Facebook introduces video on Instagram

Instagram founder Kevin Systrom talks about an added video feature to the Instagram program at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, June 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Instagram founder Kevin Systrom talks about an added video feature to the Instagram program at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, June 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about Instagram's new video feature at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, June 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Instagram founder Kevin Systrom talks about an added video feature to the Instagram program at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, June 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Instagram founder Kevin Systrom talks about an added video feature to the Instagram program at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, June 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Instagram founder Kevin Systrom talks about an added video feature to the Instagram program at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, June 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

NEW YORK (AP) ? Facebook is adding video to its popular photo-sharing app Instagram, following in the heels of Twitter's growing video-sharing app, Vine.

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom said Thursday that users will be able to record and share 15-second clips by tapping a video icon in the app. They can also apply filters to videos to add contrast, make them black and white or different hues.

"This is the same Instagram we all know and love but it moves," he said at an event held at Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters.

Vine, which launched in January, has 13 million users and lets people create and share 6-second video clips. Instagram has more than 130 million users, up from about 22 million when Facebook bought the company more than a year ago. If users like it, Facebook's move could propel mobile video sharing into the mainstream. Systrom said

To use the video feature, Instagram users who've downloaded the latest version can tap on the same camera icon they use to snap photos. A new video camera icon will appear on the right side. Tap it and a screen with a red video button will let you record clips of sunsets, kids running in parks or co-workers staring at their computer screens.

The app will record as long as your finger is on the red button or for 15 seconds, whichever comes first. Not unlike Vine, taking your finger off the button will stop the recording, allowing you to shoot the scene from a different angle or record something else altogether. Once you have 15 seconds of footage, you can play it from the beginning and post it on Instagram to share with others.

A feature called "cinema" adds stabilization to the videos so they don't look like shaky amateur shots. Systrom called it "completely mind-blowing." Right now, only owners of the iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 can shoot video using this feature.

Given Vine's popularity, "it is perhaps more surprising that Facebook has not introduced video for Instagram sooner. There is no doubt Twitter will move quickly to up the ante on Vine and this could undercut Facebook's efforts with video on Instagram," said Eden Zoller, principal consumer analyst at Ovum, a technology research firm, in an email.

Forrester Research analyst Nate Elliott thinks taking features from smaller rivals and offering them to a much larger set of users "has worked well for Facebook" so far.

"It also keeps Facebook's services fresh, and is one of the reasons more than a billion people still use the site every month," he wrote in an email.

When Facebook Inc. agreed to buy Instagram in April 2012, it offered $1 billion in cash and stock. But the value of the deal fell to $715 million by the time the deal closed last August.

Instagram was the first ? and only ? company Facebook has bought and kept running as a separate application. Until its Instagram purchase, Facebook was known for smaller "acqui-hires," a type of popular Silicon Valley deal in which a company purchases a startup as a way to hire its talented workers and then shuts the acquired company down.

Facebook still hasn't said how it will be able to make money from Instagram, as it has not introduced ads on the service. But online video ads are growing, and it's likely only a matter of time before they arrive on Facebook ? and at some point, Instagram. Research firm eMarketer estimates that the U.S. digital video advertising market will grow 41 percent this year, to $4.1 billion from 2.9 billion in 2012. The mobile video ad market is much smaller, though eMarketer expects it to more than double this year to $518 million.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-06-20-Facebook-Instagram/id-380b5c273ea5433781b6a75777652f58

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Movie Review: The Bling Ring Proves as Superficial as its Reality ...

Location

Wide Release

Dates

Opens June 21

From October 2008 through August 2009, a group of Los Angeles high school kids burglarized a string of celebrity homes in the Hollywood Hills. In many ways the crime spree was perfect 21^st century remix of the Bonnie and Clyde story. The homes were targeted by searching on the internet for which celebrities were out of town on any given night. The thrill of the crime was fed, in part, by the teen burglar?s infatuation with stars and celebrity lifestyle. The fascination and media bubble that swelled around the crooks after they were caught for their crime catapulted the teenagers into a kind of Reality TV stardom that, though nefarious and life altering, seemed to satisfy a hunger for a life authenticated through the media glare. Even today, now that most of the culprits have served their jail time and have been released, TMZ will stop some of the Bling Ring members on the streets of Hollywood. In other words, by bizarre paparazzi standards, they?ve made it.

