Orangutans get iPads in 'Apps for Apes' program

13 hrs.

LiveScience Staff , LiveScience

Orangutans at the Smithsonian's National Zoo are now using iPad apps to keep occupied.

"It's about changing up the day-to-day lives of our animals," Becky Malinsky, a keeper at the zoo, said in a statement. "We already vary their food, toys and social interactions every day, but the iPad offers another way to engage their sight, touch and hearing."

So far, the apes are using 10 different apps, including cognitive games, drawing programs and ones that feature virtual musical instruments. According to their keepers, some of the orangutans are already showing their preferences ? 36-year-old Bonnie likes to hit the drums, 16-year-old Kyle likes to play the piano, and 25-year-old Iris likes watching animated fish swim in a virtual koi pond on the screen.

RELATED:?Growing up with tech makes young bonobos language-savvy

The iPads were made available through Apps for Apes, an initiative from the conservation organization Orangutan Outreach, which has already provided tablet devices for the intelligent primates in 12 other zoos, including zoos in Houston, Atlanta, Toronto, Utah and Milwaukee. [ 10 iPad Alternatives ]

"Primarily, we want the Apps for Apes program to help people understand why we need to protect wild orangutans from extinction," Richard Zimmerman, founding director of Orangutan Outreach, said in a statement. "We do that when we show zoo visitors how similar humans and apes are, be it through observation, talking with wildlife experts or seeing the apes use the same technology we use every day."

Orangutans are among humans' closest living relatives, and there are only a few tens of thousands of them currently left in the wild. They are found in the Sumatran rain forests, where they are critically endangered, and the Borneo rain forests, where they are endangered.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter@livescience. We're also onFacebook?&Google+.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/orangutans-get-ipads-apps-apes-program-1C8087458

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Video: New gun ban introduced in Senate

Apple TV would signal future innovation

In any other context, the idea of punishing a company that delivered an 18 percent year-over-year increase, bringing quarterly revenue to $54.5 billion, would be absurd, but Apple, in a way, is a victim of its own success.

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/hardball/50579933/

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Wolfram Alpha's new Facebook analysis tool feeds your self-obsession

4 hrs.

Rosa Golijan , NBC News

As uncomfortable as it can be to admit, odds are that you occasionally really enjoy poring over information about ... yourself. It's OK, most of us secretly obsess over social media analytics and statistics ??and tools like?one offered by Wolfram Alpha don't exactly discourage those moments of narcissism.

Wolfram Alpha's Personal Analytics Tool for Facebook has been around for a while, but it received a significant update on Wednesday. "There?s much more to analyze, see, and do,"?John Burnham, a research and development fellow at Wolfram Alpha, explained on the answer engine's official blog.

To take a peek at your own analytics, you need to grant Wolfram Alpha access to your Facebook account and fork over your email address along with a couple of other details. Once you've done that, you'll have a few moments to twiddle your thumbs as Wolfram Alpha parses your Facebook. And then you'll be overloaded with so much information about things you never even wondered about before.

How are all your friends connected? Do certain individuals have a lot of friends in common with you ("social insiders")? Does someone have almost no friends in common with you (a "social outsider")??How would it look if all your friends were color-coded by relationship status, age, sex, and so on? Who comments on your posts the most? Are all your hometown friends married? Who is your most popular college friend?

Take a deep breath! There are far more questions to explore.

Who is your most distant friend, geographically speaking? Which of your friends lives nearest to the equator? When do you post photos most frequently? Which English words do you use the most in posts? Who is your oldest friend?

The stream of details provided by Wolfram Alpha's?analytics tool is?seemingly endless and, thanks to the way Wolfram Alpha structures data, you can click around and explore things from plenty of angles, zooming in on whichever specifics draw you in the most. If you like what you see,?you can even give the answer engine permission to periodically collect information "to be able to show you an evolution of your Facebook profile over time."

Silliness aside, Wolfram Alpha's tool can be quite revealing. Using it, I discovered that I'm significantly more prone to posting links in the early afternoon and photos in the evenings (likely because I tend to share stories I've written while at work).?I also learned that I have a habit of using the words "folks," "man," "now," "love," and "actually" far more than I realized.

Man, folks! I actually love how much I now know about myself thanks to this tool.

Want more tech news?or interesting?links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on?Twitter, subscribing to her?Facebook?posts,?or circling her?on?Google+.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/wolfram-alphas-new-facebook-analysis-tool-feeds-your-self-obsession-1C8091334

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Celebrity Ugly Ducklings: They Didn?t Always Look Hot!

Celebrity Ugly Ducklings: They Didn’t Always Look Hot!

We sometimes forget that today’s gorgeous Hollywood stars used to be plain and awkward as teenagers. Some of the hottest celebrities were actually considered “ugly ducklings” before they grew into the sexy stars they are today. Nicole Kidman Keith Urban’s Australian actress wife Nicole Kidman didn’t always feel like a stunner. Kidman said, “I didn’t ...

Celebrity Ugly Ducklings: They Didn’t Always Look Hot! Stupid Celebrities Gossip Stupid Celebrities Gossip News

Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/01/celebrity-ugly-ducklings-they-didnt-always-look-hot/

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MIT website hacked in tribute to Aaron Swartz

Hal Hodson, technology reporter

A tribute to internet activist Aaron Swartz replaced the home page for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology today, in an apparent act of protest over the university's role in the legal case that led up to Swartz's suicide on 11 Jan.

