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The author who has ruffled feathers of many in the Pentagon and CIA by writing a tell-all insider account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan has been identified as a 36-year-old former Navy SEAL from Alaska.

The book, 'No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden', is set to hit shelves on September 11, later this year.

It is penned under the pseudonym "Mark Owen," according to the publisher, but multiple sources were quoted by Fox News as saying that his name is in fact Matt Bissonnette of Wrangell, Alaska.

Bissonnette could be exposing himself to legal trouble, as the Pentagon has not vetted the account.

The tell-all book also has apparently upset a large population of former and current SEAL members who worry about releasing information that could compromise future missions.

One Navy SEAL was quoted by the Fox News as saying, "How do we tell our guys to stay quiet when this guy won't?" Other SEALs are expressing anger, with some going so far as to call him a "traitor."

And Colonel Tim Nye, a Special Operations Command spokesman, said the author "put himself in danger" by writing the book.

"This individual came forward. He started the process. He had to have known where this would lead," Nye said. "He's the one who started this so he bears the ultimate responsibility for this," he added.

According to a press release from his publisher, Penguin Group, "Owen (Bissonnette) was one of the first men through the door on the third floor of the terrorist leader's hideout and was present at his death."

In the book, Bissonnette writes "it is time to set the record straight about one of the most important missions in US military history."

A unilateral US military raid killed Laden in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011.

An experienced member of the elite Navy SEAL special operators, Bissonnette also participated in the highly publicised rescue of Captain Richard Phillips in the Indian Ocean in 2009.

That mission involved a daring rescue that ended when SEAL snipers shot and killed three Somali pirates with direct shots to the head.

Bissonnette received the rank of chief before he retired. The book is co-authored with Kevin Maurer, author of four books, many of which were based on Special Operations.

Along with using the pseudonym "Mark Owen," Bissonette protected his fellow SEAL Team 6 members by changing their names in the book.

Both the Pentagon and CIA said on Wednesday that the book was not in any way vetted by either department to prevent unwanted classified information from being released.

Actor Tom Cruise, who recently visited an Indian restaurant in England, was left red-faced when he wasn't able to pay USD 350 restaurant bill.

The 50-year-old visited the restaurant with a group of friends and insisted on paying the bill but couldn't as the eatery didn't accept his American Express card and Cruise was only carrying US dollars, reported Daily Mail.

"It was a big shock for us when he walked in. He said we had been recommended to him, but he would not say by whom. At the end of the meal he wanted to pay, but we could not accept American Express.

"He said his whole group only had dollars, then a lady came forward and paid in 50 pound notes," said Darshit Hora, the restaurant manager. Darshit says if the actor, who left with a generous tip, wouldn't have been able to pay the bill, the restaurant would have been more than happy to put on the house.

The bill was 220.85 pounds so they left almost an 80 pound tip. It was very generous. If they did not have any money, it would have been on the house," he added.

Cruise is reportedly enjoyed curry meals, specially chicken tikka at the restaurant. The 50-year-old actor, who recently divorced his wife Katie Holmes, was seen gorging on chicken tikka at the Indian restaurant Veer Dhara in St Peter's Street, reported Contactmusic.

The staff at the restaurant was surprised when the actor turned up with his entourage and ordered a huge list of dishes. The group also ordered fish and chicken starters, two lobsters, two Lamb dishes, rice, bread which totalled up to a bill of 220.85 pounds. The actor is currently busy shooting for his upcoming film, 'All You Need Is Kill'.

( PTI)

Of all the many striking policy measures taken since the financial crisis, one of the most extraordinary has gone almost unremarked—the introduction of negative official interest rates by Denmark.

In an attempt to maintain its strict currency peg to the euro, the Danish central bank lowered its main deposit rate for banks—the certificate of deposit or CD rate—to -0.2 percent last month.

The Nationalbanken felt it had little choice. Investors flocked to Denmark in search of a haven outside the euro zone—one that has no currency risk with the euro and offers cheap protection against a break-up of the single currency.

The move to negative rates is being watched closely by central banks around the world. “We have never been so popular,” laughs one Danish policy maker.

