That Syncing Feeling

“Smart, or stylish?” That’s the question facing casual watch aficionados looking for a new, high-tech addition to their collection.

On one hand (er, wrist), you’ve got the Pebble and other smartwatch upstarts, which come with built-in smartphone connectivity, customizable screens, and burgeoning developer communities eager to feed their app ecosystems. They also, by and large, look like uninspired pieces of mass-produced Chinese plastic, and that’s because they are.

On the “stylish” end of the spectrum is … not much. Except this: Citizen’s Eco-Drive Proximity.

The Citizen learns the current time from your phone, and the watch’s hands spin around to the correct positions.

By all outward appearances, the Proximity looks like any another chronograph in a sea of handsome mechanical watches. It has all the features you’d expect, including a 24-hour dial, day and date, perpetual calendar and second time zone. But housed within its slightly oversized 46mm case is a Bluetooth 4.0 radio, so it’s capable of passing data over the new low-energy connectivity standard appearing in newer smartphones, including the iPhone 5 and 4S. And for now, the Promixity is only compatible with those Apple devices.

Initial pairing is relatively easy. After downloading Citizen’s notably low-rent iOS app, you can link the watch to your phone with a few turns and clicks on the crown.

The gee-whiz feature is the automatic time sync that takes place whenever you land in a different time zone. Once connected, the Citizen learns the current time from your phone, and the watch’s hands spin around to the correct positions — a welcome bit of easy magic, considering the initial setup is a tedious finger dance.

The watch can also notify you of incoming communications. Once you’ve configured the mail client (it only supports IMAP accounts), you’ll get notified whenever you get a new e-mail — there’s a slight vibration and the second hand sweeps over to the “mail” tab at the 10-o’clock position. If a phone call comes in, the second hand moves to the 11-o’clock marker. If the Bluetooth connection gets lost because the watch or phone is outside the 30-foot range, you get another vibration and the second hand moves to the “LL” indicator. And really, that’s the extent of the functionality around notifications.

But notable in its absence is the notification I’d like the most: text message alerts. And it’s not something Citizen will soon be rectifying because the dials and hardware aren’t upgradable.

I also experienced frequent connection losses, particularly when attending a press conference with scads of Mi-Fis and tethered smartphones around me. This caused dozens of jarring vibrations both on my wrist and in my pocket, followed by a raft of push notifications on my phone informing me of the issue. Reconnecting is easy (and generally happens automatically), but the lack of stability in certain environments matched with the limited capabilities of the notifications had me forgetting to reconnect and not even worrying about it later on.

But actually, I’m OK with that. I still like the fact that it never needs charging. Even though there aren’t any solar cells visible on the dial, the watch does have them. They’re hidden away beneath the dial, and yet they still work perfectly. And even when its flagship connectivity features aren’t behaving, it’s still a damn handsome watch. It feels solid, and it looks good at the office, out to dinner, or on the weekend — something very few other “smart” watches on the market can claim.

However, those things can be said of almost all of Citizen’s EcoDrive watches. The big distinguishing feature here is the Bluetooth syncing and notifications, and they just don’t work that well.

WIRED A smart watch you won’t be embarrassed to wear. Charges using light. Combines classic styling with cutting-edge connectivity. Subtle notifications keep you informed without dominating your attention.

TIRED Loses Bluetooth connection with disturbing frequency. Limited notification abilities. No text message alerts. Janky iPhone app.

Read More..

Oscars expand social media outreach for 85th show

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is encouraging celebrities to tweet during the Oscars.

The film organization has expanded its digital outreach for the 85th Academy Awards with a new feature that lets stars to snap photos of themselves backstage during Sunday’s ceremony and instantly post them online.

What Twitter calls a “Magic Mirror” will take photo-booth-style pictures of participating stars in the green room and send them out on the academy’s official Twitter account. Organizers expect multiple celebrity mash-ups.

The backstage green room is a private place for stars to hang out before taking the stage and is typically closed to press and photographers.

The Magic Mirror is “giving access to fans at home a part of the show they never got to experience before,” Twitter spokeswoman Elaine Filadelfo said Friday.

A new video-on-demand/instant replay feature also being introduced Sunday will allow Oscar fans to view show highlights online moments after they happen and share them with friends on Twitter and Facebook. Dozens of clips from the red carpet and the awards telecast will be available on the official Oscar website beyond Sunday’s ceremony.

