Smithsonian art collection coming soon to an app near you

Looking to visit the Smithsonian American Art Museum without actually going to the Smithsonian? You might soon be able to do so from the comfort of your own smartphone.

On Friday, the White House announced in a blog post that the Smithsonian American Art Museum would soon open up its digitized collection to developers so they can build it into educational apps. According to the White House, "even museum curators do not have easily accessible information about their art collections. This information will soon be available to everyone."

According to the US Government's Open Data Action Plan (PDF), the Museum will release information on works in the collection such as the artist or medium used, and will release images "without copyright or other restriction [...] for non- commercial, educational use." It plans to complete the process by December. 

This newly released information is the latest step in fulfilling an executive order that "made open and machine-readable data the new default for government information." In addition to art gallery information, the US Government's Small Business Administration will update its database of small business suppliers to make it more developer-friendly.

The Food and Drug Administration will do likewise with data on adverse drug effects—information currently only available in a quarterly report.

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Microsoft trumpets Internet Explorer 11 for Windows Phone 8.1, but reviews vary

Microsoft crowed about advances in Internet Explorer 11 for Windows Phone 8.1 earlier this week, but so far reviews from users are mixed.

Microsoft detailed in a blog various security, privacy, speed and interface enhancements to the browser, but people aren't completely happy with the way it works on the upcoming version of the smartphone OS--though the software is still in beta testing.

Windows Phone 8.1 is available in a developer's preview version and is due to ship in final form in the coming months. Non-developers can install it as well by following these steps.

There are several recurring complaints from commenters, many focused on the way IE 11 handles Web page tabs, which unhappy users described as erratic, confusing and inconvenient.

Some found that the browser opens and closes tabs too slowly, and that it often arranges them in arbitrary order, making it hard for people to find specific ones when a bunch of them are open.

Several users also complained that tabs and Web pages reload too frequently and without the user prompting the action, which at times can be inconvenient and make navigating open pages confusing and slow.

"What Microsoft is doing in terms of reducing bandwidth and speeding up the experience is definitely in the right direction."

Overall, the consensus from those complaining about the browser's handling of tabs is that this worked better in previous versions, where it was clearer to users how many tabs were open and in what order, and without them being automatically reloaded.

Another complaint mentioned by some users is difficulty in using Web page menus that respond to "hovering over" by a mouse in a desktop browser, an action that can be replicated in IE 11 in Windows 8.1's "Modern" touch interface by pressing and holding those links.

A user also commented that he reported a bug in the way the browser deals with Web forms, which he said makes it impossible for him to submit forms on the sites he frequents. The user said he's been waiting several weeks for Microsoft to respond to his report.

Asked for comment, a Microsoft spokesman said via email that "a fix is coming" for this Web forms bug, and he also confirmed that the browser lacks a "badge" that in previous versions let users know how many tabs were open.

He also said that the menu "hovering" capability exists in IE 11 for Windows Phone 8.1 but that it may sometimes require that users hit the "back" button to make it work properly. "We will continue to look at improving this scenario in the future," he said.

In Microsoft's blog post, published Wednesday, Amin Lakhani, IE program manager, described the IE 11 upgrade for Windows Phone 8.1 as "massive" in the areas of "quick site access, fast and fluid browsing, safety and privacy, and accessibility."

In the area of quick access, IE 11 now lists users' most frequently visited sites in response to a tap in the address bar, and if users try to type into the address bar, IE 11 takes an educated guess of which URL they're going to enter. "It is one of those things you can't imagine living without once you have it," the official wrote.

The upgrade also lifts the limit on the number of browser tabs users can have open, from a previous maximum of six, and it places more prominently the buttons to access open tabs and refresh them.

IE 11 on Windows Phone 8.1 will also now sync a variety of elements with users' IE browsers in Windows 8 tablets and PCs, including their favorites, history, passwords and open tabs. "You can now quickly pick up where you left off when you switch devices, and finally say goodbye to emailing yourself links," Lakhani wrote.

Microsoft

Interactive tiles for individual websites can now be pinned to the Windows Phone 8.1 Start screen.