Apart from a brief move by Sweden in 2009-10, negative official rates are something of a novelty. But others may soon follow suit, with the European Central Bank recently cutting its deposit rate to zero and warning that it could go negative.

Policy makers in the UK and elsewhere in Europe have expressed interest in the idea as a potential way of forcing banks that are currently hoarding cash to start lending again.

“The Danish central bank is the first one in a small experiment of what happens when you impose negative interest rates,” says Thomas Kressin, head of the European foreign exchange desk at Pimco, one of the world’s largest bond investors.

“The popularity of the Danish krone is because of the unpopularity of the euro. Investors all over the world are looking for safe investments and are even willing to face negative interest rates for the security of knowing their money will still be there.”

So far, the economic impact of the move is largely unknown. Scandinavians take their summer holidays in July, so the central bank has little normal data to rely on. But officials acknowledge there has been a negative impact on banks, which they estimate to amount to about DKr300 million ($50.5 million).

Danish banks have about DKr200 billion on deposit at the central bank. While Nationalbanken has increased the amount banks can hold on current account—where the interest rate is zero—from DKr23 billion to DKr70 billion, this still leaves a sizeable chunk where banks will, in effect, have to pay the central bank to look after their money.

Bank executives, as well as central bankers, are clear that lenders have to increase their loan prices to compensate for the loss, as they are unable to impose negative rates on customers.

“When we are at zero [for customers’ deposits], we can’t go any lower. We have to recover that money in other ways, so we do that by increasing our margins on loans,” Eivind Kolding, chief executive of Danske Bank, the country’s biggest lender, said this month.

Government bond yields have followed suit, complicating a normal way for banks to make money. Denmark’s two-year bond yields, which had never previously been negative, were -0.22 percent on Thursday.

The danger is that this hurts the economy by reducing lending. But, in Denmark, this has been offset by a huge fall in mortgage rates as the official lending figure—the central bank’s headline interest rate—has also dropped, although it remains just in positive territory at 0.2 percent.

One-year mortgage bonds being auctioned this month are expected to yield only about 0.25 percent, according to analysts, down from the 1 percent they fetched last year.

Mr. Kolding notes that, for consumers, the cost of a mortgage in Denmark is exceptionally low. But outsiders still think the overall impact on the economy is more negative than positive.

“It is almost quantum physics,” says Mr. Kressin. “All the way down to zero, monetary policy is ultra loose. But below zero, to some extent you tighten policy, because you impose a cost on the banking system.”

Nationalbanken officials are also keeping a close eye on the circulation of coins and notes. So far, as commercial banks still offer zero for current accounts rather than negative rates, there has been no move from the public to hoard cash. But central bankers concede that if the CD rate fell to, say, -1 percent, banks might feel under more pressure to charge customers.

Denmark’s fierce defense of its currency peg means that a further move into negative territory cannot be ruled out, especially if the ECB were to cut rates further. But the small relative size of the Danish economy and the existence of the peg have led some to question how much other central banks can learn from its experiment.

“Can the ECB draw any lessons? It’s too much of a stretch from my perspective,” says Mr. Kressin.

A US Navy SEAL commando, involved in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, has written an inside account of the May 2011 mission, raising hackles in the Pentagon and CIA.

The author, who uses a pseudonym, "was one of the first men through the door on the third floor of the terrorist leader's hideout and was present at his death," The Washington Post quoted a statement from Dutton, the New York-based publisher.

The book, 'No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden', will be released on September 11.

If what the author says is true, the book would pull off the secrecy maintained by members of the team of Navy SEALs involved in the raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

It could also raise legal and political issues for the Obama administration, which has carried out an aggressive crackdown on leaks even while it has also been accused of offering access to journalists and moviemakers to exploit the success of the bin Laden operation, the Post said. It added that the Pentagon and CIA officials appeared to be caught off-guard by Dutton's announcement of the forthcoming book.

Officials indicated yesterday that neither the author nor the publisher had cleared the book's contents with the Defence Department or the CIA, a step ordinarily required by former service members or spies seeking to write about classified operations.

"As far as we can determine, this book was not submitted for pre-publication review," said CIA spokesman Preston Golson.

