Microsoft Wants Its Own Game of Thrones

On Wednesday, Nancy Tellem, Microsoft's newly appointed president of entertainment and digital media, said that she hopes to make a Game of Thrones-like series for Xbox Entertainment Studios.

"I have the ambition" to make a show as dynamic as Game of Thrones, said Tellem at The Wrap's Power Women Breakfast in Beverly Hills. "That, to me, was [the] greatest testament to how wonderful television can be and how engrossed people are and committed -- and it was a social experience."

She then added with a smile that Microsoft's budget was "enough for me to do my job, let's just say."

Creatively too, through the Xbox platform, Microsoft has the ability to create content free from traditional 22 and 44-minute time constraints, which allows Tellem's team to "focus on the content itself" so that viewers can "share that experience."

Already, Microsoft has several media projects in the works at Xbox Entertainment, including Steven Spielberg's Halo series and the company's first unscripted series called Every Street Reunited.

Currently, these shows are expected to begin rolling out in the spring. What's still in consideration, however, is whether Microsoft will release episodes one at a time or all at once like Netflix.

Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love by following @Max_Nicholson on Twitter, or MaxNicholson on IGN.

The Idea: An Inventor Wants One Less Wire to Worry About

“It was my last year to do it,” she told me, “so I literally would just carry around a notebook and write down any annoyances, because that would be an opportunity to solve a problem and have an invention.” An admitted “professional Googler,” she’d been researching all day on her computer when she decided to pack it in for the night.

“I was just standing in my room,” she said, “wrapping up my laptop charger and trying to fit it into my bag and suddenly it occurred to me: Wow, this is so archaic. Why are we using these 20-foot wires to plug in our quote-unquote wireless devices?”

“See past old paradigms” is one of those cheesy riffs one might hear from an innovation expert working the business speakers’ circuit. Yet here it was, a question that inched just past what was simply accepted: Why, in a wireless age, do we still have electrical wires?

As Ms. Perry soon learned, there are very good reasons that we don’t beam electricity through the air. Though you can transmit the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays, there are problems. “I realized that anything on the right half of the spectrum was too dangerous to beam,” she said, “and anything on the left half of the spectrum that was closer to radio was either too inefficient or tightly regulated by the government.”

So she started looking elsewhere and came upon piezoelectricity — a form of charge that is created in certain crystals and ceramics when vibrated. If you have seen Internet assertions about T-shirts “that charge your mobile phone while you wear them,” or about boots on the ground literally creating the charge for a soldier’s radio, you are familiar with the idea of piezoelectricity. Those applications rely on something that’s already in motion.

And here’s where the second eureka happened — enabling her to see how she might build a device to wirelessly charge a battery in a cellphone or a computer from across a room.

“How do I create vibration in the air without actually moving something?” The answer came instantly — it was almost like a stoner’s aha: “Sound is vibration in the air.”

Sound frequency “is basically how many cycles per second air is being pushed through a space,” Ms. Perry says. “We have little hairs in our ears that vibrate in response to sound. We interpret that change in air pressure as sound. But sound is something that exists outside of our head. Literally, it’s just air particles moving in an arranged fashion.” So was it possible to deploy sound waves that humans couldn’t hear or feel, in order to charge a phone?

Nothing in her training prepared her for this kind of research. She was an astrobiologist, after all. She was just 21 and had spent the previous two summers interning at NASA.

So she did what most everybody else does. She clicked on Wikipedia. She started with the “ultrasound” page, then “acoustic.” Soon enough, she was reading academic papers at the forefront of various disciplines.

Her idea, she discovered, meant marrying the fields of sound, electricity, battery technology and other subspecialties. “It was such a multidisciplinary idea,” she said, “and everyone in each different department basically told me that there was basically no way that you could get past all the hurdles.”

She kept running into the same genre of problem. “I was working with a couple of different people at the beginning who would say there was no way to get this high-power sound over this distance without creating shock waves,” she said. “Of course, I would have my 10-minute panic attack and think the whole thing was over. Then I would do some research on my own, and figure out how to achieve high-power sound without creating shock waves.”

Afterward, she said, “I would go back to that person and he would say, ‘Oh, yeah, that should work.’ ” Each expert seemed to dwell in his own private silo, so that whenever she crossed from one discipline to another, she would run into the same wall of constricted thinking.

Even after winning attention at a D: All Things Digital conference, where she transmitted power an impressive three feet using piezoelectrical technology, she still couldn’t attract start-up money.

“After being rejected by literally hundreds of investors — maybe not hundreds, maybe not literally — but lots of investors,” she said, she decided to research who had financed “crazy things,” and wound up gaining the attention of Peter Thiel, the former PayPal entrepreneur whose Founders Fund provides venture capital for unusual ideas.

The Idea will offer an occasional look at the origin of business notions.

Bits Blog: In Revamping, Apple Wants to Show It Can Still Innovate

Apple wants to prove that it has not lost the ability to innovate in a post-Steve Jobs world, Brian X. Chen reports in The New York Times.

The company on Monday introduced a major redesign of iOS, its mobile software system, as well as upgrades for some of its Mac computers. It also unveiled a new online music service for its music player, iTunes. The company, under intense pressure from investors, introduced the new software and Macs on the first day of its annual conference for software developers.

Apple’s stock has fallen to about $450 after peaking at about $700 in September. Some investors worry that the company’s growth is slowing because it has lost its way after the death of Mr. Jobs, its visionary leader. Apple’s vexation showed at the conference. After unveiling a major upgrade for a Mac computer, Phil Schiller, the company’s vice president for global marketing, offered a sarcastic response to those who have suggested that Apple could no longer innovate.

