Samsung fined $340,000 for online smear campaign and fraudulent reviews!!!

Back in April Samsung was put under investigation for alleged fraudulent online comments and negative assertions about its competitors. The Taiwanese Fair Trade Commission since found Samsung to be guilty of generating fake online comments through a large network of paid writers and even certain employees.

Taiwan's FTC stated that the fraudulent online presence, a practice generally referred to as "astroturfing," was done through outside marketing firms. This is something Samsung has admitted to in the past, according to previous reports. Samsung has now been fined over $340,000 for its involvement, and two local third party marketing firms have also been slapped with fines combining to more than $100,000.

Originally reports of Samsung's underhanded activity came along which accusations that the company was targeting HTC in Korea. But the FTC's report simply says that Samsung paid individuals to conduct smear campaigns against competing devices, highlighting the negative aspects of them, and does not mention any of the companies Samsung went after specifically. The FTC also claims that Samsung engaged in "disinfection" of negative reviews and comments, fraudulent "evaluation" of its products and deceptive, "palindromic" marketing campaigns.

While Samsung is certainly not the only major company involved in this kind of activity, it does seem to be the one getting caught the most recently. Earlier this year the company was fined $300,000 for a fraudulent marketing campaign for its Galaxy Y Duos GT-S6102.

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Google is experimenting with massive banner ads for brand searches!!!

Marissa Mayer penned a blog post more than seven years ago as Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, promising the company would never implement banner advertisements on the Google homepage or as part of search results.

It would now seem that the search giant is going back on their word as the company is testing massive banner advertisements in search results for specific brands. The ads, which resemble a cover photo like you’d find on a Facebook profile, were first discovered by digital marketing company Synrgy and have since been confirmed by a Google spokesperson.

Google said they are running a very limited test in the US with just five percent of search queries and roughly 30 advertisers including Crate & Barrel, Southwest Airlines and Virgin America. I searched for these brands from my own computer but was unable to see any queries with full-sized banner ads.

As The Verge correctly points out, the ads may likely drive more traffic than a traditional text-based search ad (and command more money from the advertiser) but they do so at the expense of related search results – pushing them much further down the page than they otherwise would be without the giant banner advertisement.

How do you feel about Google experimenting with such ads and the very real possibility that they could become a mainstay? Do you think it would nudge you toward using a different browser or is it not really that big of a deal to you? Let us know in the comments below!

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What is your best idea for an invention?!!!

Have you ever had a great idea for a new product or service only to see someone else beat you to the punch? Maybe you never really planned to pursue your invention but seeing someone else make million from an idea you came up with long ago is always tough to swallow.

I can think of a few instances where this has happened to me and I’m still holding on to one idea for a product I coined as part of an advertising class I took years ago. I think it would be a sure-fire hit but for whatever reason, I haven’t yet chased that dream (nor have I seen my idea show up on store shelves yet).

This week’s open forum is dedicated to this very topic. Have you ever come up with an idea only to find someone else profited from it years later? Or do you have an idea you’re tossing around that you think might be a winner? If so, let’s hear about it!

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Take a ride in a helium balloon to near-space for $75,000!!!

Interested in taking an 18-mile helium balloon ride to near-space for a breathtaking view of Earth? A startup by the name of World View intends to offer such a journey in the not too distance future for the low, low price of $75,000.

The plan is to send up to six passengers and two crew members 18 miles above Earth inside a capsule attached to a helium balloon the size of a football field. Riders will have about two hours to gaze down at the planet they call home through several transparent viewing sections in the transporter.

Testing in conjunction with Paragon Space Development Corporation is expected to begin sometime next year with Arizona and New Mexico cited as possible launch pads.

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New York City to retrofit 250,000 street lamps with LED bulbs!!!

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan recently announced plans to upgrade the city’s 250,000 street lamps from traditional bulbs to LEDs. The transition, said to be the largest LED retrofit in the country, should be ready by 2017 and will save the city and taxpayers $6 million in energy costs and $8 million in maintenance each year.

Bloomberg said LEDs are the wave of the future because they last a long time and use a lot less energy. True enough, many LED bulbs can last 20 years or longer before needing to be replaced. That’s a lot longer than the six year lifespan of existing high-pressure sodium street lights.

In addition to energy and maintenance savings, the LEDs will produce a whiter light that will help illuminate the city’s 6,000 miles of roads and 12,000 miles of sidewalks. If a recent rollout of LED bulbs in Boston is any indication, however, not everyone will be thrilled with the new light sources. Some residents complained the light given off by the LED bulbs resembles what you’d find from a floodlight.

New York and Boston aren’t the only cities switching to LED technology. Earlier this year, Los Angelescompleted a rollout that replaced more than 140,000 bulbs with their LED counterparts.

