Apple Retina iMacs Could Be Coming Next Month, Cementing Our High-DPI Future

Apple Retina iMacs Could Be Coming Next Month, Cementing Our High-DPI Future

Darrell Etherington

TechCrunch

Apple could finally be readying the launch of new Retina iMacs alongside OS X Yosemite this fall, according to a new report from 9to5Mac. Were the company to ship these this year, following what the report claims is near-final testing, it would spell the end for the Age of the Discernible Pixel, and all would be well in the Kingdom of Desktop Compute. And lo, the people would celebrate.

The Retina iMac is a beast of almost mythical proportions at this stage, with rumors and rumblings of its development and release dating back to the introduction of the first Retina MacBook Pros, in the murky, distant past of June 2012. Apple’s progress with Retina desktops was likely slowed by the cost of producing high-resolution displays at the size required for iMacs. Even the smallest iMac sports a 21.7-inch display, which adds up to a lot more surface area than even the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro.

The intervening two-plus years have given Apple time to work on the cost effectiveness of their display suppliers, and have also seen high-resolution displays become much more prevalent, thanks to Ultra HD TVs and computer monitors. Apple has also included software references to Retina resolutions that fit with the current sizing of iMac screens in betas of the upcoming Yosemite software update for OS X, its desktop OS.

These new iMacs will reportedly keep the thin chassis of the current models, and might appear alongside their non-Retina variants and higher-priced options, which is how Apple introduced its Retina laptop line. They’ll offer significant benefits for video editors working in 4K resolution, and the report also claims that updated versions of Final Cut Pro and iMovie will support that higher-resolution video footage.

Retina could give Apple’s desktop line an injection of fresh energy that they could use, given how long they’ve gone now without a splashy update. The last big change was the thinner cases, but a significant functional improvement, besides changes under the hood, would make for a much better sales proposition and upgrade incentive for holiday shoppers.

The fact is the current resolution on Apple’s desktops probably still suits the needs of most. From the seated distance most use them at, they also won’t betray any particularly “low-res” visual assets like pixelation, but the jump up will afford a level of clarity that will make using your desktop similar to the experience of working with print-resolution images and documents. Still, while the future is definitely high-DPI, any Macs we see next month in this category will probably be aimed at higher-end consumers and professionals to begin with.

Read More

Coming Soon to the Library: Humanoid Robots

Coming Soon to the Library: Humanoid Robots

Loretta Waldman

The Wall Street Journal

WESTPORT, Conn.—They have blinking eyes and an unnerving way of looking quizzically in the direction of whoever is speaking. They walk, dance and can talk in 19 different languages. About the height of a toddler, they look like bigger, better-dressed cousins of Buzz Lightyear.
And soon, "Vincent" and "Nancy" will be buzzing around the Westport Library, where officials next week will announce the recent acquisition of the pair of humanoid "NAO Evolution" robots. Their primary purpose: to teach the kind of coding and computer-programming skills required to animate such machines.

While it isn't unusual for public libraries to offer instruction in programming or robotics, Westport is the first in the nation to do it with sophisticated humanoid bots made by the French robotics firm Aldebaran. In a brief demonstration last week, Alex Giannini, the library's digital-experience manager, had Vincent kicking a small soccer ball, doing tai chi and taking bows.
"Robotics is the next disruptive technology coming into our lives and we felt it was important to make it accessible to people so they could learn about it," said Maxine Bleiweis, executive director of the Westport Library. "From an economic-development perspective and job- and career-development perspective, it's so important."

Under Ms. Bleiweis's leadership, Westport has made it a priority to provide public access to innovative new technology. For example, Westport was among the first public libraries in Connecticut to acquire a 3-D printer three years ago, and to create a "maker" space, an area where patrons of all ages can try out equipment, dabble in computer coding or work individually, or collaboratively, to create DIY technology.

Westport isn't the only public library with robots. In May, the Chicago Public Library, in partnership with Google Inc., made 500 "Finch" robots available to patrons at six of its branches. The dot-eyed, half-domed machines, the size of dinner plate on wheels, are also used to teach computer programming and coding.

