Ever wonder why it has taken so long for your robot butler to arrive? It's 2013, so why aren't those long-promised robotic domestic servants helping out around the house yet?

One reason for the delay: Robot engineers lacked a common platform on which to communicate and collaborate with one another. Robotic hardware and software systems had to be built from the ground up every time. 

Open Source Robotics

But just as open-source operating systems for computers have amped up digital innovation, the robotics industry has undergone a similar transformation over the last five years. Ever since the advent of ROS (Robot Operating System), an open-source platform on which engineers could build robotic programs and apps, robotic innovation has picked up speed.

On Friday, robot engineers from around the world gather for the second annual ROScon in Stuttgart, Germany. Meanwhile, ROS has become a requirement for several high-profile DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) robotics projects - in this year’s DARPA Robotics Challenge, every contestant will use ROS.

"ROS has also started to appear in job listings and on resumes," said Tully Foote, ROS Platform Manager at the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF). "At robotics conferences and presentations, most people are using ROS on their robots," Foote said, "and those who are not often justify why the are not using ROS if they are not."

“ROS is distinguished by its focus on building a community of collaborators,” Foote added. “From its inception, ROS has been designed to facilitate sharing of the software between members of the worldwide robotics community.”

Leveling The Robotics Playing Field

Steve Rainwater, a robotics expert and blogger at Robots.net, agrees that ROS is today’s "leading software framework for robotics," because it integrates exceptionally well with prior robotics research frameworks. 

“There have been other projects that tried to write complete robot operating systems from the ground up, but where [ROS creators] Willow Garage got it right is they understand how open source works,” Rainwater said. “They invent the parts they need and integrate them with the parts that already exist.”

ROS "keeps the playing field level to an extent between students and hobbyists at one end of the spectrum and governments and universities at the other," Rainwater added. "Improvements to robot software can come from either end of that spectrum and because of the way free software licenses work, everyone's contributions are accessible to benefit the entire community."

How ROS Works

Robotics research center Willow Garage invented ROS to solve the common platform problem. Today, the platform is overseen by the nonprofit OSRF to ensure that is remains easy to share and distribute. 

As an example of how ROS works, imagine you’re building an app. That app is useless without hardware and software - that is, your computer and operating system. Before ROS, engineers in different labs had to build that hardware and software specifically for every robotic project. As a result, the robotic app-making process was incredibly slow - and done in a vacuum. 

Now ROS, along with complementary robot prototypes, provide that supporting hardware and software. Robot researchers can shortcut straight to the app building. And since other researchers around the world are using the same tools, they can easily share their developments from one project to another. 

What Hath ROS Wrought?

The PR2, Willow Garage’s most sophisticated robot (built on ROS), has been prototyped to a variety of apps already. It can walk the dog, fold the laundry, bring you a beer and even plug itself in when it senses its battery is running low. At $400,000, it’s designed for researchers, not customers, and only 60 exist so far. 

“One of the ones I consider most impressive is the PR2 and Rosie making pancakes in Munich,” said Foote. “This is a demonstration of situational awareness, multiple robots coordinating, perception of deformable objects and they are doing it repeatedly with many visitors watching.” 

We're still a long way from affordable, personal robot assistants doing real work in homes and institutions. But the common ROS platform is helping roboticists create workable robot butlers - and many other useful robotics applications - far sooner than would have otherwise been possible.

Images courtesy of Willow Garage.

You find yourself drunk and alone at the local pub - too nervous to talk to the people around you. You pull out your smartphone. You tap the Facebook app. You update your status: "Party hard!"

A few moments pass. Still drunk, still alone, still nervous, you return to Facebook: "You guys missed out on an awesome time!" with a photo of your drained glass.

Anxiety & Alcohol Predict Facebook Use

Apparently, this scenario is more common than you might think. It turns out that being drunk and scared makes you want to use Facebook more. In fact, anxiety and alcohol use significantly predict usage and "emotional connectedness to Facebook." For college freshmen, anyway.

For his master's thesis, Missouri University doctoral student Russell Clayton surveyed 229 college freshmen students living in dorms. He asked them to rank their perceived levels of loneliness, anxiety, alchohol use and marijuana use, then measured their "connectedness" to Facebook.

Clayton found that students who reported higher levels of anxiousness and alcohol use "appeared to be more emotionally connected with Facebook." What's more, "people who perceive themselves to be anxious (in general) are more likely to want to meet and connect with people online, as opposed to a more social, public setting."

Numerous studies show anxiety is rising in American society, and Facebook - along with its advertisers - could make out like bandits. For example, Clayton's survey revealed that students with a stronger emotional connectedness to Facebook became "more motivated" to drink just by viewing friends' pictures and statuses showing them drinking.

Paging the Bud Light advertising team!

Pot Smokers Love Facebook Less

Oddly enough, this wouldn't work for those selling or advertising marijuana over Facebook - if it were legal. According to the research, marijuana use "predicted the opposite: a lack of emotional connectedness with Facebook." According to Clayton, "Marijuana use was negatively related to emotional connectedness to Facebook and unrelated to Facebook connection strategies. This indicates that the more a participant engages in marijuana use the less emotionally connected they feel toward Facebook."

