$35 Raspberry Pi computer gets its own app store

Title Post: $35 Raspberry Pi computer gets its own app store
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YouTube Announces Top 10 Videos of 2012

YouTube has just released their top 10 videos of 2012 along with one dazzling video bound to become a viral sensation in its own right.

Watch the clip to see the Rewind YouTube Style video featuring the website's biggest stars acting out a parody of Gangnam Style and Call Me Maybe. The video was shot at the new YouTube Space in Los Angeles, a place for YouTube creators to come learn, collaborate, and create great content to put up on their YouTube channels.

Check out the list of 2012's greatest YouTube moments below:

1) PSY - Gangnam Style: The Korean pop music video that surprised the world is set to hit 1 billion views and has become the most viewed video of all time in just six months.

2) Walk off the Earth: This is the most-viewed cover song of 2012, attracting 140 million views this year.

3) KONY 2012: This video contained a call to action and collected 31 million views in a single day -- the most views ever for a YouTube video.

4) Call Me Maybe - Bieber, Gomez, Pena: This video, covering the song of the summer, kicked off a trend of lip sync videos that spanned from the Harvard baseball team and celebs to Olympians.

5) Epic Rap Battles - Obama vs. Romney: This episode featured well-known Obama impersonator Alphacat, and is one of the better known instances of the 2012 trend of Obama and Romney videos.

6) Dramatic Surprise: This video, featuring a mysterious sign in the middle of a Flemish square, brought in 25 million views in its first week.

7) Why You Asking All Them Questions: Comedian Emmanuel Hudson's popularity exploded this year partly from this video that garnered 39 million views -- almost half of which came from mobile devices.

8) Lindsey Stirling: Lindsey's trademark dubstep violin styles created a lot of buzz this year -- especially in the U.S., Germany and Poland. This video, which was shot by Lindsey's fellow YouTube creator Devin Graham, has over 500,000 likes and 100,000 comments.

9) Facebook Parenting: This video taught us not to mess with Dad. Bringing in 11 million views in one day, this video was the catalyst for an international discussion about parenting and Facebook.

10) Stratos Highlights: This live stream of Felix Baumgartner's free-fall from 128,000 feet shattered previous live stream records with 8 million concurrent views.

Visit youtube.com/rewind for more.

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NBC reporter kidnapped in Syria, released unharmed after 5 days

Richard Engel, NBC’s award-winning chief foreign correspondent, was kidnapped in war-torn Syria and held for five days before being released unharmed, the network announced today.

The network said early today that Engel and his crew had been kidnapped by "an unknown group," but that are currently out of the country.

A Turkish media report yesterday that Engel and Aziz Akyavas, a Turkish journalist working with Engel, had been missing since last week quickly went viral and fueled fears they had been killed in the fighting.

Engel, 39, is fluent in Arabic and covered Iraq during the country’s last two wars and served as NBC’s Mideast bureau chief before he was promoted to top foreign correspondent.

RICHARD ENGEL

The Turkish news report quickly spread on social media.

Engel’s NBC colleague David Schuster tweeted, “Original report from Turkish media . . . Praying it is wrong.”

In his latest report, which aired on NBC’s “Nightly News” last week, Engel interviewed rebel fighters in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, and said President Bashar al-Assad’s regime appeared to be doomed.

Engel also described the city’s massive war damage, power outages and the food and health-care shortages that residents are enduring.

Engel, a Peabody Award winner, had previously reported on the Libyan civil war, the revolt that overthrew Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, and other events of the Arab Spring.

Western news organizations did not report the kidnapping of New York Times reporter David Rohde in Afghanistan in 2008. His plight was disclosed only after he and an associate, who was also abducted by the Taliban, managed to escape after eight months.

Syria has been especially dangerous for foreign journalists, and several have been held captive, wounded or even killed since the civil war erupted there in early 2011.

American Marie Colvin, a correspondent for Britain’s Sunday Times who was originally from Oyster Bay, LI, was killed along with a French photographer in a February shelling attack in the central city of Homs.

More than 40,000 people have been killed since the uprising against Assad’s government began, according to the United Nations.

With Post Wire Services

andy.soltis@nypost.com

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American Airlines adds new agreements, flights in South America

In a nod to the importance of Latin America for its business, American Airlines on Monday announced new codeshare agreements with airlines in the region as well as new routes.

