AT&T Gives Samsung Galaxy Note Price and Release Date, Calls It a Phone

Don’t even think about calling Samsung’s Galaxy Note a “phablet,” a “phone-tablet hybrid” or an ambiguous “device.” To AT&T, the Galaxy Note is a smartphone, launching on Feb. 19 for $300 with a two-year voice and 4G LTE data contract.

The Note’s 5.3-inch display makes it a rare breed among handsets. You can fit it in your pocket — although you’ll feel it with every step — and make phone calls on it, but using it with one hand is out of the question. By trading off that portability, you get a large and rather pretty 720p AMOLED display. The Galaxy Note also includes a stylus (or “S Pen”) for scribbling handwritten notes. An “S Memo” app lets users combine handwriting with pictures, voice recordings and typed text.

(MORE: The Coolest Smartphones at CES 2012)

Other AT&T Galaxy Note specs include a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, a 2-megapixel rear facing camera and 1 GB of RAM. AT&T didn’t announce how much storage the Note will have, but I’m guessing 16 GB, plus a microSD card slot, based on the model that shipped overseas last year. It runs Android 2.3, but Samsung has said it will update the Note to Android Ice Cream Sandwich this year.

At CES, I felt mesmerized by the Galaxy Note’s crisp, jumbo-sized display and smooth handling of Android 2.3. But I’m still not sure whether I’d become aggravated by the Note’s huge figure over time.

Still, I think there’s a niche for this type of device, and Samsung may succeed where Dell’s Streak failed two years ago. The Note has a much higher-resolution display to take advantage of the big screen, and it’s running an outdated-but-polished version of Android (the Streak launched with the unrefined Android 1.6). And whereas the Streak flip-flopped between phone and tablet, AT&T has a clear idea of how to sell the Note to customers: “This new breed of smartphone helps consumers accomplish more with a single device than ever before,” Jeff Bradley, AT&T’s senior vice president of devices, said in a statement.

FTC Calls for Better Transparency, Warns Google About Latest Changes

Federal Trade Commissioner Julie Brill has a simple message for companies that violate user privacy: We took care of Facebook, we took care of Google, and we’ll take care of you, too. Even bolder, her remarks came during an event that was livestreamed via Facebook itself.

Brill, speaking at a cybersecurity forum in Washington D.C. earlier this week, said the FTC felt that “consumers should not have to give up control over their most sensitive data as the toll to enter the information superhighway,” calling such a price “just bad business.”

(MORE: Senators Ask FTC to Investigate Google Just Two Months After Last Investigation)

Brill went on to demand a higher level of transparency from companies about the user information they harvest, saying:

Companies should provide consumers with more information about what is being done with their personal information. One way of putting this principle into practice is providing consumers with access to the information about them that a company possesses. Access is critical, particularly when we’re talking about entities that consumers can’t identify or don’t even know exist—like data brokers. These entities control details about consumers that can have a direct impact on their credit, employment status, and financial well-being.

We are also seeing entities that combine data from multiple sources, including off line and social networks… I am calling on data brokers to take the transparency principle and put it into practice. Develop a user friendly one-stop shop where consumers can gain access to information that data brokers have amassed about them and, in appropriate circumstances, can correct that information.

In the meantime, she continued, the FTC will continue to step in where it sees blatant abuses of user trust or privacy policy. “Facebook and Google learned this the hard way,” Brill said, talking about the FTC investigations into both companies that ended with settlements resulting in changes to privacy policies and transparency, along with periodic audits for the next couple of decades to ensure they’re keeping on the straight and narrow.

Such audits may figure into Google’s future sooner rather than later, in fact. After delivering her prepared remarks, Brill was asked about the changes Google is making to its services, including its controversial “Search, plus Your World” features. “We do have an outstanding consent order with Google, so it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment about it at this time,” Brill answered. “It is something that is certainly of interest to us.” Consider that a subtle warning, Google. After all, you already know what it’s like when the FTC goes after you.

