Which one should you buy? We have a radical proposal: neither.

Gamers can save themselves both money and mental anguish by taking note: The leading current-generation consoles, the Xbox 360 and PS3, are going to stick around for a while, and they're still getting nearly every huge game release for this year and next. 

How long? Well, consider this: Sony didn't discontinue the PS2 until January of this year—nearly 13 years after its release.

Games Of Future Past

The new console generation is less of a leap than the shift to high-definition video was seven years ago. In unveiling their new game machines, Sony and Microsoft were forced to play down advancements in graphical realism and hardware punch. Instead, they trumpeted features game players don't care about, like television and social media.

The flip side of that: The latest games will be available for older consoles—and they won't be much of a downgrade. Game developers know this full well: The vast ranks of current console owners are a far more compelling market than people shelling out for new machines, and likely will be for years to come.

So what's the end result? Five of the biggest, most highly-anticipated titles at E3 were launched as cross-generation titles. That means your battle-battered Xbox 360 or PS3 can play them just fine, no new machine required.

The bottom line: If you have to have the latest-and-greatest console, more power to you. If what you want are the latest-and-greatest games, you don't have to wait.

Will these games look and feel better on the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One? Of course. Enough to matter? That's your call.

1. Grand Theft Auto V

Because it's not officially confirmed yet for the PS4 or Xbox One, the fifth installment of Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto isn't technically cross-generation yet. So right now, it's candy for current console owners. Set in the same universe as 2004's GTA: San Andreas, which involved recreations of Las Vegas, San Francisco and Los Angeles, this high-definition take on the West Coast crime underworld is slated to be the most ambitious, massive. open-world game to date.

One example of its ambition: there are three protagonists you can switch between at any point. 

It's almost a given that, at some point in time, this game will make it's way to the next-generation consoles. Pre-release footage of the title is at a level of graphical fidelity unreachable by current hardware. Recent rumors suggest that these versions might come early in 2014, but you can be sure that Rockstar will be tight-lipped until long after the game launches this fall. With this strategy, Rockstar is expressly targeting late adopters.

Given that, GTA V will still be the best reason to own a current-generation console come September 17. It will likely provide years of play. Heck, I still play 2008's GTA IV regularly on my Xbox 360, and I shelled out the $15 for a PS3 version when I switched consoles earlier this year. 

Check out the trailer below, which lets you toggle between the narrations of each of the game's three playable protagonists. 

2. Watch Dogs

Watch Dogs is half open-world action/stealth game, half social commentary on surveillance and connectivity. (The NSA will probably hate it ... or maybe love it, depending on how the game's plot moves forward.)

Developed by publishing juggernaut Ubisoft, maker of the Assassin's Creed and Tom Clancy series, Watch Dogs features Aiden Pierce, an antihero hacker who finds his way into the networking infrastructure of an alternate version of Chicago in which every piece of tech is wed to a system called CtOS, or Central Operating System. This access lets Pierce hack smartphones, control traffic patterns, and basically leverage any form of digital connectivity as weapon while he navigates a world wrought with information warfare. 

Watch Dogs is coming to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii U on November 19 and then the next-gen consoles when they launch. 

3. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

From Japanese video game legend Hideo Kojima, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is the tenth installment in one of the gaming world's most cinematic and plot-heavy series. 

I really won't try to explain the plot to people unfamiliar with MGS's unique brand of alternative world history, because I'd fail. There are occasional clones, some well-placed supernatural elements, and, of course, giant robots capable of launching nuclear missiles. 

While the Metal Gear series has often stuck to a single console line, most recently Sony's, those not willing to upgrade to the new systems this holiday season won't be left out. Even better: Those still cross that 2008's mind-blowing MGS 4 was exclusive to the PS3 can rejoice: this title is going to be both cross-platform and cross-generation, so Xbox owners can finally join in. 

Kojima Productions has yet to open up about a release date for MSG V, but here's a nice lengthy trailer showcasing some of its gameplay. For those interested, there's also a director's cut version that features some highly disturbing torture scenes that shed light on some of Kojima's boundary-pushing plans. 

4. Call of Duty: Ghosts

5. Destiny

Destiny is the incredibly ambitious project from Bungie, the studio best known as the creators of the original Halo series. Set in a futuristic Earth, players craft their own character who gets to interact with thousands of others within a environment that is described as "alive," meaning many aspects of the game will be a dynamic result of people interacting with one another. 

There's not much to know right now about the project except that it aims to be a wholly unique mix of first-person shooter and massively multiplayer online game. For instance, how many people can play at once on one server? Will there be a main storyline that players take part in together, or on their own? Will players on the old Xbox or PlayStation get to interact with those on the new consoles? These kinds of questions will fuel Destiny's popularity in the coming months, though it's already one of the most talked about titles of E3. 

Destiny's release is not yet set, but it is confirmed for both the old and new Xbox and PlayStation consoles for some time in 2014. Here's a look at the extensive gameplay footage that debuted last week. 

And that's the limitation I've found after spending two and a half weeks with a wearable fitness tracker: It integrates itself into my life in pleasant little ways, but at the end of the day, it leaves me on my own to figure out what to do next. I love the info I'm getting, but I still don't know how best to utilize the data or exactly when or how to change this habit and that behavior.

How can I take that mound of data and aim it head-on at my issues of problems of laziness, self-motivation and unhealthy behavior?

(See also Can A Fitness Tracker Really Change Your Life? Part One Of A First-Person Experiment.)

What Has Changed

Since living with the Fitbit, I am far more consciously aware of everything I do that even remotely affects my health. Wearing a tracker makes you think about how often you opt for the elevator, how full your plate is at every meal, and how much sleep you get on a daily basis. While I'm not neccesarily eating any better, I'm becoming more aware of what I eat too often (bagels) and not enough (anything green). 

On the flip side, since wearing the tracker I've been sleeping more - and I feel that I've been sleeping better. Before using the Flex I'd been down to about five to six hours a night. And my sleep efficiency for the last two weeks has risen to a pretty stellar 94%. 

But like I said earlier, I'm not getting much in the way of suggestions. It would be great, for instance, if the Fitbit app on my iPhone let me know when I was spending an unhealthy amount of time sitting, perhaps with a nudging notification telling me to go take a walk. Instead, it just shows a depressing pie chart, making sure to highlight my time spent wasting away in a chair with the color gray. 

Of course, most everyone spends an enormous, and undoubtedly unhealthy, amount of time being sedentary, derailing workout ambitions staring at computer screens and opting for convenient but unhealthy lunch choices. What we really need is help taking control of these ingrained lifestyle habits. 

While it's shouldn't be hard to consciously decide to take more walks and change up your daily routine, it would be great to get some help actually making it happen. 

The Flaws Of The Fitbit Flex

Beyond the general shortcomings of all fitness trackers, the Fitbit Flex isn't completely flawless. Biking on a bumpy road or strumming a guitar throw off the pedometer and get tracked as steps. Don't look for 100% accuracy in any of these devices, but it's downright obnoxious when the device goes into sleep mode three or four times during a bike ride because your wrist gets jolted. 

Fitbit also insists on powering its devices with a proprietary charger. I mentioned this in my first post, but it's become even more of an issue as time goes on. Unlike the Nike Fuelband, which can plug directly into a USB port, the Flex's very small tracker must be slipped out of the wristband and plugged into that easy-to-misplace charger. Because the device is meant to be worn 24/7, you need to tote that charger to work and back if you don't want the thing to die on you. 

My Weekly Goals

In my initial post, I made it clear that my experiment was about using data to improve my lifestyle and changing bad my bad habits - not losing weight. My goals were to consistently meet my daily step counts (7,500 on weekdays and 10,000 on weekends), and burn more calories than I consume. As it turns out, I'm hitting my weekday goals about half the time - two-thirds of the time on weekends. Through some very deliberate choices, however, I managed to burn more calories than I took in every day. 