Another enhancement applies to website shortcuts pinned to the smartphone's Start screen. The icons used to be static screenshots, but now they'll be dynamic live tiles showing updated elements from the sites, like recent headlines and images.

Other additions to the browser include the ability to remember passwords, a "swipe" action to go back and forward and a "reading view" that strips certain non-text elements from Web pages and reformats them in a way to make it easier for users to read their text. It's also now possible for users to save downloaded files from the Web.

In the area of safety and privacy, IE 11 on Windows Phone 8.1 adds the ability to browse privately in certain tabs so that no record of Web page visits is kept. This also improves the browser's data savings tool, Microsoft says.

Al Hilwa, an IDC analyst, said Microsoft needed to do a lot of improvements with the Windows Phone IE browser and that the work is not finished, although this upgrade addresses important issues.

"What Microsoft is doing in terms of reducing bandwidth and speeding up the experience is definitely in the right direction," he said via email.

"One of the promising pieces is addressing the live-tile refresh problem for websites pinned on the front screen. Some of that will require cooperation of website content owners, so it may take time to realize the full potential of this feature," he added. "I think synching with PCs and Windows tablets is also an important differentiating feature."

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Senators take issue with FCC's net neutrality proposal

The Federal Communications Commission isn't expected to officially release an updated net neutrality proposal until May 15th, but that isn't stopping activists from protesting an expected provision that would allow for some "paid traffic prioritization." And activists might have just gotten some powerful new allies.

In a letter (PDF) submitted to the FCC on Friday, a group of ten US senators voiced their opposition to any policy that would block or prioritize various kinds of Internet traffic.

The letter states in part:

"Particularly concerning are reports that the [proposed Net Neutrality rules] will allow 'paid prioritization arrangements' as long as they are 'commercially reasonable,' as determined by a complicated series of tests that the Commission has yet to develop. Changing the rules—to let broadband Internet Service Providers (ISPs) demand payment from websites and app developers—would eradicate Net Neutrality, not preserve it."

Under the new policy the FCC is expected to propose next week, ISPs would also be able to enact "commercially reasonable traffic management," as IDG News Service's Grant Gross put it. Gross notes that this change "appears to be a change in tone, from a prohibition against unreasonable traffic management to an approval of reasonable traffic management."

Net Neutrality activists—including former FCC commissioner Michael Copps—have suggested that the FCC reclassify broadband Internet access as a telecommunications service, which would give the FCC more power in preventing ISPs from blocking, prioritizing, or otherwise discriminating for or against certain kinds of network traffic. 

For its part, AT&T filed a letter with the FCC on Friday, arguing against any reclassification of broadband Internet access. According to Ars Technica, AT&T argues that reclassifying broadband Internet service would "impose a host of harms" and do nothing to prevent paid traffic prioritization.

Although the FCC won't officially release its proposal for a few more days, you can tell it what you think by sending an email to openinternet@fcc.gov.

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Microsoft trumpets IE 11 for Win Phone 8.1, but reviews are mixed

Microsoft crowed about advances in Internet Explorer 11 for Windows Phone 8.1 earlier this week, but so far reviews from users are mixed.

Microsoft detailed in a blog various security, privacy, speed and interface enhancements to the browser, but people aren't completely happy with the way it works on the upcoming version of the smartphone OS.

Windows Phone 8.1 is available in a developer's preview version and is due to ship in final form in the coming months. Non-developers can install it as well by following these steps.

There are several recurring complaints from commenters, many focused on the way IE 11 handles Web page tabs, which unhappy users described as erratic, confusing and inconvenient.

Some found that the browser opens and closes tabs too slowly, and that it often arranges them in arbitrary order, making it hard for people to find specific ones when a bunch of them are open.

Several users also complained that tabs and Web pages reload too frequently and without the user prompting the action, which at times can be inconvenient and make navigating open pages confusing and slow.

Overall, the consensus from those complaining about the browser's handling of tabs is that this worked better in previous versions, where it was clearer to users how many tabs were open and in what order, and without them being automatically reloaded.

Another complaint mentioned by some users is difficulty in using Web page menus that respond to "hovering over" by a mouse in a desktop browser, an action that can be replicated in IE 11 in Windows 8.1's "Modern" touch interface by pressing and holding those links.

