It was a busy week for cyber-hijinks. Take, for example, the Associated Press’s official Twitter account getting hacked earlier this week with the message “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” (Oh, for those simpler days when intruders would just post the word “Poopin’” on invaded Twitter accounts.) Verizon’s 2013 Data Breach Investigations Report found a lot of corporate espionage and that state-sponsored cyber attacks have become much more prevalent.
LG Electronics has an event planned for early May in New York City and where it’s expected to announce the US arrival of its Optimus G Pro smartphone with SmartVideo eye recognition technology. And a code-reader looking at the Android app that comes with the new Google Glass spectacles claims to have found a few lines referring to eye gestures as a way of controlling the glasses.
In mobile news, the popular visual blogging site, Tumblr, has rolled out advertisements for is Android and iOS mobile apps. iTunes users will also be happy to know Apple has added an option to download large purchases later if you buy new music or video over a flimsy data network connection, you now get the option to defer the actually download until you’re home on your zippy WiFi network. And Yahoo has released a new app for iOS devices that has already incorporated summaries from the Summly service it bought a month ago for $30 million dollars.
Meanwhile, out in space, the Hubble telescope has found a hidden globular cluster of stars and also celebrates its 23rd birthday this week. To celebrate, the Hubble observatory captured an image the Horsehead Nebula in infrared light. Happy birthday, Hubble! Back on (Google) Earth, the new 7.1 update to 3D globe-spinning software has added support for the Leap Motion gesture-based controller. (The $80 Leap Motion controller itself starts shipping on May 13 rolling out later this year.)
Video fans have helped Netflix bounce back from kerfuffles over its pricing plans and other issues to beat HBO in terms of total number of subscribers in America. Netflix has also been crowned the biggest bandwidth hog, chewing up 33% of downstream Internet traffic. And those who occasionally switch over the AV input to play a little Xbox can now order a pizza through the game console, as Microsoft and Pizza Hut have teamed up on an Xbox Live dashboard app that lets you order a pie with your game controller or Kinect motion sensor. Wave your arms and a pizza eventually appears…yeah, life is good.