Charles Golvin, a technology analyst at Forrester Research, said Mr. Schiller’s remarks indicated that “they have a chip on their shoulder.” But Mr. Golvin said that Apple was adding improvements to battery life and other enhancements to software that people would actually find useful. “What customers are getting here is tremendous innovation under the cover,” he said.

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, called Apple’s new mobile operating system, iOS 7, the “biggest change to iOS since the introduction of the iPhone.”

Google Wants to Release Details on Classified Requests

SAN FRANCISCO — Google on Tuesday asked the government for permission to reveal details about the classified requests the technology company receives for the personal information of foreign users.

News from the technology industry, including start-ups, the Internet, enterprise and gadgets.
On Twitter: @nytimesbits.

It is the first time that Google has publicly acknowledged that it has received requests under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which forbids companies from acknowledging the existence of requests or revealing any details about them. The technology company added that it complies with far fewer of these requests than it receives.

Google made the request after revelations of the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program, known as Prism. The data the government collects as part of Prism – including email messages, telephone records and online chats -- is legally authorized by FISA.

Google made the request in a letter from David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, to Eric H. Holder, the attorney general, and Robert S. Mueller, the director of the F.B.I.

In the letter, Mr. Drummond expressed frustration that the company has been unable, because of a government gag order, to explain the details of how it shares user data with the government. He asked for permission to publish both the number of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, that Google receives, and their scope.

“Google’s numbers would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made,” Mr. Drummond wrote. “Google has nothing to hide.”

Mr. Drummond was unavailable for an interview. In a statement, Leslie Miller, a Google spokeswoman, said that of Google’s hundreds of millions of users worldwide, “only a tiny fraction” are subject to government data requests each year.

“If we could publish those numbers openly, as we are asking, they would show that our compliance with these national security requests falls far short of the claims being made,” Ms. Miller said.

Bits Blog: C.E.S 2013: Cisco Wants Your Video to Find You

Michael Nelson/European Pressphoto Agency Marthin De Beer, a senior vice president at Cisco, in Las Vegas on Monday.

In the future, the TV shows and movies you want to watch should find you — you shouldn’t have to find them. And you should be able to watch them on any device.

That’s the video service Cisco Systems wants to put in your living room. On Monday, the company introduced Videoscape Unity, a cloud-based video platform that it hopes service providers, like cable TV companies, will embed in their set-top boxes.

Dispatches from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The software package includes a tool to recommend shows to a person based on past viewing patterns. It creates a profile for each user — if Mom likes watching musicals, for example, her profiles will show a list of music-related channels; if Dad likes sports, his profile would show ESPN and Fox Sports.

The other major part of Cisco’s package is a cloud-based DVR. If you want to record an episode of “Mad Men,” it can potentially be stored in the provider’s cloud for as long as you like, as opposed to your local hard drive. As a result, you should be able to watch that episode on any device, like an iPad or Android phone.

Cox Communications is Cisco’s first United States customer to commit to offering Videoscape Unity.

Cisco is not the only company thinking about making content easier to find on the television. Panasonic and Samsung demonstrated a similar feature in their TV sets that makes recommendations based on a person’s TV habits. Some of Panasonic’s televisions even use a built-in camera to detect a person’s face and switch to his or her profile.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 8, 2013

This post has been corrected to note that Cisco did announce a customer for its new product, Cox Communications.

Donald Trump Calls Touré “Racist,” Wants Him Fired From MSNBC

The war of 140 characters between journalist/TV personality Touré, and mogul Donald J. Trump, reached a boiling point earlier today (Oct. 22) as the two exchanged insults via Twitter. In a recent tweet, the Apprentice mastermind stated, “When you are fired from MSNBC for your bad ratings and racist coverage, stop by and say hello.”… Continue

Gunplay — Rapper Says He Wants to KILL 50 Cent

Gunplay
Rapper Says He
Wants to KILL 50 Cent
Gunplay says he absolutely DID NOT fire a gun at the BET Awards ... but claims he DID beat up a member of 50 Cent's entourage ... and says he wants to "kill" everyone in the G-Unit crew. 

Gunplay -- a rapper who's signed to Def Jam -- just called in to TMZ Live to talk about the madness at the BET Awards in Atlanta on Saturday ... where multiple fights broke out behind the scenes.

Gunplay tells us ... he "had to fight off five dudes" who he believes were members of 50 Cent's camp.

Gunplay says things got violent with 50's group because, "I never liked them and always wanted to kick his ass ... and I finally got the opportunity."

The rapper says 50 Cent WAS involved in the action ... but was "hiding behind security." Gunplay says he was trying to "break his f*ckin' neck."

Gunplay says he did manage to beat down one of the guys in 50's entourage -- "kicked one of their fat-asses ... kicked them off in the dirt." Gunplay says cops then rushed in and sprayed him with mase.

Gunplay -- who's friends with Rick Ross -- says his fight had nothing to do with Rick's altercation with Young Jeezy's crew at the BET Awards ... but explains, "We just goin' at it with everybody ... let's go kill 'em all."

Doesn't sound like he was joking ... Gunplay told us, "If you're playin' with me, you're playin' with fire ... might get gunned down, ya never know." See More: Gunplay ,  50 Cent ,  Rick Ross ,  8 More Music ,  Exclusive ,  Fights ,  Celebrity Justice ,  Celebrity Feuds ,  BET Awards ,  Awards / Awards Shows ,  BET Awards Brawl Hide these