Oscar.com also offers other behind-the-scenes interactive features, including various backstage camera perspectives and a new live blog that aggregates the show’s presence across social media. It will track the traffic on whatever makes a splash, like Angelina Jolie’s right leg did last year.

The academy wants to make its second-screen experience just as rich as its primary one.

“Social media is now mainstream,” said Christina Kounelias, chief marketing officer for the academy.

“We’re not doing social media to reach out to young kids,” said the academy’s digital media director, Josh Spector. “We’re doing it to connect with all Oscar fans.”

___

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/APSandy.

___

Online:

www.oscar.com

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Oscars expand social media outreach for 85th show
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/oscars-expand-social-media-outreach-for-85th-show/
Link To Post : Oscars expand social media outreach for 85th show
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Drone Pilots Found to Get Stress Disorders Much as Those in Combat Do

U.S. Air Force/Master Sgt. Steve Horton

Capt. Richard Koll, left, and Airman First Class Mike Eulo monitored a drone aircraft after launching it in Iraq.

The study affirms a growing body of research finding health hazards even for those piloting machines from bases far from actual combat zones.

“Though it might be thousands of miles from the battlefield, this work still involves tough stressors and has tough consequences for those crews,” said Peter W. Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who has written extensively about drones. He was not involved in the new research.

That study, by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center, which analyzes health trends among military personnel, did not try to explain the sources of mental health problems among drone pilots.

But Air Force officials and independent experts have suggested several potential causes, among them witnessing combat violence on live video feeds, working in isolation or under inflexible shift hours, juggling the simultaneous demands of home life with combat operations and dealing with intense stress because of crew shortages.

“Remotely piloted aircraft pilots may stare at the same piece of ground for days,” said Jean Lin Otto, an epidemiologist who was a co-author of the study. “They witness the carnage. Manned aircraft pilots don’t do that. They get out of there as soon as possible.”

Dr. Otto said she had begun the study expecting that drone pilots would actually have a higher rate of mental health problems because of the unique pressures of their job.

Since 2008, the number of pilots of remotely piloted aircraft — the Air Force’s preferred term for drones — has grown fourfold, to nearly 1,300. The Air Force is now training more pilots for its drones than for its fighter jets and bombers combined. And by 2015, it expects to have more drone pilots than bomber pilots, although fighter pilots will remain a larger group.

Those figures do not include drones operated by the C.I.A. in counterterrorism operations over Pakistan, Yemen and other countries.

The Pentagon has begun taking steps to keep pace with the rapid expansion of drone operations. It recently created a new medal to honor troops involved in both drone warfare and cyberwarfare. And the Air Force has expanded access to chaplains and therapists for drone operators, said Col. William M. Tart, who commanded remotely piloted aircraft crews at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.

The Air Force has also conducted research into the health issues of drone crew members. In a 2011 survey of nearly 840 drone operators, it found that 46 percent of Reaper and Predator pilots, and 48 percent of Global Hawk sensor operators, reported “high operational stress.” Those crews cited long hours and frequent shift changes as major causes.

That study found the stress among drone operators to be much higher than that reported by Air Force members in logistics or support jobs. But it did not compare the stress levels of the drone operators with those of traditional pilots.

The new study looked at the electronic health records of 709 drone pilots and 5,256 manned aircraft pilots between October 2003 and December 2011. Those records included information about clinical diagnoses by medical professionals and not just self-reported symptoms.

After analyzing diagnosis and treatment records, the researchers initially found that the drone pilots had higher incidence rates for 12 conditions, including anxiety disorder, depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and suicidal ideation.

But after the data were adjusted for age, number of deployments, time in service and history of previous mental health problems, the rates were similar, said Dr. Otto, who was scheduled to present her findings in Arizona on Saturday at a conference of the American College of Preventive Medicine.

The study also found that the incidence rates of mental heath problems among drone pilots spiked in 2009. Dr. Otto speculated that the increase might have been the result of intense pressure on pilots during the Iraq surge in the preceding years.

The study found that pilots of both manned and unmanned aircraft had lower rates of mental health problems than other Air Force personnel. But Dr. Otto conceded that her study might underestimate problems among both manned and unmanned aircraft pilots, who may feel pressure not to report mental health symptoms to doctors out of fears that they will be grounded.

