The U.S. Navy plans to deploy a solid-state laser weapon

 

#Sometime in fiscal year 2014, a U.S. Navy vessel will be able to add a touch of sci-fi imagination to its already formidable weapons array. A laser weapon will head to the Persian Gulf, and although it's not quite operational, the mere deployment should send a loud message to any troublemakers in the region. Drones have been shot down by prototype lasers, but weather and other conditions have to be optimal.

  

For the first time, the U.S. Navy plans to deploy a solid-state laser weapon on board one of its vessels, with the laser's debut scheduled for the Persian Gulf during fiscal year 2014. In a press release, the Navy said development and testing have resulted in a weapon that can "perform actions ranging from non-lethal disabling and deterrence all the way up to destruction."

The U.S. Navy's Laser Weapons System (LaWS)

The laser will be deployed on board the USS Ponce, an Austin-class amphibious transport dock that was retrofitted in 2012 as a staging base for helicopters and vessels that take countermeasures against mines.
The Ponce is now in the Persian Gulf. It will serve as a testbed platform for the Laser Weapon System (LaWS) when a prototype weapon system is installed on it sometime after October. However, some reports state the LaWS weapon is undergoing field tests on the Ponce.
The Navy did not respond to our request to comment for this story.
Inside the LaWS
The LaWS weapon was temporarily installed in 2012 on the guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey for tests against various targets.
LaWS is built from commercial fiber solid-state lasers strung together, controlled and directed onto targets by an MK 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapon System (CIWS), according to the U.S. Naval Institute.

The Phalanx CIWS was designed and manufactured by defense contractor General Dynamics. It consists of a radar-guided 20mm Gatling gun mounted on a swiveling base, and is used on every class of surface combat ship by the Navy, as well as on some U.S. Coast Guard vessels. Phalanx CIWS units are nicknamed "R2-D2" because of their shape, which resembles the robot character in the Star Wars movies.
The LaWS prototype reportedly cost US$32 million to build, but the Navy claims the weapon is cost-effective because each shot of directed energy costs less than $1, compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to fire a missile.

Google Challenging Government Request

  Google is trying the other side of the argument by reportedly asking a district court to set aside the latest National Security Letter it has received from the government. The super-secret method of requesting data on a company's users was recently declared unconstitutional, so Google may be banking on that and its legal and lobbying strength for its new defiant stand.

google is reportedly challenging a government request for private information on its users, just weeks after it became the first major tech company to release information about the security probes it receives from the FBI.

The tech giant is mounting a court challenge against a National Security Letter (NSL), a highly secretive demand issued by the FBI that asks Google to provide private information on certain users. The challenge, first reported by Bloomberg, is rare.

The move comes a few weeks after U.S. District Judge Susan Illston -- the same judge who was

smartphone revolution, and Apple's iOS platform for iPads and iPhones

  Anyone can be a filmmaker these days, and with the help of a handful of apps, the results can be pretty amazing. Our No. 1 choice in this genre is Vine -- for those who want to leave a lasting impression with just 6 seconds of footage. It can be art, politics, product branding, news reporting, comedy -- the possibilities are endless.

Video cameras have been one of the killer hardware features in the smartphone revolution, and Apple's iOS platform for iPads and iPhones has made an important contribution to the video camera app market.

This week, All Things Appy takes a look at key apps in this arena.

About the Platform: Apps are found in Apple's iTunes App Store. Browse to the store from your device, and then perform a search for the app that you want to download.

 1: Vine

Vine from Vine Labs is rated 4 stars out of a possible 5 stars for all versions based on 4,740 ratings, and 4 1/2 stars out of 5 for the current version based on 1,364 ratings in the iTunes App Store.

Twitter's Vine lets you create arty 6-second looping videos for distribution on social networks including Facebook, Twitter and the Vine network.

the Bloomberg business and financial news service has begun streaming Twitter feeds to the 310,000 subscribers

Anyone who has spent time in a brokerage or financial institution has seen the omnipresent Bloomberg terminals flashing the latest business headlines and breaking news. Now the news service has decided to cast its vote for social media's ability to distribute news and insight by including tweets in its Bloomberg Professional service. The move is added validation of Twitter's ability to impact the traditional news industry.

the Bloomberg business and financial news service has begun streaming Twitter feeds to the 310,000 subscribers of its Bloomberg Professional service, which includes those who work in front of the media company's terminals that are widely used on Wall Street and in the finance industry.

"Bloomberg has always provided clients with a robust news platform offering original content, aggregated content and cutting edge technology via the Bloomberg Professional service," Brian Rooney, the company's core product manager for news told the E-Commerce Times. "Integrating Twitter into our platform is a natural extension of this."

