"Liking" things gets a real-world spin with this prototype out of Pittsburgh-based Deeplocal. The "Like Belt" uses near-field communication technology to register "likes" when you are walking around. You just have to do a bit of thrusting. Simple enough, the belt has an NFC antenna attached, with an NFC-enabled Android phone. It recognizes RFID chips embedded in objects. So when you thrust your hips at something, it will register a "like." It could, potentially, be also used for other things, li...

In a new twist on Super Bowl marketing, Coca-Cola has prepared two versions of a 60-second spot slated to run during the second quarter of the game. It won't decide which to actually run until it sees whether the New York Giants or New England Patriots have the upper hand. It appears to be a first-of-its-kind endeavor, requiring the beverage giant to have execs on-site at NBC during the game. Those execs will be in the traffic room to make the decision on which ad runs when the game goes to a co...

For a few years now, brands have been touting frothy Facebook "like" numbers as evidence of their social-media acumen. But how many of those fans are actually bothering to take part in conversation with brands? Not too many, as it turns out. Slightly more than 1% of fans of the biggest brands on Facebook are actually engaging with the brands, according to a study from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, an Australia-based marketing think tank that counts Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and other major adv...

How much are spirits marketers getting under the skin of big beer brands? So much that the nation's biggest brewer is using a big chunk of its expensive Super Bowl ad time to fight back. Anheuser-Busch, the game's exclusive beer advertiser, is dedicating the first two of its six Super Bowl ads to Bud Light Platinum, a new higher alcohol line extension aimed at younger, urban drinkers who have abandoned beer for spirits. The two 30-second spots, which will air in the first quarter, eschew the usu...

The long-awaited tech IPO of the year — perhaps of the decade — is on. Facebook will file its paperwork for an Initial Public Offering on Wednesday, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. If it comes to pass, this will be the largest tech IPO in history, yielding around $10 billion for the social network. The next-largest tech IPO is Infineon, a German company that raised $5.9 billion in 2000. Google’s 2005 IPO, as big a deal as it was, didn’t even reach the $2 billion mark. SEE ALS...

Spain's unemployment figure passed the five million mark in the last quarter of 2011, official figures show. The National Statistics Institute said 5.3 million people were out of work at the end of December, up from 4.9 million in the third quarter. The rate rose from 21.5% in the third quarter to 22.8% - the highest rate in nearly 17 years. The new figures show more than half of all 16-24 year-olds are jobless - 51.4% compared to 45.8% before. Spain already has the highest jobless rate in the 1...

About a week after suffering a legal setback in Germany, Samsung received another bit of bad news this morning, when the Mannheim Regional Court rejected the second of its patent infringement claims against Apple. As with last week's ruling, today's decision addresses one of Samsung's arguments that Apple's 3G / UMTS technology infringes upon its patents. Judge Andreas Voss officially shot down these claims early this morning, though he didn't offer an immediate reason for his ruling. As FOSS Pa...

(Reuters) - The Vatican was shaken by a corruption scandal Thursday after an Italian television investigation said a former top official had been transferred against his will after complaining about irregularities in awarding contracts. The show "The Untouchables" on the respected private television network La 7 Wednesday night showed what it said were several letters that Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who was then deputy-governor of Vatican City, sent to superiors, including Pope Benedict, in ...

Google wants to get all up in your business — but in a good way. The search giant just unveiled an expansion to its Business Photos program, which aims to put indoor images of businesses on Google Maps and Google Places profiles. The program now has a clear way to hook business owners up with local photographers with its “Trusted Photographers” initiative. If you’re interested in getting better photos of your establishment online, all you have to do is head over to the Google Business Photos pag...

Mark Thompson, the BBC's director general, has signalled to senior colleagues that he is ready to step down, with insiders believing he will quit at the end of 2012 or early in 2013, at the end of the broadcaster's Olympic year. Britain's most powerful television executive has not given an exact timetable for his departure, but friends say he acknowledges that he has entered the final chapter of his eight-year director generalship and is "psychologically ready" to leave a job that paid him £779,...

