Pinterest focuses on discovery with new Guided Search

With over 750 million boards and 30 billion pins, Pinterest has seen nearly a 50 percent increase in new pins in just the last six months. Indeed, CEO Ben Silbermann even calls it the “world’s largest human-curated collection of things.” Therein, however, lies a problem. With so much information, it can be difficult to find what you really want, but even worse, it becomes really (really) hard to find or even discover new things that might be of interest to you.

Today, in its San Francisco office packed full of journalists and guests, Pinterest announced a new feature that promises to fix that: Guided Search. Contrasting it to Google, Silbermann said that Pinterest’s new Guided Search is “more about exploration than it is about an ordered list for every person in the world.” So when you type a keyword into the search bar at the top, it’ll offer narrower topics that you can focus in on. For example, if you were to search for “chair,” it’ll show subcategories like “accents” or “living room” or “patio.” Silbermann also emphasized that these would be words used by real people, so if you were to search for “hairstyles”, some of the suggestions would be “medium length hair” or “up do” or “bangs.”

“I can go from inspiration all the way into doing something,” said Silbermann. “That’s the promise of Guided Search.”

To go along with Guided Search, Pinterest has also rolled out a couple of extra features, namely improved Related Pins and Custom Categories. As their names suggest, the new Related Pins now show 90 percent more related items, while custom categories expand on the 32 standard groups that Pinterest has as defaults. “We picked the categories relatively arbitrarily,” admitted Silbermann, referring to when the team first chose the group names. Now you can create your own, simply by tapping a button and entering a title like “Bob Dylan“.

According to Pinterest, the new search features will be rolled out in the next app updates on iOS and Android. Custom Categories, however, are still a little new to them and will be making a more gradual appearance to users.

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Source: Pinterest

Watch NASA’s Morpheus take to the air – then make a smooth landing

NASA’s Morpheus lander has gone a long way since it crashed and burned in 2012. The agency’s vertical landing and takeoff test vehicle now has a number of successful flights under its belt, including one that’s just concluded at the Kennedy Space Center. On this most recent flight, the lander easily traversed 1,300 feet at a speed of 36mph for 98 seconds, proving that it has a future in delivering cargo to space. As always, Morpheus had a very important passenger during this event: the team’s Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology. This equipment, called ALHAT for short, determines the best place to land by using lasers to scan for rocks and other hazards. That means it could be an essential tool when traveling to worlds we don’t know as well as Mars or the moon, as it can guide spacecraft to safety without human input. We’ve sadly yet to see ALHAT in action, as this particular flight used a predetermined landing point. But, since Morpheus breezed through it like a champ, the team will let the sophisticated landing tech take the reins next time.

NASA’s @MorpheusLander completed a 98-second free flight at Kennedy Space Center, landing in simulated lunar terrain. pic.twitter.com/iOL3G2gRkK

– Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) April 24, 2014

[Image credit: NASA/Frankie Martin]

Filed under: Misc

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Source: NASA, Morpheus Lander

​California’s smartphone kill-switch bill flops in the state senate

US carriers can all collectively breathe a sigh of relief today: California’s mobile kill-switch bill is dead, at least for now. The would have required all smartphones sold in the state to include a remote-kill feature designed to render stolen phones useless. The bill was designed to curb phone robberies by making the crime less lucrative. If carriers didn’t comply, the state would have been able to fine them $2,500 for every unsupported device sold.

Although the fine would have only been enforceable in California, the bill could have put the remote-kill feature in phones nationwide. In fact, it still might: though the bill failed to garner enough votes to move on to the state assembly, it still has the option to return to the senate in the future.

Filed under: Cellphones

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Source: PC World

FTC: State bans on Tesla’s direct sales model are hurting competition

Tesla has just gained a valuable ally in its battle to sell cars directly to customers: the Federal Trade Commission. The regulator now argues that state bans on direct sales are “protectionist,” propping up the traditional dealership business model rather than protecting companies from unfair abuses by automakers. It’s the “competitive process” that should decide which sales model is better, not the law. The FTC also doesn’t buy the notion that Tesla’s modest US sales (22,500 in 2013) are a threat to the wider industry (15 million). It believes that the only thing at risk is the old way of buying cars, which might not be necessary now that customers can skip the sales pitch and do most of their research online.

Not surprisingly, Tesla agrees “wholeheartedly” that state rules need to change. The National Automobile Dealers Association is less than enthusiastic, however. It maintains that customers “lose virtually all bargaining power” in a middleman-free environment, since they couldn’t simply go to an independent store to haggle for a better deal.

The FTC’s criticism stops short of announcing any formal action, and it’s not clear that anything will change. The Commission exists primarily to regulate companies, and it may have a tough time pressuring individual states; right now, it’s just hoping that legislators will see the bans as anti-competitive and reject them accordingly. Still, it’s clear that dealers shouldn’t expect much FTC sympathy if the dispute over Tesla’s sales strategy ever reaches the federal level.

Filed under: Transportation

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Source: FTC

Crowdfunding project aims to bring a forgotten space probe back to life

The International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 probe is slated to come home in August after 36 years in space, but a group of engineers wants to use it as a platform for citizen science before it does. Sadly, NASA doesn’t have the budget to reactivate a probe’s that been decommissioned since 1999 — so, the team has turned to crowdfunding to get the ball rolling. For those who’ve never heard of the ISEE-3 before, it was originally sent to space to study how the Earth’s magnetic field and solar winds interact. Thus, it has 13 different scientific instruments on board (for measuring plasma, magnetic fields, waves and particles) that students or just about anyone can use if the group manages to recapture it.

Good news is, the team is led by Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing, who have some serious credentials under their belt. These long-time collaborators head the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, which digitizes analog data tapes from unmanned lunar orbiters sent to space in the 1960′s. Also, Wingo is the founder of Skycorp, which has developed equipment for NASA and DARPA in the past, while Cowing is former NASA employee.

These two and their team need to gain control of the ISEE-3 before mid-June 2014, else all their efforts will be wasted. In order to do so, they plan to use a dish to beam radio signals and establish contact with the probe, though it won’t be that easy — hence, the need to raise $125,000 via crowdfunding. How can ordinary people tap into the probe’s onboard lab, you ask? Well, if the mission’s successful, then the team will have software devs build apps, so the scientifically curious can access the probe’s instruments from the ground.

We just passed $21,000 – every donation helps us try to make #ISEE-3 do science again http://t.co/K2MOmF1aw2

– ISEE3 Reboot Project (@ISEE3Reboot) April 24, 2014

[Image credit: NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center]

[Thanks, Tim]

Filed under: Misc

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Via: Makezine

Source: Rockethub