Pentagon spokesman George Little said he was "unaware that anyone in the department has reviewed it". White House officials said they knew nothing of the book. "We learned about this book today from press reports, said Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council. "We haven't reviewed it and don t know what it says".

The author's name is listed as Mark Owen, which Dutton acknowledges is a pseudonym.

Faith is an integral part of the Indian culture but did you know that a section of homeless people eke out their daily living from the modest coins dropped as offerings into the Yamuna river?

A nearly 22 minute-long documentary titled 'In Search of Destiny (Coin Divers)' by Aakash Arun attempts to throw light into the lives of coin divers numbering around 400-500 and living near the much polluted but equally, if not more, revered Yamuna that flows through here.

The film begins with a train chugging on a bridge and people 'offering' coins to the Yamuna and subsequently praying for their wishes. It is followed by a shot where a child is seen hurling a dumbbell-shaped greasy object into the river and tugging the rope. The camera zooms into the dumbbell-shaped object and you see one shining coin stuck to it. Later on the scene focuses on two men who narrate how they receive sustenance from the Yamuna in the form of coins.

"The men are part of the marginalised section which is not only homeless and helpless but also are susceptible to the hills of addiction, says Arun. Nearly 60 per cent of these coin drivers in the national capital are in the grip of some form of addiction. These people are not to difficult to find out. Most of them are present in a radius of 4-6 km of the bridge over Yamuna that can be reached from Kashmere Gate, according to the film's narration.

"Coin divers on an average find coins worth Rs 100 daily," says Arun adding that earning goes up on few occasions when luck smiles upon them in the form of trinkets, heavy metallic objects that fetch decent prices. The documentary was shot entirely using a DSLR camera which, he said, could be brought out in the open only after he could gain confidence of the coin divers.

The fact that Yamuna plays a pivotal role in these people's lives can be easily grasped by viewers. "Yamuna is all encompassing. She gives shelter to all who comes to her. We sleep under the sky and sustain ourselves from her largesse (read coins)," says an elderly man in the documentary.

( PTI )

 

 
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Your smartphone may soon be able to tell you when you are most stressed, with the help of a new software that can identify stress from the patterns in your voice.

The app called 'StressSense' is first trained to recognise a person's unstressed voice. For that, users must relax and read a 3-minute passage from a book into their phones.

The system then compares this recording to its pre-programmed knowledge of the physiological changes that stress induces like speaking at a faster rate and a clipped frequency spectrum.

The application then takes note of any instances of stress it detects in the voice.

"Our stress model also adapts to different background noise environments," New Scientist quoted Hong Lu of Intel in Santa Clara, California, who developed the system, as saying.

In tests that included putting volunteers through mock job interviews, the researchers found their prototype's stress-recognition accuracy to be 81 per cent indoors and 76 per cent outdoors, where sound quality wasn't as good.

The team plans to make the system a plug-in to an Android application called BeWell, which uses a phone's accelerometers and Global Positioning System (GPS) sensors to record users' activity and sleep levels.

Smartphone users will be able to set StressSense to either listen to their voice throughout the day, or only to activate when they are having a phone conversation.

The app will be presented at the Ubicomp conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, next month.

For the third time in three years, adult movie studios have largely shut down production as a precautionary measure after a performer was diagnosed with a potentially fatal sexually transmitted disease but didn't immediately disclose it.

A male performer in the Los Angeles porn community was reportedly diagnosed with syphilis last month, but apparently hid the fact from producers, prompting fears of a spread among other actors and actresses. Several big studios have voluntarily suspended production for an unspecified period, while the Free Speech Coalition (a trade group that represents the adult entertainment industry) has called for a moratorium on filming until all performers have been re-tested for the disease.

Generally, the porn industry doesn't shut down unless there is a confirmed case of HIV (which happened in both 2010 and 2011). Syphilis, of course, is a curable disease, but can be fatal if left untreated. And since the performer worked several times with a doctored sexually transmitted infection (STI) test before coming forward, there are fears about the disease spreading.

While the porn industry is under significant financial pressure due to piracy and the rise of “amateur” Web sites, insiders say this shutdown should not have a noticeable effect on revenues at major studios. Big players in the porn industry typically have a large stockpile of films awaiting release and can ride out a shutdown.