"My sense of this is that ... Bloomberg's recognizing that their market is already using Twitter, so why have people toddle back and forth between the two services?" said Susan Moeller, a professor of journalism at the University of Maryland.

Bloomberg classifies tweets by company, asset class, person and topic. Its Twitter filter lets users control and specify what they want to monitor, Rooney said.

The Bloomberg Professional service offers investors information from social media channels, corporate announcements, feeds from more than 1,000 news organizations, including Bloomberg News, and content from more than 90,000 websites.

Twitter did not respond to our request to comment for this story.

Why Bloomberg's A-Twitter

Already noted for its role in promoting public political protest, such as in the Green Revolution in the Middle East, Twitter gained further authority as a source of real-time news when it carried developments of the Cyprus financial bailout last month well ahead of traditional news channels.

Bloomberg received some clarity on social media integration earlier this week from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which issued new rules on how companies can use social networks to distribute important corporate news.

The SEC's Regulation Fair Disclosure (Regulation FD) guidance, issued in 2008, bars public companies or persons acting on their behalf from selectively disclosing material before it's made available to the general public.

It was Netflix CEO Reed Hasting's posting on his personal Facebook page about a company milestone last summer that prompted the new SEC rules. Hasting's news resulted in a jump for his company's stock.

The SEC said it has not taken action against Netflix and Hastings because it recognized that there was market uncertainty about the application of Regulation FD to social media.

Reaction to Twitter Feeds on Bloomberg

What about the possibility that scam artists of various kinds would use Twitter to engage in financial mischief?

"There are many people on Twitter who are misrepresenting their identity or misrepresenting their information sources and also distorting information," Larry Chiagouris, professor of marketing at Pace University, told the E-Commerce Times. "These factors will greatly limit any reliance [on Twitter feeds] as a source of financial news. The mainstream financial press will be seen as even more valuable and important."

However, Bloomberg's move "adds authenticity and credibility to Twitter that it hasn't had so far," Moeller said. It "makes Twitter into a news outlet that is de facto."

As for the possibility of hacks and spam, she added that "you'll never entirely be ahead of it, but one would like to think that Bloomberg is going to be very careful about how it curates and passes on the Twitter feeds that it does." 

Facebook on Thursday announced a family of Android-based smartphone apps called Facebook Home

  There was a Facebook Phone announced Thursday, but the news didn't come from the social network. CEO Mark Zuckerberg was instead focused on telling the world about Facebook Home, his collection of apps that will soon be available for select Android smartphones. The apps put Facebook sharing and messaging on the phone's home screen, illustrating the company's goal of making the mobile experience more social.

Facebook on Thursday announced a family of Android-based smartphone apps called Facebook Home, which can be downloaded from Google Play.

"We're going to talk about how you can transform your Android phone into a great social phone," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at a company event. He added that the company doesn't want to build "a phone or operating system that only some people are going to use."
However, HTC did announce a Facebook phone at the end of the event.
Facebook Home will be available April 12 on the HTC One, HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S III, S4 and Note II. Those phones run the Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean versions of the Android operating system. The apps will be extended to tablets later, and possibly to iOS.
Facebook Home will be available on users' smartphone home screens and will be loaded in the background while the device is sleeping. Users will see what Facebook calls a "Cover Feed" when they turn on their phones. This will include link shares, status updates and new photos, and users will be able to interact via swiping, tapping and pressing.
Facebook won't fork Android, according to Cory Ondrejka, company vice president of engineering.

Getting the Message

Facebook Home users can message back and forth with their friends regardless of what app they're in. A "chat head" -- a tiny image of a user's profile picture - will float up for each text message or Facebook message. Swiping up on the conversation returns the user to what he or she was doing previously.
Multiple conversations can be managed with a single tap. Users can engage in group chats. When they're finished, they can grab and pick up the chat heads and flick them away.

Impact of Facebook Home

Initially, Facebook Home won't have ads, but "in many ways, it's an extension of what it's doing with ads -- they have ads in Newsfeeds, and will eventually get ads in Cover Feed," Danielle Levitas, a group vice president of research at IDC, told TechNewsWorld.
Targeted marketing "would be the goal and they'll refine this over the next 12 months," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.
Privacy might be a concern, Enderle told TechNewsWorld. Although Facebook Home "is designed to help [harvest more data better], making use of that data has been an issue for Facebook."

  A Facebook Phone

HTC and AT&T on Thursday announced the first Facebook phone, the HTC First.
Priced at $100, the HTC First will be available April 12 exclusively at AT&T and will operate on the carrier's 4G LTE network.
It will be available in red, blue, white and black, and will be the only smartphone available with Facebook Home preloaded.
"I thought it was good news at first when Zuckerberg said they weren't going to announce a phone, then HTC comes out with its phone," Eisner said. "It seems the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing."