Siri was supposed to be a key feature on Verizon’s DROID lineup until Apple swooped in







Since the release of the iPhone 4S, Apple (AAPL) has touted its intelligent voice assistant Siri as a key feature of the iOS ecosystem. The startup company behind the app originally launched Siri as standalone program on the App Store and had plans to release Android and BlackBerry versions in the future. Siri was quickly acquired by Apple, however, and plans to expand the app were cancelled.


[More from BGR: Apple reports Q1 results: $ 13.1 billion profit beats estimates, iPhone sales and Q2 guidance miss big]






According to a report from The Huffington Post, Verizon (VZ) had actually signed a deal with the creators of Siri to feature the voice assistant on its DROID line of smartphones several months before the company was approached by Apple. The wireless carrier even created commercials touting the unique feature, although they never saw the light of day.


[More from BGR: As data gets cheaper for Verizon to transmit, customers are paying more]


After two months of availability on the App Store, Apple acquired Siri in 2010 and the rest is history.


This article was originally published on BGR.com


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News




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Ashton Kutcher Becomes Steve Jobs

Ashton Kutcher takes on the role of a lifetime in JOBS, and we have your first look at the movie.

RELATED: Stars Who Have Missed Out on Movie Roles

In the clip, Jobs (played by Ashton Kutcher) is raving about the operating system that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (played by Josh Gad) created. While Jobs is certain that this will become a ubiquitous product for mass consumption, Wozniak needs convincing.

"Nobody wants to buy a computer," says Wozniak.

"How does somebody know what they want if they've never even seen it?" Jobs replies.

RELATED: Ashton Kutcher to Play Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs lost his battle with pancreatic cancer at the age of 56 in October 2011 and as April 2013 marks the 37th anniversary of the founding of the Apple Computer Company, Open Road Films has decided to release JOBS on April 19.

Directed by Joshua Michael Stern, written by Matthew Whitely, shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer Russell Carpenter and produced by Mark Hulme, JOBS details the major moments and defining characters that influenced Steve Jobs on a daily basis from 1971 through 2001, according to a press release.

JOBS also co-stars Dermot Mulroney, Lukas Haas, J.K. Simmons and Matthew Modine.

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It’s plenty of 20 – plus flurries








When they say it’s “too cold to snow,” don’t believe them. A dusting of 1 to 2 inches is expected when snow showers develop tomorrow afternoon and continue into the evening.

Before that we’ll get more struggling sunshine today, with temperatures peaking at 21 degrees — but icy winds feeling like only 2 degrees. Tonight’s low temperature will be about 13, forecasters said.

Tomorrow’s temps should be more of the same, with a high around 22 degrees.

The weekend will be warmer, but just a bit. Saturday’s high is expected to be 24 and Sunday’s will be 27.



Don’t expect relief until next week. Forecasters say temps will finally go above freezing and hit 36 on Monday, 40 on Tuesday and a positively balmy 48 onWednesday. Andy Soltis










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Miami Dolphins slam Norman Braman, Marlins Park deal




















The Miami Dolphins ramped up their public campaign for a tax-funded stadium renovation this week, buying full-page ads against their top critic and trying to distance the plan from the unpopular Marlins deal.

The team bought an ad in Tuesday’s Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald knocking auto magnate Norman Braman’s criticism of the Sun Life Stadium deal, which would have Florida and Miami-Dade split the costs with owner Stephen Ross for a $400 million renovation. The Dolphins would pay at least $201 million, with taxpayers using state funds and a higher Miami-Dade hotel tax to pay $199 million.

In a fact sheet sent to media Tuesday morning, the Dolphins listed ways their deal differs from the 2009 Marlins deal. First: Ross, a billionaire real estate developer, would use private dollars to fund at least 51 percent of the Sun Life effort, compared to less than 25 percent from Marlins owner Jeff Loria. Second, Sun Life helps the economy more than the Marlins park does.





“Just because the Marlins did a bad deal doesn’t mean we should oppose a good deal where at least a majority of the cost is paid from private sources and more than 4,000 local jobs are created during construction alone,” the fact sheet states. And while the Dolphins’ Miami Gardens stadium has hosted two Super Bowls since 2007 and is in the running for the 2016 game, “Marlins Stadium does not generate the ability to attract world-class sports events -- other than a World Series from time to time depending on the success of the team.”