A user also commented that he reported a bug in the way the browser deals with Web forms, which he said makes it impossible for him to submit forms on the sites he frequents. The user said he's been waiting several weeks for Microsoft to respond to his report.

Asked for comment, a Microsoft spokesman said via email that "a fix is coming" for this Web forms bug, and he also confirmed that the browser lacks a "badge" that in previous versions let users know how many tabs were open.

He also said that the menu "hovering" capability exists in IE 11 for Windows Phone 8.1 but that it may sometimes require that users hit the "back" button to make it work properly. "We will continue to look at improving this scenario in the future," he said.

In Microsoft's blog post, published Wednesday, Amin Lakhani, IE program manager, described the IE 11 upgrade for Windows Phone 8.1 as "massive" in the areas of "quick site access, fast and fluid browsing, safety and privacy, and accessibility."

In the area of quick access, IE 11 now lists users' most frequently visited sites in response to a tap in the address bar, and if users try to type into the address bar, IE 11 takes an educated guess of which URL they're going to enter. "It is one of those things you can't imagine living without once you have it," the official wrote.

The upgrade also lifts the limit on the number of browser tabs users can have open, from a previous maximum of six, and it places more prominently the buttons to access open tabs and refresh them.

IE 11 on Windows Phone 8.1 will also now sync a variety of elements with users' IE browsers in Windows 8 tablets and PCs, including their favorites, history, passwords and open tabs. "You can now quickly pick up where you left off when you switch devices, and finally say goodbye to emailing yourself links," Lakhani wrote.

Another enhancement applies to website shortcuts pinned to the smartphone's Start screen. The icons used to be static screenshots, but now they'll be dynamic live tiles showing updated elements from the sites, like recent headlines and images.

Other additions to the browser include the ability to remember passwords, a "swipe" action to go back and forward and a "reading view" that strips certain non-text elements from Web pages and reformats them in a way to make it easier for users to read their text. It's also now possible for users to save downloaded files from the Web.

In the area of safety and privacy, IE 11 on Windows Phone 8.1 adds the ability to browse privately in certain tabs so that no record of Web page visits is kept. This also improves the browser's data savings tool, Microsoft says.

Al Hilwa, an IDC analyst, said Microsoft needed to do a lot of improvements with the Windows Phone IE browser and that the work is not finished, although this upgrade addresses important issues.

"What Microsoft is doing in terms of reducing bandwidth and speeding up the experience is definitely in the right direction," he said via email.

"One of the promising pieces is addressing the live-tile refresh problem for websites pinned on the front screen. Some of that will require cooperation of website content owners, so it may take time to realize the full potential of this feature," he added. "I think synching with PCs and Windows tablets is also an important differentiating feature."

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Facebook kills Poke and Camera apps

Facebook has removed its standalone Poke app, an early clone of Snapchat, as well as its Camera app, from Apple's iTunes app store.

A Facebook spokeswoman said Friday that the apps had been removed earlier in the day. Facebook didn't publicize the move, as many Internet companies don't when they pull the plug on products.

"Neither app has been updated in some time, and we've decided to officially end support by removing them from the app store," a Facebook spokeswoman said. The apps were never released for Android.

Poke, launched in 2012, let users send photos, "pokes" and other messages to their friends that would expire after a certain period of time. It came without much planning out of one of Facebook's "hackathon" coding events. Poke was seen as a rival to Snapchat, which was already on the market. Like Poke, Snapchat sends photos or messages that are designed to "disappear" after a certain period of time.

Poke doesn't seem to have caught on in a big way. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek earlier this year, referred to Poke as more of a joke than a serious app.

Facebook's Camera app was designed for shooting, filtering and sharing photos. But around the same time it launched Camera, Facebook bought the popular Instagram service, which does largely the same things.

Some features of the discontinued apps, such as the photo upload tool from Camera, have been incorporated into Facebook's iOS and Android apps, the company says.

News of the apps' removal was first reported Friday by The Verge.

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Tech Tip: How to change the default font in Microsoft Word

If you don't like the font Word automatically defaults to when you open a new document, there's an easy way to change it so that every new document you start has the font setting you want.