Aldebaran said it has sold about 6,000 robots world-wide, mostly to museums and schools. At nearly $8,000 a machine, the NAO Evolution models, which were acquired by Westport with private funds, cost considerably more than the Finch machines, which run $99 each.
But the Aldebaran robots are also more complex—equipped with two cameras, four microphones, motion sensors and sonar to detect walls.

Vincent and Nancy can recognize faces and detect where sound is coming from. They have a "fall manager" that helps them right themselves after a tumble just as a human might, grunts and all. They can even "touch" and "feel" with the help of tactile and pressure sensors.

The robots come equipped with programming software, but embedded within that software are compatible programming languages, such as Python, that can be used to expand the capabilities of the NAO bots. Aldebaran also has a large development community continuously adding new behavior apps that facilitate everything from high-five gestures to a "wake-up" routine including yawning and stretching.

"They look like Sharper Image playthings, but they're insanely complicated," said Mr. Giannini.
The library plans to debut the robots Oct. 11 and begin programs and workshops soon after that will introduce participants to the software, said Bill Derry, the library's assistant director for innovation. After that, he said, he is planning a series of competitive programming challenges requiring contestants to have the robots recite a poem, give a speech and do a dance, among other things. Winners in each category will compete in a final competition at a maker fair in April.

"What we're counting on is that there is great capacity for growth that will give patrons a chance to play with something resembling artificial intelligence," said Mr. Derry. "Our goal is to push it as far as we can and shed light on people who are thinking, experimenting and producing to inspire them to go even farther."

While some have speculated that the Internet would render public libraries irrelevant, librarians say the proliferation of technology and digitized information has had the opposite effect. According to a 2013 report by the Pew Research Center, 81% of Americans say public libraries provide services they would have a hard time finding elsewhere.

The growing emphasis in schools on science, technology, engineering and math gives library-based robots added relevance.

"3-D printing and robotics are very visceral and really speak to what's possible in the future," said Matt Latham, program and maker-space coordinator at the Hoboken, N.J. public library. "It spurs creative wonder about what we can do with technology."

Mr. Giannini envisions the robots being programmed for "practical stuff" as well, such as helping patrons locate books or greeting elementary-school groups that visit the library.

"I don't know what the coolest functionality is going to be," said Mr. Giannini. "Someone coming in off the street is probably going to teach us that." 

Read More

Think tank hires 'Call of Duty' game director to predict the future of war

Think tank hires 'Call of Duty' game director to predict the future of war

Jon Fingas

Engadget 

If you felt that Call of Duty: Black Ops II presented an eerily plausible vision of war in the years ahead, you're not alone.

 The Atlantic Council, a political think tank, has askedBlack Ops II director Dave Anthony to contribute to an "Art of Future Warfare" project that looks at fiction as a possible insight into next-generation conflicts. As he explains, the next big threat to the US probably doesn't fit into conventional definitions of war -- a game developer can imagine fantastic scenarios that might just come true, such as Black Ops II's drone assault on a G20 meeting.

 This isn't the same as directly guiding US policy, so Anthony's effect will likely be limited. However, it won't be surprising if the country is eventually better prepared for high-tech terrorists and other dangers that it otherwise wouldn't have anticipated.

Read More

Hong Kong Protesters Flock to Off-Grid Messaging App

Hong Kong Protesters Flock to Off-Grid Messaging App

The New York Times 

Amid swelling pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, protesters are turning to FireChat, a new app that allows them to send messages without a cellular or Internet connection.
Set off against a fresh wave of censorship by Beijing to ensure that potentially destabilizing images of the protests do not enter the mainland, the app is a testament to how the protean development of technology constantly challenges tried forms of blocking information online.

Introduced in March, FireChat makes use of a cellphone’s radio and Bluetooth communications to create a network between phones close to one another — up to about 80 yards — without connecting to the Internet. If a cellular signal or wireless network is available, the app uses that.
In 24 hours starting Sunday afternoon, the app, which allows users to host public chat rooms, added 100,000 users in Hong Kong and peaked Sunday night at 33,000 simultaneous users.
The surge in users was due in part to rumors that spread over the weekend that the Hong Kong government might shut down the Internet, according to protesters, though it is unlikely officials would make such a move.