For a short time, visitors to the MIT.edu home page found a message that read: "R.I.P. Aaron Swartz. Hacked by grand wizard of Lulzsec, Sabu. God Bless America. Down With Anonymous." The background was watermarked with words from a blog post, written by Swartz, titled "Immoral".

Attributing the defacement to "grand wizard of Lulzsec, Sabu" lent the page a sarcastic air, as it's widely known that the former Lulzsec leader was outed as an FBI informant last year.

The attack on MIT's website came amid widespread criticism of how the university handled the case against Swartz, including an article in The New York Times that quoted Swartz's father as saying: "We don't believe [MIT] acted in a neutral way. My belief is they put their institutional concerns first."

According to MIT's service status page, network service was restored within the university as of 1:30 pm EST. The university had not returned New Scientist's request for comment when this story was published.

This is the second time since Swartz's death that the MIT site has been the target of attacks. Previously, an MIT sub-domain was replaced with a manifesto for reform of computer and copyright laws. The authors claimed to be operating as a part of the online activist group, Anonymous.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/27cae1ab/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Conepercent0C20A130C0A10Cmit0Ewebsite0Ehacked0Ein0Etribute0Bhtml0Dcmpid0FRSS0QNSNS0Q20A120EGLOBAL0Qonline0Enews/story01.htm

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Stanley Tollman Founder and Chairman of The Travel Corporation ...

By Anita Mendiratta, Special to eTN South Africa | Jan 23, 2013

Mr Stanley Tollman, Founder and Chairman of The Travel Corporation, Celebrated for Lifetime Achievement in Global Travel and Tourism

Mr Stanley Tollman, Founder and Chairman of The Travel Corporation, was honoured recently in London with the first ever global Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2013 Globe Awards.

Born in South Africa in 1930, Tollman has built a multi-billion dollar travel and leisure business which operates in more than 60 countries and regions including the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australasia and South America.

His first taste of the industry came from his parents? hotel and restaurant near Cape Town, and from the age of 19 he set about building his own portfolio of hospitality businesses.

Despite some challenges, including a severe economic downturn in South Africa in the 1970s which damaged his investments and saw him relocate his family to the UK, Tollman reinvested and rebuilt his family?s business. Over the following decades, he made a series of successful investments around the world which turned this company into what is now The Travel Corporation.

With brands including Trafalgar, Insight Vacations, Contiki Holidays, Red Carnation Hotels and Uniworld Boutique River Cruises, and over 35 offices, across six continents, The Travel Corporation has grown under his leadership to be a truly diverse and global travel company.

Now in his eighth decade, he still takes a very active interest in a business which employs 4,500 people worldwide. Under his guidance the Travel Corporation has demonstrated its commitment to sustainable tourism with its not-for-profit Treadright Foundation, which has to date donated more than 2 million dollars to sustainable tourism projects worldwide and encourages industry best practice by annually supporting the WTTC?s Tourism for Tomorrow awards.

On receiving his award, Tollman said:

?I am honoured to receive this award. I have dedicated my entire life to the travel and tourism industry; an industry in which I and much of my family are lucky and proud to work, an industry which creates remarkable experiences, lifelong memories and broader minds. I am as passionate as ever about the contribution that travel makes to the world and its communities in terms of economic growth, employment and social integration and I remain committed to helping our industry keep as strong and vibrant as possible.

?I?d like to thank my wife and my family, who are at my side and involved in my business for their dedication, passion, creativity and vision, and similarly all those within the wider Travel Corporation family, without whose contribution each and every day I wouldn?t be standing here.?

The Travel Corporation was recognised in a further two categories for its brands Trafalgar and The One Stop Touring Shop as Best Escorted Tours Operator and Best Trade Sales team respectively.

Source: http://www.eturbonews.com/33177/stanley-tollman-celebrated-lifetime-achievement-global-travel-an

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Woman in Te'o fake girlfriend photo speaks out

NEW YORK (AP) ? The woman whose photo was used as the "face" of the Twitter account of Manti Te'o's supposed girlfriend says the man allegedly behind the hoax confessed and apologized to her.

Diane O'Meara told NBC's "Today" show Tuesday that Ronaiah Tuiasosopo used pictures of her without her knowledge in creating a fake woman called Lennay Kekua. Te'o asserts he was tricked into an online romance with Kekua and, until last week, did not understand he was being hoaxed.

O'Meara went to high school in California with Tuiasosopo, but she says they're not close. He called to apologize Jan. 16, the day Deadspin.com broke the hoax story, she said.

"I don't think there's anything he could say to me that would fix this," said O'Meara, a 23-year-old marketing executive in Los Angeles.

O'Meara said she had never had any contact with Te'o, and that for five years, Tuiasosopo "has literally been stalking my Facebook and stealing my photos."

Tuiasosopo has not spoken publicly since the news broke. His family has said they may speak out this week.

Te'o did an off camera interview with ESPN last week and is scheduled to appear on appear with his parents on Katie Couric's syndicated talk show Thursday.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/woman-teo-fake-girlfriend-photo-speaks-173115981--spt.html

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