She said she planned to conduct two follow-up studies: one that tries to compensate for possible underreporting of mental health problems by pilots and another that analyzes mental health issues among sensor operators, who control drone cameras while sitting next to the pilots.

“The increasing use of remotely piloted aircraft for war fighting as well as humanitarian relief should prompt increased surveillance,” she said.

Read More..

BP and Gulf Coast States Jockey Over Settlement on Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

John Moore/Getty Images

A BP cleanup crew removing oil from a beach in May 2010 in Port Fourchon, La., after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

With a major civil trial scheduled to start Monday in New Orleans against BP over damages related to the explosion of an offshore drilling rig in 2010, federal officials and those from the five affected Gulf Coast states are trying to pull together to strike an 11th-hour settlement in the case.

A lawyer briefed on those talks said that the Justice Department and the five states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — have reportedly prepared an offer to resolve the two biggest issues central to a series of trials against BP, the first of which starts Monday.

One of those issues is the fines that the company would pay for violations of the Clean Water Act related to the four million gallons of oil spilled after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which BP had leased from Transocean. The other point of dispute is how much the company will have to pay in penalties under a different environmental statute for damage caused by the oil to the area: beaches, marshes, wildlife and fisheries.

The Wall Street Journal reported late Friday that federal and state officials were preparing a $16 billion settlement offer that would cover both the Clean Water Act fines and environmental penalties related to the spill. “The ball is on BP’s side of the table,” said the lawyer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Justice Department officials and state officials could not be reached Saturday to comment on any possible offer. A spokesman for BP, Geoff Morrell, said, “BP doesn’t talk about possible offers or negotiations, but I can tell you we are ready for trial and looking forward to opening arguments on Monday.”

The lawyer briefed on the talks said that one problem with the current proposal by federal and state officials was that it did not cover economic damages claimed by the states related to the spill. Such claims could still leave BP on the hook for billions more, in addition to the environmental damages.

The late negotiations among federal and state officials to find common ground represents progress, even if limited, in the search for a settlement. The five states have had sharp disagreements over how much BP should pay and how billions of dollars in potential settlement funds should be divided.

For example, only two of the states, Louisiana and Alabama, are participating in the trial starting on Monday, though Florida, Mississippi and Texas could be part of any settlement. Officials in Louisiana believe their state deserves the bulk of any settlement since that state’s coastal waters, fisheries and businesses suffered the most. Florida and other states that escaped serious coastal damage instead want money for economic losses that they sustained.

“There are a lot of moving parts,” said Luther Strange, the attorney general of Alabama. “Personalities aside, the issues are so complex.” Another lawyer briefed on the talks said he believed any proposal involving Louisiana would be significant because its participation would be critical to any settlement.

Also, billions of dollars could be assessed against BP in several ways, either through fines, or through penalties to redress environmental damage and payments to cover economic losses. And each of those methods represents a different set of stakes and consequences for each of the states and for BP.

For instance, BP would prefer to limit the fines, and make more payments through environmental damage penalties, because those penalties can be written off as tax deductions while fines cannot. But the states have more flexibility in spending money derived from fines.

To date, BP has agreed to pay an estimated $30 billion in fines, settlement payments and cleanup costs related to the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which killed 11 workers aboard the rig. And so far, company officials have said that they have no intention of acceding to demands from the states for huge economic damages.

Still, the stakes for BP in the trial are high. If the company is found in this first phase of the trial to have acted with gross negligence, BP could face up to $17.5 billion in penalties, much of that in fines that would hit the bottom line hardest because those fines do not qualify as tax deductions.

The lack of a unified strategy to date among the states has also posed another problem for BP; companies are less likely to settle a major lawsuit if they know yet another one is waiting.

Read More..

Gunfire and deadly crash rattle the Las Vegas Strip

LAS VEGAS — A spectacular predawn crash on the Strip — triggered when bullets fired from a black Range Rover peppered a Maserati — hit this resort city right between the eyes. In the end, three people were dead and a major intersection under lockdown during a three-state manhunt for the shooters, leaving even casino veterans used to the extraordinary scratching their heads.

The mayhem was sparked, witnesses told police, by a quarrel early Thursday at a hotel valet stand.

The two vehicles left the Aria resort hotel and were heading north on Las Vegas Boulevard at 4:20 a.m., an hour when the casino marquees shine brightly but the gambling thoroughfare is largely empty. At Harmon Avenue, occupants inside the Range Rover opened fire on the Maserati, police said.