LED lighting has already been installed along Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, along FDR Drive and in Central Park’s pedestrian paths. LEDs have even found their way to the East River bridges, city officials said.

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Chrome used more than Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer combined!!!

Google Chrome is absolutely dominating the web browser market, at least according to social analytics firm Shareaholic, which yesterday released usage statistics for all browsers worldwide.

The data, which covers the 2013 calendar year up until now, reveals Chrome (34.68%) is used more than Firefox (16.60%), Opera (2.02%) and Internet Explorer (15.62%) combined. Adding the stock Android browser (7.36%) into the mix and Google commands over 42% of all browser usage, second to Apple with just 21% after combining Safari (16.15%) and Safari in-app browser (4.86%) use.

It's also worth noting that the top four browsers - Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer (in that order) - are used by over 80% of the market. This might not be the case in the future though, with Internet Explorer and Firefox on the decline, while Chrome and the stock Android browser continue to climb.

As The Next Web notes, Shareaholic's data differs to that collected by popular statistics firm Net Applications in a number of ways, which can explain why Net Applications consistently ranks Internet Explorer as the most used browser.

Shareaholic tracked 250 million users over 200,000 websites, collecting and combining pageview data for both mobile and desktop browsers. Net Applications simply tracks desktop unique users, rather than pageviews, which results in more market share for more widespread, but less frequently used browsers such as IE.

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Leaked documents reveal NSA spied on the phone conversations of 35 world leaders!!!

The National Security Agency has monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders thanks to help from other branches of the government courtesy of the latest leaked documents obtained by The Guardian via whistleblower Edward Snowden. The revelation comes shortly after German Chancellor Angela Merkel claimed to have obtained information that the US may have monitored her mobile phone.

According to the publication, the NSA encourages those in charge of “customer” departments like the White House and the Pentagon to share their “Rolodexes” so the agency can add the telephone numbers of world leaders to their surveillance programs.

In one instance, a government worker reportedly handed over 200 phone numbers to the NSA which were subsequently pegged for surveillance. Interestingly enough, the October 2006 memo also points out that such spying efforts resulted in little reportable intelligence.

White House spokesperson Jay Carney said the latest NSA revelations have caused tension in their relationship with some countries but they are dealing with it through diplomatic channels. Carney further noted that the relationships in question are very important both economically and for the safety and security of the US and thus they will continue to work to maintain the closest possible ties.

Germany’s defense minister Thomas de Maizière said it would be really bad if the allegations prove to be true. Maizière added that it really can’t work like this and they couldn’t simply go back to business as usual.

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Self-driving cars projected to reduce injuries by 90 percent, save $450 billion annually!!!

Driver error is the number one cause of automobile crashes so what would happen if you removed humans from the equation? According to independent research by the Eno Center for Transportation, vehicle-related injuries would drop by 90 percent and save the US economy roughly $450 billion each year.

The group discovered that 40 percent of fatal crashes in the US involved alcohol, drugs, fatigue or distraction – all metrics that wouldn’t affect an autonomous vehicle. Even in cases where a vehicle is primarily responsible for an accident, human elements like not paying attention and speeding often contributed to the occurrence of crashes and / or the severity of injuries.

The adoption rate of self-driving vehicles among consumers will of course play a big role in how many accidents can be avoided and how much money the economy could save. For example, if one in every 10 car was replaced with an autonomous vehicle, it would reduce crashes and subsequent injuries by roughly half and save around $25 billion each year.

To realize 90 percent safer roads as mentioned in the introduction, an equal 90 percent adoption rate would be necessary while hitting the $450 billion savings mark would require nearly 100 percent adoption.

Several self-driving cars are in the works from the likes of Google, Mercedes, Nissan and Toyota but thus far, the high cost of necessary components and lack of general regulations have only helped to slow down progress. It’ll eventually happen but it’s just a matter of how long it will take.

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Fon makes US debut, hoping to grow the Wi-Fi sharing community!!!

For those of you residing in Europe, you’ve probably heard a lot about Fon. The company operates the largest Wi-Fi network in the world, consisting of over 12 million different hotspots. The system essentially works by having registered members share a portion of their bandwidth, in exchange for having access to any other members’. This massive “Wi-Fi community” first launched in Europe in 2007, reached Japan in 2011, and is now making its official debut in the US.

As of today, interested parties can purchase the specialized router on either Amazon.com or through thecompany website for $59. Fon has also opened up a new office in New York City to head up the transition to US markets.

So why did it take so long for Fon to target American customers? CEO of Fon US, Nina Sodhi, toldGigaOM that Europeans and Americans share very different ideologies. In general, Europeans use Wi-Fi as the preferred method to connect their tablet or smartphone to the web, while those in the US are more reliant on cellular data plans.

