China ends video game console ban with new Shanghai trade zone

China's 13-year ban on video game consoles is ending with the creation of a new free trade zone in Shanghai that will allow foreign-funded companies to sell game systems nationwide.

Rumors that the government would finally lift the ban were finally confirmed on Friday when China's State Council published regulations for the experimental zone in the country's largest city.

Under the rules, foreign-funded companies in the trade zone can sell game consoles domestically upon receiving approval from China's Ministry of Culture.

Console makers including Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But the lifting of the ban paves the way for the companies to sell their game systems in one of the world's largest markets.

Microsoft may already be preparing to sell its Xbox system to Chinese gamers. Earlier this week, the company said it had formed a joint venture with a local Internet TV company in the Shanghai free trade zone.

Although Microsoft declined to reveal more details, a Shanghai stock exchange filing said the joint venture would focus on developing game-related hardware and software.

China first instituted its prohibition on game consoles in 2000 as a way to protect children. Despite the ban, however, merchants have long brought in video game systems from Japan and Hong Kong and sold them to customers in China.

The country represents a major opportunity for game console companies, said Xue Yongfeng, an analyst with Beijing-based research firm Analysys International. Console makers, however, will need to adapt their business models to the habits of Chinese gamers, many of whom are used to playing games for free, he added.

While China may have previously banned consoles from the country, online and mobile games in the country have been permitted and are raking in billions of U.S. dollars in revenue every quarter. Many of these games earn revenue by using a "freemium" model, in which the product is free to play, but includes virtual goods or content upgrades that can be purchased.

"If the companies just try to sell their game consoles without changes, I think it will be difficult," Xue said. "The price of these console games is quite high. Chinese gamers will be willing to pay for the console hardware, but they don't have a habit of buying expensive games."

To adapt, companies such as Microsoft may decide to enter China's gaming market with a console designed to play free games online, he added. Tethering the system to online services could also help Microsoft ward off piracy. Currently, many of the Xbox 360s sold in China's gray market are reconfigured by local merchants to play pirated games.

The Shanghai free trade zone opens on Oct. 1, and its regulations will be phased in over the next two to three years.

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Premiere Elements 12 review: A compelling choice for video newbies

Adobe’s consumer video editing program Premiere Elements is back for the 12th round in the battle to be the home video editing champ, and this version has some powerful new features that make it a strong contender for the prize.

Premiere Elements has often been viewed as a cut-rate version of Premiere Pro, inheriting pro features a couple of versions old. That’s not a bad thing, though, as Premiere Pro is one of the most powerful professional video editing programs available. With version 12, Premiere Elements gets sound effects, a dynamic soundtrack, and a new motion-tracking feature from its big brother. The interface gets a makeover as well, with the addition of a guided mode (like its sibling Photoshop Elements) alongside the quick and expert modes.

The Elements Organizer can be accessed from within the editor to load files.

New to Premiere Elements—though old hat for on Photoshop side—Guided Mode takes you through nine common tasks such as importing a video, adding a soundtrack, and trimming clips. It does a good job for the novice video editor, highlighting the correct buttons in the interface to avoid flipping between windows. It would be nice to have even more guided tasks available, though: things like the motion tracker and saving the finished video are not covered. Other parts of the interface are mostly unchanged from Premiere Elements 11: and those users will feel right at home.

The additions to the audio features are also useful. This version adds a wider range of cartoon and other sound effects, plus a soundtrack feature that creates a custom music track from 52 scores in 7 categories that are included (the program downloads them only when you use them to save space). When you create a score from these, it is customized to the length of your video so that it starts and ends properly, and the level is adjusted for the sound in the video; a nice touch that makes a video look and sound more professional.

The new Guided Mode takes you step-by-step through several features of the program, but not some of the more complex tools.

The new motion tracking feature is also easy to use: Just drag a box around the object to track in the video, and the program tracks the object as far as it can in the clip. You can then attach an image or graphic to this track, which makes it easy to add cartoon speech bubbles or effects that follow someone on screen. It lacks the sophistication of the Premiere Pro tracker, though; there's no control over the tracking process and no ability to tweak the path after the tracking is done. If it isn’t quite right, all you can do is scrap it and start again.