First, create a new document based on the Normal template, which Word automatically defaults to every time you launch the program or create a new document.

Then, go to the Home tab. In the Styles section, right-click the Normal box (Control-click on a Mac) and select "Modify." This will open up the Modify Style dialog box. Once there, choose your preferred font and size.

Make sure you select "New documents based on this template" before you hit okay and you're all set (on a Mac, it's "Add to template"). Now, when you start a new document or launch Word, the font will be the one you selected.

Updated at 11 p.m. PT with a video report from IDG News Service.

Melissa Aparicio , IDG News Service

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Hackers hoped for slam dunk on Japan Basketball Association website

The sole target detected by Symantec of attacks using a recent Internet Explorer vulnerability was the website of the Japan Basketball Association, whose chairman is a high-ranking Japanese government official.

Symantec detected three attacks since mid-February where hackers inserted malicious code on the JBA's website that redirected people to other servers rigged to deliver malware, wrote Joji Hamada on the company's blog. Such "watering hole" attacks intend to stealthily compromise visitors to a legitimate website.

"The website may have been considered a good entry point or gateway to the Japanese government," Hamada wrote.

The third time the JBA's landing page was modified by hackers came just after the disclosure of a zero-day vulnerability, CVE-2014-0324, in the Internet Explorer browser, he wrote.

Microsoft patched the vulnerability in its March update. It affected IE8 through IE11 and could allow an attacker to execute code remotely if a victim visited a tampered website. Symantec investigated attacks using the flaw, but found the JBA's website was the only one it detected that was affected, Hamada wrote.

So why attack the JBA's website? Hamada wrote that the JBA's chairman is also the current deputy prime minister and Japan's minister of finance, Taro Aso. That suggests the attackers may have been looking for a way into government systems. Aso was also prime minister of Japan between 2008 and 2009.

"A link such as this may perhaps be the motive for the watering hole attack on the JBA's website," he wrote.

The attack methods were designed to thwart security researchers from deeper probing. The malicious code on the JBA's landing page bounced potential victims to a server hosting the website of a Korean cafe, which hosted the exploit code, Hamada wrote. That website was likely unaware it had been compromised.

The JavaScript code on the cafe's website checked to see if the victim had ever landed on the page before. If so, the visitor's browser was not directed to the exploit code. The JavaScript also checked the OS version, the version of Microsoft Office installed and the OS' language, Hamada wrote.

If all checks were fine, the victim was redirected to another exploit server in Seoul. The server was suspected of delivering more malicious code, but Symantec couldn't download it.

"The attackers had either a strategy to close shop quickly to make their campaign short lived or some sophisticated evasion technique was implemented to prevent security researchers from downloading the payload," Hamada wrote.

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Asia dominates Wi-Fi hotspots, ABI says

More than two-thirds of the world's Wi-Fi hotspots are in the Asia-Pacific region, partly because of huge deployments by mobile operators in China, and the number of hotspots worldwide is expected to more than double by 2018.

There were 4.2 million hotspots by the end of 2013, with 68.6 percent of them in Asia-Pacific, ABI Research said in a report published Thursday. ABI expects the worldwide total to hit 10.5 million by 2018. Those rollouts will be driven by growing demand for mobile data, ABI said.

Wi-Fi can deliver fast wireless data without using scarce and expensive licensed frequencies, so carriers deploy it to beef up their cellular networks and wired service providers use it to get into mobile. Wi-Fi specialists such as Fon are also in the game, building their own hotspots and providing access to those built by others. Consumers benefit because their data use on Wi-Fi typically doesn't count against monthly limits.

China, already the world's largest mobile market and one where new cellular spectrum licenses have sometimes been long in coming, has embraced Wi-Fi in a big way. China has about 620,000 hotspots, including 420,000 deployed by China Mobile, 128,000 by China Telecom, and 72,000 by China Unicom, ABI said.

Latin America is the second most wired region for Wi-Fi hotspots, with 12.3 percent of the world's total, the report says. One big player there is the cellular carrier Oi, which has already completed a rollout of 500,000 hotspots in preparation for the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Meanwhile, at the end of last year Europe had 9.0 percent of the globe's hotspots, North America had 8.7 percent and the Middle East and Africa region had 1.4 percent, ABI said.