However, now that U.S companies such as Comcast are starting to embrace the concept of shared Wi-Fi, Fon realizes that it must act sooner rather than later. Sodhi added, “It really jumpstarted thinking about community Wi-Fi in the US.”

To help scale its services, Fon is hoping to join forces with several US carriers. Fon has already established a deal with AT&T; however, this partnership currently only applies to international roaming. Sodhi has mentioned that discussions with numerous carriers and ISPs are ongoing.

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Japanese restaurant replaces waiters with conveyor belt to deliver your food!!!

I love going out to eat at local restaurants. Not only do I have access to a much wider variety of food than I could cook at home, I don’t have to deal with dirtying up and then cleaning the dishes. As you are likely well aware, however, restaurants more often than not have one common complaint: the service stinks.

A Japanese restaurant has come up with a novel approach to the issue – simply get rid of the waiters. The restaurant has installed an elaborate conveyor belt that runs along the side of each table. If you see a dish that you’d like to eat, simply take it off the belt and chow down. In the event you don’t see what you’re after, you can order a custom dish from a touch screen tablet and have it sent out via conveyor belt when ready.

When you’ve finished, simply dispose of each dish into a slot under the conveyer belt. Your bill is calculated based on how many plates you send down the chute.

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Vine update finally delivers editing and draft mode!!!

Vine has pushed out a new update that adds two features deemed by many to be missing from the initial launch: drafts and editing, or as they are officially termed, Sessions and Time Travel. Collectively, the new features should make it easier for users to create the perfect Vine.

With Sessions, Vine users can now maintain multiple drafts – up to 10 at any given time – to comb through and edit at a later date. Previously, users were unable to access their feed or other sections of the app once a new video had been started. To designate a post as a draft or access previously stored Sessions, simply tap the new icon in the bottom right corner of the camera.

The Time Travel editing feature allows Vine users to remove, reorganize or replace any shot within a post at any time. When shooting a clip, you should now see a green bar and an edit option when in preview mode. This means you can now fix any mistakes in clips, something that wasn’t possible before.

The last update for Vine came in early July just two weeks after Instagram launched their competing video service. That update included a new camera interface, the ability to ‘re-Vine’ posts from other users and the addition of categories to sort clips based on content like comedy, nature, music and yes, even cats.

The latest update is available as of writing for Android and iOS.

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Nexus 5 expected to debut October 31 in the US!!!

The anticipation and excitement surrounding the upcoming Nexus 5 smartphone and Android 4.4 Kitkatsoftware update have reached a feverish pace, especially when you consider the phone briefly appeared on the Google Play store last week. And if the latest rumors prove to be true, consumers won’t have to wait much longer for the device as the latest suggests it will launch on October 31 in the US.

Canadian tech blog MobileSyrup claims a source tipped them off to the Halloween launch date. What’s more, Canadian residents could see the phone arrive a week later on November 7 or 8 through multiple carriers including Bell, Koodo, Rogers, Telus and Virgin Mobile. Of course, as with all rumors, this one should be taken with a healthy helping of salt as several ‘launch’ windows have already come and gone.

Built by LG, the Nexus 5 is rumored to ship with a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU, 2GB of system memory, a 4.95-inch display operating at full 1080p resolution, 4G LTE, NFC and support for the coveted Wi-Fi 802.11ac. Some sources also claim it will also arrive with an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 2,300mAh battery.

When the phone briefly appeared on Google Play, it was priced starting at $349 which is the same price the current Nexus 4 sells for. It’s worth pointing out that this is the off-contract price which makes the device extremely attractive.

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Germany proposes locked-down national internet after recent NSA scandal!!!

This morning information on the NSA phone tapping of 35 different world leaders dropped courtesy of whistleblower Edward Snowden, and now Deutsche Telekom is proposing to create a national internet to shield German users from prying eyes.

Deutsche Telekom, which is 32% owned by the German government, wants to create a locked-down national internet to protect itself from further NSA privacy attacks. It is also pushing for other German communications and internet companies to back the proposal, according to reports from Reuters.

As many have suggested, this is much easier said than done, technically speaking it will be very difficult to create this kind of national protection without blocking the country off from services such as Google and Facebook.

The main problem here is that this kind of censorship goes completely against what the internet is, and as Reuters mentions, it could very well lead to a "Balkanisation of the internet" if other nations decide to lock-down the web in this way as well. Currently, this kind of control is only really seen in nations like China and Iran where the governments impose strict filters over what is available online. "It is internationally without precedent that the internet traffic of a developed country bypasses the servers of another country," professor of business and telecoms at the University of Duisburg-Essen Torsten Gerpott told Reuters.

It is hard to say at this point how serious the suggestion for a locked-down German internet actually is, but it wouldn't be the first time the state-backed Deutsche Telekom made a move in this direction. Back in August, the company launched "E-mail made in Germany," a service that provides encrypted email that is sent through local German servers only.

