Off with their heads: Yahoo issues list of nixed projects

Summer cleaning starts today at Yahoo which revealed a dozen projects that are shutting down. In a note announcing the list, Jay Rossiter, the vice president in charge of platforms, said the moves will free Yahoo to sharpen its focus and thus "continue to focus on creating beautiful products that are essential to you every day." (Did you know Alta Vista was still kicking around? Well, no longer.)

From Rossiter's memo:

Yahoo! Axis (June 28, 2013)

If you installed the browser plug-in, it will no longer work. If you downloaded the app, it will continue to work, but won't be actively maintained. We encourage you to use the Yahoo! Search app for iOS and Android.

Yahoo! Browser Plus (June 28, 2013)

To see all of our current developer offerings, please go here.

Citizen Sports (June 28, 2013)

You can still get all the latest sports news on Yahoo! Sports, play fantasy sports like Fantasy Football, and stay up-to-date when you're on the go with our new Yahoo! Sports app for iOS andAndroid.

Yahoo! WebPlayer (June 30, 2013)

If you're a publisher and currently using Yahoo! WebPlayer on your site, after June 30 the Yahoo! WebPlayer won't load. Your users will continue to be able to play media files using native browser support. You may wish to locate and remove the following line in your code:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://webplayer.yahooapis.com/player.js"></script>

FoxyTunes (July 1, 2013)

To see the latest in the music world, please visit Yahoo! Music.

Yahoo! RSS Alerts (July 1, 2013)

To continue to get the latest content that you care about, you can subscribe to Keyword Newsalerts at our Yahoo! Alerts and receive them via email.

Yahoo! Neighbors Beta (July 8, 2013)

You can visit Yahoo! Local Search to find out what's going on in your neighborhood.

AltaVista (July 8, 2013)

Please visit Yahoo! Search for all of your searching needs.

Yahoo! Stars India (July 25, 2013)

To stay up on all your favorite celebrity news, check out Yahoo! India OMG!.

Yahoo! Downloads Beta (July 31, 2013)

Yahoo! Downloads will no longer support 3rd party downloads. It will continue to offer downloads of Yahoo! products like Yahoo! Toolbar or Yahoo! Messenger.

Yahoo! Local API (September 28, 2013)

As part of this shutdown, all Yahoo! Local API documentation will also be removed from the Yahoo! Developer Network portal.

Yahoo! Term Extraction API (September 28, 2013)

We are eliminating direct access to the Yahoo! Term Extraction API and as of September 28, will require developers to go through YQL. We encourage all existing users of the Term Extraction Legacy API to migrate to YQL requests by September 28. You can use the YQL forums for any questions you might have about migrating to YQL. If you are already using the Term Extraction API via YQL, you don’t need to take any action.

Topics:

Media,

Search,

Software,

Social networking,

E-commerce

Tags:

Yahoo

Plaintiffs tussle with Facebook over proposed settlement of ad-related lawsuint:

Opponents of Facebook's settlement of a lawsuit involving "Sponsored Stories" -- an ad feature that displays images of users of the social network -- spent Friday morning in a San Francisco court trying to convince a federal judge that the settlement's terms fail to protect the privacy of minors.

Facebook, of course, believes otherwise and if users who are objecting to the settlement don't agree, they should just leave the class-action lawsuit, according to Michael Rhodes, the attorney hired by the social network to handle the case.

"If it's such a terrible action, opt out," he said during a hearing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. If a plaintiff were to opt out of the class action, he or she could sue Facebook separately.

In December, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg gave preliminary approval for the $20 million settlement. But some of the case's plaintiffs weren't happy, including six parents who each have children aged 13 to 16.

Sponsored Stories are the ads that feature a user's name and photo when he or she "likes" a page belonging to an advertiser. The original five plaintiffs claimed that the social network violated users' right to privacy by publicizing their "likes" in advertisements without asking for permission or offering compensation. After hearing arguments from both sides, Seeborg can issue his decision at any time. There are no other hearings scheduled at this point, but if Seeborg ends up rejecting the settlement, the case, of course, will continue.

During the hearing, Seeborg asked the objectors' attorneys to explain why they think the settlement is not fair, emphasizing that he was not there to draft a new policy for Facebook: his role is to reject or accept the settlement.

"Why is this more harmful to the 13- to 17-year-old than it is to an adult?" he asked.

The objectors argued that teenagers need more protection because they don't fully understand the consequences and post information without thinking. Seeborg commented, "the premise of posting without thought is certainly not confined to minors."