The reason for the difference? Clayton posits that marijuana usage is "much less of a social process," unlike drinking beer and alcohol.

The study did not examine other social media platforms. Too bad. It would be great to know, for example, if there is a correlation between marijuana use and connectedness to Instagram, for example. Or if people who are generally less prone to anxiety prefer MySpace to Facebook. Do humanities students who drink too much have a Twitter account?  

Study Notes: Participants in Clayton's study had on average between 301-400 Facebook friends. The average time spent on Facebook per day was nearly one hour.

Emotional connectedness was defined as "how emotionally attached students feel toward Facebook." To gauge this, students were asked to rate on a 7-point scale their response to the question "If Facebook shut down, I would be sad."  

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock. Smoking image courtesy of Flickr.

M$: Short for Microsoft, used to imply Microsoft cares more for money than it does for security, stability, and anything else that could make a good Operating System." - Urban Dictionary, 2004.

"Microsoft sucks." Too many times, the conversation stops there.

Yes, Microsoft gets plenty of criticism, much of it justified, on everything from its nasty attacks on Linux to the failings of its latest operating system. Along the way, Microsoft has helped write its own narrative as a money-grubbing monopolist - old, litigious, out of touch. For Pete's sake, it took years for Bill Gates to recognize the potential of the Internet.

But that's only part of the story. We too often overlook the many things that Microsoft does right: its philosophy of open research; its willingness to adopt and contribute to open source; even its willingness to admit when it's wrong. The case here is not necessarily what Microsoft does best, but what it does well, what it deserves to be recognized for, and what we generally overlook.

1. More Open Than You'd Think

Microsoft, open?! Really?

Of course not, if you're looking strictly at Microsoft's commercial products. There's no way that you'll ever see Windows released as open-source code, nor will true open-source advocates ever put Microsoft in the same camp as say, Red Hat.

But in 2006, Microsoft began changing its tune toward open-source software - forced by IBM and Red Hat, admittedly. The tide turned when Microsoft and Novell signed a cooperative agreement shielding themselves and non-commercial free software developers from being sued; by 2012, Microsoft had entered the list of the top 20 contributors to the Linux kernel. Linux never really cracked the desktop PC, but Microsoft seems content enabling Linux to run on virtual machines, and possibly even developing Office for Linux, too.

Basically, Microsoft has achieved detente with open-source software; acknowledging its role, using it to Microsoft's own advantage, competing with it on its merits and contributing back to the community, where warranted. Argue all you want how Microsoft arrived here - kicking and screaming, perhaps - but Microsoft's attitudes toward open-source software have significantly improved.

2. Open Research, Too

One of the few companies that opens the doors to its labs is Microsoft, with events like TechFest held each year in either its Redmond headquarters or in its Silicon Valley facilities.

Many companies host developer conferences to engage with partners and announce new products. The difference is that Microsoft seems to emphasize research and showing off the fruits of that research to the world at large. There seems to be a sense of pride there that only a few companies (Intel, for one) seem to share.

Finally, there's the discovery aspect. Google Scholar does a fine job of assisting searches for academic papers, but compare Google Scholar and Microsoft's Academic Search. Not only is Microsoft's tool arguably more interesting than what Google offers, it also allows you to search by organization. Compare Microsoft versus Google versus IBM in terms of citations and papers, and decide whether or not you believe Microsoft's numbers, which show Microsoft publishing much more research than Google.

3. Winning The Game (Console)

In little more than a decade, Microsoft has forced Nintendo, one of the pioneers of the modern video game console, into near irrelevancy. It hasn't managed to do the same with Sony, yet, but its Xbox has outsold Sony's PS3 for well over a year (at least in the United States). Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to innovate with its use of the Kinect peripheral, both as a camera and a form of gesture input. 

Both Sony and Microsoft have struggled to bundle their consoles with music, movie and app stores, in much the same way Apple has. But Microsoft has also kept its eyes open. If the reports of the "Stingray" Xbox are true, Microsoft may be smartly attacking on two fronts: developing a low-cost Xbox derivative to take on Roku and Boxee in the video streaming market, while maintaining its dominance in game consoles. 

4. A Sense of Vision... And Touch

In the last decade, Microsoft has either bought or developed products for productivity (Windows, Office), collaboration and connection (Skype, Lync, Windows Phone) and entertainment (Xbox) and embarked on an ambitious bid to tie them all together.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer now describes the company as a services-driven organization, but Microsoft is increasingly committed to pushing the boundaries of hardware, whether that be its gigantic Perceptive Pixel displays, its Kinect depth camera, the Xbox or Windows Phones, and its Surface tablet. Microsoft has built outwards from a formidable presence in Office and Windows, adding powerful communication tools in Lync and Skype, and tying together tablets, phones and console together via the cloud. There's no other company in the industry - no, not Google, not Apple - whose software and hardware ecosystem traverses as broad a spectrum as Microsoft.

Microsoft may have fallen short with Windows 8's touch interface, but Kinect is impressive in its own right, even if it was licensed from a startup, Primesense. (I don't know why Microsoft hasn't made a corresponding investment in speech recognition, which would fit so naturally alongside a touch-based interface.)

