Satechi BT Media Remote steers your iOS media habits, summons Siri via Bluetooth

Sometimes you just don't feel like getting up to flip through that Yacht Rock playlist on Spotify while your Apple slate rests comfortably in its dock. Satechi is looking to prolong your relaxation with its BT Media Remote for your iPhone, iPad or Mac. The accessory does exactly what you'd expect -- it allows you to peruse your audio and video libraries on a Bluetooth-enabled iOS device while connected to a TV, docking station or your car's stereo. On top of the usual remote functions, the accessory can be used as a remote camera shutter control for those all-important group shots and the home button can summon your smartphone's personal assistant. Interested? You can snag yours now for a mere $40 via the source link below.

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PayPal lines up 15 retailers for mobile payments, will let you buy Jamba Juice smoothies with a smartphone

Although PayPal's mobile payment system started out small with a Home Depot deal, that snowball is quickly rolling itself into a boulder. Starting next month, 15 extra US retailers will be happy to see you slap down your smartphone (not literally, we hope) instead of a credit card. The selection leads us to think a lot of smartphone owners like to shop for wearables -- Aéropostale, Foot Locker and JC Penney are in the batch, along with others -- but there's a few useful exceptions, like Barnes & Noble, Jamba Juice and TigerDirect. At least a total of 20 merchants are expected by the end of year, and as with Home Depot, you won't need special hardware besides an Android or iOS device to spend your hard-earned cash. We'll just be thankful we won't have to buy our yogurt with actual cash, like savages.

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Leap Motion gesture control technology hands-on

Leap Motion unveiled its new gesture control technology earlier this week, along with videos showing the system tracking ten fingers with ease and a single digit slicing and dicing a grocery store's worth of produce in Fruit Ninja. Still, doubts persisted as to the veracity of the claim that the Leap is 200 times more accurate than existing tech. So, we decided to head up to San Francisco to talk with the men behind Leap, David Holz and Michael Buckwald, and see it for ourselves. Join us after the break to learn a bit more about Leap, our impressions of the technology, and a video of the thing in action.

Leap motion control technology hands-on

Before diving into the more technical details of the device he created, Holz told us about the genesis of his idea to create a better way for humans to interact with their computational devices. The idea to do so came during his days acquiring a Phd in mathematics from UNC and while working in fluid mechanics. You see, there's a problem with creating and manipulating 3D models using a mouse and keyboard --it's a needlessly complicated operation involving clicks and drop down menus. Holz wanted a way to make "molding virtual clay as easy as molding clay in the real world." After four years of research and many iterations of hardware, the Leap was finally finished.

We asked both Holz, and Buckwald about the underlying technology that enables such high-fidelity controls, and were told that it's an optical system that tracks your fingers with infrared LEDs and cameras in a way unlike any other motion control tech. This new method of motion sensing is why the Leap can be made so cheaply and come in such a small package. It can track hundreds of thousands of points at a time (note: point tracking isn't how it functions), and because its precision scales up or down according to the hardware it's connected to, it only uses one to two percent of a CPU's capabilities to work. To protect all of the IP inside the Leap, the firm has a slew of patent applications in the pipeline, which is why, despite our efforts, we couldn't extract more info about the hardware and its workings.

In practice, the Leap is impressive. As anyone who's waved at Kinect or held a Wiimote in hand can attest, mass market motion controls are far from precise... Leap Motion's technology isn't. We tested it out using one of the company's prototype units, which is a bit larger than the final version, but Holz assured us that the user experience with each is identical. Using the Leap is easy, simply wave your hand in the space above the sensor, and it starts tracking any finger pointing at the screen. Whether we were slicing watermelons in a Fruit Ninja demo or drawing minuscule curlicues in a 3D-drawing app, the Leap followed our phalanges' every move on all three axes with nary a hiccup. The company touts the system's incredibly low latency -- faster than a monitor's refresh rate and below the threshold of a human's ability to sense it -- and we can confirm that there was zero perceptible lag during our demo. Because Leap works with any machine that has touch drivers onboard (whether for trackpads or touchscreens) using it is quite intuitive, and means that the technology is backwards compatible with existing apps. Naturally, Holz and Buckwald are keen to see developers create custom applications to take full advantage of the technology, and we gotta say, so are we.
What's next for Leap Motion? Well, Holz and Buckwald told us that while the technology is initially available in peripheral form, the plan is to get it baked into laptops, desktops, smartphones and tablets, too. Because the hardware is so small, it can easily be stuffed into such devices. And, it'll work even better when embedded because there's greater flexibility in the placement of the hardware relative to the user's hands, and multiple sensors can be included to create a larger virtual workspace. We asked when we could expect to see Leap-enabled laptops, and were told that the company is in talks with several big hardware manufacturers to do just that. So, in the not-so-distant future, it seems we may all be waving our hands in front of screens instead of swiping and tapping on them.

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RealNetworks to refund $2 million, 'guilt' box stays un-ticked

Paid for subscriptions from RealNetworks you didn't ask for a few years ago? You may be eligible for a refund. Washington State's Attorney General sued the company over a free trial of its Rhapsody music service, which had a pre-ticked box for additional content that went unnoticed by many who signed up. When clients stopped the trial without also canceling the extra options, charges often accumulated in the hundreds of dollars before being seen. While admitting no wrongdoing, RealNetworks agreed to discontinue the boxes, comply with federal laws and give refunds to any customers who signed up that way between January 2007 and December 2009. If that might be you, expect a postcard from RealNetworks or check their website to apply for a refund. Hopefully you'll be less, um, ticked.

Techmeme, The Next Web

RealNetworks

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Mark Zuckerberg is now a married man!!! | Weds Priscilla Chan

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now a married man. The 28 yr old multi-billionaire wed his longtime girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, 27, at a small ceremony at his home in Palo Alto, California, yesterday Saturday May 19th. The couple met at Harvard and has been together for more than nine years. Happy Married Life to them!

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Yahoo Yahoo: Yahoo CEO Fired For Using Fake CV

AN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Yahoo! CEO Scott Thompson is expected to step down from his post following the controversy surrounding his allegedly inflated resume, in the latest blow to the struggling Internet giant, a leading industry website reported Sunday.

The All Things Digital website reported that Thompson’s imminent departure marks “what will be a dramatic end to a controversy over a fake computer science degree that he had on his bio,” and cited “multiple sources close to the situation.”

The website added that the company is expected to say that Thompson is leaving Yahoo! for “personal reasons,” and wrote that he likely will be replaced by the company’s global media head Ross Levinsohn, who recently ran its Americas unit, including its advertising sales.

The Yahoo! board earlier this month announced a review by a special committee of Thompson’s academic background as well as how much was known by those who hired him, amid pressure from an activist hedge fund.

The company has acknowledged an “inadvertent error” in the CEO’s online bio, which wrongly indicated that he had a degree in computer science.

News of the special committee came a day after the hedge fund, which has been battling Yahoo! management, called for the release of documents about the recruitment of Thompson in a scathing filing with regulators.

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