It came down to knowing when - and likely which - foods would put me over the edge. Armed with that info, I was able to choose not to indulge or to offset an indulgence with serious exercise. I do believe the Fitbit Flex facilitated this achievement.

Looking forward to the next phase of my experiment, my aim is to keep burning more calories than I take in, but also to tackle new problems: my still-problematic dietary habits and my inability to make substantive changes to my daily routine. (A key goal: spending less time spent sitting on my butt.) After all, if fitness tracker won't push you, you need to use the data to push yourself. 

I plan to post part three later this month. 

Photos by Eliot Weisberg for ReadWrite. 

Unlike instances in the past where upgrading to Apple's new beta OS was a one-way road - which will likely be the case again once iOS 7 is released to the world at large - you can in fact still revert back to iOS 6 if you've upgraded to the iOS 7 beta. 

If you're like me, you may have thrown caution to the winds by loading iOS 7 on your iPhone without much more than a vague hope that you could restore it to its prior (and fully functioning) glory. Fortunately, it's a lot easier than various online guides are making it out to be.

Step 1: Download The Proper iOS 6 File

In order to install iOS 6, you must pick the proper version or iTunes will spit an error back at you. For the iPhone 5, you must download iOS 6.1.4. For everything else, it is iOS 6.1.3. If you use the wrong file for your device, iTunes will not allow you to restore it.

To review:

• For iPhone 5, download iOS 6.1.4. Depending on what cellular carrier you use, you will have to download a different version of iOS 6. Make sure you get the proper one for your network: GSM for AT&T and T-Mobile customers and CDMA for Verizon and Sprint. More info and a full list of worldwide carriers here. 
• For iPhone 4/4S & iPod Touch 5: download iOS 6.1.3. 

Step 2: Plug The Device Into Your Computer, Cancel The iTunes Automatic Sync Process (If It Starts)

When plugging in your smartphone back into your computer, the iPhone may begin syncing its data with iTunes. This could happen even if you had previously had it set to manual sync. This could be problematic if iTunes tries to make a new backup of your device with iOS 7. 

You should cancel the sync just to be safe. While I did not let it happen with my device, having an iOS 7 backup could supersede your old backups and keep you from restoring your phone as it was in iOS 6 with all your content - apps, settings, music, photos - intact. Despite that, you should still be able to, at the very least, setup the device as a new iPhone. 

Step 3: Do Not Put Your Device Into DFU Mode, Just Hit Restore

The popular notion when downgrading from iOS 7 to iOS 6 is to put you iPhone into DFU (Download Firmware Update) mode, which is Apple's version of recovery mode for iDevices. It turns out that this is completely unnecessary and your iPhone can be downgraded without that extra effort. 

To put your iPhone in DFU mode:

• Hold down the home and power button for 10 seconds.
• Release the power button while continuing to hold the home button for eight seconds.

(Read more: Apple's New iOS 7: What You Need To Know Now)

This process sets up your phone automatically for a restore. It is not technically required to downgrade to iOS 6. At the same time, using DFU mode will not have any negative effect on restoring to iOS 6. You can use it if it makes you comfortable.

Once your iPhone is recognized by iTunes, simply hold the Alt/Option button on a Mac or the shift key on a Windows machine and click "Restore iPhone..." The option to choose the iOS6 .ipsw file will pop up, the same way it does when upgrading to iOS 7.

Find the proper file, click it and wait. If you don't hit any annoying road blocks, your device should be back on the iOS 6 train. At this point, choose to restore it from a backup and pick your most recent iOS 6 backup. Hopefully, you made that backup the same day you took the iOS 7 plunge.

A Special Case: iTunes Error 3194

If you run into an error immediately following the process of the restore where iTunes says it's verifying your iPhone's eligibility, you might have simply downloaded the wrong iOS 6 file, noted above.

But if you're absolutely sure you have the right file, then you may just be running into a common iTunes error. Cult of Mac detailed how to fix it.

Here's the step-by-step breakdown:

• Navigate to the Finder, and select Go in the menu bar
• Click 'Go to Folder...'
• Type '/etc' and find the 'hosts' file
• Copy the 'hosts' file and paste it your desktop, then open it in Text Edit
• At the very bottom of the file, find a line that reads, “74.208.105.171 gs.apple.com” and delete it
• Drop that file back into the '/etc' folder, choose replace (your Mac may ask you to authenticate the decision). 
• Go back to iTunes restore using the methods described above

Let us know in the comments if you successfully downgraded from Apple's newest beta. And don't hesitate to let us know if you used a different method from the one described here to downgrade from iOS 7 to iOS 6.

“It didn't make sense because unless you follow people or have followers, what is it?” the 30-year-old university professor says of his early mindset. Flash forward two and a half years, after a friend told Dallas to give the app another try, and he has 106,000 followers under the handle @dirka.

And Instagram itself has changed, becoming part of Facebook through a billion-dollar acquisition.

For users like Dallas, Instagram is a verb, and a well-paying one. For Dallas, one recent gig involved Toyota, who paid him to participate in an Instagram-oriented photo shoot. He’s been approached numerous other times, and turned down some of the offers.

“I’ve had to walk a fine line of, ‘Wow I’m really selling out,’ or, ‘I’m pulling a fast one on my followers,’” he explains.

And Dallas is not alone. He represents a sliver of the app’s 100 million users who are not professional photographers, photojournalists, or celebrities, yet have amassed a massive following through their keen eye and commitment to the community. To put it in perspective, Instagram cofounder Mike Krieger has only 65,000 more followers than Dallas. (Celebrities attract considerably more: LeBron James has 2.5 million).

But while it sounds like a dream come true—using a smartphone app to launch an Internet-based career on the side—Dallas has battled a common enemy in many heavy Instagram users’ paths: himself.

“I used to be kind of obsessed in a negative way," he admits. "Instagram kind of consumed me."

Before he had over 100,000 followers and before his Instagram presence became a revenue stream, he struggled with an issue at the very core of the photo-sharing app: the way it has latched onto its users and assimilated itself into our daily lives, for better and for worse.

With Facebook's backing, Instagram is here to stay, and the effects of its pressure to scan for, snap, and constantly think about shareable moments day in and day out is central to the way our digital existences bleed into our physical experiences.

"Instagram Is Not A Photography Company"

When Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom, a clean-cut towering Stanford grad, addressed a crowd at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco in May, he reiterated multiple times that the company he cofounded “is not a photography company.”

“Instagram is a communications company," Systrom said. "It’s about communicating a moment. It just so happens that that message happens to be an image."

His insistence of this point throughout the night’s Q&A conversation, moderated by Digg founder and Google Ventures partner Kevin Rose, bordered on the evangelical. Systrom showed an almost Steve Jobs-like marketing magic. He spoke as if the crowd needed convincing that Instagram was worth the $1 billion Facebook paid for it last April. They didn’t.

Instagram has no real competitors. Sure, there’s Hipstamatic and Flickr’s smartphone app and Twitter’s mobile photo-filter options, but none of these will ever come close to commanding Instagram's near-synonymous identity with photo sharing in the minds of its users.

We'll soon have physical evidence. There's already an Instagram-linked slide projector, and an upcoming Polaroid-made instant-print camera.

As Systrom said himself that night, “Anyone can make a filter app.” What Instagram did was different. It dug into our souls, and it’s part of our daily digital ecosystem on a private and personal level comparable only to Facebook, not coincidentally.

Part of its success was in the way Instagram took the hurdles of photography out of photo sharing.

For one, you can’t make an image horizontal or vertical; all photos are square. (Apple appears to be following Instagram's lead—a split-second preview of the next version of the iPhone operating system showed a square-photo mode.)

Within less than a minute, your photo is telegraphed to the world. With Instagram, photography became more than just easy. It became natural.

“I shared something, my photo got a bit of action, and it was awesome,” Dallas explains of the first photo he took after he re-downloaded the app a few months after deleting it on its launch day. “I got instant feedback."

It turned out some of his friends and Twitter followers had stumbled onto his account while the app remained off his phone. While he'd temporarily abandoned Instagram, it hadn't forgotten him—and that gave him a small following to come back to.