Microsoft is now the chief steward of the PC, responsible for pushing its boundaries. Tablets, phones and Chromebooks attract the ink these days, but preserving the future of 350 million PCs is no small task.

5. Microsoft Peripherals: So Good, We Forget About Them

Every day, we sit down at our laptop, PC, or other computing device, put our hands to our keyboard and type away. And, in general, many of the best of those keyboards and mice have said "Microsoft" somewhere on them. 

Set aside arty attempts like the Microsoft Arc Mouse. When you get right down to it, Microsoft's basic Comfort Desktop keyboards and basic mice have been under our fingers for years and years. Microsoft's keyboards are one of the reasons many people can't imagine typing on a tablet's sheet of glass for any length of time. 

  6. Investing In The Future

Few companies have the resources to invest in startups, whether that be a company or a teenager. Microsoft does both: efforts like BizSpark give out Microsoft software and assistance to startups, while efforts like the Kodu Cup help kids learn how to code. The Imagine Cup crosses borders to incentivize student innovators develop their own products and the business models to run them. And while Microsoft helps launch solar-powered broadband in Africa, it must know that it's not going to earn a front-page story.

Much of what Microsoft is simply doing here is a high-profile effort to seed Windows and its other products around the world, employing many of the same practices that other technology companies employ. But is "good" being done here? Certainly.

7. Windows Phone: Committed To Being Different

During the holiday season, comScore reported, Microsoft's Windows Phone actually lost market share. Ugh. It's hard to write positively about Windows Phone when consumers obviously aren't falling in love with it. But Windows Phone provides an attractive, easy-to-use alternative to the iOS/Android duopoly, forgoing dozens of static app icons for dynamic "Live" tiles that transform the phone's home screen into a dynamic mosaic of information. It's, well, iconic.

We all know Windows Phone's weakness: apps. What Microsoft hasn't done is convince application developers to embrace the platform, and that's a big reason consumers have shied away. But the Windows Phone OS itself has a lot to recommend it, and the hardware from Nokia and HTC isn't bad, either.

8. Still Owning The Enterprise

For all of its emphasis on consumer-facing technologies, Microsoft's empire was built on productivity and the enterprise. Microsoft's Server and Tools and the Business Division typically report both the highest profits and revenue of any divisions within the company. Microsoft has forged relationships with thousands of businesses, generating stable, consistent revenue streams especially with the creation of subscription models like Office 365.

While Google Apps continues to cut into the Word/Excel/PowerPoint triumvirate, Microsoft has made an end run around Google's services by making collaborative services like Lync the centerpiece of Office.

Does Microsoft need to own the enterprise via hardware like Surface? In the end, no. If Surface doesn't end up as the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) option for enterprise workers, the rumored Office for Android and iPad will likely serve instead. That's the end goal: capturing attention and generating revenue from enterprises, no matter the medium. As long as that keeps happening, Microsoft can afford to bet on riskier ventures like the Surface and Windows Phone.

9. Microsoft's Mea Culpas

I was honestly impressed by Microsoft's apology that it had fallen short of its commitment to provide "browser choice" to European customers in 2012, as part of a settlement agreement. Microsoft owned up to its mistake, described what had happened and what steps it would take, and again took responsibility for the error when the European Union slapped the company with a $731 million fine.

Google, by contrast, faces fines and a concerted EU investigation after allegedly ignoring requests to rework its privacy policy. Many expected Microsoft to have looked for excuses and appealed the EU's decision. It didn't.

Wouldn't it be nice if Microsoft didn't screw up in the first place? Sure. Microsoft obviously regrets its bawdy song-and-dance routine at a Norway developer conference showed last year, or its "big boobs" gaffe a month later.  But even the world's largest companies make mistakes. A company's character is determined by how it deals with them.

If It Bleeds, It Leads

Failure interests us. Microsoft climbed to the top of the market, creating arguably the world's richest man in the process. Tech journalists remain eager to write the story of Microsoft's fall, me included. Some of Microsoft's tactics are still downright embarrassing: the Scroogled campaign, for example. Windows 8 might well end up as the second coming of Vista. There are still questions whether or not Microsoft can tie its software, services and hardware together into a cohesive whole.

But refusing to acknowledge the other side of Microsoft's story isn't right, either. There's some good work coming out of Microsoft, and ignoring that creates an incomplete, inaccurate picture.

All images courtesy of Microsoft, except Microsoft's Open Source Lab Room by Todd Ogasawara, Microsoft mouse image by Fredric Paul, and roses image courtesy of Shutterstock.

U.S. teens' passionate embrace of smartphones and a "mobile first" mentality to the Internet shows no signs of slowing down. According to the latest Pew Research on teens and technology:

• 37% of teens in the U.S. have a smartphone.
• 25% of those aged 12-17 access the Internet "primarily" via a cell phone or smartphone.
• Among teens with a smartphone, however, 50% access the Internet primarily via the mobile device.
• Girls are more likely than boys to rely on their smartphone as their primary Internet access device.