NFL teams play eight home games a year if they don’t make the playoffs, while baseball teams have 81.

Miami and Miami-Dade built the Marlins a $640 million stadium at the site of the Dolphins’ old home at the Orange Bowl in Little Havana. The Marlins contributed about $120 million and agreed to pay between $2.5 million and $4.9 million a year for 35 years to pay back $35 million of debt the county borrowed for the stadium. As a publicly owned stadium, the Marlins ballpark pays no property taxes. Most of the public money came from Miami-Dade hotel taxes, along with $50 million of debt tied to the county’s general fund.

Sun Life is privately owned and pays $3 million a year in property taxes to Miami-Dade. It currently receives $2 million a year from Florida’ s stadium program, a subsidy tied to converting the football venue to baseball in the 1990s when the Marlins played there. The Dolphins also paid for a second full-page ad with quotes from leading hoteliers in Miami-Dade endorsing the stadium plan. Among them: Donald Trump, whose company recently purchased the Doral golf resort. “Steve Ross’ commitment to modernize Sun Life Stadium -- while covering most of the construction costs -- is the right thing for Miami-Dade,’’ the ad quotes Trump as saying.

Also on Tuesday, Ross and team CEO Mike Dee sent a letter to Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and county commissioners requesting negotiations over the stadium deal. The letter said the deal Ross unveiled last week is a “baseline for debate” and asked for talks. The letter also urged the commission to adopt a resolution proposed by Commissioner Barbara Jordan endorsing the state bill that would allow taxes for Sun Life. The resolution is on the agenda for Wednesday’s commission meeting.





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‘Lies, deceit and coverup’ in Rilya Wilson murder case, prosecutors say




















Friends puzzled by the disappearance of the little girl. State child welfare administrators stunned at the vanishing of the 4-year-old foster child. A slew of police investigators dispatched to work the case.

A pathetic shell of a woman, cowed by an older lover into keeping her silence. Three prison inmates — one an eccentric con with a long rap sheet — who said they learned the truth about the crime while behind bars.

For eight weeks, these were the witnesses who testified against Geralyn Graham, who is accused of murdering foster child Rilya Wilson more than a decade ago. And on Tuesday, their photos adorned an eight-foot-long timeline poster board, suspended from the ceiling by chains of paper clips as a Miami-Dade prosecutor weaved each of their stories into a chilling. if circumstantial. narrative.





Graham, driven by festering hatred for little rambunctious Rilya, smothered the girl with a pillowcase, disposed of her body and for years concocted a web of “fanciful” tales to hide the crime, the state said.

“Lies, deceit and coverup,” Miami-Dade prosecutor Joshua Weintraub told jurors during closing arguments.

The arguments come more than a decade after Rilya disappeared, a case that rocked the Florida Department of Children & Families, which for 18 months did not realize the girl was missing. Authorities never found Rilya’s body.

Graham, 67, is charged with aggravated child abuse, kidnapping and first-degree murder. Testimony in her trial began Nov. 26. She faces life in prison if convicted.

Jurors are expected to deliberate Wednesday after defense lawyers and prosecutors complete their final arguments.

A grand jury indicted Graham in 2005 after a jailhouse witness, Robin Lunceford, told police that the woman tearfully confessed to smothering the child with a pillow and burying the body near water in South Miami-Dade.

Weintraub recounted how DCF placed Rilya at the Graham house, how the agency discovered the disappearance and heard the varying accounts Graham gave about the girl’s absence.

To some, Graham claimed a “Spanish lady” she met at a park had taken Rilya on a trip to New York. To investigators, she claimed in April 2002 that an unnamed DCF worker had whisked the girl away — never to return — for some sort of mental health treatment.

“It’s incomprehensible that a child would disappear into thin air,” Weintraub said.

The key witness: Pamela Graham, Geralyn Graham’s younger lover, who was also the girl’s legal custodian. Weintraub said Pamela — who admitted she went along with her lover’s lies out of fear — was flawed.

“Pamela Graham, one of the most gutless, mousy women you will ever meet,” Weintraub said. “But for Pam Graham’s cowardice and unwillingness to stand up to her 18-years-senior lover, we might have known what happened to Rilya a lot earlier.”

Pamela testified that Graham kept the child confined in the laundry room, used “flex cuffs” to restrain her to a bed and secured a dog cage to keep Rilya from climbing on the furniture. Graham refused to tell Pamela what happened to Rilya, and even threatened her with a hammer if she called police, Pamela testified.