Sophia Coppola?s new film The Bling Ring dives into this bizarre and perfectly contemporary scenario, taking us through the crimes that led up to the eventual capture/stardom. Too bad she doesn?t dive deep enough. The film tries to be in ? and of ? the world it portrays. As a result, it feels like a glossy veneer of life. Long sequences are given over to ogling at the contents of Paris Hilton?s closet, as girls swipe high end purses and stuff them with jewelry. Other moments play out like music videos: long, lingering shots of the teenagers driving through L.A. or spending their stolen thousands at popular clubs, all to a mellow, synth-soaked soundtrack (Coppola, if anything, has always had impeccable taste in music). There are also scenes shot from webcams, incessant smart phone photo shoots, and lots of gabby vernacular. The longer we hang around these the characters, however, the less there seems to know about them. That may be part of the point, but it makes for a film that is as consumed by the surface of things as the superficial people it portrays.

Coppola approach here is tricky. She seems to want to show the world for what it is, and yet leave us with not so much a critique of its protagonists, as a lingering bitter taste. Of all the characters, Marc (Israel Broussard) seems to be most fully developed. He reluctantly joins in on his friend Rebecca?s (Katie Chang) plan to break into unlocked house, but is soon swept up in it like everyone else. Long close up shots of his face try to penetrate an inner psychology that remains out of reach. His fall from grace ? the eventual capture and spoiling of the teenagers? dream world ? hardly provokes any sympathy. There are times when Coppola seems to be trolling for our sympathy for these characters, and other times when she seems to want to keep them at arm?s length.

Emma Watson turns in the most intriguing performance as Nicki, a girl who unlike Marc and Rebecca, seems lost in an altogether deeper delusional existence. Coppola opens the film with some of this ridiculousness, having Nicki speculate to the paparazzi that despite her crimes she may become a world leader nonetheless. But then we lose the character to the mellow blur of the action that follows. That?s what happens to much of The Bling Ring, and it is what makes Coppola?s film feel more unfocused than subtle.

Source: http://frontrow.dmagazine.com/2013/06/movie-review-the-bling-ring-proves-as-superficial-as-its-reality-tv-obssessed-anti-heroes/

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Big E Langston?s rise to Superstardom

Big E Langston has just landed at home in Tampa, Fla., following a busy weekend of WWE Live Events and television broadcasts. Just the night before, the nearly 300-pound Superstar was in Dayton, Ohio, for WWE SmackDown. To some, it may seem like yesterday that Langston was a relative unknown cutting his teeth in NXT, but his meteoric rise to dominance has come as little surprise to the man himself.

Since manhandling John Cena during his very first appearance on WWE television, Langston has wowed and amazed the WWE Universe with his nearly unmatched power and intensity. It?s a trait that WWE?s newest face learned at the tender age of 8 years old. ?

Watch Langston attack Cena on Raw?| Photos of Langston's debut
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?I had sand weights and an old rusty bar I kept in the garage,? Langston told WWE.com. ?On Saturdays, I'd watch TV and do curls during the commercial breaks until I reached 100 reps.?
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The dedication to training helped catapult Langston to an amateur wrestling state championship in high school. Always one to seek out a new challenge, Langston would continue his athletic career as a defensive lineman at the University of Iowa. ?

?I train as hard as I do to be the most impressive specimen,? he said. ?After all, they don't pay me by the hour.?
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That mantra would prove an apt subtitle for the next chapter in his career.

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Source: http://www.wwe.com/shows/wwenxt/2013-06-19/big-e-langston-rise-superstardom

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Royal Highland Show 2013: Scottish Alliance Set Up To Tackle ...

