Hagel: US assessing reported Syrian chemical use

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The U.S. and its allies are still trying to figure out details of Syria's suspected use of chemical weapons against its own people, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Monday, as international officials pressed for broader access to suspected attack sites.

Speaking to Pentagon reporters, Hagel refused to discuss any military options including whether or not the U.S. would be willing to take unilateral action against the Syrian regime or if the administration would act only in concert with allies.

The Obama administration said last week that U.S. intelligence had concluded that Syrian government forces likely used chemical agents against rebels in two attacks, but said there were "varying degrees of confidence" about how large an attack it may have been.

Since then the administration has come under withering criticism from members of Congress demanding that the U.S. take steps to protect the Syrian people by setting up either a safe zone or a no-fly zone over at least parts of the country.

"We are continuing to assess what happened -- when, where," said Hagel. "I think we should wait to get the facts before we make any judgments on what action, if any should be taken, and what kind of action."

U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, have said that chemical weapons ? likely the nerve agent sarin ? were used on two occasions.

Syria wants any investigation limited to an incident in the Khan al-Assal village in the Aleppo province in March that reportedly killed 31 people, but U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wants a broader investigation, that would include a December incident in Homs.

Britain, France, Israel and Qatar also believe chemical weapons have been used in Syria's two-year-old civil war. President Barack Obama has said that use of chemical weapons by President Bashar Assad's regime, or the transfer of those stockpiles to terrorists would cross a "red line" and have "enormous consequences."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-04-29-US-US-Syria/id-e40b81551b884197bc937b48318b6727

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Daily Chronicle | Are lesbians more accepted than gay men?

CHICAGO ? It may be a man?s world, as the saying goes, but lesbians seem to have an easier time living in it than gay men do.

High-profile lesbian athletes have come out while still playing their sports, but not a single gay male athlete in major U.S. professional sports has done the same. While television?s most prominent same-sex parents are the two fictional dads on ?Modern Family,? surveys show that society is actually more comfortable with the idea of lesbians parenting children.

And then there is the ongoing debate over the Boy Scouts of America proposal to ease their ban on gay leaders and scouts.

Reaction to the proposal, which the BSA?s National Council will take up next month, has been swift and often harsh. Yet amid the discussions, the Girl Scouts of USA reiterated their policy prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation, among other things. That announcement has gone largely unnoticed.

Certainly, the difference in the public?s reaction to the scouting organizations can be attributed, in part, to their varied histories, including the Boy Scouts? longstanding religious ties and a base that has become less urban over the years, compared with the Girl Scouts?.

But there?s also an undercurrent here, one that?s often present in debates related to homosexuality, whether over the military?s now-defunct ?Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell? policy or even same-sex marriage. Even as society has become more accepting of homosexuality overall, longstanding research has shown more societal tolerance for lesbians than gay men, and that gay men are significantly more likely to be targets of violence.

That research also has found that it?s often straight men who have the most difficult time with homosexuality ? and particularly gay men ? says researcher Gregory Herek.

?Men are raised to think they have to prove their masculinity, and one big part about being masculine is being heterosexual. So we see that harassment, jokes, negative statements and violence are often ways that even younger men try to prove their heterosexuality,? says Herek, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, who has, for years, studied this phenomenon and how it plays out in the gay community.

That is not, of course, to downplay the harassment lesbians face. It can be just as ugly.

But it?s not as frequent, Herek and others have found, especially in adulthood. It?s also not uncommon for lesbians to encounter straight men who have a fascination with them.

?The men hit on me. The women hit on me. But I never feel like I?m in any immediate danger,? says Sarah Toce, the 29-year-old editor of The Seattle Lesbian and managing editor of The Contributor, both online news magazines. ?If I were a gay man, I might ? and if it?s like this in Seattle, can you imagine what it is like in less-accepting parts of middle America??

One of Herek?s studies found that, overall, 38 percent of gay men said that, in adulthood, they?d been victims of vandalism, theft or violence ? hit, beaten or sexually assaulted ? because they were perceived as gay. About 13 percent of lesbians said the same.

A separate study of young people in England also found that, in their teens, gay boys and lesbians were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By young adulthood, it was about the same for lesbians and straight girls. But in this study, published recently in the journal Pediatrics, gay young men were almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

At least one historian says it wasn?t always that way for either men or women, whose ?expressions of love? with friends of the same gender were seen as a norm ? even idealized ? in the 19th century.

?These relationships offered ample opportunity for those who would have wanted to act on it physically, even if most did not,? says Thomas Foster, associate professor and head of the history department at DePaul University in Chicago.

Today?s ?code of male gendered behavior,? he says, often rejects these kinds of expressions between men.

We joke about the ?bro-mance? ? a term used to describe close friendships between straight men. But in some sense, the humor stems from the insinuation that those relationships could be romantic, though everyone assumes they aren?t.

Call those friends ?gay,? a word that?s still commonly used as an insult, and that?s quite another thing. Consider the furor over Rutgers University men?s basketball coach Mike Rice, who was recently fired for mistreating his players and mocking them with gay slurs.

If two women dance together at a club or walk arm-in-arm down the street, people are usually less likely to question it ? though some wonder if that has more to do with a lack of awareness than acceptance.

?Lesbians are so invisible in our society. And so I think the hatred is more invisible,? says Laura Grimes, a licensed clinical social worker in Chicago whose counseling practice caters to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender clients.

Grimes says she also frequently hears from lesbians who are harassed for ?looking like dykes,? meaning that people are less accepting if they look more masculine.

Still, Ian O?Brien, a gay man in Washington, D.C., sees more room for women ?to transcend what femininity looks like, or at least negotiate that space a little bit more.?

O?Brien, who?s 23, recently wrote an opinion piece tied to the Boy Scout debate and his own experience in the Scouts when he was growing up in the San Diego area.

?To put it simply: Being a boy is supposed to look one way, and you get punished when it doesn?t,? O?Brien wrote in the piece, which appeared in The Advocate, a national magazine for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities.

Joey Carrillo, a gay student at Elmhurst College in suburban Chicago, remembers trying to be as masculine as possible in high school. He hid the fact that he was gay, particularly around other athletes. As a wrestler, he says he never wanted to hear someone say, ?Oh, THAT?S why he wrestles.?