The porn industry shoots roughly 20,000 scenes per year. Bigger companies tend to produce four or five films per month – with costs reaching upwards to $300,000 – allowing them to stockpile releases.

The porn industry, as a whole, is thought to generate roughly $14 billion in revenue per year, but revenue from porn films has been shrinking, due to piracy and an abundance of free content on the Internet.

"The nature of the industry is we don’t make nearly as many products as we did once," says Scott Taylor, president and founder of New Sensations.

The $14 billion figure is an estimate, since porn companies generally guard their financials carefully – especially these days. Porn giant Manwin is on a buying spree and no one wants to divulge revenue figures, since they fear it could hurt their asking price if Manwin turns its attention their way.

One insider, who asked not to be named, said he believes current revenue figures are vastly underreported, since online revenue is growing exponentially. Manwin's Fabian Thylmann seemed to back this up in a keynote speech at a conference in January, saying "I've looked at many books to see if something is interesting to buy. I know of many companies today that are making more than the big ones did in '98, '99 and 2000."

(Manwin, which was the first company to announce a halt in production until performers were retested, says its current growth rate – without accounting for acquisitions – is currently about 15 percent each year.)

While the health concerns for performers are certainly real, the notion that a performer doctored his test results is likely to add to the porn industry's woes as it faces new legislation from the state of California. (The performer reportedly obscured the syphilis portion of the paper test results he presented to directors, according to Xbiz, a trade news outlet for the adult entertainment industry. When one director noticed this and began making inquiries, the performer ultimately admitted to the action.)

The Los Angeles City Council, in January, voted to make condom use mandatory in porn shoots that are filmed inside the city limits. A similar measure for Los Angeles County will be on the ballot in November, which would require studios to pay a permit fee to cover the cost of enforcement. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health estimates those will cost producers between $12,000 and $60,000 per permit per year.

L.A. City officials have not yet begun enforcing the ordinance, as officials have spent seven months figuring out how best to do so. Many industry insiders say they don't expect the city to begin inspections until early next year.

While several porn companies have threatened to leave Los Angeles because of the legislation, none have yet done so and the gestures are now largely viewed as empty threats.

After successfully raising funds from the general public for the national award winning film 'I Am', producer duo Sanjay Suri and Onir are again taking the crowd-funding route for their new venture - a love story of a 14-year-old Dalit boy and an upper-caste girl.

"It's great to be acting in and co-producing 'Chauranga' with Onir. The story is about a 14-year-old Dalit boy who falls in love with a 16-year-old upper-caste girl from Jharkhand," Suri told PTI.

"I have an important role in the film, in which you will also see Radhika Apte (of 'I Am', 'Antaheen' fame)."

( PTI )

The mysterious release of a photo of Michael Phelps in a bathtub, shot for a Louis Vuitton ad campaign, threatens to cause a splash of a different kind. Everyone involved in the creating the photo denies having released it early, perhaps because it may put Phelps in hot water with the International Olympic Committee.

A new IOC regulation, called Rule 40, prohibits athletes from appearing in ads for non-Olympic sponsors from July 18 to Aug. 15. According to the IOC’s 19 page explainer, Rule 40 is designed to prevent ambush marketing, defined as non-Olympic sponsors trying to associate themselves with the Olympic brand.

Yet two photos of the Olympic swimmer, shot by the photographer Annie Leibovitz, began circulating during the time period in which athletes are prohibited from appearing in advertisements. A website in Barcelona called elperiodico.com printed the bathtub photo on Aug. 7 and announced that Phelps was the new face of Louis Vuitton. Then the Daily Mail in Britain followed up on Monday, Aug. 13, with two photos and the headline “Let the fashion endorsements begin, Michael Phelps announced as latest face of Louis Vuitton core values campaign.”

The second photo shows Phelps in a three-piece suit sitting on a couch next to Larisa Latynina of Russia, 77, who is the previous holder of the title “most-decorated Olympic athlete.” In both photos, there is a strategically placed Louis Vuitton bag.

A quick Google search shows the photos went viral and appeared on dozens if not hundreds of websites on Aug. 13 and 14.

An agent for Leibovitz confirmed to CNBC that she shot the photos, and that a Louis Vuitton campaign with Phelps was supposed to begin sometime this week.