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This modified Lexus paints a unique portrait of its driver based on how it is driven!!!

As the saying goes, the way you drive says a lot about who you are. That’s especially true for art collector Walter Vanhaerent as his new Lexus IS 300h hybrid has been modified to paint his portrait each time he drives based on how he drives.

A large LCD screen on the dash displays the artwork as it is being painted. Custom software is used to paint his portrait in the style of artist Sergio Abliac with influence on how he drives. For example, the portrait will feature more detail if Vanhaerent drives slowly and will lean towards the abstract side if he drives fast.

Even the colors used in the painting are left up to chance. Cooler colors are used when the electric drivetrain is powering the vehicle while warmer colors are only utilized when the car is running on gasoline.

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Moto X and LG G2 now available starting at $99 on-contract!!!

The highly-customizable Moto X smartphone is now available for 50 percent less than it cost just 24 hours ago. That’s right, Motorola’s latest with 16GB of storage can now be had for $99.99 with a two year service agreement or if you need more storage, the 32GB flavor now runs $149.99.

Best Buy was reportedly the first retailer to drop the price of the Moto X and since that time, other big names like Amazon have followed their lead. The price applies to both new and existing customers and is available in AT&T and Verizon flavors.

News of a price drop isn’t terribly surprising as the full lineup of Droid devices at Verizon saw similar price cuts just a week ago. The price cut could also signal the imminent launch of a new device, rumors of which have been making the rounds this week. According to SlashGear, the unnamed handset will feature a larger display and a higher resolution than the one on the Moto X. They claim the device will likely be powered by a new Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and feature the Motorola X8 compute chip.

In related news, the more powerful LG G2 has received a similar price cut down to just $99 with a two-year contract for new Verizon customers. This phone is powered by a 2.26GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU alongside 2GB of RAM. Other amenities include a 13-megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilization, 32GB of internal storage and a 5.2-inch IPS display operating at a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080.

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Comcast offering 25Mbps Internet, local channels and HBO Go for $40!!!

HBO isn’t ready to upset their lucrative distribution deals with cable providers by offering HBO Go as a standalone, online-only service. But Comcast may just have the next best thing. As reported by GigaOM, the company has begun selling a $40 ‘Internet Plus’ package comprising a 25 Mbps internet connection, a selection of 45 local channels, Comcast's streaming video service Streampix, and a subscription to HBO and HBO Go.

The service is only available in certain markets and requires no long-term contract so you can cancel anytime. There are some caveats, though. The offer is available only to new customers who sign up before January 31st, and the $40 pricing is only available for the first 12 months -- after that it will jump to $70 a month.

HBO executives have been hinting at the possibility of tying HBO Go to broadband services for months and this appears to be what they had in mind. Pricing is more or less in line with what the network’s chief executive Richard Plepler said back in March, suggesting customers could pay $50 a month for their Internet and an extra $10 or $15 for HBO to be packaged in with the service, adding that they “would have to make the math work.”

Although technically this isn’t cord cutting as you’re still getting regular HBO through a cable subscription, it certainly beats spending $100 a month or more on a full service package that bundles countless channels you don’t really care about just to gain access to a select few you routinely watch.

People have been campaigning for a la carte television programming for years -- and those living in Canada are already seeing some progress here. But while US providers may be reluctant to follow, cheaper and more flexible packages are at least a step forward. We’ll see if others follow suit.

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BlackBerry denies any involvement in questionable reviews of BBM for Android!!!

BlackBerry resumed its rollout of BBM for Android and iOS earlier this week which was downloaded more than 10 million times in the first 24 hours. Impressive as those statistics may be, it’s the controversy surrounding a number of clearly bogus reviews that have cropped up on the Google Play Store that has consumed headlines as of late.

The Canadian handset maker recently addresses the matter in a statement to TNW. In it, a spokesperson said they have been made aware of a number of potentially fake reviews for the app on Google Play. BlackBerry said they have no knowledge of how these reviews were created or populated nor do they approve of or condone such activities.

The spokesperson goes on to plug the many genuine and useful reviews from new BBM users on Android and urges others to continue to post true assessments of their experience with the software through the proper channels.

BBM for Android and iOS launched on Monday and almost immediately, some users started noticing fake reviews. The story didn’t really pick up much steam until yesterday when tech blogger Terence Edendiscovered that thousands of reviews on Google Play all appear to say the exact same thing.

If the fact that the reviews are riddled with poor grammar wasn’t enough of an indicator, the obvious copy-and-paste job should certainly tip you off. The question now becomes, if BlackBerry isn’t responsible for the phony reviews, then who is? And what is their motivation?

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New Firefox add-on allows you to see how, when and where sites are tracking your browsing history!!!