The silver-gray sports car, which was struck several times, sped into the intersection at Flamingo Road, ramming a Yellow cab. The taxi exploded, killing the driver and a passenger. Four other vehicles in the intersection were also involved in the crash and explosion, but officers offered no details.

"Omg Omg Omg that car just blew up!" one witness tweeted shortly after the crash, posting a photo of the wreckage. "God Bless their Souls! Omg!"

The driver of the Maserati died later at a hospital, police said. A passenger in the vehicle received minor injuries and was being interviewed by investigators. At least three others were also injured.

Police in Nevada, California, Arizona and Utah were on alert for the distinctive black Range Rover SUV, described as having dark-tinted windows, black rims and out-of-state paper dealer plates.

"We are going to pursue these individuals and prosecute them," Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie said at an afternoon news conference. "This act was totally unacceptable. It's not just tragic but unnecessary — the level of violence we see here in Las Vegas and across America."

Authorities had not publicly identified the dead. But a Las Vegas television station late Thursday identified the taxi driver as Michael Boldon, 62, who the station said had recently moved here from Michigan to care for his 93-year-old mother.

The victim's son, who drives a limousine, told Fox News 5 that he last talked with his father after 3 a.m., and later called his cellphone shortly after the crash to warn him to avoid the Strip. But there was no answer.

The station also identified the driver of the Maserati as Ken Cherry, a rap artist from Oakland who also is known as "Kenny Clutch." The station quoted family members identifying Cherry as the driver. An Internet video of a Cherry song called "Stay Schemin" shows two men in a vehicle on the Strip.

Police had more questions than answers.

"It began with a dispute at a nearby hotel and spilled onto the streets," said Capt. Chris Jones of the Las Vegas Police Robbery and Homicide Division.

The morning's events threw the Strip into disarray all day. The gambling boulevard's busiest and best-known intersection was cordoned off by yellow police tape until nightfall, keeping traffic and curious pedestrians away from the carnage. Even skywalks were blocked off.

While slot machines beeped and card games continued inside casinos around the accident scene — including the Bellagio, Caesars Palace and Paris Las Vegas — hotel bell captains were fielding questions from tourists who had awakened to news of the crash and the Strip shutdown. The alleys and side streets between nearby hotels were clogged with pedestrians who inched along on narrow sidewalks, past delivery doors, many making their own paths between the landscaped bushes and palm trees.

Even casino industry workers were thrown into turmoil. Hotel maids and dealers who finished their midnight shifts after dawn were left without bus service home. "I'm stranded," said Tiruselam Kefyalew, 25, a maid. "What a day to leave my cellphone at home."

Limousine drivers who normally prowl the city's gambling core improvised detours. Some said the police blockade would cost them $500 or more in lost business and tips.

"Most people understand, but you have your complainers," said Jim DeSanto, a limo driver who waited for fares outside Bally's casino. "Those people will complain, even when everything is perfect."

Well after noon, guests peered out nearby hotel windows and others leaned into the street to glimpse the crime scene.

"Hey, honey, it must have happened right here," one man told his wife as they left Caesars around noon. The tourist, who would only say that he had arrived from Tampa, Fla., the previous evening, had looked out his hotel window at 4:30 to see a vehicle in flames.

Read More..

PayPal's New U.K. Card Reader Exposes Inferior U.S. Tech

PayPal has released a new mobile card reader in the U.K., which wouldn’t seem like big news — we already have a bunch of those here in the U.S., including PayPal’s. But there’s a difference: the overseas version crushes anything available stateside.

This superiority isn’t because PayPal has come up with some big breakthrough. It’s because the underlying payment technology on which its based, called chip-and-PIN, is just better than the old-timey magnetic stripes that still adorn the backs of U.S. credit cards. Compared to Europe, the way Americans pay is stuck in the 1980s.

As shown in the video above, chip-and-PIN works like it sounds: You put your card in the reader; it reads the card’s chip; you enter your PIN. Yes, from the payer’s point of view, debit cards in the U.S. already work this way. But if your debit card is anything like mine, it still has that stripe across the back.

And mag-stripes, to use the industry argot, are child’s play to copy. Thieves can hide “wafer-thin” card skimmers inside ATM or gas pump card slots to steal a card’s data. Of course, you hardly need to go that far. Just steal someone’s credit card, rack up a big tab and scrawl an illegible signature at the bottom of the receipt. How many times has a cashier said, “Hey, that’s not you!”