A new alliance of excellence has been set up in Scotland to tackle the global challenge to feed a growing world population.

Date:

Thu, 20 Jun 2013

Source:

Farmers Weekly

The Scottish Food Security Alliance-Crops draws together expertise from the Universities of Aberdeen and Dundee and the James Hutton Institute - to create a critical mass of internationally-recognised excellence in crop science, soil science, environmental modelling, and human nutrition.

Researchers from different disciplines will work together to tackle the challenges of sustainable food production, the depletion of natural resources including productive land, water and nutrients, and the impacts of climate change on society.

The Alliance was formally launched at The Royal Highland Show, Ingliston by the chief executive of Scotland Food and Drink, James Withers. Commenting on the initiative Mr Withers said: "As Scotland looks to produce more with less resources it has never been more important for our leading universities and research institutes to collaborate.

"The food and drink industry needs armed with emerging science and understanding. With that, we'll play our part in rising to the food security challenge and, in so doing, secure economic success for Scotland too."

Read the full article in Farmers Weekly here.

Source: http://www.scotlandfoodanddrink.org/news/article-info/4470/royal-highland-show-2013-scottish-alliance-set-up-to-tackle-food-security-issues.aspx

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Hutong Vs. Highrise: A Photo Essay On China's Radical Urban Changes

Beijing is one of the earliest still-existant cities planned around a grid: the old city is organized around a chessboard-like matrix of alleys, known as hutong, that date back at least a millenium. But as developers in Beijing scramble to built modern towers in the urban core, hutong are disappearing.

German photographer Christopher Domakis has made it his business to document them. Domakis spent three months in China earlier this year, and during his stay, he ended up photographing dozens of hutong, documenting the narrow, centuries-old alleys and corridors as he ran across them. He also traveled widely throughout other Chinese cities, documenting the construction of hundreds of new towers.

According to a report from The Atlantic, over 600 hutong were razed every year during Beijing's boom in the 1990s:

Seemingly overnight, the city was transformed from a warren of Ming dynasty-era neighborhoods into an ultramodern urban sprawl, pocked with gleaming office towers and traversed by eight-lane highways... Remaining hutong dwellers are worried, and for good reason?they have a lot to lose. Their courtyard houses have survived centuries of war and revolution, the strain of collective ownership, and the turbulence of early economic reform. Passed down from generation to generation, they are often last-remaining monuments to entire family lines.

After an international outcry?precipitated by the destruction of hundreds of hutong to make way for the 2008 Olympic village?preservation groups are seeking to protect what remains?though it's unclear how successful they'll be.

Domakis' images throw this radical urban transformation into relief. In the 1200s, Marco Polo described Beijing as "laid out in squares like a chessboard with such masterly precision that no description can do justice to it." In a way, he probably would've enjoyed the modern-day Beijing: there's still plenty of masterly precision at work here?but unfortunately, it's to the detriment of the old city. [Christopher Domakis]

Hutong in central Beijing from the air.

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Source: http://gizmodo.com/hutong-vs-highrise-a-photo-essay-on-chinas-radical-u-523165696

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World looks to Bernanke to clarify stimulus plans

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Is the era of ultra-low interest rates nearing an end?

That's the question ? and the fear ? Chairman Ben Bernanke will face this week when he takes questions after a Federal Reserve policy meeting.

Financial markets have been gyrating in the 3? weeks since Bernanke told Congress the Fed might scale back its effort to keep long-term rates at record lows within "the next few meetings"? earlier than many had assumed.

Bernanke cautioned that the Fed would slow its support only if it felt confident the job market would show sustained improvement. And earlier in the day, he said the Fed must take care not to prematurely reduce its stimulus for the still-subpar economy.

Yet investors were left puzzled and spooked by a mixed message. Fear spread that the Fed would soon slow its $85 billion-a-month in bond purchases. Those purchases have been intended to hold down long-term borrowing rates to spur spending. Many worried that a pullback in the bond purchases could boost long-term rates, trigger a stock selloff and perhaps weaken the economy.