The rapid adoption of smartphones and the parallel demands for a real-time, location-based and personalized Internet will clearly have a significant and potentially lasting impact on work, shopping, entertainment, the PC industry - and even the structural underpinnings of the Internet. According to Pew:

In many ways, teens represent the leading edge of mobile connectivity, and the patterns of their technology use often signal future changes in the adult population. Teens are just as likely to have a cell phone as they are to have a desktop or laptop computer. And increasingly these phones are affording teens always-on, mobile access to the internet — in some cases, serving as their primary point of access.  

(See also "Good Luck Building A Business In Today's Youth Market.")

Adoption of the mobile Web by teens appears to be accelerating.

• 37% of American youth ages 12-17 now have a smartphone, up from 23% in 2011.
• Already, 23% of teens own a tablet.  
• No group is more connected to the Internet overall than teens.

Household income and urbanity are strongly correlated with teen smartphone use. Black and Hispanic teens are more likely to own a smartphone than their White counterparts. The smartphone could be the tool that eradicates the digital divide.

What Parents Don't Know

A 2012 University of Washington study noted that teens in general considered their rather high level of connectivity as necessary for effective cultural development and to prevent social isolation. 

This does not mean, however, that teens are eagerly sharing these many online engagements with their parents. Smartphones, which by their very nature are designed for use by a single person - unlike a family computer in the living room, say - may make it even harder for parents to know what their children are doing online. A McAfee study last year, for example, noted that 70% of teens actively seek to hide their online behavior from their parents. (The McAfee study examined digital activity across multiple computing devices, not just smartphones.) 

The shift to mobile internet use changes the ways teens access information and creates new challenges for parents who wish to monitor their children’s Internet use. Given bandwidth constraints and the fact that many websites are not yet optimized for mobile devices, teens who access content primarily on their cell phone may have to work harder to get important information.  On the other hand, for parents who may wish to restrict access to their children’s exposure to certain kinds of content online, mobile devices can make it more difficult for parents to use the passive monitoring strategies they tell us they prefer, instead requiring more technical solutions.

It is not yet fully understood how the always-connected teen might alter the economy, work, even culture - though it will no doubt touch nearly every aspect of society. For example, there has already been a "drastic drop" in the number of teens getting  driver's licenses, likely due to their adoption of mobile technology and social media. Expect many more changes to come. Today's teens have grown up online - and online increasingly means via a smartphone.

Image of happy teens courtesy of Shutterstock.

Maybe you've wanted to control your big-screen TV with your smartphone for years, even though the idea has been a nonstarter for most of that time. Now Microsoft, which insists that it sees large-screen computing devices playing a dominant role in the home and workplace, says it will make that a reality.

On Tuesday, Microsoft kicked off TechFest, a research fair of sorts where the company's engineers emerge from their darkened labs and reveal their notion of the tech future. And perhaps more important, how we're going to get there.

Over twenty projects will be on display, including older exhibits such as one that lets you animate household objects using your body. One of the most significant presentations came from senior researcher Michel Pahud, who showed off how users could interact with large-screen displays, either directly or using their phone.

Why is this important? Consider the following concept video, which shows how Microsoft imagines users interacting with massive interactive displays projected onto walls and ceilings. It's a showcase for what Microsoft calls "natural user interfaces," or ways of interacting with computers via touch, voice and gestures instead of a keyboard. (Microsoft has authored similar videos before, such as the "smart glass" concept from 2009 and a similar video in 2011 that showcased holograms.)

The problem with controlling displays such as TVs via smartphone is that the phone is usually sitting right next to a remote control — a purpose-built, and often superior, device.

Buying and installing a wall-sized display might seem ludicrous at the moment, but let's bear with Microsoft for a moment — this is the future, after all. What Pahud's video shows us, though, is how close this future is to reality.

Some of what Pahud describes may seem familiar. Placing a finger on the screen opens a "palette" of available options next to it, similar to the radial menu that Microsoft included in its OneNote application. If the user spreads his fingers, the palette expands to include new options. Part of this could be enabled with a touch display; alternatively, a Kinect sensor could also be used to "see" how a user is actually interacting with the display.

When a user approaches with a Windows smartphone, the phone syncs with the display. When the user is close to the display, the phone shows the palette options. Farther away, the phone shifts into a "remote control" mode, presenting a keyboard and allowing the user to search and control via his voice.

"So in conclusion we have been looking at the strengths of the large display, the strengths of the phone, and combine them together as a society of appliances," Pahud said.

A second video, authored by Microsoft researcher Bongshin Lee, takes the concept of "palette" in a different direction. By drawing an "L" on the display, the SketchInsight technology concept draws a graph; writing the labels for the X and Y axes not only assigns values to both, but also begins filling in the data (from a predetermined source, I assume). In a nifty trick, drawing a battery icon populates the graph with the appropriate data, also using the elongated icon as a the element of a bar graph.

Lee's video isn't nearly as impressive as Pahud's demonstration, if only because the source of the data is never really made clear, nor is how the data should be bounded. Creating a pie chart merely by drawing a circle is a nice touch, however, and shows how data can be herded into the appropriate format using the appropriate tool.

Microsoft also presented research papers on:

Adaptive machine learning. As a front-end tool, this is a bit difficult to conceptualize. Microsoft showed off several examples of machine learning, ranging from the relatively trivial — using machine learning to decide the category of a business expense — to the more profound, such as using a manufacturing profile to determine whether a semiconductor wafer was defective or not.