Twitter has refined its technology so it can censor messages on a country-by-country basis. The additional flexibility announced on Thursday is likely to raise fears that Twitter's commitment to free speech may be weakening as the short-messaging company expands into new countries in an attempt to broaden its audience and make more money. But Twitter sees the censorship tool as a way to ensure individual messages, or tweets, remain available to as many people as possible while it navigates a gau...

No, it's not another Fast & Furious sequel, it's something much quicker -- 800 billion times quicker, to be precise. Scientists at DESY (Germany's largest particle physics center) are premiering the Guinness World Record-holding fastest "movie" to a select audience at its light sources users' meeting. The film was shot using an X-ray Laser, and splitting the light in two. By firing one beam off on a minuscule detour (0.015 millimeters) and delaying its arrival by 50 femtoseconds, two separate im...

Read the whole thing at Search Engine Land >> Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook . Join the conversation about this story » See Also: NICE TIMING: Google Announced A Big Change To Its Privacy Policy Right When Apple Announced Earnings Apple's Profit Was Higher Than Google's Revenue Last Quarter How In The World Will Microsoft Convince People To Buy A Windows Tablet?

Fitch just cut the long-term issuer ratings of 5 EU countries: Belgium: AA+ to AA Spain: AA- to A Italy: A+ to A- Cyprus: BBB to BBB- Slovenia: AA- to A It affirmed Ireland's BBB+ rating with a negative outlook. Borrowing costs have been sinking for these countries lately–particularly for Italy and Spain—after the European Central Bank announced liquidity support measures in early December that have lessened mounting worries about the health of the banking system. While Fitch says that it suppor...

It might not be making as much money as the competition in Cupertino, but that doesn't mean Samsung isn't raking in cash at an astonishing clip. We reported earnings estimates a few weeks ago, but now it's official that the firm posted a 5.3 trillion won ($4.7 billion) operating profit in Q4 2011. That represents over a 2 trillion won ($1.8 billion) increase year over year. In all, it pulled in 47.3 trillion won ($42 billion) in sales, thanks in no small part to the over 300 million phones Sammy...

The US will have a "smaller, leaner" military, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta says, with almost 100,000 US Army and Marine Corps troops cut. Announcing plans to restructure the military, Mr Panetta said the US would retain the ability to defeat "any enemy on land" and boost special forces. The Pentagon is facing cuts of $487bn (£310bn) over the next 10 years. Over five years, 92,000 active duty Army and Marine Corps soldiers would be cut, with some bases closed, he said. Mr Panetta said the US w...

Ratings from Thursday reveal a new pecking order: the once-unbeatable music-talent show on Fox is being beaten by the CBS comedy.

Republican front-runners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have clashed over immigration at a debate in Florida, the last before the key state's primary. While pledging he would not deport long-term illegal immigrants, Mr Gingrich accused Mr Romney of being the most anti-immigrant candidate. Mr Romney labelled Mr Gingrich's claim "repulsive" and accused him of using "highly charged epithets". Florida is a swing state that holds its nominating contest next Tuesday. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Sa...

What does where we tweet say about how we live and work? That’s one of the questions Oakland-based programmer Eric Fischer hoped to answer with his latest mapping project. Fischer, a mapping fanatic and artist, is used to displaying vast amounts of information in visually compelling ways. In his latest project, he manages to plot out the motion of New Yorkers using public tweets on Twitter with geotags from May 2011 until January. The project lays out around 10,000 geotagged tweets and 30,000 po...

Wouldn't it be absolutely splendid if you could hand your phone over to a friend (or complete stranger) without fear of them mucking up your system or digging into your personal bits? Yes, we'd absolutely love to see guest accounts become standard issue on all handsets, but until that day arrives, a new application called SwitchMe will work in a pinch. Word of caution, this app requires root privileges, which may deter many folks. Rather than allowing multiple sessions to run simultaneously, as...