In fact, though more gay and lesbian athletes are coming out in college, gay male professional athletes in major sports have waited to do so until they have left their sport, one of the more recent being Robbie Rogers, an American soccer player who played professionally in England. There have been reports that gay male athletes who are currently playing may be on the verge of going public.

But women have already done so with little backlash.

U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe, for instance, came out right before she played in last year?s Olympics. WNBA star Seimone Augustus and the league?s No. 1 draft pick, Brittney Griner, are some of the more recent female athletes to follow suit.

In Hollywood in recent years, both openly gay men and lesbians have had successful careers. And when it comes to television and movies, it appears there are more high-profile gay male characters.

Still, while many see the two dads on the ?Modern Family? sitcom as groundbreaking, others have a sense that the societal discomfort with gay men as parents is at the root of many of the jokes.

?A good portion of that is for comedic effect,? says Don Todd, a 32-year-old father in a two-dad family in Orange, Calif. He doesn?t think most people would think it was as funny if the characters were two moms.

Herek, the researcher at UC-Davis, has, in fact, found in surveys that heterosexuals think lesbians would be better parents than gay men.

Nancy Dreyer, a mother in a two-mom family, has noticed this in her own life.

?With gay male friends of ours who have kids, people will say, ?My gosh, who takes care of this baby?? ? as if they?re not capable,? says Dreyer, whose 57 and lives in suburban Boston.

The assumption, she says, is that men aren?t nurturing. And if they?re too nurturing, she says, people get suspicious, noting that no one has ever questioned her and her partner about their ability to raise their son, who?s now in college.

She?s noticed the different ways society treats gay men and lesbians, partly because she has a brother, Benjamin Dreyer, who?s gay. The Dreyer siblings say it?s difficult to compare their experiences because Benjamin came out in college, and Nancy in her early 30s.

So he was the first to tell their parents. ?They yelled at me. They took you to dinner,? Benjamin Dreyer, who?s 54 and works in publishing in New York City, now jokes with his sister.

Truth was, as a young gay man coming of age as the AIDS epidemic took hold, his parents simply worried, and with good reason, his sister says.

There?s little doubt, they both say, that AIDS influenced the perception of gay men.

Benjamin Dreyer says he dealt with societal bias by avoiding it, and surrounding himself with people he knew would be supportive, including his parents, eventually.

But he?s also realizing how quickly the need to do that is disappearing. He was surprised and pleased, for instance, when he attended his nephew?s high school graduation last year. There, he saw a gay male graduate with his boyfriend, open and accepted by all his peers.

?It?s mind-boggling,? Benjamin Dreyer says. ?It?s wonderful.?

Carrillo, too, decided to live openly when he arrived at Elmhurst College. He joined a fraternity and even painted a rainbow ? a common symbol of the gay community ? on his fraternity paddle. To his surprise, there was some backlash from a couple of his straight fraternity brothers who feared people would think their fraternity was the ?gay fraternity.?

?There?s a long way to go,? says Carrillo, who graduates next month. But he still feels hopeful.

?Honestly, I see it ? everywhere there?s progress.?

___

Martha Irvine is an AP national writer. She can be reached at mirvine(at)ap.org or at http://twitter.com/irvineap

There are 33 hours, 6 minutes remaining to comment on this story.

Source: http://www.daily-chronicle.com/2013/04/27/are-lesbians-more-accepted-than-gay-men/ao2g0gn/

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Authorities: Student shoots self in Ohio classroom

CINCINNATI (AP) ? A student at an Ohio Catholic high school is in critical condition after police say he pulled out a gun and shot himself in his classroom.

A University of Cincinnati Medical Center spokeswoman reported the student's condition Monday afternoon, about six hours after the shooting at La Salle High School west of Cincinnati.

She says his parents have provided a statement thanking people for their thoughts and prayers while asking for privacy. She didn't release any other information about the student's condition.

Police say there was no apparent threat to anyone else at the school. The high school went immediately into lockdown, and students have been dismissed to their parents.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/authorities-student-shoots-self-ohio-classroom-141438739.html

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Hospitals see surge of superbug-fighting products

NEW YORK (AP) ? They sweep. They swab. They sterilize. And still the germs persist.

In U.S. hospitals, an estimated 1 in 20 patients pick up infections they didn't have when they arrived, some caused by dangerous 'superbugs' that are hard to treat.

The rise of these superbugs, along with increased pressure from the government and insurers, is driving hospitals to try all sorts of new approaches to stop their spread:

Machines that resemble "Star Wars" robots and emit ultraviolet light or hydrogen peroxide vapors. Germ-resistant copper bed rails, call buttons and IV poles. Antimicrobial linens, curtains and wall paint.

While these products can help get a room clean, their true impact is still debatable. There is no widely-accepted evidence that these inventions have prevented infections or deaths.

Meanwhile, insurers are pushing hospitals to do a better job and the government's Medicare program has moved to stop paying bills for certain infections caught in the hospital.

"We're seeing a culture change" in hospitals, said Jennie Mayfield, who tracks infections at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.

Those hospital infections are tied to an estimated 100,000 deaths each year and add as much as $30 billion a year in medical costs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency last month sounded an alarm about a "nightmare bacteria" resistant to one class of antibiotics. That kind is still rare but it showed up last year in at least 200 hospitals.

Hospitals started paying attention to infection control in the late 1880s, when mounting evidence showed unsanitary conditions were hurting patients. Hospital hygiene has been a concern in cycles ever since, with the latest spike triggered by the emergence a decade ago of a nasty strain of intestinal bug called Clostridium difficile, or C-diff.

The diarrhea-causing C-diff is now linked to 14,000 U.S. deaths annually. That's been the catalyst for the growing focus on infection control, said Mayfield, who is also president-elect of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.

C-diff is easier to treat than some other hospital superbugs, like methicillin-resistant staph, or MRSA, but it's particularly difficult to clean away. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers don't work and C-diff can persist on hospital room surfaces for days. The CDC recommends hospital staff clean their hands rigorously with soap and water ? or better yet, wear gloves. And rooms should be cleaned intensively with bleach, the CDC says.

Michael Claes developed a bad case of C-diff while he was a kidney patient last fall at New York City's Lenox Hill Hospital. He and his doctor believe he caught it at the hospital. Claes praised his overall care, but felt the hospital's room cleaning and infection control was less than perfect.

"I would use the word 'perfunctory,'" he said.

Lenox Hill spokeswoman Ann Silverman disputed that characterization, noting hospital workers are making efforts that patients often can't see, like using hand cleansers dispensers in hallways. She ticked off a list of measure used to prevent the spread of germs, ranging from educating patients' family members to isolation and other protective steps with each C-diff patient.

The hospital's C-diff infection rate is lower than the state average, she said.

Westchester Medical Center, a 643-bed hospital in the suburbs of New York City has also been hit by cases of C-diff and the other superbugs.

Complicating matters is the fact that larger proportions of hospital patients today are sicker and more susceptible to the ravages of infections, said Dr. Marisa Montecalvo, a contagious diseases specialist at Westchester.

There's a growing recognition that it's not only surgical knives and operating rooms that need a thorough cleaning but also spots like bed rails and even television remote controls, she said. Now there's more attention to making sure "that all the nooks and crannies are clean, and that it's done in perfect a manner as can be done," Montecalvo said.

Enter companies like Xenex Healthcare Services, a Texas company that makes a portable, $125,000 machine that's rolled into rooms to zap C-diff and other bacteria and viruses dead with ultraviolet light. Xenex has sold or leased devices to more than 100 U.S. hospitals, including Westchester Medical Center.

The market niche is expected to grow from $30 million to $80 million in the next three years, according to Frost & Sullivan, a market research firm.

Mark Stibich, Xenex's chief scientific officer, said client hospitals sometimes call them robots and report improved satisfaction scores from patients who seem impressed that the medical center is trotting out that kind of technology.

At Westchester, they still clean rooms, but the staff appreciates the high-tech backup, said housekeeping manager Carolyn Bevans.

"We all like it," she said of the Xenex.

At Cooley Dickinson Hospital, a 140-bed facility in Northampton, Mass., the staff calls their machines Thing One, Thing Two, Thing Three and Thing Four, borrowing from the children's book "The Cat in the Hat."

But while the things in the Dr. Seuss tale were house-wrecking imps, Cooley Dickinson officials said the ultraviolet has done a terrific job at cleaning their hospital of the difficult C-diff.

"We did all the recommended things. We used bleach. We monitored the quality of cleaning," but C-diff rates wouldn't budge, said nurse Linda Riley, who's in charge of infection prevention at Cooley Dickinson.

A small observational study at the hospital showed C-diff infection rates fell by half and C-diff deaths fell from 14 to 2 during the last two years, compared to the two years before the machines.

Some experts say there's not enough evidence to show the machines are worth it. No national study has shown that these products have led to reduced deaths or infection rates, noted Dr. L. Clifford McDonald of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

His point: It only takes a minute for a nurse or visitor with dirty hands to walk into a room, touch a vulnerable patient with germy hands, and undo the benefits of a recent space-age cleaning.

"Environments get dirty again," McDonald said, and thorough cleaning with conventional disinfectants ought to do the job.

Beyond products to disinfect a room, there are tools to make sure doctors, nurses and other hospital staff are properly cleaning their hands when they come into a patient's room. Among them are scanners that monitor how many times a health care worker uses a sink or hand sanitizer dispenser.

Still, "technology only takes us so far," said Christian Lillis, who runs a small foundation named after his mother who died from a C-diff infection.

Lillis said the hospitals he is most impressed with include Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago, where thorough cleanings are confirmed with spot checks. Fluorescent powder is dabbed around a room before it's cleaned and a special light shows if the powder was removed. That strategy was followed by a 28 percent decline in C-diff, he said.

He also cites Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Ill., where the focus is on elbow grease and bleach wipes. What's different, he said, is the merger of the housekeeping and infection prevention staff. That emphasizes that cleaning is less about being a maid's service than about saving patients from superbugs.

"If your hospital's not clean, you're creating more problems than you're solving," Lillis said.

___

Online:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/hai/

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hospitals-see-surge-superbug-fighting-products-063323422.html

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Rendezvous Connects You With Nearby Folks Who Share Your Interests, Keeps Track Of Who You've Met

Rendezvous is an upcoming mobile application built at the TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 hackathon by San Francisco developer Taran Gill and designer Mehtab Bajawa. The app intends to connect you with others nearby who share your interests, as based on Facebook profile data. But while other mobile apps, including those in the recently trendy “ambient location” space often do the same, the difference with Rendezvous is that it keeps track of your location history, too. That way, you can scroll back to see who you met and when, as well as perhaps discover other missed connections. The mobile app was built using the Facebook API alongside the NewAer API for location data. And also unlike other location apps,?Rendezvous doesn’t use GPS data – which means it won’t kill your smartphone’s battery. (Hooray!) Instead, Rendezvous will be able to tell if users are connected to the same Wi-Fi router or cell tower in order to determine their proximity to each other. Though the build created this weekend focused on using Facebook data, Gill explains that the app will be developed further after the event wraps to include other APIs and data sources, in order to do things like connecting users’ Pandora’s playlists, for example. Users may be able to manually enter in data, too. (E.g. “what’s on my mind right now”). Friending functionality is also on the way, and that could be really interesting, since it could tell you others places you and your new friend had both visited together in the past, unknowingly. “It’s a lot of data that nobody has ever collected before,” says Gill. He adds that?didn’t know that he would be working on when he arrived at Disrupt this weekend, but wanted to start a new project. In San Francisco, he had been working on a cloud storage startup for many months, but acknowledges that space is now dominated by major players like Google.?Meanwhile, co-creator Bajawa recently left his job in the finance industry to begin working on startups and tech. For those who attend a lot of hackathons like this one and other networking events, an app like this could come in handy to help you not only find people you would want to know, but also help you remember who you met at a later date.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/aevIsh6xS8A/

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Some say immigration bill is bad deal for the GOP

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Some feisty Republicans are challenging a claim widely held among GOP leaders that the party must support more liberal immigration laws if it's to be more competitive in presidential elections.

These doubters say the Republican establishment has the political calculation backward. Immigration "reform," they say, will mean millions of new Democratic-leaning voters by granting citizenship to large numbers of Hispanic immigrants now living illegally in the United States.

The argument is dividing the party as it tries to reposition itself after losing the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections. It also could endanger President Barack Obama's bid for a legacy-building rewrite of the nation's problematic immigration laws.