Analyzing viral content. Much as you would expect, Microsoft's research showed that "viral" content doesn't originate from a single source, but is spontaneously shared by a number of influencers, whose content ripples across the online sphere. But Microsoft researcher Jake Hofman also developed a tool that would help analyze the "clout" of individuals on the Web, and track the virality of content they share. 

The Kinect handgrip. While this may seem relatively trivial, Microsoft views the ability to close one's hand into a fist — the "handgrip" — as the gestural equivalent of a mouse click, and the company said that it would be supported in future versions of the Kinect SDK.

Microsoft's TechFest doesn't necessarily mean that these products will come to market and be built into next-generation Microsoft-branded products. But it's a good indication that this is the direction the company is headed.

Here are some more images from TechFest:

Freeform Sketching: Using Microsoft's SketchInsight tool, the user sketches an example icon, and SketchInsight automatically completes the chart by synthesizing data from example sketches. SketchInsight also enables the presenter to interact with the data charts. 3D Scene capture: Using several live color and depth images, this technology builds a high-resolution composition of the visible surfaces in a scene using voxels, a sort of three-dimensional pixel. Unlike previous methods, Microsoft's project captures people moving and talking, using the graphics chips found within a PC. 3D Haptic Touch: A way to move through 3D models. The X and Y interactions come via X and Y touch interaction on the screen, visually scrolling in two dimensions. Pushing "into" the display physically moves the screen down, and the video renders the appropriate depth.

Lead image courtesy of Microsoft

Sadly, it's going to take a long, long time before we can shrink people and submarines small enough to be injected into an ill patient, a la Fantastic Voyage. But it turns out that shrinking the people isn’t necessary to realize the idea.

Easy-To-Swallow Diagnostics

A team of doctors and researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have created a pill-sized, tethered lab that patients swallow, and they are preparing to commercialize it. The 1-inch glass bead, in the shape of a typical multivitamin, can take better-than-high-def video and stills (what, no audio?) of a person’s entire esophagus, that tubular organ that starts at the back of your mouth and ends at the entry to your stomach.

The esophagus view. This is big news for anyone who has problems with their esophagus, notably the one-in-five Americans who suffer from acid reflux disease - which can lead to lesions known as Barrett’s Esophagus, which can lead to highly fatal stomach cancer.

The Old Way Hurts

Today, such patients periodically undergo an upper endoscopy, a $1,500 procedure in which they are anesthetized so that a specially trained physician can slide a long, flexible, black video camera and remote tool kit down their throat. Ouch!

Over the course of about 40 minutes, the team watches a video screen for signs of trouble - seeing only what’s on the surface of the surrounding esophagus. Along the way, the doctor can use tools near the lens to snip off bits of flesh for later examination.

No Knockout Juice Needed

About 18 months ago, the team, led by Dr. Gary Tearney, at Massachusetts General’s Wellman Center for Photomedicine, was kicking around ideas for simplifying the procedure. This is what they came up with:

You pour a cup of water in your mouth, put the device (attached to the end of a tether) in your mouth and swallow the water and probe at, say 2pm (this is important). No knockout juice.

The thin tether, containing a fiber-optic cable, dangles from your mouth as a doctor - or even a technician - lightly holds on. The same rhythmic muscle contractions that deliver swallowed coffee to your stomach even if you stand on your head does all the work, pushing the bead along.

“We were skeptical,” said Tearney. “We thought the bead would be loose in the esophagus.” Picture a small elevator in a big shaft. For it to work, the device had to be in contact with tissue. “I was shocked and amazed that the esophagus clamped down on the probe, giving us full contact all the way around. “I had no idea it would work this well.”

A Better Picture

The fiber optic cable shoots near-infrared light onto a tiny, rapidly spinning prism that reflects it out a microscope lens. The focused light scatters inside the tissue and, using sonar-like principles, software written by Tearney’s team builds a picture of features within the lining based on how long it takes the light to rebound. The information hits the prism and races back up the same cable to be reconstructed as a real-time, deep-tissue image, showing healthy and damaged flesh in minute detail.

The technician can pull the probe back at any point, but after shooting the whole esophagus, that little glass bead likely will exit your mouth at 2:06pm. Six minutes after the start of the procedure.

The probe has been tested on 13 patients so far, and has returned detailed images quickly, less expensively and without sedation. If doctors spot dodgy cells, they schedule a traditional upper endoscopy, with the snaking camera, anesthesia and snipping tools.

Still In Testing

Tearney declined to predict how much the tool, which requires purpose-built electronics, would cost. He did say the new procedure could be done in a doctor’s office, not in a much more expensive hospital room.

After the recent tragedy in Newtown, CT, some commentators and - notably - the National Rifle Association (NRA) remarked that video games played a role in a "culture of violence" and detachment that can ease the path to violent behavior. This, in turn, has given new life to the debate about the role of media violence – particularly, violent video games – on real-world aggression. It's a serious topic, so ReadWrite thought it was important to to recap the latest on the discussion and see where scholarly studies and popular opinion fall.

Understanding The Numbers

We all know the guy who plays Call of Duty eight hours a day, then goes home to a world of puppies and rainbows. We've also heard of the kid who plays a game for an hour or two, then goes on a shooting spree. There are exceptions to any rule, and if we're going to find real answers, we need to look at trends and averages, not statistical outliers.

It's also important to remember that even if there is a link between violent games and aggressive behavior, that does not imply causality. Violent criminals may well choose violent games, but tens of millions of gamers play those games every week, and the vast majority are law-abiding, normal citizens.

At the same time, it might be shortsighted to ignore such links. According to a recent publication by Iowa State University professor Dr. Craig Anderson, "Correlational studies are routinely used in modern science to test theories that are inherently causal. Whole scientific fields are based on correlational data (e.g., astronomy). Well conducted correlational studies provide opportunities for theory falsification. They allow examination of serious acts of aggression that would be unethical to study in experimental contexts. They allow for statistical controls of plausible alternative explanations." In other words, short of placing a subject in a dangerous situation, correlation is often the best evidence available, and it can be useful debunking other theories.

The State Of Research

At the moment, studies are all over the map, largely because just about every study of video game violence uses different definitions of the terms. The Legend of Zelda, Grand Theft Auto and Missile Command are all violent games in their own ways, but they're not at all similar. Likewise, throwing a fake roundhouse kick at your buddy, checking a box describing "elevated feelings of aggression," and setting fire to a building are all extremely different violent expressions. Unfortunately, current studies span both spectrums, so anyone with a vested interest can easily find a study to support their position. Worse, this makes meaningnful meta-analysis across multiple studies is effectively impossible. 80% of studies agreeing with a certain position doesn't mean much if half of those studies were poorly structured and the other half were measuring something completely different.

5 Emerging Truths

With that said, there seem to be five theories gaining traction. Each has its naysayers, of course, but they have real data to back them up:

1. At-Risk Populations Are Vulnerable To Violent Stimuli

One popular theory holds that some people are more vulnerable to the effects of gaming violence than others. This resonates with our gut instincts, and provides a happy, reasonable-sounding middle ground for both sides. In the Review of General Psychology, Drs. Patrick and Charlotte Markey outline the three most predictive traits for vulnerability:

• high neuroticism
• low agreeableness
• low conscientiousness

This doesn't mean that games cause violent behavior. It suggests that violent games are among the many influences that can be linked to violent behaviors. We've seen copycat murders modeled after television newscasts, Mark David Chapman's obsession with The Catcher in the Rye, and thousands of years of killings based on stories from holy works. Violence and rebellion in media have always been lightning rods for the mentally ill, and video games are a popular medium for the young male demographic most likely to commit violent acts.

The upshot? Young people who are emotionally upset, detached or combative, and impulsive should probably not be exposed to violent games. Unfortunately, that describes a fair portion of teenagers, so use discretion applying the rule to your own kids.

2. Video Game violence Is Not A Significant Danger To The General Population

Even the most damning studies don't claim that video games will create violent monsters of your children. They can't. If that were true, we'd have blood running in the streets. For the majority of "normal" gamers, the worst claims seem to be short-term aggression without substantial consequence, and a general lessening of communication and empathy skills – but again, without specific consequences attached.

The majority of research on the subject seems to indicate a fairly tenuous link between in-game and real-world violence. For example, two studies conducted by Texas A&M and the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, respectively, found no conclusive evidence. "Structural equation modeling suggested that family violence and innate aggression as predictors of violent crime were a better fit to the data than was exposure to video game violence."

In other words, a predisposition to violence or a violent homelife is very likely a predictor of future violent behavior, while video games are not.

3. Fantasy Violence Is Less Dangerous

Killing Falatacot Raiders won't make you murder humans, though we're not sure about Hitman. Some people have pointed to studies showing that even E-rated games can lead to imitation (e.g., children punching or kicking) for a period following play, but it appears that transference of aggression from aliens, orcs, or Pokemon to humans is minimal, at worst.

4. Violent Games Do Increase Simulation

Just like watching action movies or sprinting down a street, violent video games (and other competitive or action games) increase stimulation and adrenaline production, which can produce short-term disruptions and enhanced moods. Some studies claim short-term affects can last long enough to disrupt sleep when played before bedtime, while others saw certain effects lingering up to 24 hours. At the very least, the "amp up" factor is real – it's kind of the point. For parents of children who may be particularly affected by such things (e.g., those with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD), this can be a concern.

5. Content Ratings Matter

People on both sides of the issue agree that content ratings are important. Even absent a long-term impact on violent behavior, graphic scenes of violence, nudity and other adult situations can impact developing minds. Video game access should be restricted like access to any other type of media.

The Easy Answer

Anyone who wants the government to step in and make the call on what to do about video game violence will be sorely disappointed. There simply isn't enough evidence linking video games and violence to even start that discussion, particularly when films and images of far more graphic violence are readily accessible.

The answer to the problem seems to be the same as the answer to concerns about TV rotting your kid's brain in the 1960s: personal responsibility. If you're a parent, pay attention to the ratings, research the content of games online before you buy them, and above all, know your child's sensitivities and limitations. If you're in doubt about the effect of a game or other piece of media, say no.