ABI's hotspot growth forecast comes out to an average of 15 percent per year. That will help to absorb a dramatic increase in data traffic going over mobile networks, rising from 23,000 petabytes last year to 190,000 petabytes in 2018, the company said.

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US voters may make political donations in bitcoin, election commission rules

The U.S. Federal Election Commission appears to be warming to the idea of political donations in bitcoin, but has left the larger question of the upper value limit of such donations unresolved.

The commission issued on Thursday an advisory opinion on bitcoin usage for a political action committee called Make Your Laws. The group asked the FEC if, in a given election cycle, properly identified contributors could each donate bitcoin worth up to $100, a limit set by that group.

The six-member FEC, which is equally composed of Democrats and Republicans, advised that was fine. The commission determined in a vote that the group could also buy bitcoins from its donated funds for investment purposes but the bitcoins would have to be converted to cash before paying suppliers.

In a separate vote, however, the commission did not approve using bitcoins to directly purchase goods and services.

The FEC has yet to make rules around bitcoin, and it is clear its commissioners are divided over the virtual currency.

The advisory opinion for Make Your Laws was just based on the circumstances of that group, according to a statement from Ann M. Ravel, a Democrat who is vice chair of the commission. The release was also signed by commissioners Steven T. Walther and Ellen L. Weintraub.

Ravel's statement said that the FEC did not approve a request in August 2013 from the Conservative Action Fund, another political action committee, to accept bitcoin donations worth more than $100. That group had also asked for an advisory opinion.

A statement from the FEC's Chairman, Republican Lee E. Goodman, suggested that situation was more nuanced. Three months after the group asked for the opinion, the commission "lacked four votes to provide advice regarding how to use bitcoins," his release said.

In the absence of clarity, several political action committees then said they would begin accepting bitcoin. Goodman's release cited the Libertarian National Committee, which said it accepted $6,000 worth of bitcoin in October and November 2013.

"In short, new technology has moved forward without the commission," he wrote.

The greater question is whether bitcoin should be considered like cash, which has a $100 limit under federal election rules, or an in-kind contribution. The rules have higher value limits for in-kind contributions, such as works of art, securities and silver.

Goodman favors classifying bitcoin as an in-kind contribution. Ravel's camp views bitcoin as most like cash. "For this reason, the $100 limitation on MYL's acceptance of bitcoins was a material aspect of the proposed transaction upon which we relied when joining our colleagues in approving MYL's request," her release said.

Ravel's release went on to say that the FEC should address bitcoin contributions in rulemaking.

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Bitcoin lacks 'credibility and trust,' US SEC says

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is leery of bitcoin.

The agency issued a lengthy warning to investors on Wednesday about risks it sees in bitcoin and virtual currencies, much of which has been already iterated by bitcoin advocates or other regulators.

But the SEC, which is the top regulator for U.S. securities markets, also took a dig at bitcoin's short existence as another negative.

"As a recent invention, Bitcoin does not have an established track record of credibility and trust," the agency wrote in its advisory.

The statement perhaps conflates the pure technology of the bitcoin protocol that transfers the virtual currency, which has been vetted by cryptography experts as solid, with the nearly innumerable thefts, scams and failures of bitcoin-related businesses.

Bitcoin, which launched in 2009, has seen a fair share of challenges, including vacillating exchange rates and regulatory restrictions in countries such as China.

To back up its claim of bitcoin's track record, the SEC cited the February collapse of Mt. Gox, the Japan-based exchange that said it lost some 650,000 bitcoins and US$28 million in cash, confirming suspicions the exchange that once dominated bitcoin trading was in trouble.

Law enforcement and the SEC may also have trouble investigating bitcoin-related cases, the warning said, since banks are not involved with bitcoin transactions and there is no central authority to obtain information on users.

The SEC must rely on other sources for information in such cases, such as bitcoin exchanges or users. Seizing and freezing proceeds that are in bitcoin can also be difficult, the SEC said.

Of course, many of those supposed weaknesses are also what makes bitcoin attractive to certain kinds of users.

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