alex

Aiming for more retail deals, Square adds partnerships VP

For a mobile payments platform whose future success is tied to its ability to be accepted by as many retailers as possible, a company like Square has to have someone leading the charge toward such deals.

That's why Square -- the San Francisco startup founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey -- has just hired its first vice president of partnerships. It said today that it has tapped Alex Petrov, former PayPal vice president of retail marketing, for the job. Petrov also previously held the position of vice president of consumer brands at supermarket giant Safeway.

It will be Petrov'… Read more

Crafting spectacular high-end amplifiers in NYC

Alex Chorine built his very first amplifier when he was 15, and one amp led to the next. He kept building amps for friends and friends of friends. This was in the Soviet Union, where there was no established high-end audio industry. Chorine went on to earn an electrical engineering degree from the Moscow Institute of Technology, and started working with TVs, but audio was his passion. He took on side projects building guitar and bass amplifiers and pro sound systems. He modified European VCRs to work with Russian TVs. He came to the U.S. in 1992, and a … Read more

Watch: Spectacular video of Australia's night sky

When it comes to stargazing, not all locations are created equal.

Nowhere is this more true than the Australian Outback, incredibly remote and far from civilization. Except, that is, for the Australian SKA Pathfinder Radio Telescope (ASKAP). As the stylish video below shows, ASKAP may have one of the best views of the night sky on the planet. … Read more

Rovio puzzler Amazing Alex keeps you coming back for more

Amazing Alex (99 cents) for iPhone or Android is a physics game where you're challenged to create chain reactions with objects to complete objectives. Our hero, Amazing Alex, is a kid who's stuck cleaning his room and tries to get creative with organizing his belongings by building Rube Goldburg-like devices.… Read more

Yahoo hack reveals most-used passwords

This Thursday, it's time to train your brain to win the gold in multitasking:

Seems to be the season for security breaches. This time, it deals with a subsection of Yahoo, called Yahoo Voices. Hackers posted more than 450,000 login names and passwords of Voices users, and it was said to be done as a wake-up call to Yahoo and others to step up security. The Voices section of Yahoo was slacking in security and did not hash passwords or require complicated strings.

CNET's Declan McCullagh wrote a program to comb through the most frequently used passwords … Read more

Rovio tries to strike gold twice with Amazing Alex launch

Rovio's Angry Birds is still the top game in the mobile arena. But now, the company is trying something new.

The developer announced today that it has launched Amazing Alex for iOS and Android. The game will allow players to take control of 35 objects that can be set in motion to create a Rube Goldberg device. The objects can "bounce, pop, ricochet, bash, and crash into each other," Rovio says. The game is launching with 100 levels.

Rovio didn't create the game from scratch. Earlier this year, the company acquired the intellectual property rights to Casey's Contraptions, … Read more

Earth's atmosphere lights up with airglow in time-lapse video

A little known fact about the Earth is that its atmosphere generates its own light. Lines and clouds in hues of yellow, green, blue, and red reach 60 miles above the surface of the planet.

This light is created in what's known as a chemiluminescent process and is called "airglow" or "night glow," according to videographer and scientist Alex Rivest. "The colors are not reflected light, and not pollution, but rather are light generated from the components in the atmosphere itself," he wrote in a blog post.

Rivest has just released a new … Read more

Pay $2 to promote your Facebook status?

In today's show, we're buying status updates, finding a new route and building a new game addiction:

Would you pay $2 to get your Facebook status message seen by more people? It's something Facebook is testing in New Zealand. (And tell me your two-cents on the issue via Tout!)

The Foxconn factory for Apple products is preparing to build the much anticipated Apple television set. The chief at the Foxconn spilled the beans in a news conference.

According to 9to5Mac, the next version of iOS will not include Google Maps. Rather, it will have Apple's own mapping software. … Read more

Angry Birds maker to launch new title: Amazing Alex

Rovio is preparing to launch a new game to follow its wildly popular Angry Birds franchise.

The company's CEO, Mikael Hed, said in an interview today with Finland's YLE breakfast television show that Rovio will be launching Amazing Alex in two months. The game will feature an educational element as players control a young boy named Alex who enjoys building things.

That word from Rovio comes after the company acquired the intellectual property rights to Casey's Contraptions, a title developed by Snappy Touch and Mystery Coconut. When users surf to the Casey's Contraption Web site now, … Read more

India-set Assassin's Creed on Ubisoft's radar

Assassin's Creed III is set in Colonial America, and a future installment in the series could have gamers slitting throats in Colonial India.

Speaking to the Official Xbox Magazine, Assassin's Creed III creative director Alex Hutchinson said Ubisoft is excited about the prospect of bringing the franchise to that country.

"[Assassin's Creed III writer Corey May] really wants to do India," he said. "I would, too. I'd really love to do the Raj."

Read more of "India-set Assassin's Creed on Ubisoft's radar" at GameSpot. … Read more