That won't end the debate, of course. Truly troubled teens often don't have the parental supervision they need to limit their gaming or other media consumption. But it's unclear exactly what the right strategy would be to deal with that issue.

TED, the international conference known for tackling "ideas worth spreading" just topped a billion views for its videos. That's a billion with a "b."

That milestone didn't just happen on its own - TED has been gathering momentum online for a decade.

The first step came in 2001, when TED's current curator Chris Anderson's Sapling Foundation took over and turned the company into a nonprofit organization. Five years later, in 2006, an experiment to post six TED-talk videos online led to the birth of a viral phenomenon. Today, these videos are watched globally, and the speakers behind them are some of the most influential people in their fields, working to share insight on issues not often seen by the general public. But with TED's enormous success has also come criticsim and charges of elitism. Among other things, TED has taken heat for claiming to be for the masses, yet charging exorbitant ticket prices for attendance. And these days, even TED has competition. 

I had the chance to speak with Anderson about TED, from answering the critics to what it  took to get here, where TED is going, and the role of technology in the developing world. Anderson, an idea man born in a small village in Pakistan to missionary parents, stressed his desire to serve social change, the future of media companies and how technology is unifying us and creating a level playing field:

READWRITE: TED just went over a billion views on its videos. Tell me what it meant to get here and what that means for you as the curator and the founder of the brand.

CHRIS ANDERSON: Everyone here is thrilled about that milestone. We never dreamed it would get this big, this fast. What's surprising is that the reason it's happened. It's not like there's any big giant marketing budget or anything like that driving it. It's more been through word-of-mouth. Through online word-of-mouth. Largely email referrals, sharing and more recently social media, Facebook as well. So that's the thrilling part. There are enough curious people in the world that are getting excited about learning to the point where they'll watch something and then pass it on to their friends and family. I just find that exciting. 

RW: Tell me when the first TED talk was and how you got the word out there and that first push.

ANDERSON: We put six talks out in June of 2006. It was a small media team that tried to find a way to get TED out there. Early on our thoughts were let's put these out in a way that they're well-shot, they're well-edited and they capture the drama of what the audience feels live. It's a modern campfire experience. So, eyes locked onto a speaker. Not the boring, traditional association people certainly brought with them, of a guy stuck behind a podium in the distance. Communication is much more dramatic than that, so video has to reflect that. We certainly felt that. And then we only put up six talks as an experiment and just shared the links with a few blogs. And it took off from there to our pride and crossing our fingers. We were really excited by the response to these initial talks. Not just in the numbers but people reacting to them in email back to us, instead of being ripped by them, you know laughed, shared and wept, and that was a surprise. It was amazing they worked. 

RW: Who gave the first talk and how many talks have their been total?

ANDERSON: The six we launched on the first day, that included what is still today the number one talk. Ken Robinson's talk on education and a talk by Hans Rossling on showing why our conception of the developing world is wrong. There are now 1,400 or so talks posted. 

RW: And those are just official TED events. That's not counting TEDx, correct?

ANDERSON: Those are talks posted on our site. So some of them include TEDx or best of the other conferences on our site. But the majority of them are from our own events, yes. And it doesn't include the 25,000 other TEDx talks that are up on YouTube.

RW: Tell me who's one of your favorite guests, a best guest, and who was a worst guest? Or a worst speaker?

ANDERSON: I don't know if you can quote me on the worst but there's been some flops. And there's so many favorites. I love best talks that give you a mental shift. They just make you see the world differenrly. Everything from David Deutsch who's given a couple of talks. The way he thinks really appeals to me. Ken Robinson himself, changed a lot of peoples minds on how to think about education and how we have to figure out a better path before it all falls. I'm a fan of so many talks. Barry Schwartz who had the talk of the paradox of choice. He says that too much choice is actually not necessarily good for us. 

RW: Can you tell me, without insulting past speakers, maybe some flops, or at least the subject matter you didn't like?

CA: Well, I think there were people who way overshot their time slot and were gently nudged, pushed off the stage. There have been people who have been given, had their say, talks that were full of ego rather than insight. And there's a favorite instance, of a celebrity who was hissed off the stage because of the ego. The ego-to-insight ratio was just way out of whack. As they say, not all the talks are good, but at least the bad ones are short.  

Looking Ahead

RW: Now that you've gotten such a big name and created such a big, relatively mainstream brand, what are the goals going forward?

ANDERSON: The number one focus is just keep up research ongreat ideas. The world is often described in terms of events and political upheaval and so forth. We view the world through the development of knowledge. The truth is human knowledge is growing at a spectacular rate. There's amazing discoveries every year and the vast majority of them are completely invisible to most of us. That I think is something of a tragedy. Because the ideas are out there. They could fix our problems, it's just that they're not easily accessed. So, literally the number one goal is keep on finding those people and figure out how to make their work accessible.

RW: Do you have a roadmap?