The chips in chip-and-PIN cards are supposed to be much harder to copy than a mag-stripe. Credit card networks in the U.S. are pushing for the widespread adoption of these so-called EMV chips sometime this decade, and for obvious reason: Cutting down on fraud saves them money.

But if chip-and-PIN is so much better, why don’t we have it here already? Analysts say that when it comes to the slow spread of payment tech in the U.S., we have the free market to thank. Consumers, probably due to a simple lack of awareness, aren’t demanding better payment options. Stores and banks, in the meantime, don’t want to invest in the new hardware they’ll need to take chip-and-PIN if no one has the cards to begin with.

PayPal isn’t the first company to offer mobile chip-and-PIN readers in Europe. But such a device made by a U.S. company at all could be a good sign. If all it takes to accept chip-and-PIN cards is a smartphone and a tiny mobile card reader keypad, the hardware doesn’t seem like such a huge investment for retailers after all. In the U.S. we love innovation. Sometimes we’re just not good at knowing it when we see it.

Read More..

Question Mark: Acne Common in Baby Boomers Too

Pimples are no surprise on babies and teenagers, but boomers?

You no longer have to gaze over a school lunchroom, hoping to find a seat at a socially acceptable table. You don’t rush to get home at night before your junior license driving restrictions kick in. And you men no longer have to worry that your voice will skip an octave without warning.

But if adolescence is over, what is that horrid protuberance staring at you in the mirror from the middle of your forehead? Some speak of papules, pustules and nodules, but we will use the technical term: zit. That thing on your forehead now is the same thing that was there back in high school, or at least a close relative. Same as it ever was (cue “Once in a Lifetime”).

We get more than the occasional complaint here from baby boomers who want to know about this aging body part or that. So you would think people would be happy with any emblem of youth — even if it is sore and angry-looking and threatening to erupt at any second. But oddly, there are those who are not happy to see pimples again, and some have asked for an explanation.

Acne occurs when the follicles that connect the pores of the skin to oil glands become clogged with a mixture of hair, oils and skin cells, and bacteria in the plug causes swelling, experts say. A pimple grows as the plug breaks down.

According to the American Academy of Dermatology, a growing number of women in their 30s, 40s, 50s and even beyond are seeking treatment for acne. Middle-age men are also susceptible to breakouts, but less so, experts say.

In some cases, people suffer from acne that began in their teenage years and never really went away. Others had problems when they were younger and then enjoyed decades of mostly clear skin. Still others never had much of the way of pimples until they were older.

Whichever the case, the explanation for adult acne is likely to be the same as it is for acne found in teenagers and, for that matter, newborns: hormonal changes. “We know that all acne is hormonally driven and hormonally sensitive,” said Dr. Bethanee J. Schlosser, an assistant professor of dermatology at Northwestern.

Among baby boomers, the approach of menopause may result in a drop in estrogen, a hormone that can help keep pimples from forming, and increased levels of androgens, the male hormone. Women who stop taking birth control pills may also see a drop in their estrogen levels.

Debate remains over what role diet plays in acne. Some experts say that foods once thought to cause pimples, like chocolate, are probably not a problem. Still, while sugar itself is no longer believed to contribute to acne, some doctors think that foods with a high glycemic index – meaning they quickly elevate glucose in the body — might. White bread and sweetened cereals are examples. And for all ages, stress has also been found to play a role.

One message to acne sufferers has not changed over the years. Your mother was right: don’t pop it! It can cause scarring.

Questions about aging? E-mail boomerwhy@nytimes.com

Booming: Living Through the Middle Ages offers news and commentary about baby boomers, anchored by Michael Winerip. You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming. You can reach us by e-mail at booming@nytimes.com.

Read More..

Euro Watch: European Commission Offers Grim Forecast for Economy

BRUSSELS — A top E.U. official warned Friday that the economy of the euro area would shrink for the second year in a row and that countries like France and Spain would miss fiscal targets meant to ensure the stability of the common currency.

Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, forecast growth across the 27-nation European Union of just 0.1 percent this year and a contraction of 0.3 percent among the 17 countries in the euro zone.

Mr. Rehn’s presentation signaled “another year of falling output and rising unemployment in store in 2013,” said Tom Rogers, a senior economic adviser at Ernst & Young.