FACEBOOK 5 Things You Should Know Before the Facebook Timeline Switch Happens

As we mentioned recently, Facebook Timeline is coming whether you like or not. In the next few weeks, your Facebook profile will be assimilated, giving you seven days to get your house in order before everyone can browse through your virtual history.

Earlier, I wrote a full account of why Timeline is both awesome and a little disturbing, and what you can do to prepare for it — but in the interest of time, here are some basics for getting your profile ready for Facebook Timeline.

(MORE: Two Minute Video: Getting Started with Facebook Timeline)

1. ‘Hide from Timeline’ Is Your Friend

Get ready to click “Hide from Timeline” a lot. You can find it under the “Edit or Remove” pencil icon that comes up when you hover your mouse over the top right corner of every Timeline post. Remember, it’s not just embarrassing photos that Timeline unearths — it’s every inappropriate status update you’ve ever posted and every asinine message your old college buddies have ever written on your wall at 3 a.m.

If you’ve had Facebook for a long time, you’re going to want to spend at least an hour combing through everything in your virtual past and hiding what you don’t want seen. You can also remove or hide posts through your “Activity Log,” which presents everything posted on your profile in a more compact, easy-to-digest form.

2. Smile! Your Album Covers Are Now Huge

Before, old photo albums hid in an archive — a collection of small thumbnails that only the most committed Facebook stalker would search through. Now it’s all front and center on your Timeline. That means that the photo of you drinking a giant novelty margarita in Las Vegas could now be displayed in unsettling clarity in one of Timeline’s two giant columns. If you want to keep your photo albums visible, but just want to switch the cover to something a little less embarrassing, click “Change Primary Photo” in the “Edit or Remove” menu.

3. The Internet Knows Where You Are

Photos and photo albums can now be tagged with locations, which are then displayed neatly on a map. That means if your friend geotags your album “Vacation Time,” all of a sudden instead of just photos from a cabin in the woods, everyone can tell that your August vacation took place near Lake Tahoe. Now you have to either untag yourself from every geotagged photo or have your friend manually remove the geotag from every photo you’re in. It’s a total pain. Welcome to Timeline.

4. Violation of Privacy? There’s an App for That

A lot of the apps out there for Timeline are pretty cool, but a few venture into TMI territory or, at the very least, turn your profile into a kind of corporate billboard. Think carefully before you let a third-party app have permission to automatically add activity to your Timeline. Do you really want everyone to know where and what you’re eating at all times or what products you’re buying online?

You can always manage your apps by clicking on “Account Settings” in the very top right pull-down menu on your profile. Then click “Apps,” and you’ll be presented with a list of all the apps that have access to your Timeline. Remove the ones you don’t like or, under “App activity privacy,” change who can and can’t see the content posted by that app.

Remember, you can always remove any individual embarrassing app revelations on your Timeline by clicking “Hide from Timeline.”

WotWentWrong Will Explain Why Your Date Was Such A Delinquent

There's no shortage of sites to help you find a date. But what about what comes next?

The recently-launched WotWentWrong, more break-up app than dating site, promises to help you do a post-mortem on the delinquent date who never called, never followed up, and never explained why.

WotWentWrong boasts it can "help people to find out why their relationship ended" and even assist them to improve their dating technique by soliciting feedback on all their annoying mannerisms and neuroses.

"She's okay with the fact that she won't be dating Peter or Mark again. But wouldn't it be nice if they could tell her they lost interest so she doesn't repeat the same mistakes again?" asks a narrator in WotWentWrong's introductory video. "Maybe there's a pattern she keeps repeating but isn't aware of."

In essence, the website offers to replace the friend who has traditionally acted as a go-between for a couple and that asks, after no text, email or phone call, "So, Bianca was just wondering..."

Want to know why your date never texted you back? WotWentWrong will first help you pen a "Dear John" query

 letter asking for an explanation (users choose from 11 different templates with descriptions like "flippant," "philosophical," "cool" and "historical"), then helps you incentivize your delinquent date to respond to your query by having you rate his or her appearance, kissing skills, sense of humor and style.