The feedback is the key to Instagram’s success and growth. It’s the reason communities with thousands of people spring up around hashtags in mere hours. But it’s also the source of the now-too-familiar narcissistic tendencies—that need to show everyone what you’re about to eat for lunch, for instance, and the negativity that comes with that.

Instagram is now yet another pillar of society’s continuously strained and conflicted relationship with social networks. For the photo-sharing app, the dangers lurk deeper than with Twitter or Facebook or Tumblr because with Instagram, our very experiences are our digital currency.

The devaluation of daily life to a struggle for likes and exposure and reaffirmation can force us to reconsider and reflect upon the reasons we love Instagram so much—or why, love it or hate it, we can't quit it.

The Conflicted Relationship With Sharing

After a few months of near-constant use, Dallas decided to take a break from Instagram.

“I actually stepped back for about four months,” he says. The app ended up taking away from Dallas's own experience of the very moments his followers were so keen to like.“Right off the bat, it made me very aware of my surroundings.... I was always trying to look for something epic to share.”

Dallas’s personal conflict exposes the potentially destructive relationship we can have with an app that also helps us connect in amazing ways.

"It seems that there are a few populations that are particularly impacted by these technologies," says Morgan G. Ames, a graduate of Stanford's PhD progam in communication who specializes in the ways new technologies impact our everyday lives. "One would be parents of younger children who can capture and share all aspects of the minutiae of their children's everyday lives.

"Some parents seem to feel a tremendous pressure to capture all of the 'important' moments of their child's lives, which can make their lives feel more exciting and important, but can also add a great deal of stress," she adds.

This kind of Insta-stress happens in other circumstances, too.

Take the food photo for instance. As early as August of last year, GQ’s Luke Zaleski wrote, “The best way to Instagram your food? Don't. It's time to go on an Insta-diet.” More recently, you have the Tumblr "Pictures Of Hipsters Taking Pictures Of Food."

This idea that people were so consumed with sharing their every moment—something people previously said about the Facebook status and the tweet—seems magnified with Instagram. Taking a photo of your perfectly composed food suggests that you think it's beautiful enough to share with the world—but not delicious enough to start eating immediately.

And food photos are only the tip of the iceberg. Think about every time you visit a famous landmark, ride your bike past a beautiful landscape, or notice how striking the light of the sunset looks against the clouds.

"Many photographs today are take-once and view-once (probably in the next few days), and have little value beyond that, at least currently," Ames says. "I can imagine archaeologists sifting through our digital remains sometime in the future and these photographs serving useful functions for them, but will we ever go back and look at our meals and shopping lists and pretty sunsets? It's hard to say."

When Systrom explains the ideas driving Instagram's popularity, he strikes a particularly interesting note when he says that life in the digital age is driven by staying in touch, that central desire of human nature that made us, in the pre-smartphone age, increasingly more separated from those we used to know as time goes on.

“Success to us in the future is where everyone in the world has the Instagram app in their lives,” he says.

Keeping in touch through Instagram is a fantastic solution to bridging the thousands of miles that separate us from friends and family members, but it’s also a very superficial and one-sided take on the social network. To go deeper, Ames suggest, you have to be willing to accept the fact that Instagram has cheapened the photographic image, and therefore by extension, lessened the value we get out of moments we're so eager to share.

"It seems that photographs are now more commonly being used as a stand-in for medium-term and even short-term memories as well," she says. "Even though the resulting photographs are cheapened, the pressure to take the photographs in the first place hasn't necessarily lessened."

Viewed through a social-network lens, if Twitter is an inside look into someone’s mind from a textual standpoint, and Facebook a view into that person’s world from a social one, then Instagram is the next frontier: the closest thing to participating in someone else’s physical experience, visually.

That’s where the pitfalls for all of us reside. Ames sums up the ambiguity of Instagram's value when pitted against the compulsions it fosters on a personal note.

"I rarely go back and look through these photographs I've taken—time and attention, as always, are the bottlenecks—and I sometimes joke, even as I take photos, that it'd be better if I just put the camera away and experience the world more directly," she says.

"Of course, I don't."

Image Control

When Dallas rejoined Instagram in late 2011, he felt refreshed. It was this new take on the app that let him approach it in a manner that reassured him he had the control, and 100,000 plus more followers without needing another break set that in stone.

Since then, Dallas’s life as an Instagram celebrity of sorts has pushed him far beyond what he imagined possible when, at his friend’s insistence more than two years ago, he put the app back on his iPhone home screen.

More recently, he was approached by Orchestra, the company behind iOS email app Mailbox, while it was in beta. It wanted to feature his and other Instagrammers' photos as a reward for users who hit “inbox zero”—a state of cutting through email clutter. (That's how ReadWrite first heard of Dallas's work.)

When Toyota approached him recently for a special vehicle shoot, they didn’t want the photos he could take with his Canon 5D Mark III. “They wanted me to bring my iPhone,” he says with a laugh.

“I’m still looking for awesome shots to share that are interesting and maybe inspiring, but I’m trying to not let it just be about Instagram,” he says. It’s a feeling not so unfamiliar to many of us in our daily lives who find ourselves in conflict with the obtrusive nature of a smartphone and the crisp click of a shutter-mimicking tone the moment a scene strikes us.

For Dallas, it helped to tell himself, “‘Hey, I’m at this cool spot, I need to be here right now, live in the moment.’" For him, the pitfalls of the app are avoidable through this self-meditation. “So now I feel like I’m bringing Instagram with me as opposed to I’m just going somewhere to Instagram.”

Just last month, Dallas visited some visually stunning spots in Arizona and New Mexico with friends, and brought along his Canon DSLR because he was less worried about Instagram authenticity and the idea of an immediate post.

After his trip came to a close, he shared a select few shots, specifically some astounding long exposure light images, with his followers, stressing to everyone that the shots were taken with his “big-boy camera” for pure pleasure.

“I wanted to experience those in my eye, to make those memories,” he says, “and Instagram came along.”

Photo of Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger by Nick Statt for ReadWrite; all other photos [except food photos] by Dirk Dallas

The next development in the sprawling PRISM scandal may see the Obama Administration in court. The American Civil Liberties Union, as a customer of Verizon, claims that the collection of massive amounts of data by the NSA has violated its First Amendment rights of free speech and association as well as the right of privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

(Read more: PRISM Fallout Part 2: Companies Will Store More Data Behind The Firewall)

The ACLU, alongside the New York Civil Liberties Union, has filed a constitutional challenge to the program. "The program goes far beyond even the permissive limits set by the Patriot Act and represents a gross infringement of the freedom of association and the right to privacy," wrote Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU's deputy legal director. The brief is available in full here.

In related news, Google has asked the U.S. government for permission to add national-security requests for user data it receives under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to its regular transparency report.

Shortly before his retirement roughly 13 years ago, Horiuchi bought himself a copy of Excel because he figured he could draw with it and it was far cheaper than design-oriented software from companies like Adobe. 

Using autoshapes, a tool in Excel that lets users connect and color custom shapes, Horiuchi builds massively complex images that push the limits of spreadsheet software. And because Excel isn't really an image-creation program, his work is even more impressive than the creations of artists using Microsoft's Paint software to make masterful drawings, for example. 

After entering a Excel autoshape art contest in 2006, in which Horiuchi blew the other contestants out of the water, he has seen his art gain international recognition and be featured in a number of exhibitions. 

Feel free to check out Horiuchi's methods by downloading one of his actual Excel files.  

"In the consumer market, developers monetize through ads and app purchases. They're familiar going to the iTunes Store and Google Play," explains Chris Yeh, Box's VP of Platform. But productivity tools generate relatively low revenues, often because it's hard to take an app from a single user who puts it on their personal device all the way through the IT evaluation criteria required to generate bulk purchases for enterprises. 

Adoption vs. Procurement

"The adoption model has changed, but the procurement model has not," Yeh adds. With $rev, it matters less how many people are paying the flat fee for an enterprise app if the developer partners with Box and begins to generate ongoing payments through app usage.