Many conservatives "are scared to death" that the Republican Party "is committing suicide, that we're going to end up legalizing 9 million automatic Democrat voters," radio host Rush Limbaugh recently told Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a leader of the bipartisan team pushing an immigration overhaul.

Strategists in both parties say several factors, including income levels, would make many, and probably most, newly enfranchised immigrants pro-Democratic, at least for a time.

Rubio says the risk is worth taking.

"Every political movement, conservatism included, depends on the ability to convince people that do not agree with you now to agree with you in the future," he told Limbaugh.

Politically, Republicans face two bad options.

They can try to improve relations with existing Latino voters by backing a plan that seems likely to add many Democratic-leaning voters in the years ahead. Or they can stick with a status quo in which their presidential nominees are losing badly among the electorate's fastest-growing segment.

In 2012, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who suggested that vanishing job opportunities would prompt immigrants to "self deport," carried only 27 percent of the Hispanic vote. A Republican Party study of that election concluded, among other things, that the GOP must appeal to more Hispanics, and to do so it must "embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform."

Party leaders say the harsh language that some Republicans use when discussing illegal immigration has angered many Americans with Hispanic heritages.

Rubio's bipartisan group has proposed legislation to strengthen border security, allow tens of thousands of new high- and low-skilled workers into the country, require all employers to check their workers' legal status, and provide an eventual path to citizenship for some 11 million immigrants now in the country illegally.

Even if the bill survives the Democratic-controlled Senate, stiff resistance is expected in the GOP-dominated House. Many House Republicans dislike the idea of "amnesty" for those who crossed the border illegally, and some say it's foolish to enfranchise likely Democratic voters.

Obama embraces the Rubio plan, and it won crucial praise from House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., last year's vice presidential nominee.

Rubio and his allies challenge the notion that creating a way to citizenship for millions of people here illegally will dramatically increase Democratic turnout in future elections.

"Not all 11 million illegal immigrants here today will qualify to become citizens, and not all of the 11 million illegal immigrants are Hispanic," according to Rubio's "Myth vs. Fact" website. The site says many immigrants will not choose to become citizens, and many new citizens, like many current ones, will not bother to vote.

Some Republican campaign strategists, however, say the political damage would be worse than party leaders acknowledge.

Republican consultant and pollster Mike McKenna said one of his surveys shows that most Americans favor "immigration reform" and they believe it will benefit Democrats more than Republicans.

In an interview, McKenna said Republican leaders are embracing Rubio's plan without sufficient data on where it might lead. "I think about two months from now, the folks in the establishment are going to wish they hadn't started this conversation," McKenna said.

Party leaders erred, he said, by couching the immigration debate in political rather than moral terms. "The argument that it's going to be politically advantageous is not going to be sustainable over time," McKenna said.

Political activists have swapped estimates of how many people now living here illegally might choose to become citizens, register to vote and turn out for Democratic candidates if a path to citizenship is opened. Even the most conservative guesses assume that Democrats would benefit more than Republicans, initially, at least.

Rubio's allies play it down.

"The status quo is not acceptable to Republican voters," said GOP consultant Kevin Madden, who has worked for Romney and others. Republican leaders, he said, must push for the best rewrite of immigration laws they can achieve.

Texas-based GOP consultant Matt Mackowiak noted that evangelical leaders, major business groups and others that opposed immigration changes in 2007 are now on board. He said the Republican Party should focus on attracting Hispanic voters with its standard message of small government and free enterprise, and not worry too much if a new law produces more Democratic-leaning voters for a while.

"If we don't win 40 to 45 percent of Hispanics," Mackowiak said, "we're not going to win elections regardless of whether this happens."

Limbaugh is among those who don't buy it.

"I see polling data again that suggests that 70 percent of the Hispanic population in the country believes that government is the primary source of prosperity," he told Rubio in their recent exchange. "I don't, therefore, understand this contention that Hispanics are conservatives-in-waiting."

___

Follow Charles Babington on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cbabington

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/immigration-bill-bad-deal-gop-132850249.html

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NKorea charges US man in plot to overthrow regime

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) ? North Korea announced Saturday that an American detained for nearly six months is being tried in the Supreme Court on charges of plotting to overthrow the government, a crime that could draw the death penalty if he is convicted.

The case involving Kenneth Bae, who has been in North Korean custody since early November, further complicates already fraught relations between Pyongyang and Washington following weeks of heightened rhetoric and tensions.

The trial mirrors a similar situation in 2009, when the U.S. and North Korea were locked in a standoff over Pyongyang's decision to launch a long-range rocket and conduct an underground nuclear test. At the time, North Korea had custody of two American journalists, whose eventual release after being sentenced to 12 years of hard labor paved the way for diplomacy following months of tensions.

Bae was arrested in early November in Rason, a special economic zone in North Korea's far northeastern region bordering China and Russia, according to official state media. In North Korean dispatches, Bae, a Korean American, is called Pae Jun Ho, the North Korean spelling of his Korean name.

The exact nature of his alleged crimes has not been revealed, but North Korea accuses Bae, described as a tour operator, of seeking to overthrow North Korea's leadership.

"In the process of investigation he admitted that he committed crimes aimed to topple the DPRK with hostility toward it," the state-run Korean Central News Agency said Saturday. "His crimes were proved by evidence. He will soon be taken to the Supreme Court of the DPRK to face judgment."

DPRK is the acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. No timing for the verdict issued at the austere Supreme Court in Pyongyang was given.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the U.S. government is "aware of reports that a U.S. citizen will face trial in North Korea" and that officials from the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang had visited Bae on Friday. She said she had no other information to share.

Because Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations, the Swedish Embassy in North Korea represents the United States in legal proceedings.

Friends and colleagues described Bae as a devout Christian from Washington state but based in the Chinese border city of Dalian who traveled frequently to North Korea to feed the country's orphans.

At least three other Americans detained in recent years also have been devout Christians. While North Korea's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, in practice only sanctioned services are tolerated by the regime.

Under North Korea's criminal code, crimes against the state can draw life imprisonment or the death sentence.

In 2009, American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced to hard labor for trespassing and unspecified hostile acts after being arrested near the border with China and held for four months.

They were freed later that year to former President Bill Clinton, who flew to Pyongyang to negotiate their release in a visit that then-leader Kim Jong Il treated as a diplomatic coup.