Defense attorney Michael Matters suggested Pamela was just a jilted lover who admitted she never actually saw the girl confined in the cage. He showed jurors photos of a happy, healthy-looking Rilya

“Sure doesn’t look like Rilya is afraid to go in that laundry room or that dog cage,” Matters said.

Defense attorneys tried to shift the blame to DCF, and specifically case worker Deborah Muskelly, who admitted she lied in claiming she was making regular visits to the Graham home to check on Rilya. Muskelly later pleaded guilty to falsifying time sheets to show she was working with DCF when she was actually working as a substitute teacher.

“Deborah Muskelly did whatever she could to make a buck,” said Matters, who suggested detectives did not investigate any role Muskelly herself might have played in the girl’s disappearance.

The latter weeks of the trial featured Lunceford, plus two other inmates who claimed Graham suggested to them that she had killed the child. A stream of current and former corrections employees testified about the jail and prison world in which the women live.

Graham’s defense focused on destroying the credibility of Lunceford, a colorful con with a long rap sheet who got a reduced prison sentence in return for her testimony. She spent four days on the witness stand.

A former inmate, Cindy McCloud, told jurors that Lunceford concocted the whole story to reduce her sentence. Prosecutors countered that McCloud is a “scorned lover” looking to exact revenge on Lunceford.





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FTC study taking aim at online marketing of booze and kids






LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans this summer to recommend ways that the alcoholic beverage industry can better protect underage viewers from seeing its advertisements online.


Distillers, brewers and wineries pour millions of dollars into brand promotion on Twitter, Facebook and other social media, and industry critics contend they are not doing enough to prevent young consumers from receiving these messages.






“We’re doing a deep dive on how they’re using the Internet and social media,” said Janet Evans, a lawyer with the FTC, which is conducting a year-long study due to be released by early summer. “We’re focusing on underage exposure.”


She would not elaborate on any potential recommendations that might come out of the study, which began in April 2012.


The FTC is reviewing data from 14 big producers, Evans said, including Beam Inc, the maker of Jim Beam, Diageo Plc, home to Johnnie Walker, and Constellation Brands Inc, which makes Robert Mondavi and Ravenswood wines.


The FTC report “is something we take seriously and place at high priority,” said Karena Breslin, director for digital marketing at Constellation.


The FTC has made two requests for information since the study began, she said.


The regulatory agency has not said it intends to impose restrictions on liquor company social media advertising but it can make recommendations to the industry.


The FTC is empowered to file suit to ensure consumers are protected from deceptive marketing practices, Evans said, but she stressed that studies of this nature are meant to promote better self-regulation, not provide a basis for a case.


Executives say alcohol makers and distributors voluntarily adhere to the same industry-set standard for marketing to underage viewers on social media sites that the industry set for its ads on TV and other medium. That requires that at least 71.6 percent of an audience consists of adults 21 and older.


“No one in their right mind would want to advertise to people who can’t legally buy their product,” said Frank Coleman, senior vice president for Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), the trade group that sets the industry’s advertising codes.


In June 2011, DISCUS revised its code upwards to 71.6 percent from 70 percent, after the FTC recommended it review the standard to better reflect U.S. Census population data.


Industry critics, including David Jernigen, director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Johns Hopkins University, and Sarah Mart, research director of the advocacy group Alcohol Justice, contend the industry didn’t go far enough and should raise the standard further.


Jernigen says it needs to be at least 85 percent to effectively protect youth, so there would be no more than 15 percent exposure to the underage drinking population.


“The industry says its self-regulating but it’s ineffective and social media opens up a whole new set of problems because their ads are everywhere,” said Sarah Mart, research director for the San Rafael, Calif.-based group Alcohol Justice.


The industry group’s Coleman said the group now requires members to install age-checking tools via instant-messaging as a gateway to Twitter feeds and other branded Web platforms that ask the user for a birth date before admitting them.


In the first nine months of 2012, beer, wine and spirits manufacturers’ spent an estimated $ 35 million for paid Web display advertising, but industry executives estimate many millions more were spent on Web site creation, video production for platforms like Google’s YouTube and social media marketing efforts.


“We’ve significantly adjusted more money to digital for online video, Web sites, Facebook and Twitter content,” said Kevin George, global chief marketing officer for Jim Beam, which he says spends 30 percent of its media spend for online outlets, up from 10 percent in 2008.