Prospects for growth in many parts of the Union were “very disappointing,” Mr. Rehn acknowledged at a news conference, where he presented a so-called winter economic forecast prepared by his department at the European Commission, the Union’s administrative arm.

“The ongoing rebalancing of the European economy is continuing to weigh on growth in the short term,” Mr. Rehn said.

Just three months ago, the commission forecast that the euro area economy would grow by 0.1 percent this year.

Mr. Rehn said the European economy should resume expanding in 2014, with growth reaching 1.6 percent across the Union and 1.4 percent in the euro area.

But the downbeat forecast, coming a day after data showed that a slump in business activity in the euro area worsened unexpectedly this month, added to perceptions that Europe continues to struggle to stimulate growth while cutting spending to pare deficits.

The commission also forecast that unemployment would continue to rise in the euro area this year, to 12.2 percent, up from 11.4 percent in 2012.

In Spain, the commission said it expected joblessness to hit 26.9 percent, up from 25 percent last year. In Greece, the forecast was for unemployment to leap to 27 percent from 24.7 percent a year earlier.

Even in buoyant Germany, which is expected to grow this year by 0.5 percent, unemployment was seen nudging up slightly this year to 5.7 percent from 5.5 percent in 2012.

The litany of grim figures will add fuel to a furious debate over whether an insistence on austerity is creating a self-perpetuating cycle where cuts to state spending to meet E.U. targets diminish demand, weakening tax revenue and further straining government finances.

Yet blaming the effects of belt-tightening for Europe’s continued economic woes, particularly in the case of Spain, is too simplistic, said Guntram B. Wolff, the deputy director of Bruegel, a research organization.

“Perhaps the real reason for the deterioration in the economic situation in Europe was the massive drop in confidence of international investors in the ability of the euro area to overcome its more systemic problems,” Mr. Wolff wrote in a blog posting shortly after Mr. Rehn’s news conference.

The commission said Spain’s deficit was expected to fall to 6.7 percent of gross domestic product this year, down from 10.2 percent in 2012, partly because of tax increases and a sharp reduction in year-end bonuses for public-sector workers. But that still fell wide of the official target of 4.5 percent, and the commission warned that Spain’s deficit could rise to 7.2 percent in 2014.

In the case of France, the commission attributed economic stagnation to declining household spending linked to rising unemployment — which the report said was expected to reach 10.7 percent in 2013, then climb to 11 percent in 2014, up from an estimated 10.3 percent in 2012. In addition, the report cited a drop in confidence among French entrepreneurs.

The report forecast that the French budget deficit for 2013 would be 3.7 percent of G.D.P., down from an estimated 4.6 percent in 2012, but well above the government’s official target of 3 percent. The commission also warned that the deficit could rise to 3.9 percent in 2014.

In a sign of flexibility, Mr. Rehn said deadlines for meeting budgetary targets could be extended in the cases of France and Spain, assuming their governments could demonstrate progress in implementing fiscal reforms despite the unexpectedly tough economic environment.

Read More..

Bulgari shows off Liz Taylor's gems

It isn't easy sometimes to be an ordinary person in Los Angeles, so near to and yet so far from the city's glamorous events.

You hear about the grand Oscar parties, but you will never be invited. The award ceremony may be taking place minutes from where you live, but you watch it at home, on TV, in your sweat pants — and you might as well be in Dubuque.

Rodeo Drive too can make you feel like a scrap on the cutting room floor. As you stroll the wide and immaculate sidewalks of Beverly Hills' iconic shopping street, you pass by boutiques you'd feel self-conscious walking into. In the windows are baubles and trinkets you could never in three lifetimes afford.

Which is why it is rather nice to be invited to make a private appointment at the house of Bulgari, the fine Italian jeweler that opened its doors in 1884.

Elizabeth Taylor loved Bulgari jewels. Richard Burton, whose torrid affair with her began during the filming of "Cleopatra" in Rome, accompanied her often to the flagship shop on the Via Condotti. He liked to joke that the name Bulgari was all the Italian she knew.

So it is fitting that starting Oscar week, the jeweler is celebrating the Oscar-winning star with an exhibit of eight of her most treasured Bulgari pieces.

They are heavy on diamonds and emeralds — of rare size, gleam and value.

And Bulgari knows their value well.

After Taylor's death, it reacquired some of the gems at a Christie's auction. One piece, an emerald-and-diamond brooch that also can be worn as a pendant, sold for $6,578,500 — breaking records both for sales price of an emerald and for emerald price per carat ($280,000).