Yeh added that developers do not have to change how they go to market; The apps can remain in consumer app stores. "The notion is once those apps are driving users, we'll be able to track that separately without them having to do anything," he says. 

The idea is for $rev to not only foster Box integration and partnerships, but also reward higher-quality enterprise app development. The number of enterprise developers working on Box's platform has grown from the low thousands two years ago to more than 25,000 today, creating more than 500 OneCloud apps. OneCloud is Box's mobile cloud hub that lets users work in any of the platform's apps. 

(See also Box CEO Aaron Levie On The Uncertain Landscape Of Enterprise Software [Video])

10 Pilot Partners

Box is starting out $rev with 10 pilot partners, most of which are already successful, Box-integrated apps like PDFExpert and Documents by Readdle. The focus is primarily on Box's paying clients, though Box does operate as a freemium service for personal accounts. 

Also launching Thursday are Box's mobile enterprise-grade software development kits (SDKs) for iOS and Android). The primary goal with Box-specific SDKs is to reduce the time it takes to integrate an app into Box's platform, from days or weeks to just hours.

With more than 150,000 business customers and 15 million users, Box is firmly ensconced as an enterprise storage and cloud-management staple. With $rev and its new mobile SDKs, the company is working to give its platform more visibility and make it an even more central component of the Box business model.  

The latest player is called Boxer, which employs the tag line "email isn't broken, it's just unfair." (Apparently its co-founders subscribe to the rich-relative theory).

The two apps share a lot more than clever marketing slogans. Like Mailbox, Boxer is also an iOS-exclusive app meant to replace your native email client with one that greatly expands the user experience. Through clean design, simple list making, and nifty swipe gestures, both apps try to help users take the hammer to their inbox count.  

But while Mailbox has thrived with its singular goal of daily "inbox zero," Boxer is more concerned with casting the widest net and arming itself to the teeth with features. 

Where Boxer Has The Edge

First and foremost, Boxer works with multiple iOS email clients, from Gmail and Yahoo to Outlook and iCloud. This is great for users who have been looking for the singular email app that can unify work and personal accounts. 

"Let's differentiate by being the most open client out there. One that could be used for serious business as well," Jason Shellen, a Boxer co-founder, tells ReadWrite. In fact, Boxer is the only iOS email app that currently handles both Exchange and Gmail accounts. 

Mailbox got a great deal of early buzz from its slow-paced waiting list, which founder Gentry Underwood says was imperative to keep the server-side components of Mailbox's delivery system up to speed. Boxer on the other hand, has adopted a more user-friendly approach: it is giving itself away for free until it racks up 100,000 downloads. After that, it'll be $4.99.

Swipe To Do... What?

Boxer's swiping features are now commonplace in nifty app design, and work especially well with email organization. A swipe to the left archives the message. A swipe to the right pulls up five functions: Like, Quick, To-Do, Request, and Done. 

Quick is a familiar feature that allows for a pre-written response to be sent with the touch of a button. Boxer crafted a list for common use, but it's customizable. The To-Do option let's you set a due date and a priority level for a message, and the Request button takes that feature a step further and let's you assign a person to the message, say if it involves a task, and follow-up later. Other Boxer users can see if they've been assigned to a message and when the task is due. 

This kind of Boxer-to-Boxer interaction is a key differentiator for the app, and the Like button is the best way to see that in action. With one tap, a Boxer user can send a message that notifies someone they've simply Liked the previous exchange.

"The same sort of action used to be: 'Okay, now I need to open, hit reply, tap out an "Okay, let's go."' Ours is swipe, tap and you're on your way," Shellen says. 

This could reduce a long-standing email time-waster: when message recipients feel obligated to respond, often with no more than a "Thanks" or "Sounds good," just to let someone know they've seen the message. While the Like button currently works only in the form of a pre-written email, Shellen said visual Boxer-to-Boxer interactions are in the works. 

Features, Features And More Features

If that's not enough, Boxer also integrates contact lists from Facebook and LinkedIn, and lets you send attachements direct to Dropbox. You can also see and organize with Gmail labels, a key feature Mailbox currently lacks, despite its Gmail-only functionality.  

That many features can be overwhelming, so Boxer's acceptance will depend on its ability to walk the line between its impressive functionality and the ability of users to remember and take advantage of all that power - especially when compared to the conscious simplicity of its competitors.

While not condoning the use of fully driverless cars, the DOT issued a non-binding policy statement to states, advising them to use driverless cars for testing only. The DOT also stressed that some forms of autonomy in vehicles can save lives, like speed adjustment, lane-centering and driver monitoring to watch for dangers like falling asleep at the wheel. 

As it stands, driverless cars are not fully legal, but they're also not illegal. It depends on the state, the level of autonomy in question and the various regulatory layers that stretch from a state-enforced law to a Federal one. 

The Legislative Puzzle Behind Driverless Cars

First of all, the decision of whether to allow driverless cars on the road is not up to the Federal government. States have the power to set driving laws, like the age requirement for a driver's license and the range of penalties for driving while talking on your cellphone. 

Because of this state power, California, Nevada and Florida have all legalized the use of fully autonomous cars in the last two years. It's those laws that make it legal for Google employees to cruise down to Mountain View without their hands on the wheel. In the case of Nevada, driverless vehicles are specifically licensed one-by-one by the state with a special license plate and a requirement that at least two people, one in the driver's seat, be in the car at all times. 

That's not to say that a company like Google couldn't test a driverless car in another state. New York, for instance, does not have any laws on the books that say using a driverless car is explicitly illegal, though it wouldn't be smart to take an autonomous Prius to the streets of Brooklyn, considering the liabilities involved if a crash occurs. In fact, for every other state in the U.S., driverless cars are not technically illegal because no law says cars must have drivers.

So where does the Federal government fit in? The DOT, which oversees the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) agency that issued the policy statement Friday morning, is the governmental body that manages a number of regulations, like vehicle safety and fuel economy standards, that currently keep companies like Toyota and Ford from selling a street-legal consumer model of an autonomous car. 

But while a fully driverless car is technically not available to consumers right now, different levels of autonomy are present in every modern vehicle and exist solely because of regulatory loopholes that don't take into account the vast levels of sophistication humming under the hoods of many software-equipped cars. Some of these technologies include adaptive cruise-control, which automatically alters speed depending on your proximity to other vehicles and lane-assist systems that, while not physically moving the car for you, alert drivers and suggest ways to drive safer. And future models of Mercedes-Benz vehicles will include auto-braking systems to prevent potential collisions. 

Given these advancements and the occasionally anachronistic laws on the books that date back to the time of horse-drawn carriages, the NHTSA policy statement was a two-fold move. It both publicly recognized government regulations are being far outpaced by technological advancements, but also acknowledged the government is willing to take it step by step to ensure that the ultimate goal - to increase driver safety and efficiency - is met within reasonable limits. 

The final verdict: “Self-driving vehicle technology is not yet at the stage of sophistication or demonstrated safety capability that it should be authorized for use by members of the public for general driving purposes,” the statement read. Also included were recommendations that states begin drafting up special licenses and carmakers consider the easiest way to implement and place a feature that would quickly switch from an autonomous to driver-control mode. 

The Pace Of Autonomous Advancement 

The commonly repeated timetable for driverless cars to hit the market is within the next decade, which poses a siginficiant legal hurdle for lawmakers and car manufacturers alike. While Google may be covering all the bases required to convince people a driverless car is safe - including its significant lobbying efforts to get laws on the books like it did in Nevada - it doesn't mean that the DOT will easily wave the green flag for Ford, Toyota, GM and the handful of other companies who are currently developing autonomous technology for their product lines. 

Without a significant joint effort from states, technology companies, carmakers and Federal legislative bodies, the future of autonomous cars will remain cloudy. All of the confusing layers of bureaucracy and the technology vs. government back-and-forths seem to hide a central question: driverless may be safer, but does the public really want to adopt them? 