The release of these photos before Aug. 16 raises the thorny question of whether the world’s most decorated athlete is in violation of rule with sanctions that could include fines and the stripping of medals.

Thus far, answers are not forthcoming from either the U.S. Olympic Committee, the International Olympic Committee or the London Olympic Committee. None of the organizations responded to attempts for comment. In fairness, many people involved in the Olympics have gone on vacation or are still traveling back from London.

Louis Vuitton representatives will say only that they did not release the photos. Leibovitz’s press agent says her office did not release the photos. Yet, the Daily Mail contained a quote from a Vuitton representative about the campaign. (That page has since been removed from the newspaper’s website.)

Regardless, if the photos were leaked, they may still fall into the category of ambush marketing and thus be a violation of Rule 40.

The imposition of Rule 40 for London 2012 angered many athletes because it prevented them from monetizing their brand at the precise moment when it was most valuable. Most Olympic athletes are not household names like Phelps and are far less likely to garner lucrative sponsorship deals.

The U.S. Track and Field team began a Twitter campaign to end the regulation, with two hash tags: #rule40 & #wedemandchange. Gold medalist Dawn Harper tweeted out two photos mocking Rule 40. One was a self-portrait with a white tape covering her mouth; the words “rule 40” written on the tape. Olympic runner Nick Symmonds, who specializes in the 800m, was especially vociferous on Twitter. In a conversation with me Wednesday, he expressed frustration that he was unable to thank his sponsors, Nike and the Orgeon Track Club, during the Olympics. “It’s about being able to give them a return on their investment.”

His agent Chris Layne told CNBC if the IOC is going to continue with Rule 40, the athletes should be compensated monetarily for their participation in the Games. An example he cites is the Track and Field World Championships, where the top performers receive prize money. Layne said he believes Rule 40 emanates from antiquated thinking about the Games—that the athletes are amateurs but not professionals. But “the Olympics have changed,” and now, “It is truly a professional, commercial event from start to finish.”

Neither he, nor his client Symmonds, thinks Phelps should be sanctioned for the photos because it is unlikely that Phelps himself released them. Layne points out that, if anything, the situation highlights the difficulties of enforcement. “If this photo shoot were prior to Rule 40, how you can enforce that?”

Sanctions can range from removal of accreditation (not relevant once an athlete is finished competing), financial penalties, disqualification from the games, and according to the Olympic charter “a competitor or a team may lose the benefit of any ranking obtained in relation to other events at the Olympic Games at which he or it was disqualified or excluded; in such case the medals and diplomas won by him or it shall be returned to the IOC.”

Sports law attorney Joe Baghat thinks the Olympic Committee will do nothing to Phelps because “it would be a public relations nightmare to come on him because he is so well loved.”

Emails to Phelps' agent were not returned.

It’s no sunscreen pill, but these new bracelets could provide a simple early warning sign that you’ve been out in the sun too long. If your wristband is pink, so are you.
If you don’t want the nasty side effects of staying in the sun too long, there’s a simple fix: Don’t bask in the sun all day, especially not without sunscreen. But if you want to know exactly how much ultraviolet radiation is hitting your skin--and whether you’ve been sunbathing for too long--Intellego Technologies has a solution.

The Swedish company plans to commercialize a color-changing disposable wristband that changes from yellow to pink based on increasing exposure to UV rays. You’ll know that it’s time to get out of the sun, in other words, when the yellow wristband turns pink. The wristband, developed by researchers at the University of Strathclyde, features an acid release agent that picks up UV rays along with a dye that changes in response to pH levels--so when the rays increase, acid is released and the dye changes the wristband’s color.You’ll know that it’s time to get out of the sun when the yellow wristband turns pink.

Intellego is working on an array of wristbands that work for different skin types. The Daily Mail reports that there will be one wristband for people with fair skin and lighter hair, another for people with dark skin and dark hair, so that your wrist alert signals you at the exact right time.

We’d suggest adding in wristbands that also take into account sunscreen use--a person with fair skin and light hair won’t absorb as many UV rays if they’re wearing high SPF sunscreen. Another caveat: The kind of person who would wear a wristband like this is probably already cautious about sun exposure.