American has agreed to codeshare with TAM Airlines, based in Sao Paulo, and LAN Colombia, both part of LATAM Airlines Group.

The airline also said that it will add new routes in late 2013 between Miami and two destinations in Brazil: Curitiba and Porto Alegre. American also plans to add service between Dallas/Fort Worth and Bogota late next year.

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Provisional ballots spike, but Florida elections supervisors say they’re not needed

TALLAHASSEE --
It’s the most unreliable way to vote, a last resort in which half of the ballots are disqualified.

Created by Congress a decade ago, the provisional ballot was intended as a final attempt to preserve the right to vote for someone whose eligibility is in doubt.

Florida saw a surge in such ballots in 2012 even though turnout was nearly the same as four years ago.

The reason: a much-maligned law approved by Gov. Rick Scott and the 2011 Legislature that, among other things, required anyone moving to a different county to vote provisionally if they didn’t change their address a month before Election Day.

As a result, provisional ballots jumped an average of 25 percent in counties reviewed by the Herald/Times, further taxing elections officials struggling with extra paperwork from a separate rise in absentee ballots.

“It’s like pouring sand into the gears of the machine,” said Ion Sancho, the Leon County supervisor of elections, who had a 56 percent spike in provisional ballots, driven mostly by incoming Florida State University students.

Supporters say the county-to-county requirement was needed to combat fraud and prevent people from voting twice by casting ballots in two counties. But those supporters lacked evidence that it had happened, and the 2012 election didn’t bolster their case.

Interviews with elections officials and a preliminary review of 2012 provisional ballot figures show that type of fraud is essentially non-existent.

Despite the surge in provisional ballots, none of the counties reviewed by the Herald/Times reported rejecting one of them because someone tried to vote twice. “There hasn’t been any instance of someone moving from one county and voting in another,” said Pasco County Supervisor of Elections Brian Corley.

“We’ve never found a voter who voted in one county and tried to vote in our county,” said Palm Beach County Supervisor Susan Bucher.

Each provisional ballot takes about 30 minutes to review and inspect, said Ron Labasky, counsel for the state association of election supervisors.

Voters cast provisional ballots when they show up at the wrong precinct, lack an ID or register to vote after the deadline.

Before the law changed last year, a voter who showed up at the correct precinct but was registered in another county could cast a regular ballot because clerks could verify their status on a statewide database. After the law changed, those voters — many of them college students or young people changing jobs — were forced to cast provisional ballots. That held up lines as poll workers telephoned other counties to confirm the voters hadn’t already voted.

“It resulted in a lot of extra work,” Labasky said.

The rise in out-of-county provisional ballots ensured that the rejection rate would drop. So despite a 25 percent increase in provisional ballots among 11 counties reviewed by the Herald/Times, the rejection rate fell from 60 percent in 2008 to 46 percent this year.

“All this change did was just increase the amount of paperwork for our supervisors of elections while decreasing the amount of time to process other votes,” said Daniel Smith, a political scientist at the University of Florida.

Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, sponsored the law that included the provisional ballot changes. Despite the national criticism he’s received for supporting it, Baxley said the changes were needed.

Baxley said he pushed to have the out-of-county requirement after talking with a friend, Alachua County GOP chairman Stafford Jones.

Baxley said Jones told him that voters from Tampa and other cities shifted their voter registrations to Gainesville for a day to vote in the city’s 2010 mayoral election in which Craig Lowe became the city’s first openly gay mayor by a 42-vote margin.

“It wasn’t right for people to move in and steal an election like that,” Baxley said.

Jones said he wanted the county transfer provision to keep college students from voting.

“The liberals do a good job of bringing in college kids to vote on local issues,” Jones said. “The kids vote on raising our taxes, but don’t have to live here to pay the consequences.”

Jones said he has no proof to support his claim, only recollections of liberal blog posts that people were moving to vote.

Will Boyett, Alachua’s chief deputy supervisor, said his office researched the claims and found nothing to back Jones’ claims.

Boyett said it’s far-fetched that someone would try to vote twice and risk being charged with a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.

“We’ve never seen someone do it,” Boyett said. “One reason why is, you’re going to get caught. It makes us wonder, ‘If that fraud isn’t occurring, why are we trying to stop it?’ ”

Michael Van Sickler can be reached at 850-224-7263 or mvansickler@tampabay.com.

