The series will arrive on the Watch Disney Junior app and a related Web site on Nov. 24. Then, early next year, the series will have its debut on two traditional TV networks, Disney Channel and Disney Junior. “This is an entirely new approach for us,” said Nancy Kanter, executive vice president and general manager of Disney Junior Worldwide, which is aimed at children age 2 to 7. “We have been amazed at how quickly kids have embraced this new technology. We’re talking billions of minutes spent watching.” Disney is in some ways racing to keep up with its tiniest viewers. More than half of households with children now own a tablet, a 40 percent increase from last year, according to research conducted by the company. The devices are perfect for small hands, and parents have quickly become comfortable with iPads and similar devices as a form of entertainment.

It’s not in the stars after all. Instead, it seems, the shape of a person’s social network is a powerful signal that can identify one’s spouse or romantic partner -- and even if a relationship is likely to break up. So says a new research paper written by Jon Kleinberg, a computer scientist at Cornell University, and Lars Backstrom, a senior engineer at Facebook.

The paper will be presented at a conference on social computing in February 2013. The pair used a hefty data set from Facebook as their lab: 1.3 million Facebook users, selected randomly from among all users who are at least 20 years old, with from 50 to 2,000 friends, who list a spouse or relationship partner in their profile. That makes for a lot of social connections to analyze, roughly 379 million nodes and 8.6 billion links. The data was used anonymously. A yardstick called dispersion, a term used for the number of mutual friends shared in a network, measures not only mutual friends, but also friends from the further-flung reaches of a person’s network neighborhood. High dispersion occurs when a couple’s mutual friends are not well connected to one another. Particularly intriguing is that when this algorithm fails to identify a user’s spouse, it looks as if the relationship is in trouble.