Including Ling and Lee, Bae is at least the sixth American detained in North Korea since 2009. The others eventually were deported or released.

"For North Korea, Bae is a bargaining chip in dealing with the U.S.," said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean Studies at Dongguk University in Seoul, South Korea. "The North will use him in a way that helps bring the U.S. to talks when the mood slowly turns toward dialogue."

As in 2009, Pyongyang is locked in a standoff with the Obama administration over North Korea's drive to build nuclear weapons.

Washington has led the campaign to punish Pyongyang for launching a long-range rocket in December and carrying out a nuclear test, its third, in February.

North Korea claims the need to build atomic weapons to defend itself against the United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea and over the past two months has been holding joint military drills with South Korea that have included nuclear-capable stealth bombers and fighter jets.

Diplomats from China, South Korea, the U.S., Japan and Russia have been conferring in recent weeks to try to bring down the rhetoric and find a way to rein in Pyongyang before a miscalculation in the region sparks real warfare.

South Korean defense officials said earlier in the month that North Korea had moved a medium-range missile designed to strike U.S. territory to its east coast.

The Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war because the three-year Korean conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953.

___

Associated Press writers Jean H. Lee in Pyongyang; Sam Kim and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, and Tom Strong in Washington contributed to this report. Follow Lee, AP's Korea bureau chief, at www.twitter.com/newsjean and Sam Kim at www.twitter.com/SamKim_AP.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nkorea-charges-us-man-plot-overthrow-regime-185113441.html

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House to Vote on FAA Bill (WSJ)

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Google adds tablet optimization tips to Google Play Developer Console

Google proactively scanning apps uploaded to Google Play for tablet compatibility, provides feedback to developers in real-time

Google has added a new tablet optimization tips page to the developer console in order to provide feedback about apps and how they fare against the Tablet App Quality Checklist. When developers upload their apps, the Developer Console now runs a "series of checks to verify basic criteria" against the list, and displays the results in a new page. Android was built with application scalability in mind, meaning there is no need to build multiple apps designed for different device types, and instead use tools and assets designed for each under the umbrella of one app. It sounds great on paper, and works great when developers take the time to build out apps with this in mind.

Taking time is the key part. It's not easy to build mobile apps, especially ones that look good and take advantage of each device screen size and dimensions. Starting today, Google can help a little more by analyzing an app when it's uploaded, then placing some tips how it can be done "better" for tablets in the new optimization tips page.  

While this is one of those things most of us will never see, having it in place means better apps -- something we can all get behind.

Source: Google

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/rwU_N5pMWAs/story01.htm

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Hyundai Suicide Ad Everyone is Talking About - Business Insider

It was shaping up to be a great, great week for Hyundai.?

On April 19, the car maker's new ad for the British market, which centers around a man attempting suicide in his new Hyundai, was named Ad of the Week by The Drum???a well-thought-of U.K. marketing magazine. On Thursday, April 25, The Guardian also highlighted the spot as worth a watch.

Hyundai's marketers thought they had a potentially huge hit on their hands: Maybe it would even win some awards for its originality. Car advertising is usually riddled with visual clich?s, such as the open road, night-time city driving, and over-the-top stunts like driving through walls of flames or crystal chandeliers.

They dreamed of marketing awards, but they could not have been more wrong.

How wrong? Watch the ad. When done, pick up your jaw and then scroll down to find out what happened next:

Watch Hyundai's controversial ad below:
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The spot is unusual and dramatic: It shows a depressed man locking himself in his car, attempting to suffocate himself with exhaust fumes. But the Hyundai ix35 is a fuel cell car, and its tailpipe emits only water vapor. "How clever!" the marketers must have thought. Then, as the music swells dramatically, and the man leans back to accept his fate ... nothing happens. He's forced to get out and open the garage door to let the steam out.

Holly Brockwell

Holly Brockwell's father's suicide note.

But then, also on April 25, came a blog post by an advertising copywriter in London whose father committed suicide in just such a fashion as was depicted by Hyundai. She published his suicide note. Suddenly, the ad wasn't a bold, creative move against car advertising clich?s. Instead, it was a tasteless joke about depression and death.

Her post, and a copy of the ad on YouTube, immediately went viral. It's the most talked about ad of the week alright ? but for all the wrong reasons.?

Hyundai immediately tweeted an apology and promised to withdraw the ad. But it was too late. By that time, the ad had become its own case study on how to create a PR crisis. Hyundai tried to get the ad removed from YouTube, but copies of it were being published faster than the company's lawyers could challenge them.

Friday, it emerged that Hyundai was given warning days ago that the ad would likely cause offense. Adweek contacted the company on April 19, and wrote a widely overlooked blog post suggesting the spot was crass.

Hyundai never responded to the Adweek reporter.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/hyundai-suicide-ad-everyone-is-talking-about-2013-4

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Bill Maris, the Man Behind Google Ventures, on the Present Challenges and Future Potential of Glass

How Google Ventures and the Glass Collective are taking Glass to the next level

"The initial versions of Glass were just Sergey [Brin]'s Oakleys with a phone taped to them," Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures, told me in a noisy cafe in Midtown Manhattan. Given his position and our topic of conversation -- Google's Project Glass -- he was conspicuous for wearing no eyewear whatsoever. "[Sergey's prototype] was not very compelling." You'd forgive him for being a bit skeptical back then about what the company's leadership was hoping would be the next big thing -- or, at least, a thing worthy of the time and money required to iterate from those humble beginnings to the sleek device we now know and covet.

So, then, how did we get from those initial doubts to the launching of the Glass Collective, dedicating millions of dollars to finding, funding and fostering innovative applications (not just of the software variety) for Google's new wearable? Maris spoke of Glass project lead Steve Lee and a later prototype that took photos every few seconds. "Imagine if you had this for your entire life. You could ask: 'What did I do 10 years ago today?'" That was compelling enough for Maris to commit to the foundation of the Collective, helping Google move the project beyond a single product and into the all-important realm of the platform. This is a platform, he believes, that could change our lives over the next 10 years just as smartphones have over the past decade.

Filed under: Wearables, Google

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/25/google-ventures-glass-collective/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Hoax tweet tests firms that filter social media for Wall Street

By Ryan Vlastelica

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Firms that scour social media sites such as Twitter for information to help investors and traders make money faced their biggest test yet this week.