Don't count on anything too personal, though you can customize the text. Here's what WotWentWrong's "philosophical" template for its "feedback request" looks like:

The person you're pumping for information will receive an email alerting them that "Bianca B has sent you a personal feedback request from WotWentWrong" and "Bianca is hoping to understand WotWentWrong with your dates." In order for your dates to find out how you've rated their looks, sense of humor, and kissing prowess, they'll have to first explain what it was about your personality or relationship that "bothered" them. WotWentWrong helpfully provides 12 categories of feedback, such as "Something's missing" or "It's about how you treat me," within which there are more specific explanations.

Clicking on the "lifestyle" category presents the feedback-giver a dropdown menu of more than a dozen choices, ranging from "You don't earn enough money for the lifestyle I want to have" to "You don't like pets." The "Physical/Sexual" category gets even more personal ("Too hairy?" "You finish sex too quickly?" Ouch).

WotWentWrong's pitch is that its service offers a "portal to finding out the truth in a socially acceptable way," and maintains that "calling or emailing an Ex for an answer can be so -- stalkery."

"Stalkery?" Really? Well, we have to wonder then how they'd describe "getting a third party website to pen an email for you and communicate with your ex in your place."

"Disturbing" was how one person characterized the sample WotWentWrong email he received, noting it looked like spam. Another said that if a girl sent him such a "feedback request," he'd "think she was a psycho."

Pumping an old flame for information isn't all WotWentWrong will do. The site also gives you the ability to offer "Proactive Feedback" -- or tell your date everything they did wrong.

The press release explains. "In the spirit of helping an Ex put their best foot forward, users thinking 'For their own sake, I really wish someone would tell them that' can do exactly that -- without having to receive a request first."

This calls to mind another site, ExRated, that offers a Yelp for exes: a place for people to anonymously review their former lovers' behavior, habits, and overall datability for their future flames to find (Read more about it here).

Rumor Round-Up: The Future Smartphones of 2012

Rumored specs: Quad-core processor, 720p Super AMOLED Plus display, 12-megapixel camera, 2 GB of RAM, with Android Ice Cream Sandwich, according to tech blogger Eldar Murtazin and Unwired View.

What’s interesting about it: Samsung’s Galaxy S line is known for high-end specs, slim designs and no gimmicks. That simple combination has helped Samsung sell more than 30 million Galaxy S and S II phones worldwide. The third model, reportedly due out in April, should be one to watch. (The above image is from a Samsung CES wrap-up video, and could be the Galaxy S III.)

Rumored specs: Quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, 4.7-inch 720p display, 8-megapixel rear camera, 1.3-megapixel front camera, 16 GB of storage, 2,000 mAh battery, less than 0.35 inches thick, with Android Ice Cream Sandwich, according to PocketNow.

What’s interesting about it: The gargantuan display should help LG’s phone stand out from the quad-core pack, and hopefully that big battery will keep the phone running through a busy day. It’s rumored to launch in the late spring or early summer.

Rumored specs: Dual-core processor, 4.3-inch WVGA display with glasses-free 3D, 5-megapixel rear camera, 8 GB of storage, less than 0.39 inches thick, with Android 2.3, according to PocketNow.

What’s interesting about it: I still think 3D phones are a cheap trick, but LG’s going to try it again with a brighter display, a thinner design, and a way to convert 2D video into 3D. It could launch this spring.

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Twitter Buys Dasient Security Startup To Combat Spam

Twitter's made another big buy, its second in the past week.

On Monday, TechCrunch reported that the microblogging site will acquire Dasient, a security startup that offers malware protection for businesses.

A post on the Dasient blog confirms the purchase, which is "effective immediately." The company's staff will work exclusively on Twitter's revenue engineering team and will no longer service new clients.

Founded in 2008 by Neil Daswani, Ameet Ranadive and Shariq Rizvi, the company has been "solving web-scale security problems involving malware and other types of online abuse," according to the company blog post.