We all know that many sites will use any method they can to track us, whether it's for legitimate reasons that make our experience a better one or for evil reasons like advertising data or just keeping an eye on us.

That tracking data can become woven in a large web of connected sites and now Mozilla has released a new add-on for its Firefox browser that will visualize this process as it happens, logging sites that are tracking you and how those entities are connected to other services/tools.

The new add-on is called Lightbeam, it functions as a Firefox plugin and will put a name to the faces that are tracking your browsing history. The add-on, which is based on the experimental Collusion extension, will not only track first party sites but it also allows you to see third party tools and other forms of tracking technology connected to those sites.

It provides three view modes to display the data, including Graph, Clock and List. It will allow the user to examine tracking data over space and time. More importantly it will identify where they are connecting to your internet activity and provide ways for users to "engage with this unique view of the Web." From there, the add-on also has some sharing options where users can feed their data (or parts of it) into the Lightbeam database, which is attempting to piece together a more global picture of how different tracking elements work online.

Lightbeam is available now for Firefox. So far user reviews have been positive with a 4 out of 5 rating on Mozilla's download page. It requires Firefox 19 or later (current version is 24.0), head over to Lightbeam'scompatibility page for more information.

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Samsung turns in another record-setting quarter with $9.56 billion in profit!!!

Samsung has once again turned in a record-breaking quarter that surpassed even their own estimates. During the three-month period, the Korean tech giant posted 59.08 trillion won (roughly $55.59 billion) in revenue and a consolidated operating profit of 10.16 trillion won, or about $9.56 billion. The profit gains represent a seven percent increase over the quarter ago period and a 26 percent boost compared to the same time period last year.

It should come as little surprise that sales of smartphones and chipsets are responsible for the impressive figures. Flagship handsets like the Galaxy S4 and the Note 3 continue to do well as we are told that smartphone shipments were up about 10 percent but still remained somewhat flat compared to the previous quarter sales. Instead, Samsung is cleaning up in the lower-end, mass-market segment which was primarily responsible for driving profits up.

The chipset division, meanwhile, turned in its best earnings performance in three years. Sales of memory for gaming consoles and mobile devices led to a 12 percent increase in revenue over the previous quarter. The display business, on the other hand, didn’t do so well as it caused operating profits to fall by 12 percent.

Looking forward, Samsung is expecting steady growth through the fourth quarter. This of course will be led by the always-lucrative holiday buying season as consumers clamor to get the latest and greatest smartphones and tablets either for themselves or loved ones.

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PlayStation 4 will require a Day One update to enable many basic features!!!

Sony’s PlayStation 4 will require a Day One software update to enable full console functionality. The patch will weigh in around 300MB and enable basic features like Blu-ray and DVD support, party chat and the ability to listen to music in the background while playing a game.

Other more complex features that will be missing out of the box include Remote Play on the PS Vita and the ability to record and upload gameplay highlights using the Share button. What’s more, gamers won’t be able to livestream sessions through Twitch and Ustream without the 1.50 update nor will they be able to use voice commands and facial recognition features via the optional PS4 Eye accessory.

It doesn’t end there, either, as the update will be necessary to use Sony’s ‘play as you download’ feature powered by technology acquired from Gaikai. As Engadget correctly pegs it, pretty much everything we’ve heard Sony talk about in the lead up to the PS4’s launch won’t be available without the update.

Looking past how so many crucial features missed being baked into the console from the factory, I can already see how this will play out based on experience with other massive updates and online-required game updates. In short, there will be a lot of pissed off gamers come November 15 and in the days that follow that won’t be able to get the update because the servers will be overloaded. I invite Sony to prove me wrong and allocate enough download servers in advance but given precedent, I just don’t see that happening.

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Batman: Arkham Origins Review!!!

Troy Baker's Joker voice is one of the best things about Batman: Arkham Origins. But it’s also a disturbingly reverent impersonation of Mark Hamill's take on the Clown Prince of Crime. Therein lies the conundrum of the latest video game featuring the Dark Knight.

On multiple levels, this game is about finding one's voice. Players inhabit a Bruce Wayne who's been Batman for two years, as he faces a crucible that will test his resolve as never before. The Christmas Eve drama starts with eight assassins out to collect a $50 million bounty on Batman's head—set by crime lords and gets complicated by a first run-in with future arch-foe The Joker.

The people making Origins are trying to establish their creative voice as well. The game has been made by a new studio who are following up two well-regarded games by originating studio Rocksteady.

Playing Origins feels like listening to a great cover band. As you glide, sneak and brawl your way through Gotham, you'll remember the rhythms that made you fall in love with this playable adaptation of Batman. But that same experience reminds you that this is a tribute act—often a convincing one—but still a tribute. And like any tribute, it's wise to worry when new interpreters try to put their own spin on the familiar.