In addition, there are tweaks to the video effects. These include the addition of what Adobe calls Hollywood effects, but which are mostly cheesy looking. The only ones that might find some use are the FilmLooks, which tweak colors for a motion picture style. Presumably to avoid licensing issues, these are called things like Trinity (for a Matrix green look), Sparta (a 300 muted color look), and Pandora, which turns skin tones (or ginger cats) blue. Unless you are producing an Avatar fan film, this is best left unused. The same is true of most of the included templates.

The Pandora filter turns your family (or ginger cats) into blue-skinned aliens. Will James Cameron sue? Probably not, but we doubt he will be using this on the Avatar sequels, either.

One fine feature though, is the Auto Smart Tone, a filter that tweaks the video to look better by adjusting the contrast, color, and gamma. It did a nice job on several dull and gloomy clips, boosting the color to more usable levels without overdoing it. It would be nice if you could apply this to an entire movie, but instead you have to apply it to each individual clip: a rather tiresome business for complex videos.

You can, however, apply most of the other effects to an entire movie by putting them into an adjustment video layer—like a Photoshop adjustment layer.

While generally I found this version of Premiere Elements easy to use, there were a few irritations. For example, I found that using the timeline to find a specific spot in a video was difficult: when moving through the timeline, the on-screen preview would often lag behind by a second or two, especially when effects were applied. Other programs get around this by generating previews while the computer is idle: but to get a smooth preview in Elements, you must render the preview files by clicking on the render button. Elements doesn't use the GPU to accelerate creating previews and effects the way other programs—like Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro—do.

The Auto Smart Tone feature of Premiere Elements 12 automatically corrects video, boosting brightness and tweaking colors

Adobe Premiere Elements 12 features some interesting new tools, but they aren’t compelling enough to make this version a must-have for owners of previous versions (the upgrade costs $80). But those who are just starting out in video editing, or are looking for a step-up from the lightweight iMovie will find a good home in Premiere Elements 12: this $100 program (or $150 when bundled with Photoshop Elements 12) offers a good balance of features and ease of use, providing powerful tools without overwhelming users with choices.

Richard Baguley has been writing about, testing and breaking technology for the past 20 years. He has written for Wired, Macworld, USA Today, Amiga Format and many others
More by Richard Baguley

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Google posts, and pulls, video that may have revealed the Nexus 5

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Report: NSA broke into UN video teleconferencing system

The U.S. National Security Agency reportedly cracked the encryption used by the video teleconferencing system at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

In June 2012 the NSA department responsible for collecting intelligence about the U.N. gained "new access to internal United Nations communication," German magazine Der Spiegel reported Monday based on information from secret NSA documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

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The NSA technicians were able to crack the encryption used by the U.N.'s internal video teleconferencing (VTC) system allowing VTC traffic to be decrypted. "This traffic is getting us internal UN VTCs (yay!)," one of the internal NSA documents said, according to Der Spiegel.

In less than three weeks, the number of U.N. communications that the NSA managed to intercept and decrypt rose from 12 to over 450.

According to another NSA internal report from 2011, the agency caught the Chinese spying on the U.N. and managed to tap into their signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection to gain insight into high interest and high profile events at the time.

Media reports in June based on documents leaked by Snowden claimed that the European Union mission to the U.N. in New York and its delegation in Washington, D.C. have also been bugged by the NSA, prompting E.U. officials to demand answers from the U.S. government.

The NSA was able to maintain persistent access to computer networks at E.U. delegations in New York and Washington by taking advantage of the Virtual Private Network (VPN) linking them, Der Spiegel also reported Monday.

"If we lose access to one site, we can immediately regain it by riding the VPN to the other side and punching a whole [sic] out," an internal NSA presentation said, according to the German magazine. "We have done this several times when we got locked out of Magothy."

"Magothy" is the internal code name used by the NSA for the E.U. delegation in Washington, D.C. The code name used for the E.U. mission in New York is "Apalachee."

New security systems were installed to protect the restricted area hosting the server room at the offices of the E.U. delegation to the U.N. in New York a few weeks ago, following the June reports about the NSA targeting the E.U.'s diplomatic missions in the U.S., Der Spiegel said. An investigation was launched and technicians have searched for bugs and checked the computer network.

View the original article here

Report: NSA broke into UN video teleconferencing system

The U.S. National Security Agency reportedly cracked the encryption used by the video teleconferencing system at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

In June 2012 the NSA department responsible for collecting intelligence about the U.N. gained "new access to internal United Nations communication," German magazine Der Spiegel reported Monday based on information from secret NSA documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The NSA technicians were able to crack the encryption used by the U.N.'s internal video teleconferencing (VTC) system allowing VTC traffic to be decrypted. "This traffic is getting us internal UN VTCs (yay!)," one of the internal NSA documents said, according to Der Spiegel.