The wristband is expected to go on sale in Spring 2013.

That seems to be the inferred opinion behind a policy held by two Australian airlines.
Last week two incidents were widely reported in the Australian media whereby male passengers seated next to unaccompanied minors were asked to swap seats with a female.

The first involved a Sydney firefighter who was traveling aboard a Virgin Australia flight. He was assigned a window seat next to two boys he estimated to be between eight and 10 years old, he told journalists at the Sydney Morning Herald. He took the aisle seat, though, so the boys could look out the window.

A flight attendant approached the man asking him to move shortly before the plane pushed back from the gate, according to the report. When he asked why, the flight attendant reportedly told him, "Well, you can't sit next to two unaccompanied minors." Getting looks from other passengers, the embarrassed man complied.

When the story broke, social media channels came alive with criticism over the policy, even spawning a new Twitter hashtag #VirginDiscrimination. On Facebook, users posted comments including "disgracefully discriminatory" and "stupid load of nonsense."

Virgin Australia later tweeted and posted a response on its blog saying, "We understand the concerns raised around our policy for children travelling alone, a long-standing policy initially based on customer feedback."

"In light of recent feedback, we're now reviewing this policy," the post continues. "Our intention is certainly not to discriminate in any way."

The second incident involved a man flying on Qantas. He, too, was asked to swap seats with a female passenger.

"After the plane had taken off, the air hostess thanked the woman that had moved but not me, which kind of hurt me or pissed me off a bit more because it appeared I was in the wrong, because it seemed I had this sign I couldn't see above my head that said 'child molester' or 'kiddie fiddler' whereas she did the gracious thing and moved to protect the greater good of the child," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

A Qantas spokesman confirmed the policy with the newspaper further clarifying, "Qantas's policy is consistent with other airlines around the world and is designed to minimize risk."

What About U.S. Airlines?
CNBC reached out to several airlines in the U.S. to see if a similar policy applied to passengers seated next to children traveling alone.

American Airlines spokesman Ed Martelle told CNBC.com in an email, "We have no such policy."

Andrew Christie, spokesman for US Airways, sent a reply saying, "US Airways does not have a formal policy on whom to, or not to, seat next to unaccompanied minors, rather we defer to the expertise of our trained gate agents and crew members who are tasked with ensuring the safety and security of all our passengers. We also intentionally do not announce the boarding of unaccompanied minors so as not to draw unwanted attention to children traveling alone."

"We do not have any rules regarding seat mates for unaccompanied minors aboard Virgin America," said spokeswoman Jennifer Thomas.

Requests for more information were not immediately returned from Delta or United.

Protecting children from predators — male or female — is paramount in any society. But is an overt policy necessary onboard an airliner filled with passengers? Tell us what you think.

 

 
The recent blackout in India highlights problems in the electricity sector, including ineffective distribution networks, loss-making providers and low capacity utilization of utilities. Despite improvements in recent years, as supply generation capacity has risen relative to demand, distribution losses have fallen, and the supply shortfall has shrunk, the Indian government’s production targets for the coming five years appear overly ambitious. The electricity shortfall is likely to remain due to coal shortages and lack of incentives for loss-making providers. Read More..

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Latest indicators point to flat U.S. economy

Photobucket Revamps To Rival Social Sharing Photo And Video Sites

Photobucket has just revealed a vastly made-over user experience for its online photo service, which has usually functioned as a photo depository of sorts. The company says it's reacting to a recent survey it conducted which quizzed people about their digital habits--two thirds said they were disorganized in managing their digital pics and 83% said they'd like a solution. Thus the Photobucket revamp is intended to make it much easier to back up, share, and organize digitally stored photos and videos.

The company also revealed that it'll be launching a new Photobucket Stories feature in September, designed to be a way to curate the videos and photos you store in the service into a more narrative format. The idea is to combine text and imagery into a sort of 21st century photo album, so that you can share, for example, media from your recent vacation with friends in a more structured way than via a simple online album or via updates on Facebook.