Scott Michelman, an attorney with Public Citizen, the nonprofit that's representing the parents with teens, said the bottom line is that the court can't approve a settlement that breaks other laws. In this case, state laws require parents to give permission for the use of a minor's likeness. Under the settlement, minors can opt out of participating in the ad unit only if they say specifically that their parents didn't give them permission to use Facebook, or if the parents are on Facebook as well and are linked to the minor's account. In the second scenario, the parents would opt out for the minor.

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"Minors' images will continue to be used under this settlement without parental consent," Michelman told Seeborg.

The objectors also argued that Facebook's recent plans to get rid of the "Sponsored Stories" label and integrate that type of ad unit into its other advertising products would give the company a loophole out of the settlement.

Rhodes responded, saying that the name may have changed but the ad unit's function has not and Facebook will recognize that.

"The name of that ad format is being phased out and Sponsored Stories will be a part of ad units going forward...We can't avoid injunctive relief by changing the name," he said.

Though the answer didn't appease Michelman, who said after the hearing that the settlement should be rewritten to clarify that point, Judge Seeborg said Facebook can't argue that the settlement won't apply just because the label "Sponsored Stories" is gone.

"Effectively, whatever Sponsored Stories is doing, whatever one may put as the name for it, it's covered," Seeborg said.

Topics:

Facebook,

Social networking

Tags:

sponsored stories,

advertising,

Facebook

Internet pioneers to collect first Queen Elizabeth Prizes:

The queen of England will award the trophies Wednesday for a new million-pound prize to encourage engineering to Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Kahn, Vint Cerf, Marc Andreessen, and Louis Pouzin.

Sweden has the Nobel Prize, Japan the Kyoto Prize, and the United States the Pulitzers. Now the royalty of the United Kingdom has its own contribution, the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, and those who made the Internet possible are sharing the award for 1 million pounds.

The queen will present trophies to Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Kahn, Marc Andreesse

n, Vint Cerf, and Louis Pouzin on Wednesday, the foundation behind the prize said.

Kahn, Pouzin, and Cerf made contributions to the packet-switching design of the Internet, in which information is broken into small chunks of data that individually are routed across a hodgepodge of interconnected computers. Cerf created the World Wide Web's protocols, and Andreessen was instrumental in writing the Mosaic browser that made the Web vastly more accessible.

Related stories

• What 420,000 insecure devices reveal about Web security
• China gets nod from ICANN for 2013 confab
• FBI, DEA warn IPv6 could shield criminals from police
• What IPv6 means for you (FAQ)

The trophies are being issued the same day that the Royal Academy of Engineering is publishing a study called "Skills for the Nation" that shows demand for engineers across the U.K. economy outstrips supply.

Funding the prize are several donor companies, many eager for more engineers, including BAE Systems, BG Group, BP, GlaxoSmithKline, Jaguar Land Rover, National Grid, Shell, Siemens UK, Sony, Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Steel, and
                                                                                Toshiba.

This diagram of a packet-switching network appears in the 1974 paper by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn describing what became the TCP/IP technology for transferring data reliably across such a network.

(Credit: IEEE/University of Massachusetts Amherst)

Fujifilm's latest X marks a better-priced spot.

Fujifilm brings its interchangeable-lens camera line down another price notch with the addition of the X-M1. It's essentially a cheaper version of the X-E1, which swaps the viewfinder for a host of other features -- a move that's probably bound to confuse some buyers.

The X-M1 is based around the same antialiasing-filter-free X-Trans sensor as the X-E1, probably the new model's most notable feature compared with competitors. While the X-E1 has an electronic viewfinder and mic input, plus uses less metal in the body, in trade-off the much cheaper X-M1 has a larger, higher-resolution LCD, built-in Wi-Fi for image transfer, and an updated EXR Processor II from the X100S. Continuous-shooting specs are just a hair slower.

From a design standpoint, the X-M1 is a very different animal than the X-E1. With physical shutter-speed and exposure-compensation dials and a reliance on a manual aperture ring on the lens, the latter directly targets analog-shooting enthusiasts. The X-M1 is far more "digital," with a typical mode dial, frequently used shooting functions mapped to the directional navigation buttons, and an odd vertical adjust

ment dial on the back.Another trade-off is the new kit lens, which sounds like a typical 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 OIS. One of the nice things about the X-E1 kit is its relatively fast (f2.8-4) 18-55mm OIS lens. It will be interesting to see if retailers offer a custom kit combining the X-M1 body with the better 18-55mm lens; a lot of folks don't care about the viewfinder and are willing to forgo the all-metal body. If the street price of the X-M1 body eventually falls to about $100 below manufacturer price (which is quite likely) it seems like it's be an excellent matchup for the same price as the X-E1 kit.

