polls

Following the shocking riots in Britain this week, Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament his government is looking into whether social media services should be shut down when there's unrest.

"When people are using social media for violence we need to stop them," Cameron said. "So we are working with the police, the intelligence services, and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these Web sites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder, and criminality."

Indeed, as the country picks up the pieces and looks for culprits, Facebook, Twitter, and BlackBerry Messenger have come under heightened scrutiny as facilitators of chaos. Home Secretary Theresa May is to meet with the companies.

Britain does have legal provisions to protect against network users suspected of inciting violence, but it would require new legislation to prevent online incitement to crime in real time, according to a lawyer quoted by The Guardian.

Social networks are being used to identify rioters, and even Manchester police are using Twitter to publicize those convicted.

But are authorities justified if they try to shut down online activity, as Egypt did in January, to ward off threats?

On Thursday, operators of San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) subway system shut down cell service to deal with a protest over a shooting by a BART Police officer. BART said its move was meant to avoid service disruptions.

The ACLU of Northern California condemned the action, saying, "Shutting down access to mobile phones is the wrong response to political protests, whether it's halfway around the world or right here in San Francisco. You have the right to speak out. Both the California Constitution and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protect your right to free expression."

What do you think? Is shutting down online communication ever justified? Vote in our poll and leave your comments below. … Read more

You're going out of town for a week and could use some extra cash. Why not rent out your home through a travel marketplace like Airbnb? It can match you with a traveling stranger and you could come home richer.

That's what a San Francisco woman known as "EJ" hoped for until she came back to a ransacked apartment with her personal items stolen or destroyed. She has described her experience with Airbnb as "utter hell."

Airbnb has apologized and implemented new protection measures such as $50,000 for damages for users who rent out their homes.

That hasn't stopped many people from blaming EJ for being so trusting as to leave her credit card, birth certificate, passport, and other important documents at home when her unpleasant guests arrived. She has written about the online vilification of her, which is really blaming the victim.

While the incident was no doubt an exception to the many uneventful and even wonderful transactions that happen through sites like Airbnb and VRBO, it has rekindled discussion of travel marketplaces and the wider issue of trusting online strangers.

What do you think? Has the Airbnb debacle affected your views about accommodations sites? Would you consider using one (as either a homeowner or guest) if you haven't already? Vote in our poll and add your comments below.

And, of course, bon voyage! … Read more

During a recent visit to the doctor, I marveled that all the patient files were still in paper form, filling up multiple filing cabinets in the small office.

Well, they're having none of that old-time clutter at the New York University Langone Medical Center, which started scanning palms last month to reduce paperwork and prevent identity theft.

Instead of asking patients for insurance cards, the hospital uses a PatientSecure device to scan palm vein patterns with infrared light, associating unique biometric traits to electronic health records.

This certainly isn't the first palm scanner in use, but its presence in a hospital may signal growing acceptance. The hospital says more than 22,000 patients have already used the system.

The system is optional, the data is protected by law, and it's designed to increase efficiency. Still, it wasn't surprising that at least one patient wasn't keen on the high-tech palm reading.

"It was the kind of intrusion that, if government needed it, you'd have to be under arrest or something," the patient was quoted by the New York Daily News as saying.

What do you think? Would you mind having your palm scanned at the hospital if it could protect your identity and speed up service? Vote in our poll and be sure to add your comments below. … Read more

Imagine designing the user experience for Facebook, where even the slightest change has the potential to irritate millions of users. Not a job for the weak-minded.

Facebook recently altered the appearance of its chat feature for those viewing the site in a Web browser--and not everybody is happy about it. Previously, the simple chat system would show a list of online friends in a small box on the lower right side of the browser window. It was easy to use and unobtrusive.

In contrast, the new chat sidebar stretches from top to bottom on the right side of the window. The social area no longer is a small list of only those who are online, but rather a group of people the popular social-networking site thinks you'll want to speak to, regardless of whether they're online.

There is no option to edit the list of people in this area. If those predetermined "top" friends aren't online, the chat box has an option to send them a message. Online friends not on this list must be searched for manually, which is slightly frustrating. … Read more

I love music, but I hate downloading songs, and I can never get iTunes to run smoothly on my PC. That's why I'm intrigued by popular European music-streaming service Spotify, which hit the U.S. this week.