There's a lot of new in Batman: Arkham Origins. New gadgets, new voice actors, new villains and, most significantly, new developers. New gadgets like the Remote Claw tether and Shock Gloves serve dual purposes throughout, with combat and traversal applications that let you vary up strategies. New enemy types—like burly, hit-sponge Enforcers and nimble Martial Artists who can counter your counters—also make for a nice change up from the last two Bat-games. Indeed, for the most part, the infusion of new gameplay elements meshes well with the established ones that have won hundreds of thousands of fans for Batman's most recent video game outings. But sometimes, the new stuff feels like so much nervous fiddling.

Take the Crime Scene Investigations. When Batman comes upon the site of a murder, players will need to scan for multiple pieces of evidence that will eventually congeal into a virtualized version of what happened. But all you're really doing is looking for glowing indicators in Detective Vision. There's no real sifting through possibilities, no red herrings to lead you astray. It's just turn the camera and click on the red thing. What would Harvey Harris say?

Then there's the Dark Knight System, which is a bit of a split offering. It's sort of like the synchronization tiers that the Assassin's Creed series added as it annualized, a subset of challenges that task you with fulfilling the role of The Dark Knight in a specific way. So, you'll have to do stuff like take out two enemies in one slide or finish a stealth encounter without ever being seen. The system isn't invasive and acts as a set of passive objectives that unlock XP points as you clear them. There's also a related scoring system that feels like an attempt to make players care about how they fight and sneak in Origins. I never cared about that stuff in previous Bat-games, though, and while adding this tweak here doesn't seriously hurt anything, it mostly feels like distracting clutter. Every fight judges your performance and grades you, so instead of the world being immersive, you're constantly being reminded of the game-iness of the whole thing.

However, boss battles are one significant area where Origins feels like it's better than its predecessors. The Bane showdowns—yeah, there's more than one—are less of a goad-charge-dodge-attack endurance affair than in previous games. You feel like you're actually fighting and out-thinking the 'roided-out mercenary rather than reacting to his brute force. The fight with Firefly is a nice departure, too, changing up camera angles to top to side and creating a larger playfield for the flying pyromaniac to torment Batman. The reliance on quick-response prompts hasn't gone away but at least it's embedded in duels that show some varying approaches.

The fast-travel feature is yet another thing emblematic of the changes that WB Montreal is implementing to the Bat-Arkham game recipe. You need to unlock the travel points in each section of the map by hacking security consoles. Where hacking puzzle sequences were more or less elements unto themselves in previous games, here they're more embedded into the gameworld. So, it's "defeat one node, fight the guys guarding another, solve the traversal conundrum making the last node impossible to reach." It's a lot of busywork and it'd be worth it if it unlocked a cool story beat or impressive cutscene. But after all that effort, all you're getting mostly is a way to get around faster. Other subquests open up, too, like the option to track down and destroy the relay network that Enigma (a pre-question-mark Riddler) uses to collect blackmail information. But that, too, is tertiary, just more busywork that adds nothing to narrative momentum. You don't have to do any of it, of course, since it's pinned to an auxiliary but still helpful procedure. But the alternative is much slower travel across the map.

But this deeper interconnectedness feels good in other portions of the game. The Most Wanted missions are threaded tangents that form a sort of mini-campaign away from the main plotline. They're standard open-world side missions, like tracking down and destroying Penguin's weapon caches, defusing Anarky's scattered bombs and foiling Mad Hatter's kidnapping. But, whether it's the psychedelic sidescrolling of Mad Hatter's mindscape or the philosophical orneriness of Anarky's speeches, they're presented in ways that experiment. Yes, finishing a Most Wanted campaign unlocks even more gadgets but—combined with the tougher Crimes in Progress pop-up encounters in the open world—they all congeal to make the game feel like Bruce Wayne's final exam in Batmanology.

Speaking of Batmanology, Origins' story will ring familiar for longtime fans. It's a mix-and-match buffet of Significant Bat-Moments, with Barbara Gordon hero worship, Alfred pleading with Bruce to stop his crusade and the earning of Jim Gordon's trust all nestled in the Story mode. If you've absorbed seminal Bat-lore like The Long Halloween, The Dark Knight, The Killing Joke, Batman: Year One and the previous Arkham games, many scenes and plot threads—psycho-criminals supplanting mobsters, for example— will ping off of your memories. There's also WB Montreal's take on a fateful first meeting between Batman and Joker, where each comes away realizing that their lives are going to be much different because of each other.

Some of the proceedings reek of formulaic thinking, though. Oh, look, it's another sequence where Batman's stumbling around hallucinating because he's been drugged. Oh, look, more guilt-ridden visions. Oh, look, Batman being terse and dismissive of allies. It doesn't matter that this is a prequel and that these moments may be chronologically justifiable. They may meant to be homage but feel like required assignments on a Batman 101 syllabus.