"In 2010, Dasient launched the industry’s first anti-malvertising service to protect ad networks and publishers from the scourge of malicious ads," the post went on to explain. "Over the last year, we have been very active in securing the ads and content of the some of the industry’s largest ad networks and web sites."

It is exactly this kind of ad security that caught Twitter's eye. As the popular social network ramps up its monetization effort with new advertising strategies, it will need additional security to weed out malicious advertisers who may pay for their content to infiltrate Twitter's network.

A Twitter rep emailed the following statement to The Huffington Post:

Neil Daswani, Shariq Rizvi and Ameet Ranadive have created technology that provides network security and malware prevention service for some of the largest ad networks in the world. Their team has an excellent understanding of advertising platform-related security issues and will be a valuable addition to the revenue engineering team.

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Apple's Textbooks: Undeniably Cool, But Will They Help Students?

Apple debuted the holy grail of textbooks on Thursday in New York City. The books are undeniably cool: they will integrate videos, photos and interactive graphics, make taking notes a breeze and be easy to navigate — all features that will undoubtedly make Apple’s textbooks more enjoyable and engaging to students than the current dead tree versions. But the problem Apple ignored in their announcement is how to actually get their reinvented textbooks into the hands of students.

For the majority of schools, having cutting-edge technology in the classroom is still a far-flung dream. While ed-tech is a booming industry, if you’ve paid any amount of attention to education in the past few years, you’ll recall budgets have been slashed, teachers are losing their jobs and no amount of cookies sold at a bake sale will buy every kid an iPad.

(MORE: Apple Rolls Out iPad Textbooks, Publishing Software for Teachers)

At the announcement Apple noted that there are currently 1.5 million iPads in use in educational institutions and schools today. That’s great, but they left out the fact that there are more than 49 million students enrolled in public schools in the U.S., so their penetration is still quite small. In fact, according to textbook distributor MBS Direct Digital, only 6% of textbook sales will be digital this year.

Part of that, of course, is because while textbook publishers have been producing electronic versions for years, they’ve lacked a strong technology platform to call home. Let’s pretend for a moment that a school district is somehow able to buy every student an iPad. One great thing about the textbooks is the cost: Apple says the books will be available for $14.99, a large discount from the average cost of the paper versions, which range from $75 to $100. With that low cost, it’s a wonder they have the big three textbook publishers — McGraw Hill, Pearson and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, who together make up 90% of the industry — on board. But, as Peter Kafka writes on All Things D, publishers expect to make up the difference in terms of volume.

(MORE: Four Industries Apple Can Disrupt in the Near Future)

That’s because rather than schools buying the books for the students as is the model today, under Apple’s arrangement with McGraw-Hill, the students will foot the bill for the books themselves. At the end of the year they’ll keep the books, but will not be allowed to resell them or give them to another student. So when new students enroll the following year they will be required to purchase the book, too. This is vastly different from the practice today where school districts purchase books for a larger cost upfront, but hang onto them for five to 10 years, passing them from student to student.

But let’s get back to the fact that without a program to offer iPads at discounted rates to students, teachers and schools — which Apple conveniently left out of its announcement — in reality most students will still be using the same old textbooks for years to come. In the past few years since their debut, some school districts have indeed been able to buy iPads for all their students, but those districts are still in the vast minority. Thus in the most frightening scenario, one could imagine a world where Apple’s textbooks serve only to increase the digital divide, and thus the achievement gap. In this scenario, there will be some students who are able to use the new textbooks, likely those at wealthy suburban schools where either the school or their parents can afford to buy them an iPad, while other students, most likely those in impoverished urban schools, are stuck using paper textbooks that have been handed down for years.

That said, I consider Apple’s textbooks to be aspirational. Like many products Apple comes out with, they are well ahead of their time, and in this case, well ahead of the reality on the ground. If Apple’s textbook is the future, then the future of textbooks is a very exciting one—it’s just a question of how long it will take our schools to get there.