According to a recent Cisco report on the consumer experience within the automotive industry, the answer is yes, mostly. 57% of global consumers trust driverless cars, the report cites. The trust is heavily weighted in emerging markets like Brazil, India, and China, but still comes in at 60% for the U.S. 

So it seems that Google and others have done a solid job convincing people that a driverless car is a good idea - after all, only two recorded crashes of the Google Prius included one where a driver was manually controlling it and another where the vehicle was rear-ended by another driver. With the Federal government keeping a watchful, but encouraging eye, on the market, regular drivers can only sit and wait for the laws to match the technology, presumably in traffic while Larry Page chides us for not using our time efficiently. 

Image courtesy of Flickr user jurvetson. 

What's mobile-native news? It's an approach to delivering stories that are best designed for smartphones, mixing mobile design with varying story lengths, from sentence-long snippets to full stories. More importantly, it's an approach that incorporates the very idea of a social media-infused news environment where information is a constant barrage that must be sorted, verified and organized. With Circa, all stories evolve over time through a clever subscribing system that ensures users are never rereading information.

The Circa app has so far subsisted on larger, more traditional news outlets' original reporting to generate its articles, leading many to call the app a news summarizer, rewriter, or aggregator. But that may soon change. On Monday, the company named its first editor in chief: Anthony De Rosa, formerly the social media editor of Thomson Reuters, one of the world's most reliable and far-reaching news wires.

(De Rosa's departure follows the indictment in March of his superior, Reuters' deputy social media editor Matthew Keys, for allegedly assisting Anonymous in hacking the LA Times website. De Rosa's boss at the time, former Reuters.com editor Kenneth Li, claims that he was considering leaving before Keys' indictment.)

De Rosa, who became increasingly more prominent during his six years at Reuters through his Twitter and Tumblr influence, already has plans when he starts mid-June, and it could push the company towards its make-or-break moment as a true-blue publication. "We're too small to do original reporting initially but I intend to make that a goal down the line," De Rosa told ReadWrite via email. "If we want to go far and wide, we need to figure out how to do that in the most efficient way and that often means balancing putting boots on the ground with vetting what's out there from our own newsroom."

Evolving Over Time

Circa was launched last October by Ben Huh, CEO of the Web's sprawling meme database Cheezburger Network, along with Matt Galligan and Arsenio Santos. It also racked up an impressive list of investors, including Tumblr creator David Karp and Path co-founder Dave Morin. 

Galligan, who now serves as CEO, is not shy when it comes to establishing Circa's presence. "We're not news reader, or a news aggregator. We are a mobile news publication and we're the first one like it," he said in an interview with ReadWrite. "The way that you read a Circa story is on mobile, and the way we write is mobile-first. Our goal is to be essentially a newspaper on somebody's phone."

So what exactly makes Circa so unique? Principally, it's the app's ability to cater to the way stories now evolve over time through social media and the discovery of new information. A Circa user can subscribe to individual stories, and then receive updates on those stories as time goes on. "We're betting on the idea that we write one story and that it evolves over time. That's the way we have built and structured our company," Galligan says. 

Evolving over time is a very important concept in today's media landscape. As was clearly apparent during the frenzy surrounding the Boston bombings last month, breaking news begins breaking first on Twitter, with uploaded photos and 140-character snippets of what may or may not be verified facts that then ripple nearly everywhere. Circa's approach is to take the tools and tactics used to tackle a story of that magnitude and complexity and apply it to all its stories. Because journalism no longer fits a defined model of measurable length and finality, the idea of an article is now a fluid concept in Circa's eyes.

As stories shrink and grow depending on the amount of information available and both the platform and device a reader is using, Circa wants readers to be able to get the most important facts first, subscribe to what they're interested in and be able to check back for the more later without reading old news. "I'd say that the nature of our stories is very different as opposed to finite pieces of information," Galligan reemphasizes. 

The Future Of Mobile-Native News

For burgeoning and untraditional news sources, partnering with mainstream media giants is a prime way to expand a publication's presence and establish legitimacy, for instance when BuzzFeed paired with The New York Times last summer to tackle the Democratic and Republican national conventions (BuzzFeed also just partnered with CNN). In a world where traditional news organizations haven't yet fully grasped a mobile-native approach, Circa could be in a prime spot to take on that mantle. 

"There's definitely some benefits from the right kind of partnerships. We'll certainly explore some of those options," De Rosa says, though he stressed that that avenue is more the territory of Galligan, who was tight-lipped on any Circa partnership possibilities and stressed that Circa's focus was on growth and the long-term potential of original reporting. 

As for De Rosa's other plans as editor in chief, taking some of his social-media savvy to the editorial team is a priority. "I intend to fuse what I've learned as someone whose primary role was social media into my new position. You'll be seeing Circa out in the wild far more often," he says. "It needs to be the beacon for all news and I plan on making sure you come to us to follow any story. Social plays a huge part in that."

Circa will be launching on Android later this year, and by the time it's a cross-platform news experience, mobile-native publication could very well be what the The New York Times, CNN and every other major news outlet is desperate to capitalize on. 

We can only assume the monologue will be recorded and shared, but either way it's a hilarious and cunning twist on the general celebrity Reddit AMA. Celebrities everywhere should be taking note that the best way to engage the Internet is not only to challenge them, but to do so in a way that adds value only you can provide. In this case, it's Jackson's unique ability to rant. 

(Read more: Bill Gates Does An AMA On Reddit - Promotes Robots, Speech & More)

Get. Your. Ass. Up.

At publication time, the leading comment (with an astounding 25,000 upvotes) comes from Reddit user teaguechrystie. Titled "my new alarm clock," it's a stirring speech designed to help get your out of bed. Try reading this line in your head in Samuel Jackson's voice: "You think it's supposed to come easy? You think I've had it easy? Get your ass up. Get. Your ass. Up. Right now."

The rest of the rant is sort of like that, but the roughly 220 more words are studded with far too many f-bombs to reprint here. Hopefully, the actor will soon be stringing together this rant in an online video that could serve as inspiration for slug-a-beds everywhere.  

(Read more: I Am A President -- Obamamania Shuts Down Reddit)

Charitable Motives

Jackson's real Reddit motive is to raise awareness for the Alzheimer's Association. His Reddit post promotes chances to meet him in the UK for lunch with a $3 donation on his Prizeo page. A $200 donation gets an autographed Kangol hat, his trademark headwear of choice. 

The contest is slated to run through Thursday. We'll add video of the winning monologue as soon as it's available. 

Update on 5/31/13 at 12:54 p.m. PT: Jackson has released the first video to YouTube after announcing that he would in fact be picking two monologues, one based on upvotes and the other being one of his choosing. This first release appears to be Jackson's personal choice considering many Reddit users are pointing out that the submitted monologue was not in the running for the top upvote slot, still currently held by "my new alarm clock."  Here it is folks: 

One might expect that these trackers primarily help the already motivated enough achieve their goals faster, leaving the rest of us drowning in useless data. Or can having that data really help the average Joe improve their health?

These issues are at the core of the quantified self movement, and I wanted to find out for my self. I want to know if, over the course of six weeks, having this data can help me substantially alter my behavior and become fitter. My goal is not to lose weight, specifically, but rather to shed my bad fitness habits and change myself for the better. 

Quantified Me

The Quantified Self concept sounds a lot more intense than it really is. The idea is simply that using wearable tech to collect detailed data about everything you do, eat and feel will reveal patterns and correlations that can help you improve your life. (Not everyone who engages in quantified self activities is looking to change themselves, of course; the people who attend quantified self meet-up groups apparently just like the idea of monitoring the body's daily data stream.)

As someone with no prior experience with wearable devices, I decided to jump headfirst into fitness tracking with the Fitbit Flex. It's a bracelet-like device meant to be never taken off save for the few hours it takes to charge it every week. It stays on your wrist when you sleep, when you shower and when you ride your bike. And it knows when you decide that you'd just rather grab a Big Mac than walk the four extra blocks to the coffee shop to get a salad. 