In less than three weeks, the number of U.N. communications that the NSA managed to intercept and decrypt rose from 12 to over 450.

According to another NSA internal report from 2011, the agency caught the Chinese spying on the U.N. and managed to tap into their signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection to gain insight into high interest and high profile events at the time.

Media reports in June based on documents leaked by Snowden claimed that the European Union mission to the U.N. in New York and its delegation in Washington, D.C. have also been bugged by the NSA, prompting E.U. officials to demand answers from the U.S. government.

The NSA was able to maintain persistent access to computer networks at E.U. delegations in New York and Washington by taking advantage of the Virtual Private Network (VPN) linking them, Der Spiegel also reported Monday.

"If we lose access to one site, we can immediately regain it by riding the VPN to the other side and punching a whole [sic] out," an internal NSA presentation said, according to the German magazine. "We have done this several times when we got locked out of Magothy."

"Magothy" is the internal code name used by the NSA for the E.U. delegation in Washington, D.C. The code name used for the E.U. mission in New York is "Apalachee."

New security systems were installed to protect the restricted area hosting the server room at the offices of the E.U. delegation to the U.N. in New York a few weeks ago, following the June reports about the NSA targeting the E.U.'s diplomatic missions in the U.S., Der Spiegel said. An investigation was launched and technicians have searched for bugs and checked the computer network.

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Google seeks experts for its soon-to-launch Helpouts video service

Google needs help. More specifically, the Internet giant is looking for people who are experts on basically anything to lead some of the first sessions for its soon-to-launch Helpouts video calling program.

Helpouts is a face-to-face, live video calling service, based on the company’s Google+ Hangouts product, that the company has been testing internally for some time. The service is designed to let professionals or experts in a particular area share their expertise or knowledge with others who want to learn from them, for a price.

Helpouts could provide an additional platform for Google to attract new users beyond its usual channels within the Google+ social network. It may also give Google a strong e-commerce business in providing users with more personalized expert information that can’t be gathered from a simple search on Google.com.

If someone is an IT expert looking to make some extra cash, Helpouts can connect that person with less technically savvy people to, say, hook up a wireless router or connect a laptop to a printer, Google said in one example of the service.

The company is stressing the social side of the service. “Helpouts is a new way to connect people who need help with people who can give help, over live video, anytime, anywhere,” the service’s current landing page proclaims.

Helpouts is not yet open to the public, but the company is looking to attract people with expertise across a range of topics to offer sessions within the program once it goes live. Google is looking to bring on people and businesses who are experts across a number of categories, including information technology, home and garden skills, fashion and education, a Google spokeswoman said.

People who are interested can visit the Helpouts site to submit their contact information. “If we feel they are a good fit, we will follow up with them and possibly extend an invitation to apply,” the Google spokeswoman said. Users will need an invitation code to sign up as a provider and create listings on Helpouts.

Google declined to say exactly when Helpouts would launch, but it will be rolling out soon, the spokeswoman said. The company has been conducting internal tests of the product with multiple partners for some time.

Once it goes live, here’s how Helpouts will work: Expert providers can charge for their sessions or offer Helpouts for free if they want, but a platform fee must still be paid to Google for each completed Helpout. The service is designed to let people start or join a call from their desktop computer, Android-based mobile device, iPhone or iPad.

Helpouts is designed to make it easy for people to grow their businesses by setting their own rates and getting paid online, according to the company. Providers can work on their own schedules, whether they’re at home or on the go.

If the provider charges a fee for the session, both providers and customers will need to use Google Wallet for the payment, according to the Helpouts site.

Helpouts has a strong social component for a reason: Social networking is an area of Google’s business that the company is continually seeking to scale out to better compete against rivals such as Facebook and Twitter. While Facebook and Twitter have more than 1 billion and 200 million active users, respectively, Google+ has about 190 million, the company reported in May.

Google already provides videos covering practically every topic through its YouTube video-sharing site, some of which are instructional in nature. But Helpouts looks to be a step up in both the level of interaction and the qualification of the experts, given its current invitation-only sign-up process.

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Twitter's new Vine video service hits 40M users since January

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