On the flip side, if you like the EVF of the X-E1, the XF 16-50mm will be the cheapest XF lens yet -- though Fujifilm won't be selling it standalone, at least initially -- and might make a buy-in to the series a little more palatable for some. One of the biggest issues with the X series ILCs are the expensive lenses; they're good, to match the sensor, but make it hard for nonprofessionals to justify buying into the series. (However, at first glance I don't see an aperture switch or ring on the lens, which is pretty much a requirement to operate with the X-E1.)

And speaking of lenses, Fujifilm took the opportunity to announce its XF27mm f2.8 lens a (for them) rather modestly priced $449.95 pancake lens that, like the 16-50mm lens, uses the company's Super EBC coating and has a seven-bladed aperture. It also looks like it lacks an aperture control for operation with the X-E1.

Here are some comparative specs (will update with more complete X-M1 specs when they become available):

Fujifilm X-M1	Fujifilm X-E1	Samsung NX300	Sony Alpha NEX-6

Sensor (effective resolution)	16.3MP X-Trans CMOS n/a	16.3MP X-Trans CMOS n/a	20.3MP hybrid CMOS	16.1MP Exmor HD CMOS n/a
	23.6mm x 15.6mm	23.6mm x 15.6mm	23.5mm x 15.7mm	23.5 x 15.6mm
Focal-length multiplier	1.5x	1.5x	1.5x	1.5x
Sensitivity range	ISO 100 (exp)/ 200 - ISO 6400/25600 (exp)	ISO 100 (exp)/ 200 - ISO 6400/25600 (exp)	ISO 100 - ISO 25600	ISO 100 - ISO 25600
Continuous shooting	5.6fps 30 JPEG	6fps n/a	8.6fps n/a	3fps 11 raw/15 JPEG (10fps with fixed exposure)
Viewfinder	None	EVF 0.5-inch 2.36 million dots 100% coverage n/a	None	OLED EVF 0.5-inch 2.4 million dots 100% coverage 1.09x/0.73x
Hot shoe	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Autofocus	n/a	49-area Contrast AF	105-point phase-detection, 247-point contrast AF	99-point phase detection, 25-area contrast AF
AF sensitivity range	n/a	n/a	n/a	0 - 20 EV
Shutter speed	n/a	30-1/4,000 sec.; bulb to 60 min; 1/180 x-sync	30-1/6000 sec.; bulb to 4 minutes; 1/180 x-sync	30-1/4,000 sec.; bulb; 1/160 sec x-sync
Metering	n/a	256 zones	n/a	1,200 zones
Metering range	n/a	n/a	n/a	0 - 20 EV
Flash	Yes	Yes	Included optional	Yes
Wireless flash	n/a	No	No	No
Image stabilization	Optical	Optical	Optical	Optical
Video	1080/30p H.264	1080/24p H.264	1080/60p/30p; 1080 x 810/24p; 720/30p H.264 MPEG-4	AVCHD 1080/60p @ 28, 24Mbps, 1080/ 24p @ 24, 17Mbps, 1080/60i @ 17Mbps; H.264 MPEG-4 1440 x 1080/30p @ 12Mbps
Audio	Stereo	Stereo; mic input	Stereo; mic input	Stereo; mic input
LCD size	3-inch tilting 920,000 dots	2.8-inch fixed 460,000 dots	3.3-inch tilting AMOLED touch screen 768,000 dots	3-inch tilting touch screen 921,600 dots
Wireless connection	Wi-Fi	None	Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi
Battery life (CIPA rating)	n/a	350 shots	n/a	270 shots (with viewfinder)
Dimensions (inches, WHD)	4.6 x 2.6 x 1.5	5.1 x 2.9 x 1.5	4.8 x 2.5 x 1.6	4.8 x 2.8 x 1.1
Body operating weight (ounces)	12.1 (est)	12.4 (est.)	10.9 (est)	12.3
Mfr. price	$699 (body only)	$999.95 (body only)	n/a	$749.99 (body only)
	$799 (with 16-50mm lens)	$1,399.95 (with 18-55mm lens)	$649.99 (with 20-50mm i-Function lens)	$899.99 (with 15-60mm PZ lens)
	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Ship date	July 2013	November 2012	March 2013	October 2012

The X-M1 jumps into a very competitive segment; there are a lot of cheaper, excellent ILCs, and the X-Trans sensor tends to be a little weak on video, so the camera might not appeal as much to the consumer crowd. And the Samsung NX300 comes in a similarly two-tone look with the digital feel. It seems nice, but only testing will tell.