Why The Fitbit Flex?

The $100 Fitbit Flex is the latest offering from Fitbit, following a line of clip-on devices called the Fitbit Zip and the Fitbit One. Internet reviews have largely been positive, to the point where the device is on eight-to-ten-week back order. (Importantly, its excellent companion app is available for both Android and iOS.).  Alternatives include the Jawbone Up and the Nike FuelBand, both of which deliver similar functionality - sleep monitoring, pedometer features and daily/weekly data production using manual food and exercise inputs - for a few dollars more. 

That part about manual inputs is important. The Flex will automatically count your steps and monitor how you thrash around in your sleep, but you need to tell it how you exercise (how long and how vigorously you rode your bike or jogged, for instance) and what you consume. It has a database of calorie counts for foods spanning the McDonald's Dollar Menu to Panera Bread, but laboriously inputting numbers of ounces and other measurements for common items like fruit and orange juice quickly gets tedious - many users could getting frustrated and give up.

Fortunately, setting up the device is relatively easy. You start by plugging in the charging cable and slipping the tracker into it. Unfortunately, unlike the Nike FuelBand, you cannot plug the device directly into a USB port so the only option is the easy-to-misplace charger. The Flex charges in a couple of hours, giving you at least a week's worth of tracking. 

The next step is to slip the tracker into the bottom of the wristband, strap it on (which takes a bit of a struggle at first) and then you're good to go. You can sync via a USB dongle you keep plugged into your laptop, or via Bluetooth with the Fitbit smartphone app that lets you set alarms, monitor your day's activity and toggle on and off the background sync function. 

Learning To Ignore It

So far, the Fitbit Flex has been an innocuous addition to my everyday life. At first, it was hard not to ignore its presence on my wrist, and keep double-tapping it to see the flashing white dots that indicate the day's progress, like whether or not you've walked 5,000 steps or burned the designated number of daily calories. 

But after a few days, the device's sleek design and comfortable material helped me stop noticing it so much - except when I was going sleep. To get ready for bed, you need to tap it quickly five or six times to put it into sleep mode. It then vibrates to wake you up in the morning, a vast improvement on the jolting iPhone siren I had been using.  

Now that it's become more or less a seamless addition to my life, I'm fully ready to tackling the six-week challenge of habit breaking and behavior altering. 

My Weekly Goals 

My weekly in-app goals: 

• Walk 7,500 steps every weekday / 10,000 on the weekends
• Travel 4 miles every weekday / 8 miles on the weekend
• Burn 2,200 - 2,350 calories every day (to maintain my weight)

Since my goal is not to lose weight, I set my calorie intake and burn rate to remain steady. Instead, I want to get in better shape and take a more conscious look at my eating habits. The ultimate goal is to improve my lifestyle habits, and figure out just how well a fitness tracker facilitates that.

So my pivotal, hard-to-reach goal for my first week is to burn more calories than I take in every single day. For me, that doesn't mean eating less. Instead, I want to maintain what has my 3-meals-a-day (occasionally 4-small-meals-a-day) routine while focusing on exercising and being more active.

Check back in in the coming weeks to follow my progress and track the results. 

(See also Gaming Legend Peter Molyneux: What Makes A Great Game?)

What part will Henderson's status play in Godus, a cross-platform mobile and PC/Mac game that will let you run a civilization as a deity? Early indications are that he will not only rule over potentially tens of thousands of other players - setting rules, imposing a moral code and acting as a sort of Zeus of Greek mythology - but he will also share in the profits of the game and its in-app purchases. How big a slice Henderson will get is not yet clear. 

(See also Curiosity Update Will Let Players Find Out What's Inside The Cube Much Faster)

Here's the video Henderson was given access to as the winner of Curiosity, which he subsequently agreed to let 22Cans share with the world:

What if designers worried about digit size instead?

Luke Wroblewski, a respected designer who sold a company to Twitter and more recently founded Polar, an app maker, thinks it's time to reconsider mobile design principles. Instead of worrying about questions like whether to upsize smartphone apps for tablets, designers should start by asking how their users will physically interact with their devices when using an app.

The technical term for this is input type—keyboard versus touchscreen, one-handed or two-handed interactions, and the like. This requires designers to think about how a device is held, which fingers are used, and how the app in question can optimize the experience for users' dexterity. 

The Beginning: Start With Responsive Design

For a smartphone, the primary input type has become a single hand with a single finger, typically the thumb. For tablets, it's two hands with two inputs, typically both thumbs. And for desktops, it's still restricted largely to the mouse, trackpad, and keyboard, but can branch out in rare circumstances, in the case of devices like the Chromebook Pixel or Microsoft Surface to touchscreen inputs as well. 

Wroblewski's Polar makes an iOS app that lets users poll friends on any topic and then build communities around these topics. Just last week, Polar launched a desktop Web client that is designed to match not just the look but the functionality of the mobile app versions and the input types taken into account with each one. As you change the size of your window, the app morphs from the desktop version to the tablet/touchscreen computer version, and then down to its smartphone version.

If you resize ReadWrite in a browser window, you'll see a similar transformation. This is known as responsive design, and it's an increasingly popular approach to Web design. Last week, at its I/O conference, Google unveiled tools that promise to make it much easier to build responsive websites.

That way, Polar not only looks the same in-app for the iPhone and iPad as it does on the mobile Web, but it adapts for pretty much every platform for optimal use. It's not about scaling the layout of interface objects up and down; it's about scaling the whole experience up or down. 

Next: Think About How We Hold Our Devices

But responsive design has largely been limited to these screen-size adjustments. Input type may be an even more important concept because it factors in both the physical limitations of the device from a display and functionality standpoint as well as how those limitations translate to our physical interactions with the devices. 

Wroblewski detailed the input-type approach to design in a blog post on May 13 that covered the app's new Web client, which lets users quickly scroll through and vote on topic pages related to everything from Star Wars and Game of Thrones to Web design and photography.

"Topic pages on Polar were designed to adapt to not only different screen sizes but to different input types as well," Wroblewski writes. "The end result is a Web interface that aims to fit into the reality of Web use today. In particular, the human ergonomics of how people interact with different devices ..."

It turns out that thinking about ergonomics on mobile devices and adapting design accordingly is not a widely used approach. Steven Hoober, who Wroblewski cites as his primary source for input-type research, published a report earlier this year on UXmatters, "How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices?" that collected two months of observations on how more than 1,300 people used their mobile devices. 

Hoober's report aimed to dispel the myth that designers should follow a "best practices" approach to app design that relies on assumptions that cast the widest net. Instead, Hoober advises that the approach should be far more customized, taking into account the constantly changing nature of mobile use that is contingent on factors like device type and screen size as well as physical location, be it standing or sitting on a bus or in a cafe. 

"The way in which users hold their phone is not a static state," Hoober writes. "Users change the way they’re holding their phone very often—sometimes every few seconds."

While Hoober did verify the assumption that majority of smartphone use is done one-handed with the thumb—49% of the time—he also discovered that designing from that standpoint alone could lead users to alter their behavior and thus deemphasize the very reasons underlying the approach.

"What if a user sees buttons at the top, so switches to cradling his phone to more easily reach all functionality on the screen—or just prefers holding it that way all the time?" he explains.  

Comfort-First Approach

Wroblewski stresses that Polar was designed primarily to be "comfortable to use," incorporating the ideas behind Hoober's findings into the app's design to cover the best input types for every device.  

For instance, Polar's smartphone app contains no left-hand column because users wouldn't typically be able to access it comfortably using one hand and one finger. It does support keyboard use in the event someone is using a large-screen phone-tablet hybrid, also known as a phablet, that's more typically held with two hands.

By contrast, when using Polar on a full tablet, a browsing column is present to take advantage of two-handed use. That's placed strategically on the left edge, with voting options on the right to take advantage of quick thumb access to the left and right sides of the screen. 

The desktop version of Polar mostly matches the mobile app experience. The main difference: When Polar detects a large enough screen, it adds keyboard support.

This type of comfort-first approach has its downsides.

"Looking at the Polar interface on a laptop can be a bit disconcerting because we’ve essentially left the middle of the page 'blank,'" Wroblewski says. This runs contrary to the fill-'et-up instincts of most Web designers, but it's the only way Polar could create something that easily scales down both aesthetically and functionally from a 27-inch monitor to a 4-inch smartphone screen. 

While these methods are very much experimental, they showcase the implementation of a much more sophisticated approach for thinking about mobile app design. We know that the diversity of devices is only increasing. With responsive design, we've scrapped a one-size-fits-all approach to screen size. The next step is to discard one-swipe-fits-all thinking about how we interact with those screens.

Photo by Intel Free Press

In an event Tuesday morning that felt like a casual bar conversation compared to Sony's brain-exploding extravaganza back in February, Microsoft unveiled the next-gen Xbox — not in a giant conference center, but in a tent set up on a soccer field at its Redmond campus.

With a hard-line focus on the One's television connectivity and a smart decision to actually show off the physical console, Microsoft pulled off a tight one-hour presentation that glazed over the trickier undercurrents at play. But the devil is in the details, and it's now apparent that while the Xbox One will not require a constant Internet connection [Note: this point is now in dispute - see update further down], as many had feared, it's still the most restrictive console ever made.

(See also: Sim City Launch Disaster Should Kill Online-Only DRM)

As the event highlighted, the One is an aggressive grab for the living room from the get-go. But for gamers, long the core market for the Xbox, two really important questions remain. How much of the hardware we buy do we really own, and how far can and should a manufacturer go in telling us how to use our console?

Microsoft drew some very serious lines in the sand today. It's up to consumers to decide whether or not to play ball. 

Microsoft's Iron Grip

The rumor of a universal always-online requirement was finally quelled, but even more mysterious news boiled up in its place. Microsoft openly revealed that the One will require users to download all games to the console's hard drive to play, but Wired's Chris Kohler reported that to do this a second time with the same disc will require a player to pay an unspecified fee.

(See also: Xbox One: Microsoft's Big Bid To Pwn The Living Room)

Microsoft quickly responded by saying that the Xbox One will "enable customers to trade in and resell games" and that the company will have more details to share later, likely at the Electronic Entertainment Expo next month. But the same spokesperson also added this ominous note in a comment to the game-news site Polygon:

Xbox One’s support for used games and these other scenarios may not look like they have on previous console generations, and that’s what we’ll be explaining as soon as we’re able.

That's as clear as mud, of course. But tacking on fees for re-using an already-purchased game disk could seriously damage the used game market, or even kill it entirely. Not only would used games get more complicated to rebundle and price, resellers would likely offer less for used games in the first place.

That would antagonize retailers and consumers alike. It would be a giant step backward in an era where a game that provides maybe 8-10 hours of gameplay will still cost $60. Such a policy could even boomerang on game developers themselves, since many gamers finance their purchase of new games by trading in their old ones. If the trade-in market vanishes, so does that source of cash for new purchases.

The good news here is that a used game fee was "a surprise" to GameStop President Tony Bartel when he spoke to Polygon. Bartel went on to call the fee requirement "speculation." In a separate statement to ReadWrite, the company replied, "GameStop is working closely with Microsoft to ensure there is an opportunity for customers to take advantage of our popular buy-sell-trade model and provide a seamless transition for consumers to enjoy the next generation of console gaming." 

(See also: Xbox One Photo Gallery)

While the Xbox One will be able to operate without an Internet connection, the always-online issue won't go away entirely. Microsoft announced that it will be handing that ability over to publishers, who can designate certain game functions that will only work on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform — in other words, effectively requiring an Internet connection to play.

This isn't great news, especially considering Electronic Arts took the stage at the One unveiling. EA, voted the worst company in America two years in a row, recently tried to play nice with its consumer base by discontinuing its insane Online Pass program, which charged gamers a fee to access some online levels or items via a used game disk. But you can bet the company will be near the front of the line when it comes time to bake core game functions into the cloud to make an online-only gaming world an unavoidable, and unpleasant, reality.  

Say Goodbye To Your Current Collection

So what about that huge library of Xbox 360 games you've collected so far? Sorry, those won't work on the One. (PlayStation 3 games won't work on Sony's upcoming console, either, so there's plenty of blame to go around on this front.)

But what about all those awesome indie games you've downloaded through Xbox Live Marketplace or the full 360 titles you bought digitally? Those will carry over, right? Nope. It turns out that only music, movies, and TV shows purchased through Xbox Live will follow you to the One. [Note: Microsoft's Don Mattrick has responded to this aspect - see update further down].

Then there's the Kinect. While it sports very impressive voice recognition and motion control, reports quickly surfaced that the updated camera-sensor combo will need to be plugged in at all times to use the One. For starters, that's both annoying and a bit creepy, considering the Kinect will be on all the time watching everything you do. But this bit of news also suggests that the One itself might be pretty pricey, if it comes with the next-generation Kinect bundled.

Your Move, Sony

To be sure, Sony's PlayStation 4 could be equally bad, or even worse; we won't know until Sony really unveils it at E3 next month. For the moment, though, Sony at least stands a chance of offering a more consumer-friendly future for console gaming.

Is it inevitable that both the software and hardware we buy in the gaming realm, be it the new SimCity or the next-gen Xbox, are simply no longer ours to own, let alone to hack and mod and use in the way we're most comfortable? Microsoft may not have come out and said so outright, but it's certainly taken quite a few steps down that gloomy manufacturer- and publisher-dominated road.

Updated 10:15am on 5/22: When asked directly by Kotaku whether or not the Xbox One would have a time limit on its ability to play games offline, Microsoft Vice President Phil Harrison offered these fateful words: 

Kotaku: If I’m playing a single player game, do I have to be online at least once per hour or something like that? Or can I go weeks and weeks?

Harrison: I believe it’s 24 hours.

Kotaku: I’d have to connect online once every day.

Harrison: Correct.

The company immediately backpedaled on Harrison's statement, telling Polygon Wednesday morning that the comments represent only "potential scenarios," adding, "...we have not confirmed any details today, nor will we be."

Updated 11:40am on 5/22: When asked about backwards compatibility by The Wall Street Journal, Don Mattrick, head of Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business, said that only 5% of customers play old games on a new system and developing technology to accommodate those players was not worth it. “If you’re backwards compatible, you’re really backwards,” Mattrick added.

Photos by ReadWrite's Taylor Hatmaker for ReadWrite

A massive overhaul of the service, announced Wednesday during a keynote at Google's I/O conference for developers, has brought it in line with the most modern and functionally powerful Web design principles. It now has a multi-column layout, scrolling menu bars, and enormous images. Google also rolled out an umbrella messaging service called Hangouts, a standalone app for Web and mobile that neatens up the sloppy mess that was Voice, Talk, and Google+ messaging.  

All of this is great news for heavy users of Google+ who have been awaiting a design push that looks and feels like 2013. But there's still one giant problem plaguing the service and Google's entire social platform at large: the hub of your Google life is still an email address, and that's a nightmare for users with multiple Gmail accounts.

Since taking over as CEO in 2011, Larry Page has been talking up the notion of "One Google" to unify the search giant's disparate services. But the reality is that it's very hard as a user to experience a unified Google until Google realizes that a person is a person, not an email account.

At best, the complex process of trying to manage multiple Gmail accounts with Google+ and all the various apps involved slows users down. At worst, it could keep some users from adopting the beautiful new services altogether. 

Two Accounts, Twice The Pain

"For me personally, I have two Google accounts: I have a corporate and personal [account], and it is a pain," admitted Seth Sternberg, director of product management for Google+, in a roundtable discussion with reporters in San Francisco Thursday. And Sternberg is definitely not alone. Many people have two Google email accounts—a personal Gmail and a corporate Google Apps account. Those ought to be Google's best users. Instead, they're the most frustrated ones.

And many people set up multiple email accounts for other reasons. Social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn let them associate multiple email addresses with a single personal or professional identity. Google doesn't.

What that ends up doing is disrupting the entire process of laying the Google+ social net atop the Web. Every time a user tries to +1 a link, log into a website with Google+ sign-in, or personalize search, they're confronted with Google's fragmented view of online identity.

So for Google, the email-as-account concept disrupts users' ability to seamlessly use Google+, which in turn makes the network's constantly increasing integration with the rest of the company's apps and services more and more painful with every turn. And for users, it's just plain obnoxious having to use incognito browser windows and all sorts of other workarounds to try and simply manage their online identity.

No wonder Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr are the go-to networks for finding friends and sharing information.

Identity, If And When You Want It

Google says it's trying to get better.

"We sanded off all the rough edges," David Glazer, a director of engineering at Google, said in the recent roundtable event. Google, to its credit, has introduced an account chooser that makes it easier to stay logged into multiple accounts.

But those fixes don't address the core problem—Google's email-linked identity model.

What Google really needs is something above an email address that could be used as an identifier for all of a user's various accounts. This higher-level identifier could be something akin to a Twitter handle or a Facebook username.

This new Google login could have a registered primary email address—the way Apple and Amazon handle logins to their online accounts—but it should sync up your other Google+ accounts.

Separating personal and professional sharing could be simply handled with a strongly established Google+ concept: Circles, or lists of contacts.

(And, of course, you should still be able to establish a Gmail account for an unlinked, throwaway identity—for, say, a Craigslist posting or mailing lists.)

Umbrellas Are Good

Google showcased its ability to neatly fold up services with Hangouts, and the strategy is a no-brainer. It resolves so many problems users face when a company's products are all around them, yet they have no idea how to manage them all and end up just turning away from what they feel they don't need. 

An umbrella strategy to Google+ and Gmail is a much taller order, but it's one of the biggest impediments standing between the search giant and a more steady, fuller-scale adoption of its social network. So Google, please give us that umbrella, and you'll likely see more people standing underneath it if its done right. 

What does root access do? It lets you tinker under the hood of Glass, allowing you to, for instance, install Linux and run apps tailored to the open-source OS. 

Google software engineers P. Y. Laligand and Hyunyoung Song started with the warranty warning and a quick presentation on how to enable a debug mode that lets you load Android applications (APKs) on Glass. The two stressed that Google recommends this method for tinkering with Glass, as the debug mode doesn't void your warranty. 

It being Google though, the duo hurriedly brushed past the warning. Using a Bluetooth trackpad-enabled keyboard synced to Glass, the engineers outlined five steps involved in rooting Glass: 

1. Access the bootloader
2. Unlock the device & erase personal data
3. Swap out and override boot partition
4. Reboot into normal state
5. Access root mode

Laligand was nice enough to run through a demonstration in real-time. Below are the screens from his fast hack. 

Accessing The Bootloader & Unlocking Device

Reboot To Root 

Success!

Google Variant Of The Samsung Galaxy S4

One of the briefer announcements at I/O was the introduction of a variant of the Samsung Galaxy S4 configured with the look and UI feel of a 4.2 Jelly Bean Nexus phone. In a sense, it strips all the Samsung bloatware from the phone to deliver a much purer Google/Android experence. The phone will hit the Play store June 26, with a no-contract price of $649. 

Google's Music Streaming Service

The news was out yesterday, so it wasn't a huge surprise when Google's Chris Yerga announced the company's plans to enter the music streaming service battleground with Google Play All Access. Despite the few missing details, ReadWrite's John Paul Titlow writes, "It's a crowded space with challenging economics, but if anybody is well-positioned to win this game, it's Google."

(See also: Google Just Launched A Grenade At Spotify — And It Just Might Work)

Free Chromebook Pixels

Google didn't disappoint with its Oprah moment. While a free Google Glass device was obviously the longshot giveaway in the back of everyone's mind, the company opted instead for a free Chromebook Pixel laptop for every attendee. Not bad. 

Linking Device Displays Into A Multiplayer Game

While the first attempt at demoing a live multiplayer game at the keynote failed, Google managed to get it right the second time in a more impressive setting. On a stripped down racing game, four players competed all using different devices that synced together to form the race track. 

Google Realizes Its Star Trek Dreams

Senior VP Amit Singhal opened by recalling childhood hopes of bringing his Star Trek-influenced dreams to life, and segued to how Google is bringing that to pass with devices that you can talk to. The goal is to make search a natural language conversation, and Google's examples were pretty convincing — both a Chromebook and Nexus were able to accept spoken commands and turn them into personalized search results without a single hiccup. 

(See also: Google Search Learns To Listen & Understand Context)

Google Delivers Impressive Photo-Editing Tools

After debuting a Google+ design overhaul, SVP of engineering and social Vic Gundotra also took keynote attendees through a demonstration of Google's new capabilities in photo editing. Some especially notable features include the ability to auto-edit an entire batch of photos to the best moments and to enhance photos automatically. 

Google Maps Escapes The Stratosphere

While the overhaul of Google Maps certainly wasn't the most exciting presentations of the keynote, the presentation ended with stunning scenes of the Earth from space — both daylit and at night. That view and others that used to be limited to the Google Earth service are now baked right into your browser as part of the new Maps refresh. Desktop users will see it first, with mobile users to follow soon after. 

Larry Page Ends His Speech With A Q&A Session

Larry Page's speech was notable both for its oddly vulnerable quality and for the hoarseness of Page's voice, which hovered slightly above a whisper — a consequence of what Page described yesterday as an unexplained case of vocal chord paralysis.

The big surprise here came when when Page turned the finale into a Q&A session. The highlight: Google's CEO telling Robert Scoble, who was first in line to ask a question, that he didn't appreciate his now-infamous Google Glass shower pic. 

Jon Hamm Of Mad Men Makes An Appearence (Not Really...)

Last but definitely not least is that guy who looked eerily like Jon Hamm (of Mad Men, you philistines) waiting in line to ask Larry Page a question... while wearing the greatest hat ever. Turns out it wasn't Jon Hamm (sigh), though from a distance (and over slightly grainy streaming video) the resemblance is truly uncanny.

Images by Nick Statt for ReadWrite

While the focus may have been on life after Microsoft, the interview also included emotional recollections from Gates as he recalled the last time he saw longtime rival Steve Jobs alive in May of 2011. He recalls Jobs being very forward-looking, focusing both on heavy subjects like where technology had failed education as well as personal ones, like finishing his 260-foot yacht Venus despite the somber realization from both he and Gates that it was unlikely he would ever set foot on the finished vessel. 

When asked, as he often is, what he think Jobs was better at, Gates immediately responds, "His sense of design, that everything had to fit an aesthetic...it shows that design can lead you in a good direction and phenomenal products came out it."

Watch the unaired footage from the interview below: 

Google+ Recommendations: Just One Snippet Of Code

Placing a snippet of code in a website's main template enables Google+ recommendations on all pages of that site's mobile version. Users click on the mobile recommendations bar that provides articles from the same author, other popular articles on the site, and — if a user is signed into his or her Google+ profile — articles that people in their Circles have read and recommended.

All that's required beyond the free-to-use code is a Google+ profile to let publishers or individuals manage the recommendation tool. 

"We chose to launch this on mobile Web first because this problem for users and for publishers is most acute in mobile Web. It's the place where the user is least able to find interesting content in a property," Seth Sternberg, director of product management at Google, told ReadWrite. 

The feature will also be automatic from the publisher's standpoint, meaning a user will see the recommendations regardless of whether the user has a Google+ profile.  

Google+ Sign-In

Google+ mobile recommendations comes on the heels of the Google+ sign-in, which debuted two months ago. Like the more prevalent Facebook sign-in option, Google+ sign-in allows publishers to leverage the social network as a way of commenting and creating a profile on a publication website. The company says it has seen strong growth from its initial batch of 12 launch partners, and will showcase some 50 Google+ sign-in partners at I/O.