social media news: février 2014

vendredi 28 février 2014

Google Maps Dives Into World Oceans for Underwater Street Views

The Google Maps team has announced the addition of new underwater Street View images in locations around Mexico with the help of the Catlin Seaview Survey, an organization documenting the world's declining coral reefs via high-resolution, underwater photography.

Created in September 2012, the 360-degree, panoramic photographs produced by the Catlin Seaview Survey will allow scientists to monitor the health of coral reefs around the world and offer policy makers and the general public a closer look at a critical part of the environment.

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Best Picture Nominees Sing for the Oscar

Oscar night is no stranger to grandiose musical performances inspired by the nominated films. But what would the awkward sex scenes from Her between Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlet Johansson's voice sound like as a Broadway-inspired musical number?

Award-winning online media company Wayside Creations gave this year's Best Picture nominees — with the exception of 12 Years a Slave — a lyrical makeover for a spoof titled "Oscar Season: The Musical."

Oscarphiles can enjoy a song reminiscent of "Take Me or Leave Me" from Rent, but sung by the female lead characters from American Hustle. And where else can you watch the nominees enter into a full-on death match as they await for the winner's name to be called on stage? Read more...

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Twitter's User Growth Is Tapering Off Very Quickly

Year-over-year growth of Twitter's monthly active users is declining quickly, both globally and in the U.S.

At its peak, within the past three years, Twitter grew internationally by more than 140%. However, as of Q4 2013, that growth is just under 40%, despite reaching 241 million monthly active users

Research firm eMarketer recently projected that Twitter's growth will slow even more over the next few years. The social platform will need to work hard for continued success.

The following chart, created by Statista, breaks down Twitter's year-over-year growth since 2011. Read more...

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Make Your Predictions for Oscars 2014

In the week leading up to the Academy Awards, we all like to put on our film critic hats and confidently predict which movies will win big.

And while none of us can know for certain which films and actors will take home the evening's major awards, there are indicators that can give us a sense of each film's relative chances. The results of other events during "awards season," such as the Golden Globes, the Screen Actor's Guild Awards and the Producer's Guild Awards, help us get a sense for who has the right momentum leading up to Oscars night.

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When Google Glass Haters Attack

One of the more troubling technology stories to come out of the past week is the assault on Sarah Slocum, a San Francisco-based tech enthusiast and writer, who was apparently targeted because she was wearing Google Glass in a bar.

Like many incidents of this nature, the exact account of what happened is a little fuzzy. Slocum said she was merely showing friends how the connected headset works when other bar patrons began hurling insults her way. One witness told local media she was "running around very excited," which annoyed some of the people around her. But it's revealing that Slocum has publicly come forward with her account, while the people who confronted her have not. Read more...

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Tim Cook to Climate Change Deniers: Get Out of Apple Stock

Apple CEO Tim Cook has not been known for taking a strong stand on, well, just about anything. Caution has been the watchword of Cook's three-year tenure at the top of the world's wealthiest technology company. So far his legacy is largely comprised of incremental improvements in established products, tweaks to the supply chain, and more corporate transparency.

But Cook does care about the environment — and that became very clear on Friday, when the CEO had a terse exchange with an anti-environmental lobbying group

Apple has made vast improvements in its use of renewable energy since Cook took over from Steve Jobs. More than three-quarters of the company's facilities worldwide, including all of its data centers and its Cupertino HQ, now run on solar, wind, geothermal or hydro power, up from about a quarter under Jobs. Last year, Cook hired Lisa Jackson, former head of the EPA, to lead the company's sustainability efforts. Read more...

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Bilked Investors' New Dream: A Mt. Gox Takeover

Some investors who lost thousands after Mt. Gox's implosion are weighing a new plan: Taking over the exchange to recoup some of their cash.

The idea, which some consider pie-in-the-sky, made the rounds on the Bitcoin sub-Reddit. The gist: Investors will take over Mt. Gox and use its remaining equity to and it running for a few years. Over that time, they will generate enough money from trading fees to pay back at least some of the money they've lost. As Redditor Xeldel explained:

A new Xchange wouldn't be mt gox, it wouldnt have any of the employees or management, not even the name. Call it anything. the idea would be to maintain the account balances. Take the data , put together a transparent secure exchange and run it. There is no reason to say i want anyone's account balances dissolved and forgotten, if that is able to be preserved. There are plenty of cheap gox coins for sale right now. A working solution of this idea would be more than enough incentive for some very talented people to get involved. Read more...

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'Lego Movie' Producer Bringing 'Minecraft' Game to Theaters

Following in the footsteps of the hit film The Lego Movie , Warner Bros. has acquired the rights to the popular video game Minecraft

The game's creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson broke the news via Twitter on Thursday

Someone is trying leak the fact that we're working with Warner Brothers on a potential Minecraft Movie. I wanted to be the leak!

— Markus Persson (@notch) February 27, 2014

Lego Movie producer Roy Lee (with his company Vertigo Entertainment) has signed on to oversee the project, Deadline reports

No surprise there, considering the similarities of the two gamesMinecraft, which has sold more than 35 million copies since its beta release in 2009, is essentially a digital Lego set, allowing users to create avatars and build structures using various materials Read more...

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Must Reads: Striking Gold, the WikiLeaks Ghostwriter and More

During the week, we consume words in snackable, tweetable bites. But on the weekends, we have the time to take a dive into the murkier, lengthier depths of the Internet and expand our attention spans beyond 140 characters. We can brew a cup of coffee and lie back with our iPads, laptops, smartphones and Kindles.