Photobucket, which has previously been used for personal photo storage and for tricks like storing avatars for use on other online services, is reacting to the rise of services like Instagram and Viddy, which are, along with Facebook, changing how we share digital media online and which create de facto social networks as part of their sharing abilities. One key differentiator of Photobucket is that it's offering the ability to edit your media, but to preserve the original content in the database. This is similar to the way photo editing suites like Adobe Lightroom or Apple's Aperture work, and reinforces that Photobucket also works as a digital "locker" to securely store your images.

Photobucket has been in the news recently for a more controversial reason, where hackers used a relatively simple trick to access sexually charged images stored in some user's online lockers and then share them online. The company noted a very small number of users were affected and has reacted by protecting all new uploads with a scrambled URL to prevent snooping.

Gift Cards To Google Play Are On Their Way

Google is creating a plastic, pocketable links to the digital wares it sells in its Google Play store. Android Central has photo evidence of prototypes of Google's newest creations--cling-wrapped gift cards worth $10 and $25--which can be traded in for books, apps, movies and music.

With its Play gift cards, Google is following a path first cleared in a big way by Apple when it started selling iTunes gift cards for music and movies, and eventually, apps. This year, Apple replaced its traditional back-to-school iPod giveaway with iTunes gift card this season. If you are heading to school or college and bought a Mac, you got $100 in credit to spend at the iTunes store. This last quarter, the iTunes store generated $1.9 billion in revenue for Apple according to Bloomberg, and Apple is steadily growing access to iTunes and its media sharing features to countries outside the U.S.

The Play gift cards would give people a bit of nudge to spend at the Google Play store, sure. But the gift cards could make the Play store more visible, if the cards were made as readily available as those iconic neon iTunes cards, and seen at every grocery store and Best Buy. But that's not it for Google. Word is, a "Wish List" feature, as seen on Amazon, is on the way as well.

Instagram Homes In On Mapping With Version 3.0

Instagram is releasing version 3.0 of its photo app today, and it improves on the browsing experience in several significant ways.

The boldest new feature is called "Photo Maps." All the photos you geotagged before posting them on Instagram? Photo Map collects those and pins them on an interactive world map. This is by no means a revolutionary interface--apps from Foursquare to Yelp offer something similar, and even iPhoto lets you sort images by location. But by automatically creating location-specific photo albums that can be seen by friends, Instagram has put a new twist on the feature. The maps are turned off by default, making it a privacy-friendly opt-in program. When you activate it, you can choose individual photos that do and don't appear on the map, and even edit your preferences later. Photo maps are accessed through a user's profile page, making it easy for friends to see one another's favorite stomping grounds.

You can see our trigger-happy social media editor Anjali Mullany's photographs from all over Manhattan in her Photo Map view below.

Compared to that, my Photo Map is sparser, because I tend to geotag only a few of the Instagram photos I take

I'm not alone, it turns out. According to the New York Times, not more than 25 percent of Instagram users geotag their photographs. This update looks like a bid to get Instagrammers to geotag more frequently in the future. A trove of mobile location data could prove quite valuable to the startup that was acquired by Facebook in April.

There are a few other new tricks in Instagram's update today. The photos can now be displayed in a 3-across grid rather than a vertical river for faster browsing. The upload screen has a larger text box, making it easier to write captions. No need to tap the "load more" button, the app now offers infinite scrolling that loads as you go. And to better combat spam and abuse, individual comments can be reported and deleted in one action.

When Fast Company put Instagram founder Kevin Systrom on the Most Creative People In Business list in 2011, he said, "We think about photos like, 'This is your tweet, this is your status update.'" And now it can be your image-based homing beacon too.

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Facebook Inc ( NASDAQ: FB ) stock touched a new all time low $19.72 and keep trading sub $20 levels. For those who have invested on the first day or there after, they have keep loosing their investment values. There was a lot of buzz that Facebook Inc stock might see a steep rise like a fall,but the reality is quite different as stock keep making new lows and toda it has touched an all time low and breaks below with a significant volume. We were recommending a Sell rating on Facebook since an announcement of an IPO and our reason behind this was quite reasonable if you see logically. Don't invest in Facebook stock because you have other value picks available.

The selling in Facebook stock is partly due to the end of lock up period for 270 million shares, that could hit the market over the period of nine months. Read More