Microsoft debuts Xbox music service to take on Apple

(Reuters) - Microsoft Corp on Monday announced that Xbox Music, a digital music service to vie with Apple Inc's iTunes and Amazon.com Inc's Cloud Player, will be available for its Xbox game consoles on Tuesday. The service will be expanded to Windows software-based computers and tablets, including the upcoming Surface tablet, from October 26, when Microsoft launches Windows 8. It will be expanded to phones shortly after that. The world's largest software maker has been trying for years to make the household living room an entertainment hub with its Xbox. ...

Quantum computing -- nobel prize in physics

Nobel physics prize highlights weird world of quantum optics

By Karl Ritter and Louise Nordstrom The Associated Press

updated 10/9/2012 12:54:06 PM ET STOCKHOLM — A French-American duo shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for experiments on quantum particles that have already resulted in ultra-precise clocks and may one day lead to computers many times faster than those in use today.

Serge Haroche of France and American David Wineland showed in the 1990s how to observe individual particles while preserving their bizarrequantum properties, something that scientists had struggled to do before.

Michel Euler / AP French physicist Serge Haroche discusses his role in Nobel-winning research during a news conference at the College de France in Paris on Tuesday.

A quantum particle is one that is isolated from everything else. In this situation, an atom or electron or photon takes on strange properties. It can be in two places at once, for example. It behaves in some ways like a wave. But these properties are instantly changed when it interacts with something else, such as when somebody observes it.

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Working separately, the two scientists, both 68, developed "ingenious laboratory methods" that allowed them to manage and measure and control fragile quantum states, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

"Their ground-breaking methods have enabled this field of research to take the very first steps towards building a new type of superfast computer based on quantum physics," the academy said. "The research has also led to the construction of extremely precise clocks that could become the future basis for a new standard of time."

Background: Nobel-winning physics explained

Haroche is a professor at the College de France and Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. Wineland is a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado.

The two researchers use opposite approaches to examine, control and count quantum particles, the academy said. Wineland traps ions — electrically charged atoms — and measures them with light. Haroche controls and measures photons, or light particles, by sending atoms through a specially prepared trap.

Haroche said he was out walking with his wife when he got the call from the Nobel judges.

"I was in the street and passing a bench so I was able to sit down," Haroche told a news conference in Stockholm by telephone."It's very overwhelming."

He said his work in the realm of quantum physics could ultimately lead to unimaginably fast computers. "You can do things which are prohibited by the laws of classical physics," he told The Associated Press.

Haroche also said quantum research could help make GPS navigating systems more accurate.

'Got a lot smarter' Wineland told AP he was sleeping when his wife answered the phone at 3:30 a.m. local time in Denver. He was utterly shocked even though his name had come up before. "But actually I hadn't heard anything this time around. It was certainly surprising and kind of overwhelming right now," he said. "I feel like I got a lot smarter overnight."

Wineland took pains to note that many people are working in the field. "First of all, a lot of people have been working on advanced computers and atomic clocks for a long time. It's a bit embarrassing to focus on just two individuals," he said.

Asked how he will celebrate, Wineland said: "I'll probably be pretty worn out by this evening. I'll probably have a glass of wine and fall asleep."

Christopher Monroe, who does similar work at the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland, said the awarding of the prize to the two men "is not a big surprise to me. ... It was sort of obvious that they were a package."

Monroe said that thanks to the bizarre properties of the quantum world, when he and Wineland worked together in the 1990s, they were able to put a single atom in two places simultaneously.

At that time, it wasn't clear that trapping single atoms could help pave the way to superfast quantum computers, he said. That whole field "justfellintoour laps,'" Monroe said.

In an ordinary computer, information is represented in bits, each of which is either a zero or a one. But in a quantum computer, an individual particle can essentially represent a zero and a one at the same time — that is, until the result is read out. If scientists can make quantum bits, or "qubits," work together, certain kinds of calculations could be done with blazing speed.

One example is prime factorization, the process of discovering which two prime numbers can be multiplied together to producea given number.That has implications for breaking the encryption codes that provide the foundation for today's secure financial transactions. However, quantum encryption could open the way for a new generation of secure communication tools as well.

Quantum computers could radically change people's lives in the way that classical computers did last century, but a full-scale quantum computer is still decades away, the Nobel judges said. "The calculations would be incredibly much faster and exact, and you would be able to use it for areas like meteorology and for measuring the climate of the earth," said Lars Bergstrom, the secretary of the prize committee.

The physics prize was the second of the 2012 Nobel Prizes to be announced, with the medicine prize going Monday to stem cell pioneers John Gurdon of Britain and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka. Each award is worth 8 million kronor,orabout $1.2 million.

The prizes are always handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.

More about quantum physics:

Millions invested in quantum weirdness Time-twisting test stuck in limbo Information teleported between atoms

AP science writer Malcolm Ritter in New York, Lori Hinnan

European Union wins Nobel Peace Prize 2012

10/12/2012 European Union wins Nobel Peace Prize OSLO (Reuters) - The European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for promoting peace, democracy and human rights over six decades, a morale boost for the bloc as it struggles to resolve its economic crisis. The award served as a reminder that the EU had largely brought peace to a continent that tore itself apart in two world wars in which tens of millions died. The EU has transformed most of Europe "from a continent of wars to a continent of peace", Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said in announcing the award in Oslo. ...