A tweet reporting explosions at the White House appeared on the Associated Press's official feed Tuesday afternoon, sparking a temporary sell-off that briefly wiped out about $140 billion in market value on the S&P 500.

The tweet was a fake and the account had been hacked. But for analytics firms that comb through tweets for tradable ideas - a small but growing niche industry - it was the latest example of the challenges they face in delivering information to a client base that often prizes speed first.

Failure to highlight a tweet saying President Barack Obama had been injured in an explosion would have left people in the dust as the market zoomed lower - but a hair-trigger response to sell may have been worse.

Some of these firms did throw up red flags, based on other tweets or on the unusual nature of the news, but the selloff had already happened. For some of the firms, that's just fine - they're aware of their limitations.

"The guys who trade on tweets as they happen will always be susceptible to things like this, that's why we've shied away from delivering every tweet to people for them to trade off," said Oli Freeling-Wilkinson, chief executive officer of the London-based analytics firm Knowsis, one of several recent start-ups which sell subscriptions to investors and institutions such as retail brokers and fund managers.

"Algorithms used to trade off news headlines, now they trade off tweets. That's very dodgy, very shaky ground."

For Knowsis and other firms doing this analytical work, the ability to discern news from noise is the key to success, and it appears to be getting harder. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said earlier this month that companies can use Twitter, Facebook and other social media to make key announcements.

Tuesday's fateful tweet appeared at 1:07 p.m. EDT (1707 GMT). It was picked up almost immediately by investors and analytic companies scanning Twitter for key words to determine breaking news or measure sentiment. Stocks and commodities moved sharply lower and bond prices soared.

Within minutes, analytics firm Dataminr issued an alert saying the AP account was probably hacked, citing another tweet by a reporter in the White House basement.

That warning came at 1:11 pm EDT, "just four minutes after the fake message had been published on the AP's hacked Twitter account," said Ted Bailey, New York-based chief executive of Dataminr, which was founded in 2009.

The difficulty of reacting to such news can be seen in this case, however. By the time Dataminr's message went out, the market recovery was already underway.

The nature of the hoax created a challenge as the AP account is considered a trusted source. Past hoaxes originated from newly created accounts that were more readily identifiable as suspect. But the extraordinary nature of the news would have been another cautionary signal, some said, especially in the absence of similar reports by other news outlets.

"We would have published the AP tweet but because it could not have been verified at the time we would have clearly marked it as a rumor," said Emmett Kilduff, chief executive officer at Eagle Intel in Dublin. "When it was proven to be false we would have published a note to our clients saying so."

Kilduff, in an email, noted differences in the language of the fake tweet and official Associated Press style that could have outed it as a hoax, including the use of capital letters and that it referred to "Barack Obama" instead of "President Obama" or "Obama," the two ways the AP refers to the president.

European markets were closed at the time of the hoax tweet.

For a graphic on how the S&P 500 reacted to the tweet, see: http://link.reuters.

The mini-crash sparked by the bogus tweet was reminiscent of the "flash crash" of May 2010 when security prices suddenly plunged, as if the floor had been yanked from underneath them.

The free-fall nature can be explained by a couple of factors. For one, automatic stop-loss orders, which are designed to limit an investor's losses, kicked in, adding to the selling.

In addition, trading firms that provide liquidity pulled their bids, making the selloff more chaotic. Similar moves worsened the flash crash. In a market where participants step back when news is either onerous or uncertain, the combination of stop-loss orders and market makers withdrawing bids can make a selloff worse.

"We see this every time this type of news comes out: liquidity evaporates quickly. High-frequency traders cancel their orders on even one little tweet," said Dennis Dick, a trader at Bright Trading LLC in Las Vegas.

Freeling-Wilkinson said analytics firms like his are more interested in looking at trends than individual tweets.

"I would never recommend that anyone trades on a single tweet," he said.

(Additional reporting by Herb Lash; Editing by Claudia Parsons)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hoax-tweet-tests-firms-filter-social-media-wall-201513758--finance.html

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Report: Amazon Has a Kindle TV Streaming Box on the Way

Bloomberg Businessweek is reporting that Amazon will soon be announcing its own streaming box to pair up with its Amazon Instant Video and video on demand. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/ped6AXtBHTA/bloomberg-amazon-has-a-kindle-streaming-box-on-the-way

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Use These Tips To Make An Impact With Online Marketing

Online marketing can be used in conjunction with any number of marketing methods, like TV or print advertising. It can also work by itself. Use these tips if you would like to perform Internet marketing with your business.

Make use of emphasis coding on your website. Use different font types to increase the effectiveness of different words. You can distinguish how customers see a certain message, and it can clarify what you?re saying.

Create and advertise limited edition products and watch your profits grow. Owning exclusive items are all the rage and people are more likely to purchase products from you if they feel what they are receiving is special or limited in number.

TIP! Internet marketing is both similar to, and different from, other marketing tactics. For example, what if search engines stopped emphasizing title keywords in their ranking systems? If this is the case, you may have to put more effort in video marketing to a viral audience.

See what people are saying about your brand, then use them for future internet marketing plans. If you use familiar vocabulary, people will be more likely to reach out to you and feel comfortable about it. When you use the right vernacular for your brand messaging it can connect better.

Consider marketing your website as some sort of social club or gathering rather than a simple business website. This can hep build traffic to your website as customers come back to interact with others. By using this technique visitor will want to visit often. Encourage people who visit your website to share it with their friends.

Personalized descriptions full of emotion and praise are the best for your products as it will cause potential customers to form a sense of attachment to an item and be more likely to purchase it. It will help you to become a recognized brand. Use very descriptive words when you are trying to sell your product.

TIP! As you may already know, people usually hold a lot of respect for those in authority. Let others know that you?re your own boss.

Looking for a way to market online? If your customers have a viable reason to give their email, they will. This in turn will grow your email list. Offer freebies or contests, and they will be much more likely to provide you with their contact information. It is much easier to get people?s email addresses if you offer them a chance at a tempting prize.

Make sure you diversify when you are planning your Affiliate marketing strategies. This is key when because income will vary in the beginning and may not be sufficient at first until you are more established. Keep your primary job until you are absolutely certain it is safe for you to give it up.