The U.S. version of Spotify is invite-only for now, but will apparently open for general use later. Currently, Spotify has a free, ad-based service that's time-limited.

There are also $5 and $10 monthly plans that allow users to listen to their music on mobile devices.

As CNET's Donald Bell explained, Spotify definitely has competitors like Grooveshark but it's hoping its free service will lead to a base of paying subscribers.

Our editorial roundtable noted that Spotify has a tricky search engine, and some tunes are missing from albums.

Overall, though, they gave it the thumbs-up. But what do you think? Is Spotify for you? Vote in our poll and add your comments below. … Read more

Was 1981 really 30 years ago? It seems like only a decade or so since MTV launched, we were all wearing day-glo threads, and the shuttle Columbia inaugurated NASA's reusable space vehicle program.

Fast forward to today, when Atlantis roared off into history around 11:30 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral on STS-135, the final shuttle mission. The 12-day journey to the International Space Station will be the last before the orbiters are mothballed.

Overcast skies at the Kennedy Space Center cast doubts over the launch schedule, but after a minor delay Atlantis took off on 7 million pounds of thrust and a pillar of flame, penetrating a low cloud ceiling toward its orbit 135 miles over the planet.

The crew of four will deliver the Rafaello multipurpose logistics module to the ISS before scheduled return to Earth on July 20. A robotic refueling experiment is also part of the mission.

NASA is ending the shuttle program due to high costs, and will rely on Russian rockets to ferry people and supplies to the ISS until private firms can take over the job. NASA will meanwhile design new, cheaper spacecraft that will travel to asteroids and Mars.

Some fear that terminating the shuttles while having nothing to replace them will also end America's long dominance of human spaceflight. Meanwhile, many highly skilled people will be put out of work.

What did you think of the final shuttle launch? Was it something you'll tell the young ones about when you're older? Or did it leave you nonplussed? Vote in our poll and be sure to elaborate in the TalkBack section below. … Read more

This week, we told you about a teen who got his Xbox taken away. Hardly an unusual occurrence, to be sure. Only it wasn't a parent or teacher who made this 13-year-old surrender his gaming console.

It was a judge who wanted to teach the youngster a lesson about what it felt like to have something of value taken away.

The Irish teen, you see, is being charged with a series of burglaries. When the judge asked him which of his possessions meant the most to him, he cited his Xbox. Thus, the unusual and very modern-day punishment.

The story got us wondering. Which gadget would you miss most if forced to give it up by a judge/teacher/parent/sister/brother/significant other/superhero?

More importantly, perhaps, given that today's gadgets enable everything--calling, texting, playing games, networking, streaming movies, searching, GPS navigating, and just about anything else you could think of--which tech-related activity would you feel most lost without? Vote in our poll and be sure to add your thoughts in the comments. … Read more

Quadraphonic was the first music surround format, and the first to bite the dust. That was in the 1970s. The SACD and DVD-A formats debuted at the dawn of the century, promising vastly improved sound quality over the CD, and both formats flopped. Their futures looked bright, so why did they fail?

Of course the record labels knew selling a new format on the basis of sound quality was a risky business, so they tacked on 5.1 surround sound. There were millions of households in the early 2000s with multichannel home theaters, so selling new music surround formats looked … Read more

Set in 2054, "Minority Report" revealed a future in which natural user interfaces play a major role. A memorable scene features Tom Cruise controlling a large interactive screen with illuminated gloves, gesturing back and forth to navigate through an NUI.

Less than a decade after the movie hit theaters, we now have Microsoft's $150 Kinect accessory for Xbox 360, which provides a similar experience to the one seen in the movie--without requiring special gloves or a multimillion dollar computer setup.

People have primarily used a mouse and keyboard to interact with computers for decades; this seems silly considering that nearly every other computer component has evolved significantly in the same time frame. Now that the Kinect SDK is available for Windows 7, natural user interfaces have more opportunity than ever to change how we interact with computers.

Supportive technology such as speech recognition (which has already matured greatly, as this week's launch of Google Voice Search for desktop computers highlighted), Microsoft Surface, and 3D Immersive Touch are all stepping stones to something far greater in the evolution of computer interaction. It's inevitable that years from now, aspects of these technologies will work together to free us from pressing keys and clicking buttons.

So, what do you think the most exciting possibilities for natural user interfaces are? Vote in our weekly poll. And please be sure to elaborate in the comments section.… Read more