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Google could emerge unscathed from federal web search probe – WSJ

(Reuters) – Google may not face any major repercussions from the Federal Trade Commission‘s (FTC) two-year-old anti-trust investigation into its web search business, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The FTC might drop the investigation sometime this week based on voluntary changes Google will make to its search practices, rather than making the company sign a formal settlement called a consent decree, the Journal said.

The web search investigation examined whether Google tweaks its search results to disadvantage rivals in travel, shopping and other specialized searches.

Google will probably still be required to sign a consent decree for a separate federal investigation into the licensing of mobile-technology patents it acquired when it took over phone maker Motorola Mobility, the Journal said.

An end to the federal probe into Google’s search business would allow the company to avoid getting mired in anti-trust investigations like rival Microsoft Corp endured in the early 2000s.

The European Commission, which is also probing Google, is expected to announce a decision next month.

The FTC declined to comment to the Wall Street Journal and could not be reached for comment by Reuters outside of regular business hours. Google could not be reached for comment by Reuters outside of regular business hours.

(Reporting by Tej Sapru in Bangalore; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Google could emerge unscathed from federal web search probe – WSJ
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Newtown plans victims' burials as school's future debated

REUTERS

A woman and a child pray over candles outside Saint Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church a day after a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut Saturday.

NEWTOWN, Conn. — A grieving Connecticut town braced itself Monday to bury the first two of the 20 small victims of an elementary school gunman and debated when classes could resume — and where, given the carnage in the building and the children's associations with it.

The people of Newtown weren't yet ready to address the question just three days after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and a day after President Barack Obama pledged to seek change in memory of the children and six adults ruthlessly slain by a gunman packing a high-powered rifle.

"We're just now getting ready to talk to our son about who was killed," said Robert Licata, the father of a student who escaped harm during the shooting. "He's not even there yet."

Newtown officials couldn't say whether Sandy Hook Elementary, where authorities said all the victims were shot at least twice, would ever reopen. Monday classes were canceled, and the district was considering eventually sending surviving Sandy Hook students to a former school building in a neighboring town.

TERRIFIED STUDENTS RAN INTO DANGER

OBAMA: "THESE TRAGEDIES MUST END"

MOTHER DEVOTED HER LIFE TO HIM - THEN HE ENDED IT

The gunman, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, was carrying an arsenal of hundreds of rounds of especially deadly ammunition, authorities said Sunday — enough to kill just about every student in the school if given enough time, raising the chilling possibility that the bloodbath could have been even worse.

The shooter decided to kill himself when he heard police closing in about 10 minutes into Friday's attack, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said on ABC's "This Week."

At the interfaith service in Newtown on Sunday evening, Obama said he would use "whatever power this office holds" to engage with law enforcement, mental health professionals, parents and educators in an effort to prevent more tragedies like Newtown.

"What choice do we have?" Obama said on a stark stage that held only a small table covered with a black cloth, candles and the presidential podium. "Are we really prepared to say that we're powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?"

The president first met privately with families of the victims and with the emergency personnel who responded to the shooting. Police and firefighters got hugs and standing ovations when they entered for the public vigil, as did Obama.

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Five years after the recession, a slow recovery plods on

Five years ago this month, the Great Recession began. Which leads to this question: How much longer until South Florida can erase the damage?

Officially, the recession ended in June 2009. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the national economy began contracting in December 2007 and did not grow again for 19 months. Using taxable sales figures, it’s probably safe to say South Florida experienced a longer downturn. Overall spending contracted for the first time in South Florida in March 2007 and didn’t post a year-over-year gain until February 2010.

“Miami was at the forefront of the housing boom and bust,’’ said Karl Kuykendall, an economist who follows South Florida for IHS Global Insight. “It’s no surprise Miami was early into the recession and somewhat late coming out.”

But whatever the actual duration of the downturn, it doesn’t take much math to realize the economy still feels shaky. South Florida lost its first net job in more than two years in October, when a tiny decline of 300 payroll slots interrupted 26 months of consistent expansion. The upcoming November report out Friday will show whether the losing streak continues.

And while unemployment is off near-record highs set in April 2010, more than 180,000 South Floridians were listed as officially out of work in the last count. That’s almost 90 percent more than the 98,000 people listed as out of work in the first month of the recession.