Use limited-time incentives. Consider waiving the shipping costs on the first thousand orders you send out, or giving customers free gift-wrapping if they get their order in a certain number of days before Christmas. An effective sense of urgency should be created by making the offer?s end date clear.

TIP! In your ad, use the word ?limited?. When people get tired of what?s on offer at their local shops, they choose to shop online.

Create a unique, well designed website. Your website is the first impression of your business. For this reason, your site should have a solid design and interesting content that makes visitors want to stick around. Engaging the visitor is key, because as they build interest, they stay longer and purchase more often.

Your website should include original, creative content. The content should attract search engine attention as well as offer content that your audience appreciates.

Even small, internet based businesses can benefit from a slogan and a good logo. These tools can help build your brand and make customers remember you. Slogans will stay on the mind of customers for a long time period. When customers are ready to purchase a product that you sell, that very slogan could be the first thing that comes to their minds, driving the sale to you.

TIP! Keep a list of consumers who have purchased from you and later send out an online catalog or email, offering other items they might be interested in. Always tell them you appreciate their business and invite future purchases.

You should write action-oriented emails to your customers that encourage their followup. This action could be anything from purchasing something, to signing up for a service, to donating to a cause. This also gives you a nice metric to track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

Test your emails; learn what works and does not work to get action out of your customers. The A/B test is a common way to do this. After coming up with an email campaign, modify one detail in the email. This may include two separate subject lines or two different paragraphs. Disseminate the versions to two equal-sized groups of customers and see what the results are. Track which email got the best results, and use this information to improve your emails in the future.

Review your business website from the perspective of a customer. Would they find it simple? Is it enjoyable to look at? Can people place orders easily and quickly? Using SEO techniques and struggling to attract more traffic will not get you anywhere if you do not offer quality content on your site.

TIP! Small sellers are probably intimidated by the bigger, more competitive Internet marketplaces. There are a couple things you can do to try and stay ahead of the game.

In conclusion, your business may find Website marketing to be useful. Internet promotion can be utilized to advertise your services and products instead of traditional TV or print ads. If you keep these tips in mind, you can have Internet marketing help your business.

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Source: http://www.maynaseric.com/use-these-tips-to-make-an-impact-with-online-marketing-2

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Campaigners call for ban on "killer robots"

By Li-mei Hoang

LONDON (Reuters) - Machines with the ability to attack targets without any human intervention must be banned before they are developed for use on the battlefield, campaigners against "killer robots" urged on Tuesday.

The weapons, which could be ready for use within the next 20 years, would breach a moral and ethical boundary that should never be crossed, said Nobel Laureate Jody Williams, of the "Campaign To Stop Killer Robots".

"If war is reduced to weapons attacking without human beings in control, it is going to be civilians who are going to bear the brunt of warfare," said Williams, who won the 1997 peace prize for her work on banning landmines.

Weapons such as remotely piloted drones are already used by some armed forces and companies are working on developing systems with a greater level of autonomy in flight and operation.

"We already have a certain amount of autonomy," said Noel Sharkey, professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at the University of Sheffield.

"I think we are already there. If you asked me to go and make an autonomous killer robot today, I could do it. I could have you one here in a few days," he told reporters.

But the technology is a long way off being able to distinguish between a soldier and a civilian.

"The idea of a robot being asked to exercise human judgment seems ridiculous to me," Sharkey told Reuters.

"The whole idea of robots in the battlefield muddies the waters of accountability from my perspective as a roboticist," he added.

NO INTENTION

The British government has always said it has no intention of developing such technology.

"There are no plans to replace skilled military personnel with fully autonomous systems," a Ministry of Defense spokesman told Reuters.

"Although the Royal Navy does have defensive systems, such as Phalanx, which can be used in an automatic mode to protect personnel and ships from enemy threats like missiles, a human operator oversees the entire engagement," the spokesman added.

But the organizers of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots say Britain's rejection of fully autonomous weapons is not yet watertight.

"We're concerned that there is a slide towards greater autonomy on the battlefield and unless we draw a clear line in the sand now, we may end up walking into acceptance of fully autonomous weapons," said Thomas Nash, director of non-governmental organization Article 36.

Rapid advancements in technology have allowed countries such as the United States, China, Russia, Israel and Germany to move towards systems that will soon give full combat autonomy to machines, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

"We think that these kinds of weapons will not be able to comply with international humanitarian law," Steve Goose, Human Rights Watch executive director, told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Georgina Cooper; Editing by Jon Hemming)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/campaigners-call-ban-killer-robots-171648365.html

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UN official hopeful about 2015 climate talks

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) ? Governments are more serious and the impact of climate change is more dramatic, improving chances of a groundbreaking global warming pact in 2015 in contrast with the failure of such an effort in 2009, the U.N. climate chief said Tuesday.

The climate change talks in Copenhagen were a resounding failure, setting back the movement to control global warming. Even so, the U.N. official, Christiana Figueres, is optimistic, though she admits the world needs to step up its efforts to meet its goals.

A conference is set for Bonn next week, one of a series of meetings leading up to the next major climate convention in 2015.

Briefing reporters by teleconference from Washington Tuesday, Figueres complained that no country is doing enough now, and the "scale and speed" of efforts must be intensified to ensure the world can keep temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), compared to pre-industrial times. Experts believe that meeting that target would help ensure that the worst effects of climate change can be averted.

"What is very different is that we all went to 2009 having made our own decision that governments had to come to an agreement. But there was actually no commitment of governments to come to an agreement," said Figueres, who was appointed in 2010 after serving as member of Costa Rica's negotiating team.

"It was everybody else except the governments," she said. "Now, we have commitment of countries, of governments. They have said we are going to come to agreement in 2015. They have reiterated and reemphasized that, and it is very much on track."

Noting the devastation of Hurricane Sandy and the droughts that hit the midsection of the United States last year, Figueres also said it was hard to ignore the damage caused by warming of the planet.

"Unfortunately, we have much more evidence of climate change than we did way back in 2009, and that is actually a frightening thing," she said. "It does prove negative effects of climate are accelerating, both in impact and frequency. Across the world, we have every single country being affected in some way."

Figueres also said negotiators learned from 2009 not to leave important components of the agreement to the last minute and to ensure there is "transparency (and) inclusiveness" in the talks.

Climate negotiations over the years have dogged by suspicion, with rich and poor nations accusing one another of failing to do enough to move the talks along.