ANDERSON: I often say that we do not have a roadmap. I think a five-year roadmap for TED, or a five-year roadmap for anything, in the fast changing world that we're in, sounds to be a flawed document. What we do have is a compass. Our compass is our mission statement and then first a strategy, a sense of openeness. When we want to get something done instead of seeking ourselves, we seek to empower the people to do it. We give away our best stuff so people can do it for us. So that whole TEDx thing that has happened in the last three years. We've given away our brand and allowed pre-licenses to people around the world to hold their own event. To the point that there are now six or seven every day held somewhere. It's vastly increased the number of people who can go to a conference. Instead of in California, 1,000 people spending $7,500, around the world there are 800,000 plus people who have spent less than $100 to go to one of these events. It's really democratized TED and that's thrilling. My whole genuine philosophy is how to open this thing up and make it available to anyone.

Is TED Elitist?

RW: Some would say that the price point for a ticket makes TED elitist. What's your take on that?

ANDERSON: The business model is that the profits made from the main conference are used to fund the rest of what we do. So the whole free distribution of ideas online (the TED Foundation) and the opening up of TEDx, none of that would have been possible without a successful concept where people were willing to pay lots of money. So, it's true that not everyone can come and afford to go that. But even if we cut the price to zero, it's not like everyone else could go. It would just make the waiting list that much longer. So we're doing what we can do. One, give away the content, and two, give away the brand. Which makes it kind of hard to make the charge of elitism stick, I think. It's absolutely the opposite of what TED is doing. TED is taking knowledge and making it as widely available as possible. 

On Publishing And Media

RW: I know you have a background in the news business and publishing. Where do you see that business going?

ANDERSON: Speaking broadly, attention is always going to be one of the world's most valuable commodities. From attention everything else flows. Every decision that anyone makes come from a point of attention. So it's always going to be an incredibly important business. How it is won, how it is monetized is in total flux right now. And I think that a lot of the traditional models of paying a large number of people a lot of money to write, when there are millions of people who are willing to write for free, many of them very insightfully, that is a problem. I think media owners need to grasp how to move their talent up a notch to a level of inspring, identifying, coaching, empowering other writers. Because the overall model is broken. 

Technology And The Developing World

RW: You were born in Pakistan. Do you think technology creates a level playing field for the developing world?

ANDERSON: I absolutely do. I grew up in a village in Pakistan in my early years. Kids I grew up with, most of them are probably grinding out a life of poverty somewhere. The main reason I'm not is because of education. My parents could afford to get me fully educated.

RW: What's different there now? 

ANDERSON: The kid in that village right now is going to have access to a cellphone within the next few years, if they don't already. Through which they can be eyeball to eyeball with the worlds great futures, and basically have a shot at realizing their full human potential. It's a game changer, it's really exciting, and I think we have already seen many instances where they're leapfrogging what we're doing in the West because of the pace of learning. 

Photo courtesy of TED Conference.

An analysis of thousands of apps found nearly 8% of them are vulnerable to what's called a man-in-the-middle attack. That's when a hacker intercepts data between the app and a Web server.

Developers prevent this type of digital eavesdropping by implementing a cryptographic protocol called a secure sockets layer of protection. But researchers from the Leibniz University in Hanover and Philipps University of Hamburg found is that many Android developers do a miserable job implementing secure sockets layer.

Using a self-built tool for identifying exploitable secure-sockets-layer, or SSL, bugs, the researchers analyzed 13,500 popular free apps on Google Play and found 1,074 vulnerable to man0in-the-middle attacks. The researchers examined 100 apps manually and found 41 with the same flaws.

The cumulative installed base of all vulnerable apps ranged from 39.5 million to 185 million devices, according to data the researchers gathered from Google Play.

"The actual number is likely to be larger, since alternative app markets for Android also contribute to the install base," the researchers said in an overview of their findings.

So what?

So what were the researchers able to do with the security hole? Quite a bit.

From the 41 apps analyzed manually, the researchers captured credit-account numbers, bank account information, and logons and passwords for a bunch of sites, including American Express, Diners Club, PayPal, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live ID and Box.

The researchers also were able to disable anti-virus apps, and remotely inject and execute code.

For a hacker to do the same in the real world would not be easy, but it is possible. Man-in-the-middle attacks typically occur over compromised public Wi-Fi networks. In response, companies often set up virtual private networks for mobile employees to use when accessing corporate networks over the Internet.

No surprise

Security experts were not surprised by the findings. Mobile-app development is immature, so mistakes in implementing something as complicated as a security protocol are expected. The same problems with secure sockets layer are found in site development, which has been around for 20 years.

With mobile apps, problems arise when the rush to get products to market lead to mistakes. Or the developer may not know how to properly secure a product, said Chester Wisniewski, senior security adviser for anti-virus vendor Sophos. Secure sockets layer is a fragile, multi-part technology and if any one piece is not set right, nothing works.

Carelessness also plays a part. Developers sometimes skip implementing secure-sockets-layer rules in beta versions of an app, and never go back when the app becomes generally available, Wisniewski said.

"Most developers don't really understand how SSL actually works," he said. "They just know that they're suppose to use it."

Fixing the problem

For a long time, experts have said that the biggest problem with Android apps is the lack of oversight. In many markets, apps go on sale before they are properly vetted, which leaves users at risk of downloading spyware, trojans and seriously flawed products.

Google Play is one of the most trusted Android markets. To combat malware, Google uses an automated system to examine each app. Nevertheless, as the latest research shows, the bar for quality remains too low, and much more needs to be done to protect users.