On Wednesday, when the Fed ends a two-day policy meeting with a Bernanke news conference, the financial world will be looking to the chairman to settle the confusion. What, Bernanke will likely be asked, would show sustained improvement in the job market? And when will the Fed most likely slow the pace of its bond purchases?

Last month, the U.S. economy added a solid 175,000 jobs. But the unemployment rate was 7.6 percent. Economists tend to regard the job market as healthy when unemployment is between 5 percent and 6 percent.

Since Bernanke's vague public comments May 22, the Dow Jones industrial average has fluctuated sharply and shed about 3 percent of its value. But the bigger shock has been in the bond market. The rate on the benchmark 10-year Treasury has jumped from a low of 1.63 percent in early May to 2.13 percent.

Higher rates ripple through the economy by making mortgages and other loans costlier. The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage, which tends to track the 10-year Treasury yield, reached 3.98 percent last week, according to Freddie Mac. That's its highest level since April 2012.

Just as cheap mortgages have helped feed a housing recovery, higher rates might slow it. Refinancings have declined since Bernanke's comments led to higher mortgage rates: Refinancings are 36 percent below their recent peak at the start of May, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Compounding the confusion stirred by Bernanke's remarks have been comments from other members of the Fed's policy committee. Minutes of the previous meeting suggest a sharp division: Some, like Bernanke, still stress the need to fight high unemployment with low rates. Others warn that rates kept too low for too long raise the risk of high inflation and financial instability later.

The Fed's investment purchases have swollen its portfolio to $3.4 trillion ? a four-fold increase since before the 2008 financial crisis. Eventually, the Fed will need to gradually sell its portfolio. Doing so would likely lead to higher rates. Yet some think it would also defuse some risks to the financial system.

Alan Greenspan, who preceded Bernanke as Fed chairman for nearly two decades, said in a recent interview on CNBC, "The sooner we come to grips with this excessive level of assets on the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve ? that everybody agrees is excessive ? the better."

Economists say Bernanke will seek to clarify the Fed's message Wednesday. Yet they're unsure what he'll say.

Some think he could spell out the Fed's likely timetable for curtailing its bond purchases. The earliest the Fed is expected to announce a pullback is at its September meeting ? and only then if unemployment has declined and the economy is growing faster than its current sluggish annual pace of around 2 percent.

Other analysts think the economy will not have recovered enough by September. They believe the earliest the Fed will reduce its stimulus is at its final meeting of the year in December. Until then, they think Bernanke will seek to reassure investors that the Fed will make sure the economy has strengthened before it acts.

"The Fed has worked very hard to get stock prices and home prices rising to help the economy, and I don't think they want to back away from that in any way," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "I think Bernanke will deliver a strong message that the Fed is not going to taper until the job market is improving in a consistent way."

Some in this camp say the economy will continue to be held back by a Social Security tax increase that kicked in in January and by federal spending cuts that began taking effect March 1.

"There is nothing in the underlying economy that would suggest the Fed needs to change policy any time soon," said Brian Bethune, an economics professor at Gordon College in Massachusetts. "There is considerably slower growth on the radar screen and absolutely no inflation to worry about."

Indeed, the Fed's preferred gauge of inflation tied to consumer spending rose just 0.7 percent in the 12 months that ended in April? far below the Fed's 2 percent target.

Some think Bernanke will want to signal to investors on Wednesday that the Fed is moving toward at least the start of a reduced pace of bond purchases in the second half of the year. Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at the Martin Smith School of Business at California State University, suggested one possible approach: The Fed could reduce its $85 billion a month in purchases to about $60 billion in September, then to about $35 billion early next year, then stop the purchases altogether by spring.

Even when the Fed stops buying bonds, it's expected to maintain its current holdings, which would continue to exert downward pressure on long-term rates.

Whatever guidance Bernanke offers Wednesday could help steady markets for a key reason: It will reduce uncertainty.