Baker's Joker is an amazing if occasionally strained Hamill impersonation. You can almost see him clenching his jaw to get the killer clown's cadence just so. To his credit, Roger Craig Smith doesn't try to ape the legendary Kevin Conroy with his Bat-voice. His Bruce and Batman are essentially the same, a medium-rumble growl that occasionally breaks into shouts. It's a safe Bat-voice but I found myself wishing for more enough emotional inflection in Smith's performance.

It needs to be said that there's a ton of stuff to do in Origins. When the credits rolled on my Story Mode playthrough, my completion percentage stood at 21%, after about 10-12 hours of playtime. It'll take some digging to root out all the characters lurking around Gotham as some of the assassins are buried in side missions. For example, I went through the entire story mode without encountering Deadshot or Lady Shiva, even though I know that they're in the game.

Origins makes me think about what I want out of a Batman game. The answer has always been a deeper, interactive understanding of what it's like to be Batman. But Rocksteady's efforts had it easy. The first one oozed atmosphere and established Batman as a stealthy opponent, fearsome combatant and observant detective. Arkham City showed us the scope of his crusade, giving us a whole chunk of Gotham to prowl and adventure through. This one? It has the burden of showing you how it all started.

Maybe the name of this latest Bat-game bothered you. Arkham Asylum and Arkham City were places, locales that the games bearing their names brought to life in expert fashion. Arkham Origins doesn't have the same clear-cut messaging and it has the unfortunate ring of prequelitis, that disease that makes serial entertainment go backwards when it can't figure out how to go forward. But, in its latter third, Origins does illustrate why there needs to be an asylum for the new breed of criminal. There had been thugs and mobsters before but not sheer insanity.

Origins is an incremental installment, not a transformative one. It doesn't have the massive leaps forward that differentiated City from Asylum. It's almost understandable since WB Montreal have been tasked with harmonizing along to someone else's lead vocals. Right here, right now, the result is good enough. But the very success of the Batman video game franchise could prove to be its biggest limitation. And decisions to ever so slightly vary the template could be a slowly contracting deathtrap that not even the Caped Crusader can escape.

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Amazon's trio of biospheres gets two thumbs up from Seattle Design Review Board!!!

Earlier this year Amazon submitted a building proposal to construct a series of massive biospheres in downtown Seattle adjacent to three other traditional office buildings as part of their new campus. The company received good news this week as the city’s Design Review Board approved the design created by architectural firm NBBJ after they were convinced the unique structure would be engaging and inviting to the public.

The next step in the process involves the Seattle Department of Planning and Development which could approve the plans within the next couple of months according to the LA Times. Once complete, the new campus will consist of 3.3 million square feet of office and retail space spanning three city blocks bounded by Westlake Avenue, Blanchard Street and Sixth Avenue. The facility will also be connected by a streetcar line to Amazon’s existing headquarters in the South Lake Union.

The five-story biospheres will feature 65,000 square feet of usable space for offices, retail space and a commons area based on early renderings. Amazon is even planning to offer a number of creature comforts and amenities including a public dog park. Three other 38-story office towers will occupy the remaining real estate, we’re told.

The new office space should go a long way in helping to accommodate Amazon’s ever-swelling employee base. At last check, the company had 97,000 employees on the payroll and has tripled in size over the past three years.

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Google believed to be constructing a floating data center in San Francisco Bay!!!

A barge afloat in the San Francisco bay just off the shore from Treasure Island is home to something the locals refer to simply as the secret project. The mysterious four-story tall building that sits on top of the barge was built from shipping containers and if CNET’s investigative team is correct, it could be a massive floating data center owned by Google.

Maintaining a data center requires a large amount of cooling to keep the servers at safe operating temperatures. By building a data center on a barge, the servers could easily and cheaply be cooled by the surrounding water. Saltwater could potentially be problematic but it’s not an insurmountable endeavor.

What’s more, building data centers inside of shipping containers isn’t out of the norm. Companies like Dell, HP, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems have been doing so for a while now simply because such setups are easy to deploy.

Perhaps the most damning evidence is the fact that Google was granted a patent for a water-based data center back in 2009. Specifically, the patent covered a floating platform-mounted data center with a sea-based electrical generator and sea-water cooling units. That sounds like a pretty solid fit of what’s likely going on in the San Francisco bay.

A wealth of evidence has pointed towards the search giant as the entity behind the project .

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Understanding Amazon's "profitless" business model!!!