Since you're bound to miss a few things during the daily grind, we present to you, in our weekly installation of Mashable Must Reads, a curated list of can't-miss stories from around the web to read and reflect on. (You can find last week's must reads here.) Read more...

The Crazy True History of the Saddle Ridge Gold Coins | Mashable

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'Maxim' Magazine Sold to Operator of Steak 'n Shake Restaurants

The Key To Helping San Francisco's Homeless: Cellphones

You won't find "cellphone" listed within Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but the device is certainly making a case for inclusion.

A new San Francisco-focused website, Link-SF, was unveiled Friday with the goal of helping the city's homeless population connect with resources like shelter, food and medical assistance.

The idea for a website alone isn't necessarily groundbreaking, but the intended use case is. Site creators built the service specifically for mobile phones, which have become an important tool in the everyday lives of America's homeless population, too, says Kenshiro Nakagawa, a software engineer at Zendesk who helped develop the site Read more...

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Moscow's 'Gay Olympics' Are Off to a Nightmare Start

Outraged by the 2014 Winter Olympics being held in Sochi despite Russia's harsh anti-gay climate, LGBT activists there and elsewhere had a dream they hoped would counter their disappointment

The first Russian Open Games — an Olympics for LGBT athletes meant to also promote LGBT equality in Russia — would feature more than 200 athletes from more than 10 countries competing in Russia's capital city of Moscow from Feb. 26 through March 3. Hotels were booked, as were sports venues, and the Open Games looked set to fill an attention gap between the Olympics' closing ceremony on Feb. 23 and the start of the Paralympics on March 7 Read more...

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Beyonce's NSFW 'Partition' Video Dominates YouTube

Driver roll down the partition please, it's getting way too steamy in here

Beyonce released the official video to "Partition" on her YouTube channel Tuesday, and it's a hot one. The video was technically released on Dec. 3, along with 16 other videos, during the surprise iTunes drop of Beyonce's visual album

But the Queen has now given us common-folk access to the raunchy Jake Nava-directed video. In it, the singer seduces real-life hubby Jay Z in, where else?, the back of a car. There are also a few lingerie-filled pole-dancing scenes to really turn up the raunch factor Read more...

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Obama Warns Russia: Don't Mess With Ukraine

President Obama warned Russia against intervening in Ukraine's conflict, saying he was "concerned" about reports of military movement in the Crimea region.

"The Ukrainian people deserve the opportunity to determine their own future," Obama said in a very short press briefing Friday afternoon. "We encourage Ukrainians to stabilize their country."

Obama said he has been in touch with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has made clear that there will be costs for military intervention

Ukraine's fugitive president, Viktor Yanukovych, on Friday reiterated that he would still fight for "the future of Ukraine" and blamed the recent political crisis in his country on the irresponsibility of the West. Read more...

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Twitch Plays Pokémon: A Social Experiment From Its Creator

The creator of one of the weirdest things to happen on the Internet this year, who has managed to remain anonymous to every single reporter and media outlet that has come calling for a story, tells Mashable the live-gaming experiment may be a game changer

According to the creator of Twitch Plays Pokémon, an insightful and endlessly frustrating crowd-sourced romp through Nintendo's 1996 role-playing video game Pokémon Red, it all began as a social experiment.

“I think the internet is capable of handling things of this nature,” the anonymous programmer said. “But if they were being produced and released rapidly it would be hard for an audience to get invested in one particular production.” Read more...

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Bankrupt Mt. Gox Facing Class-Action Suit Over Bitcoin Disappearance

The mountain of trouble that has been piling up for Mt. Gox just got even larger

Once the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world, Mt. Gox shut its digital doors and later filed for bankruptcy this week after losing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of its customers' bitcoins. Now the Japan-based company and its French CEO, Mark Karpeles, have been hit with a class-action lawsuit.

Chicago-based law firm Edelson PC filed the suit Thursday in a federal court in Illinois on behalf of one named plaintiff, Gregory Greene, and all other U.S. residents affected by the collapse of Mt. Gox. Greene is said to have lost a trove of bitcoins worth $25,000. Read more...

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Pitch Your Startup on Twitter, Win a Chance to Pitch a VC at SXSW

It can be hard to get the attention of the right people for your startup at SXSW, but one marketing stunt may make it a little easier.

Life360, the communications app for families, is partnering with BMW to give as many as 10 founders the chance to pitch a well-known VC for 15 minutes, in the backseat of a BMW i3 during SXSW in Austin, Texas. The VCs include Christine Herron from Intel Capital and Ethan Kurzweil from Bessemer Ventures.

Those interested can enter the contest by tweeting their startup pitch @Life360 and @BMWiUSA, and include the hashtag #PitchaVC. The pitch can include a link, photo or video and must be submitted by Wednesday, March 5. Read more...

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At $1 Billion in Sales, Apple TV is a Rapidly Growing Drop in the Bucket

Some people have Etsy shops or play a bit of poker on the side. But when Apple has a hobby, it turns into a rapidly growing business that has become a foothold in the living rooms of millions.

CEO Tim Cook said on Friday that Apple had sold more than $1 billion worth of Apple TVs in the last year, according to Reuters. He went on to admit that the "hobby" label that had been applied to the little black box may no longer be appropriate