Margie Patel, a portfolio manager at Wells Fargo Capital Management, thinks investors will remain calm even after the Fed slows its stimulus. She noted that the economy has been improving, however gradually.

"There's no sector you can look at that's extremely dependent on the low rates for growth, even housing," she said. "If rates went up modestly, housing is still more affordable than it has been in years."

___

AP Business Writers Christina Rexrode and Matthew Craft in New York contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-06-17-Federal%20Reserve%201st%20Ld-Writethru/id-3df1165f2f4441529fa90adab86996be

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Firefighters advance containment on Colo. wildfire

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) ? Crews gained the upper hand on the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history Saturday and had more than half the blaze contained as officials prepared to lift mandatory evacuation orders for hundreds of residents.

Incident commander Rich Harvey said at an evening news conference that containment of the Black Forest Fire was at 55 percent, up from 45 percent earlier Saturday.

El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa said some residents along the north and west fronts of the initial evacuation zone were being allowed to return to their neighborhoods at 8 p.m. after authorities downgraded evacuation orders from mandatory to pre-evacuation status in specific areas.

While most mandatory evacuation orders had been lifted, as the fire zone remained at about 25 square miles, hundreds remained displaced after the fire destroyed nearly 500 homes and killed two people. The victims' bodies were found inside their garage Thursday, their car doors open as though they had been about to flee.

The announcement that crews had made significant advances on the blaze and taken control of it came the same day authorities were able to gain a clearer picture of the grim landscape it left behind after exploding Tuesday outside Colorado Springs. It's unclear what caused the fire, which sparked amid record-high temperatures and tinder-dry conditions, but officials believed it was human-caused.

No additional homes were destroyed as fire crews expanded containment lines, Sheriff Maketa said. Also, there were no new reports of injury or death, he said.

Earlier Saturday, worried residents waited for permission to return to their neighborhoods to see whether their homes were still standing.

Maketa cited deputies in saying that some areas in the fire's path had been described as looking "like a nuclear bomb went off," making it difficult to assess the damage before Saturday.

"That is the level of incineration and destruction that took place in some areas," he said.

Containment was at 55 percent by evening, up from 45 earlier Saturday. So far, it's cost more than $3.5 million to fight.

Some residents had already gotten to see the damage for themselves.

Jack and Judy Roe were able to tour their neighborhood Friday, and saw to their relief that their house had been spared. Several other homes on their block, however, where destroyed.

"Our hearts were breaking for our neighbors," Judy Roe said.

Describing the scene, she said she saw charred piles of what remained of homes, with bricks the only distinguishable feature.

"But other than that, everything is black. The ground, everything is just black," she said.

Some residents were forced to evacuate so quickly they didn't have time to pack an extra change of clothes.

"This is my wardrobe," said Bob Metzger, signaling to his jeans and polo shirt. Metzger and her wife Barbara were among those who lost their house.

The site of the wildfire is only a few miles away from the state's second most destructive wildfire, the Waldo Canyon Fire, which burned last summer.

The lessons from that fire spurred a quicker response, officials said. When the latest wildfire began in Black Forest, a thickly wooded rural region north of Colorado Springs, authorities swiftly evacuated tens of thousands of people from an area larger than the Denver metropolitan area.

White House officials said Saturday that President Barack Obama called Gov. John Hickenlooper on Friday to get an update on conditions and reinforce his commitment to help. The president also expressed his concern for the devastation and gave his condolences to families who have lost relatives.

Elsewhere in Colorado, fire crews worked to contain other smaller wildfires. In Canon City, 50 miles southwest of Black Forest, the Royal Gorge Fire burned 5 square miles and was 65 percent contained. A lightning-sparked fire in Rocky Mountain National Park had burned nearly 500 acres and was 30 percent contained.

___

Associated Press writer Ivan Moreno contributed to this report from Denver.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/firefighters-advance-containment-colo-wildfire-184819754.html

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