Amazon and the "profitless business model" fallacy With every quarterly earnings call, my Twitter feed lights up with jokes about how Amazon continues to grow its revenue and make no profits and how trusting investors continue to rewards the company for it. The apotheosis of that line of thoughts is a quote from Slate's Matthew Yglesias earlier this year: "Amazon, as best I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers." Eugene Wei

AT&T's plan revamp signals the end of voice minutes The days of worrying about minutes ticking away on your cell phone plan are nearly gone. As of today, is dropping the availability of its old plans for new smartphone subscribers, and all of the remaining plans include unlimited calling and texting with the exception of one. The three other major U.S. carriers -- Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile -- now only offer unlimited voice and messaging to new customers. The era of the minute was a long one. The WSJ

The man who would teach machines to think "It depends on what you mean by artificial intelligence." Douglas Hofstadter is in a grocery store in Bloomington, Indiana, picking out salad ingredients. "If somebody meant by artificial intelligence the attempt to understand the mind, or to create something human-like, they might say -- maybe they wouldn't go this far -- but they might say this is some of the only good work that's ever been done." Hofstadter says this with an easy deliberateness... The Atlantic

The decline of Wikipedia The sixth most widely used website in the world is not run anything like the others in the top 10. It is not operated by a sophisticated corporation but by a leaderless collection of volunteers who generally work under pseudonyms and habitually bicker with each other. It rarely tries new things in the hope of luring visitors; in fact, it has changed little in a decade. And yet every month 10 billion pages are viewed on the English version of Wikipedia alone. MIT Technology Review

Introducing games of the generation We're nearly there. Since Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 at the end of 2005, it's been a long and often fascinating journey through what's loosely defined as the seventh generation of consoles. There's been high drama -- the meltdown of both the Xbox 360's innards and Sony's PlayStation Network spring immediately to mind, but it's Mr. Caffeine's own breakdown in front of a bemused E3 crowd that still wins out for me -- as well as, most importantly, nearly eight years' worth of outstanding games. Eurogamer (their PC section currently lists Fallout 3 and Portal -- early trailers for which are below)

Retina, round two: Apple's 15-inch 2013 Retina MacBook Pro reviewed 2013 is bringing the Retina MacBook Pro to the mainstream. Well, as mainstream as high-end Macs can be, anyway. When the first Retina MacBook Pro was released back in 2012, it came with great hardware and a beautiful screen, but only Apple’s applications had been upgraded to really take advantage of it. Ars Technica

A few thoughts on Nvidia's G-Sync On the plane home, I started to write up a few impressions of the new G-Sync display technology that Nvidia introduced on Friday. However, that attempt pretty quickly turned into a detailed explanation of refresh rates and display technology. Realistically, I'll have to finish that at a later date, because I have another big graphics-related project hogging my time this week. The Tech Report

Microsoft, it's time to get serious about devices In the summer of this year, Microsoft announced -- ultimately to the surprise of no-one -- its intentions to purchase Nokia’s device business in a move that, when it is completed next year, will see Microsoft effectively become a smartphone manufacturer with the kind of product integration of software and hardware that only Apple has managed to make a lasting success. Neowin

A quick look at Blackberry 10.2 and web browsing performance on Z10 Blackberry has started rolling out OS 10.2 to BB10 devices such as Z10, Q10 and Q5. Update appears to be available in Canada and UK for a start. The OS update is quite a major one. The android runtime has been updated to 4.2 Jelly Bean from the previous Gingerbread based version and its performance has improved significantly. AnandTech

How Google Glass will usher in an era of superhuman vision Stanford professor Marc Levoy, fresh off a two-year leave to work on Google Glass, recently spoke to a packed house at Stanford’s Center for Image Engineering (SCIEN) about the new era of photography that Glass, and other increasingly powerful wearable cameras, have begun to usher in. ExtremeTech

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World's first Bitcoin ATM to open in Vancouver this week!!!

The world’s first Bitcoin ATM will be ready for its inaugural transaction starting this coming week at a coffee shop in downtown Vancouver. Manufactured by Nevada-based Robocoin with service from local operator and broker Bitcoiniacs, the $18,500 machine will be the first of five Bitcoin ATMs headed to Canada.

The machine will allow locals to exchange Canadian dollars for Bitcoins and vice versa. When depositing Canadian money, the Bitcoin credits will be added to the user’s online Bitcoin wallet. Alternately, Bitcoin credits can be used to ‘purchase’ Canadian funds which can be retrieved from the machine at the time of the transaction.

The machines will use palm scanners to identify and keep track of users which should also help prevent money laundering schemes. We are told there will be a CAD $3,000 ($2,870) limit per user, per day. At that rate, it would have taken alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht a lifetime to cash out his $80 million haul in the digital currency, but I digress.

Bitcoiniacs co-founder Mitchell Demeter said the machines will make it easier for people to buy and sell Bitcoins and hopefully drive the adoption of the virtual currency and make it more accessible.

The remaining four machines are scheduled for deployment this December in Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. It’s unlikely we will see similar ATMs pop in the US, however, as government regulations have thus far been a barrier in making that happen.

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