"There has to be a very clear process with which we get to this agreement. We will not be going to France with 300 pages of text," she said. "The governments have decided they will engage in a very serious exercise which leads up to draft of agreement, or at least the elements of a draft agreement, by 2014."

As for the United States, Figueres said she would like to see a "high level person in the White House orchestrating" the various American efforts to combat global warming.

She said she understood the preference of the Obama administration was not to push climate change legislation through Congress, but to implement a range of executive orders to tackle climate change instead. The Obama administration has already taken such measures to set fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks and is working on regulations for new power plants. Figueres said she hoped the U.S. would look at regulations for existing power plants as well.

A study last year from Climate Analytics, Ecofys and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said U.S. policies won't be enough to meet its stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020, compared to 2005 levels.

Figueres said the worldwide effort was more important than the record of a single country, even the U.S.

"Of course, the ideal scenario would be for every single of the 191 countries to come with legislation in 2015. Is that realistic? No, that is not realistic" she said. "What is important here is to very quickly for each country (to do the) maximum they can do. There is no country doing its maximum."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/un-official-hopeful-2015-climate-talks-195618680--finance.html

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Wife of China's jailed Nobel winner: I'm not free

BEIJING (AP) ? Liu Xia, under house arrest in China's capital since her imprisoned husband Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize, made a rare appearance Tuesday at a trial, yelling out a car window: "I'm not free."

Liu was allowed to leave the Beijing apartment where she has been held for two-and-a-half years to attend the trial of her brother on fraud charges that his lawyers said are trumped up to punish the family. Taken by car into the court in Beijing's suburbs, she sat through the morning-long proceedings, and when she came out accompanied by her lawyer, she shouted from an open window at diplomats and reporters.

"I'm not free. When they tell you I'm free, tell them I'm not," she said.

The brief exchange is one of the few instances when Liu has broken the security cordon that has surrounded her. A poet and activist in her own right, Liu became an exponent for democracy and freedom of expression after her husband was jailed in late 2008 for authoring and disseminating a program for political reform called Charter '08.

Liu Xiaobo was later sentenced to 11 years in prison, his fourth prison term in 20 years of political activism. Since he was awarded the Nobel in 2010, authorities have tried to turn Liu Xia into a non-entity to prevent her from becoming a rallying point for Chinese seeking democratic change.

Authorities in China routinely put pressure on family members of political activists and government critics to cow them into falling in line.

Twice in recent months outsiders have managed to slip past police to visit Liu Xia in her apartment, a group of Associated Press reporters in December and then five political activists several weeks later.

Lawyers and family members said the charges against her brother, Liu Hui, appear to be in retaliation for those visits. The charges relate to a real estate deal in which prosecutors said Liu and a partner pocketed 3 million yuan ($500,000) that was claimed by another party to the transaction.

His attorneys said the funds have been returned and the dispute does not rise to the level of crime.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wife-chinas-jailed-nobel-winner-im-not-free-062344520.html

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Hasbro earnings boosted by online contest

Trading in an iron for a cat looks to have been a good move for Hasbro, which is crediting a recent surge in revenue to the introduction of a new Monopoly piece.

The U.S.-based toymaker posted higher than expected earnings for its first quarter on Monday. The company said revenue was in part buoyed by the recent and ?tremendously successful? online campaign, in which fans of the board game Monopoly voted to replace one of its eight iconic pieces with something new.

Fans in more than 120 countries voted on Facebook in February to get rid of the iron and replace it with a cat. A robot, helicopter and a guitar were also in the running.

Hasbro said Monday it plans to follow up with more versions of the game. The company?s other big sellers include the G.I. Joe, Transformers and My Little Pony franchises.

Together with its game division, revenues were also up among Hasbro?s preschool and girl-aimed toys, while sales of toys aimed at boys slumped by 20 per cent.

Growth in its girls' category was driven by Furby, My Little Pony and One Direction. Play-Doh helped boost its preschool category and action games such as Angry Birds Star Wars helped fuel growth in the games category.

Hasbro lost $6.7 million, or five cents per share, compared to a loss of $2.6 million, or two cents per share, for the same period a year ago.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hasbro-earnings-boosted-online-contest-024502236--finance.html

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TokBox Brings WebRTC To The Cloud, Enables Multi-Party Video Chats & SIP Interop

Telefonica’s TokBox announced a huge upgrade to its OpenTok on WebRTC service today. TokBox’s new cloud-based Mantis media distribution framework is designed to overcome some of WebRTC’s limits with regard to video distribution. By default, WebRTC is a peer-to-peer platform, but that makes it hard to scale video chats beyond two participants. With Mantis, TokBox essentially puts its own cloud infrastructure in the middle of these calls and is then able to route and manage calls that include multiple participants without using a prohibitive amount of bandwidth and using a complicated mesh-based architecture. In the future, as TokBox CEO Ian Small told me earlier this week, this will also enable TokBox to shape video streams according to the different users’ bandwidth conditions and the developers’ needs. “With Mantis, what we’re doing is putting smarts into the WebRTC infrastructure,” Small said. “Today, we’re routing traffic. Tomorrow, we’ll shape traffic.” On cool feature Mantis already enables today is SIP interop, so developers will actually be able to write WebRTC-based apps that allow users to call in from their standard phone lines. This, for example, is useful for video conferencing services where you can now have a number of WebRTC-based video streams and a few participants on regular phone lines simultaneously. Currently, Small told me, the system scales well for chats with up to 10 users. In a webinar setting where just one user is broadcasting, it can easily scale up to more than a hundred users. The company beta-tested Mantis with the help of LiveNinja and Roll20. Current OpenTok developers won’t have to do anything to take advantage of the new system, given that TokBox already abstracts most of the WebRTC calls anyway. They will just have to create the topology they need for their apps (P2P, multi-party chat, etc.) and get started. It just “happens in the cloud automatically,” as Small noted, and now that it’s in the cloud, the company will be able to add many new features to its implementation in the near future. WebRTC, of course, is still in its early phases, something Small also acknowledged in our interview. In his view, we are not even in the early adopter phase right now. Instead, he believes, WebRTC is still in its experimentation and early mover phase. Once WebRTC arrives in the stable release channel of Firefox (it’s about to hit the developer channels soon and should be in

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/wTQ9fSe290c/

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