That brooch, whose centerpiece is an octagonal step-cut emerald weighing 23.44 carats, was Burton's engagement present to Taylor. He followed it upon their marriage (his second, her fifth) with a matching necklace whose 16 Colombian emeralds weigh in at 60.5 carats. Bulgari bought the necklace back too, for $6,130,500.

They are in the exhibit, along with Burton's engagement ring to Taylor and a delicate brooch — given to her by husband No. 4, Eddie Fisher — whose emerald and diamond flowers were set en tremblant so that they gently fluttered as Taylor moved.

The jewels are not for sale.

On Tuesday night, actress Julianne Moore wore the Burton necklace, with pendant attached, at a gala for Bulgari's top clients. At the dinner hour, guests were escorted along a lavender-colored carpet to a nearby rooftop that had been transformed into a Roman terrace.

Those honored guests, of course, got private viewings of Taylor's jewels.

But so did Amanda Perry, a healer from West Hollywood who arrived the next morning for one of the first appointments available to the public.

Someone had emailed news of the collection to the 35-year-old Taylor fan. She walked in off the street Tuesday, when the exhibit was open only to press — and Sabina Pelli, Bulgari's glamorous executive vice president, fresh from Rome, was taking sips of San Pellegrino brought to her on a silver tray between back-to-back interviews that started at 5 a.m.

The camera crews were long gone when Perry came back Wednesday. She had the exhibit, and handsome sales associate Timothy Morzenti of Milan, entirely to herself.

In a black suit, still wearing on his left hand the black glove he dons to handle fine jewels, Morzenti whisked Perry off via a private elevator to the exhibit on the second floor. The jewels stood in vitrines mounted high off the ground. Behind them were photos and a slide show of Taylor, bejeweled.

"Which piece would you like to see first?" Morzenti asked her as a security guard stood by. "I personally love the emerald ring."

Then he proceeded at leisure to explain Bulgari-signature sugar-loaf cuts and trombino ring settings, while tossing in occasional Taylor stories.

Read More..

RIAA Says Google's Anti-Piracy Search Algorithm Is Bogus

The Recording Industry Association of American said Thursday that Google’s algorithm change to lower rankings of sites with “high numbers” of copyright-infringing removal notices has had no “demonstrable impact on demoting sites with large amounts of piracy.”

“The sites we analyzed, all of which were serial infringers per Google’s Copyright Transparency Report, were not demoted in any significant way in the search results and still managed to appear on page 1 of the search results over 98 percent of the time in the searches conducted,” the RIAA’s report said. (.pdf)

The report concluded that pirate sites are much more likely to appear in top search rankings than are legitimate music sites.

“Whatever Google has done, it doesn’t appear to be working,” the report said.

Google, which did not immediately respond for comment, announced the algorithm, or “signal,” changeover in August.

At the time, a Google spokesman told Wired that a primary reason for the move was to better the “user experience” in Google search to direct internet surfers to “high-quality” sites. The plan was not a result of any “deal” with the content industry, the spokesman said.

Google receives millions of notices a month under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to remove infringing content from its search results.

Sites like 4shared.com, audiko.com, beemp3.com, downloads.nl, mp3chief.com, mp3juices.com, mp3skull.com and zippyshare.com repeatedly showed in the top 10 search results, despite Google receiving more than 100,000 removal notices for each site, the RIAA report said.

“There does not appear to be any meaningful decrease in ranking of these sites since the demotion signal was implemented,” the report said.

Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, search engines must remove links upon request by rights holders who tell the company the links lead to infringing content. If Google doesn’t remove the link, Google itself may be liable for infringement.

In August, when the change was announced, we speculated that the move looked like it was designed to head off potential legislation giving the Justice Department the power to seek court orders requiring search engines like Google to remove from search results websites the government declares to be rogue. Such a feature was included in the Stop Online Piracy Act, which was defeated for altogether different reasons more than a year ago because the package also included tinkering with the (DNS) domain name system.

At the time, we assumed the new algorithm would work better than how the RIAA portrayed it Thursday.

That said, it makes no sense for Google for Google to highly rank pirate sites to the detriment if its own business model, which is more than just online search. Google is a giant media company, and its marketplace called Google Play sells music, books, magazines, movies and TV shows from the world’s biggest content producers.

Read More..