Tourism posted an early recovery, particularly in Miami-Dade, where foreign visitors helped hotels shake-off a sharp drop in U.S. vacationers and business travelers. But the recession lingers in Broward’s tourism industry, which is just now retiring past records.

Housing suffered the most dramatic crash throughout the recession and was also the last of the major indicators to begin its recovery. The Case-Shiller real estate index pegs May 2006 as the peak of the bubble in South Florida. Although each neighborhood is different, the average South Florida house worth $200,000 that month would have fallen down to $97,600 by the time the market hit bottom just over a year ago, in November 2011.

Values have recovered 9 percent since then, meaning the same house should be worth just over $105,0000. That’s a loss of 47 percent over six years.

Recovering from that kind of crash takes time, and five years clearly isn’t enough. To give a hint of the progress underway, Business Monday checked into businesses and residents on the frontlines of the recovery. The reports follow:

Housing

After fending off a foreclosure and battling to get out from under an onerous option ARM mortgage, Marie and Wilson Destin recently worked out a loan modification on their 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom house near Miami Lakes.

With the help of Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida, a nonprofit agency that helps people navigate the Byzantine home financing landscape, the Destins cut their monthly mortgage payment to $1,500 from $1,900 under a new fixed-rate loan.

In 2006, when the housing market was booming, the Haitian-American couple had taken out an option ARM loan on the property, which they had owned for several years.

“Somebody came to the house and approached me with an option ARM loan,’’ said Wilson Destin. “They said I would pay less.’’

The option ARM — which has triggered financial woes for thousands of homeowners during the downturn — allowed for flexible payments and negative amortization, practically encouraging people to defer payments.

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7-year-old in critical condition after accident

Police were investigating an accident involving a 7-year-old who was struck by a vehicle in a Lauderhill neighborhood late Saturday, Lauderhill Police spokesman Rick Rocco said.

The vehicle and its driver, who has not yet been identified, remained on scene after the incident near the intersection of Northwest 27th Court and 56th Avenue.

The child was transported to Broward Health Medical Center in critical condition immediately after the incident, police said.

Details of the accident were not immediately available.

This post will be updated as we receive more information.

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Facebook unveils new privacy controls

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc began rolling out a variety of new privacy controls on Wednesday, the company’s latest effort to address user concerns about who can see their personal information on the world’s largest social network.

New tools introduced on Wednesday will make it easier for Facebook’s members to quickly determine who can view the photos, comments and other information about them that appears on different parts of the website, and to request that any objectionable photos they’re featured in be removed.

A new privacy “shortcut” in the top-right hand corner of the website provides quick access to key controls such as allowing users to manage who can contact them and to block specific people.

The new controls are the latest changes to Facebook’s privacy settings, which have been criticized in the past for being too confusing.

Facebook Director of Product Sam Lessin said the changes were designed to increase users’ comfort level on the social network, which has roughly one billion users.

“When users don’t understand the concepts and controls and hit surprises, they don’t build the confidence they need,” said Lessin.

Facebook, Google Inc and other online companies have faced increasing scrutiny and enforcement from privacy regulators as consumers entrust ever-increasing amounts of information about their personal lives to Web services.

In April, Facebook settled privacy charges with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it had deceived consumers and forced them to share more personal information than they intended. Under the settlement, Facebook is required to get user consent for certain changes to its privacy settings and is subject to 20 years of independent audits.

Facebook’s Lessin said some users don’t understand that the information they post on their Timeline profile page is not the only personal information about them that may be viewable by others. Improvements to Facebook’s so-called Activity Log will make it easier for users to see at a glance all the information that involves them across the social network.

Facebook also said it is changing the way that third-party apps, such as games and music players, get permission to access user data. An app must now provide separate requests to create a personalized service based on a user’s personal information and to post automated messages to the Facebook newsfeed on behalf of a user – previously users agreed to both conditions by approving a single request.

The revamped controls follow proposed changes that Facebook has made to its privacy policy and terms of service. The changes would allow Facebook to integrate user data with that of its recently acquired photo-sharing app Instagram, and would loosen restrictions on how members of the social network can contact other members using the Facebook email system.

Nearly 600,000 Facebook users voted to reject the proposed changes, but the votes fell far short of the roughly 300 million needed for the vote to be binding, under Facebook’s existing rules. The proposed changes also would eliminate any such future votes by Facebook users.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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