Many companies are expanding their digital staff. Wine maker Constellation hired Breslin three years ago to initiate digital marketing and now has a team of five reporting to her.


Many alcoholic beverage companies flocked to Facebook because it requires users to post their birth dates when signing up. Last year Twitter partnered with Buddy Media to offer a more effective screening tool that sends a direct message to fans who click on a brand. The message sends the fan a link to a site that asks for date of birth, which has allowed Twitter to grab some more of the sector marketing. Salesforce.com bought Buddy Media last June, which is now folding the platform into its marketing cloud portfolio.


Health advocates and industry critics are crying foul. “Facebook and other interactive platforms are poorly monitored and not well age protected,” said Jernigen of Johns Hopkins University. “Anyone can say they’re 21 and click yes.”


(Reporting By Susan Zeidler; Editing by Ron Grover and Alden Bentley)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Mariska Hargitay Fashion Rewind

Despite her fourteen-year stint as tough-cop Olivia Benson on Law and Order: SVU, Mariska Hargitay is a surprisingly girly gal when it comes to her real-life red carpet style. 

Related: Mariska Hargitay's Heartbreaking Adoption Moment

Join us as we look back at Mariska's fashion evolution over the years!

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Lucky ‘7’ at 3 Hudson Blvd.









headshot

Lois Weiss










The skyline in the Hudson Yards area is taking shape — at least on paper.

Here’s the first look at a new rendering (see right) for developer Joseph Moinian’s 1.7 million-square-foot tower at 3 Hudson Boulevard, bounded by the new park, the Javits Center and West 34th and 35th streets.

Designed by Dan Kaplan of FXFOWLE, the roughly 1,000 foot-high tower will turn slightly to catch the sunshine as well as views of the Hudson River and public spaces within Hudson Yards.

As the Manhattan street grid is slightly off the true north-south axis, Kaplan said the tower will align to the street grid at the base, and then do the twist.





WOW!  Far West makeover king at 3 Hudson Blvd.

FXFOWLE





WOW! Far West makeover king at 3 Hudson Blvd.





“It has a subtle, elegant spin and only rotates the 22 degrees as you go up,” said Kaplan. “It’s enough to give it a distinctive form, but not so much that it contorts the building.”

While the eastern and western ends of the building will change as it rises, the long sides of the structure will stay consistent.

“So that is how we were able to marry floor efficiencies with the mechanics,” Kaplan said.

The twist is also “great for tuning the building to solar,” as a unique highlight of the project will be solar-paneled awnings, or “eyebrows,” that will shield the south-side occupants from the sun while generating electricity with photovoltaic cells.

“They are architectural projections, and the revisions to the zoning code anticipate these kinds of devices,” Kaplan explained. “You will start to see more of these.”

The building will also have several roof terraces and a rooftop deck shielded from the winds.

“He’s been a magician in making this design efficient and beautiful and LEED Platinum,” said Arthur Mirante, tri-state president of Avison Young, which is leading the tenant marketing for the Moinian Group.

Because the building features an entrance to the new No. 7 line inside and has the new Hudson Boulevard Park at its eastern foot, Mirante said he is pitching the best site in the “center” of the new West Side. Construction on bedrock can start in 2014, and the building will be ready in 2016 or 2017.

“It’s a great building,” said Moinian at last week’s Real Estate Board of New York banquet.

The base could be designed as either trading or retail, Mirante said, with residential added at the top of the tower should an anchor office tenant not object. Asking rents for the base will start in the $80s per foot and rise from there.

“The whole building could be office or mixed use,” said Mirante. “We really have a clean slate, which is really exciting and will allow us to go after the monster tenants.”










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Miami Dolphins slam Norman Braman, Marlins Park deal




















The Miami Dolphins ramped up their public campaign for a tax-funded stadium renovation this week, buying full-page ads against their top critic and trying to distance the plan from the unpopular Marlins deal.

The team bought an ad in Tuesday’s Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald knocking auto magnate Norman Braman’s criticism of the Sun Life Stadium deal, which would have Florida and Miami-Dade split the costs with owner Stephen Ross for a $400 million renovation. The Dolphins would pay at least $201 million, with taxpayers using state funds and a higher Miami-Dade hotel tax to pay $199 million.