First domestic Chinese won Nobel Prize in literature

Mo Yan, after winning the 2012 Nobel Prizein Literature, is interviewed by the press in his hometown Gaomi, east China's Shandong Province, Oct. 11, 2012. Chinese writer Mo Yan has won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy announced in Stockholm on Thursday.

Movies from Amazon.com

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is producing its own movies and TV programming using the consumer tracking and data crunching skills it developed while becoming the world's largest Internet retailer.

Essentially, Amazon is crowdsourcing the creation of original content -- movies such as "Zombies versus Gladiators" and the children's TV series "Magic Monkey Billionaire."

The retailer hopes the approach will result in more hits and fewer flops than the traditional Hollywood practice of filtering creative ideas through three-martini lunches with studio bosses and movie stars.

Like rival movie provider Netflix Inc, Amazon is developing its own content to supplement movies and TV shows from Hollywood's back catalog. Amazon pays an estimated $1 billion a year to stream programming from others over its Prime Instant Video service.

Since late 2010, the company's Hollywood studio, Amazon Studios, has let aspiring screenwriters and film makers upload thousands of scripts to its website.

It has an exclusive, 45-day option to buy movie scripts for $200,000 and TV series for $55,000. It can also pay $10,000 to extend options for 18 months.

Instead of green-lighting a feature-length film or TV pilot, Amazon first helps develop the scripts it options into trial videos. It posts these online to solicit reviews and feedback from its millions of customers. Writers use the feedback to adjust scripts, hoping to boost the chances of creating a hit when Amazon spends millions of dollars turning projects into full movies or TV shows.

"Hopefully we can avoid big bombs," said Roy Price, head of Amazon Studios. "Our notion for what the world needs may be a roller-skating movie or a battleship film, but that could be wrong. We can do tests and find out that, actually, no one cares about this project or that one. If you do that before you spend $200 million on it, that would be good. Good for customers and good for the business."

For instance, Amazon took its nine best test movies from 2011 and posted them on Amazon Instant Video, the company's streaming video service. Customers viewed the projects hundreds of thousands of times, according to the company. It is using reviews and feedback to re-write scripts.

Amazon also collected data on how long customers watched the test videos and how many watched all the way through.

"That form of implicit feedback is as useful, or more useful sometimes, than the explicit feedback," Price said. "This told us something about the marketability of these ideas."

Amazon Studios recently turned "Blackburn Burrow," a movie script by screenwriter Jay Levy, into a digital comic to get more consumer input.

The comic, recently the most-downloaded free comic on Amazon's Kindle store, comes with a survey for feedback on what people thought about the story, according to Levy.

"If you look at the amount of data Amazon collects every day, it's incredible," Levy said. "This way, they begin to get actual feedback about the story and will create something that people really get invested in."

Bringing market research to the creative process is nothing new, of course. Hollywood tests movies with focus groups all the time. But it is not done on such an open, large scale as Amazon's approach.

"You often don't get audience feedback until you almost release a movie," said Edward Saxon, Oscar-winning producer of "The Silence of the Lambs."

"Film-making is an iterative process - a draft and then another draft. Amazon is very smart to find more places along the way to get feedback."

Saxon is one of a handful of big-name producers who have signed on to Amazon Studio projects. He is helping develop "Children Of Others," about a woman who takes her last chance at a fertility clinic, only to find that her unborn child may be the first wave of an alien invasion.

Amazon Studios currently has 21 movie projects and nine TV projects in development.

The movies will be made for theatrical release - Amazon has a deal that gives Warner Bros. Pictures the first crack at bringing them to the big screen, known in industry parlance as a "first-look" deal. Any TV series will be distributed on Amazon's video streaming platform as exclusive shows, according to Price.

Amazon has been clear about what it wants to spend and it knows movie-making costs money, Saxon said.

"I am betting my professional energy that we are going to see a good number of Amazon movies, and I hope mine is one of them," he added. "The movie we're making is going to compete with the big boys."

(Reporting By Alistair Barr; Editing by Peter

Craigslist Rolls Out Maps for Apartment Hunters

Craigslist introduced a new mapping feature on Wednesday that will allow its users to see what apartments are available in a particular area in a map view.

[More from Mashable: Apple No Longer Saying Maps Are ‘Most Powerful Ever’]

As of now, it's still in its "rolling out" phase, and is only available in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Ann Arbor, Mich., but more cities will have access in the near future.

SEE ALSO: This Might be the Best Craigslist Used Car Ad of All Time

[More from Mashable: Apple Shows Off Maps Alternatives in App Store]

The release comes at a peculiar time for Craigslist. In July, the organization filed a lawsuit against Padmapper and its data provider, 3Taps, for copyright infringement and breach of contract -- alleging that both organizations had illegally compiled their listings of apartment locations.

3Taps recently filed a counter suit for what they're claiming are anticompetitive practices that monopolized the apartment-searching market.

Check out the video above to learn more. Is this a feature you'd use, or a poorly-planned launch? Let us know in the comments.

Brit.co new Martha Stewart

Http://www.brit.co