In a fact sheet sent to media Tuesday morning, the Dolphins listed ways their deal differs from the 2009 Marlins deal. First: Ross, a billionaire real estate developer, would use private dollars to fund at least 51 percent of the Sun Life effort, compared to less than 25 percent from Marlins owner Jeff Loria. Second, Sun Life helps the economy more than the Marlins park does.





“Just because the Marlins did a bad deal doesn’t mean we should oppose a good deal where at least a majority of the cost is paid from private sources and more than 4,000 local jobs are created during construction alone,” the fact sheet states. And while the Dolphins’ Miami Gardens stadium has hosted two Super Bowls since 2007 and is in the running for the 2016 game, “Marlins Stadium does not generate the ability to attract world-class sports events -- other than a World Series from time to time depending on the success of the team.”

NFL teams play eight home games a year if they don’t make the playoffs, while baseball teams have 81.

Miami and Miami-Dade built the Marlins a $640 million stadium at the site of the Dolphins’ old home at the Orange Bowl in Little Havana. The Marlins contributed about $120 million and agreed to pay between $2.5 million and $4.9 million a year for 35 years to pay back $35 million of debt the county borrowed for the stadium. As a publicly owned stadium, the Marlins ballpark pays no property taxes. Most of the public money came from Miami-Dade hotel taxes, along with $50 million of debt tied to the county’s general fund.

Sun Life is privately owned and pays $3 million a year in property taxes to Miami-Dade. It currently receives $2 million a year from Florida’ s stadium program, a subsidy tied to converting the football venue to baseball in the 1990s when the Marlins played there. The Dolphins also paid for a second full-page ad with quotes from leading hoteliers in Miami-Dade endorsing the stadium plan. Among them: Donald Trump, whose company recently purchased the Doral golf resort. “Steve Ross’ commitment to modernize Sun Life Stadium -- while covering most of the construction costs -- is the right thing for Miami-Dade,’’ the ad quotes Trump as saying.

Also on Tuesday, Ross and team CEO Mike Dee sent a letter to Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and county commissioners requesting negotiations over the stadium deal. The letter said the deal Ross unveiled last week is a “baseline for debate” and asked for talks. The letter also urged the commission to adopt a resolution proposed by Commissioner Barbara Jordan endorsing the state bill that would allow taxes for Sun Life. The resolution is on the agenda for Wednesday’s commission meeting.





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Appeals court throws out Miami judge’s controversial fingerprint ruling




















An appeals court has thrown out a Miami-Dade criminal court judge’s controversial ruling restricting long-accepted fingerprint evidence.

The Third District Court of Appeals this week ruled that Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch should have removed himself from the case before issuing his ruling.

The reason: Hirsch had earlier told two prosecutors that he would remove himself from similar cases because he harbored “preconceived opinions on the subject of fingerprints.”





In October, Hirsch ruled that a police fingerprint examiner could not testify that he identified a conclusive fingerprint “match” for Miami’s Radames Borrego, who is accused of two burglaries.

The judge’s ruling raised eyebrows among legal observers because U.S. courts have long allowed experts to testify to jurors that the accused person’s fingerprint is unique to him or her.

The appeals court did not rule specifically on Hirsch’s fingerprint order, but nevertheless threw it out, saying the judge should not have presided over the case. It is unclear whether Hirsch will be able to preside over future criminal court cases involving fingerprint evidence.

Hirsch, a former president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and a law school professor who wrote a book on state criminal trial procedure, is well-known in South Florida’s legal community. He was elected in May 2010.

The judge — who often quotes Shakespeare in lengthy orders — often delves into polemic legal waters.

In 2010, when a Tampa federal judge ruled that Florida’s drug law was unconstitutional, Hirsch was the only local state judge to follow suit. He threw out more than two dozen cases, but the same Miami’s appeals court later reversed Hirsch.

Late last year, Hirsch from the bench criticized relatives of a murder victim after they criticized him in a Spanish-language television interview. After he declined to recuse himself from the case, the Third DCA booted him from the case.

Also last year, the same appeals court said Hirsch “did not have jurisdiction” when he filled in for a fellow judge, then reversed that judge’s decision to keep behind bars a man accused of violating a restraining order.

Hirsch will be ruling on a high-profile case next week.

Lawyers for Sergio Robaina, accused of voter fraud, have asked Hirsch to throw out two misdemeanors charged under a county ordinance prohibiting possession of more than two absentee ballots. The ordinance is unconstitutional, they claim.





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