Nevertheless, Kyle Hui, 19, a student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the app was proving useful because large crowds had overwhelmed the mobile infrastructure in parts of the city, rendering cell signals spotty.

“Protesters use it to, for example, announce what supplies are needed — goggles, surgical masks — or to announce protest tactics,” Mr. Hui said.

The Hong Kong protesters are not the first to make use of the technology. In March, just 10 days after FireChat was released, students participating in the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan downloaded the app en masse out of concerns about the Internet being cut, said Christophe Daligault, an executive with Open Garden, the San Francisco company that distributes the app.

The company also saw a jump in users in May, after the Iranian government blocked access to the photo-sharing app Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp.

“When people find themselves in the situation where they think access to the Internet is going to be removed, they all download the app in big numbers,” Mr. Daligault said by telephone.

In Hong Kong, fears that the Internet might be blocked may have gained credence because Beijing has occasionally used the tactic, as it did in the western region of Xinjiang during riots in 2009.
Thus far in response to the Hong Kong protests, Beijing has heavily censored social media on the mainland, scrubbing references to the demonstrations from Sina Weibo, a popular microblogging service. Instagram has also been largely inaccessible in mainland China since Saturday, according to users and several Internet watchdogs, leading commentators to speculate that the government shut access to the app to staunch the flow of images of the protests. Instagram did not respond to a request for comment about the apparent blockages. Facebook, which owns Instagram, has been blocked in China since the riots in Xinjiang in 2009.

For now, FireChat has only a modest presence in mainland China, in part because potential users need Internet access to download the app and its site has been blocked, according to the company. Still, if the company were to take a new approach — for instance, work out a way for users to download and sign up offline — that could expose new vulnerabilities in China’s network of filters, known generally as the Great Firewall.

Even so, FireChat faces some of the same problems faced by all social media — such as the uncontrolled spread of rumors and overwhelming streams of data, Mr. Hui said.

“Sometimes I get more than a thousand messages in just an hour, so I simply can’t keep up,” he said.
“People keep posting the same message to grab others’ attention,” he added. “And I’m skeptical of many of the rumors that spread on the app, like saying that the People’s Liberation Army is sending in tanks and armored vehicles.”

Read More

Norwegian Instagram rival to launch child safe tablet with Microsoft

Norwegian Instagram rival to launch child safe tablet with Microsoft

Reuters

OSLO - Kuddle, a Norwegian picture sharing app designed for children, plans to launch a child safe tablet with Microsoft on Dec 1, and expects to sign funding deals with several venture capital firms within weeks, its chief executive said on Monday.
The Oslo-based company said it was on track to reach its goal of one million users by year-end and plans to soon raise another $5 million of fresh funds on top of the nearly $6 million it has already raised.

"We are working with Microsoft on several child safe devices which will be sold on our online store," Chief Executive Ole Vidar Hestaas said. "The first device will be an Ipad Mini sized tablet prized under $100 that will be ready ahead of the Kuddle Store launch."

"This is a child friendly device and it is not possible to download games like GTA (Grand Theft Auto) or apps like Snapchat," Hestaas said.

Kuddle, which bills itself as a rival to Instagram, lets parents monitor what their children publish and keeps access to content restricted, preventing strangers from seeing and sharing pictures. There are no hashtags or comments to prevent online bullying and "likes" are anonymous.

Hestaas said the company also is in talks with Samsung and Microsoft's Nokia phones unit on similar cooperation, and that it was also working on deals with European telecoms operators Telenor and Vodafone for child safe Kuddle SIM cards to be sold separately or linked up to one of its devices.
The app, which has a target of 1 million users by the end of 2014, is now available in 7 languages. The most significant growth has recently come from Brazil and the US.

Hestaas said he expects to conclude funding deals with several major international venture capital funds within weeks.

The firm's present investors include Norwegian golf ace Suzann Pettersen.

Read More

National Coffee Day 7 Apps That Every Coffee Lover Needs

7 Apps That Every Coffee Lover Needs

Business Insider
Madeline Stone

Coffee addicts, rejoice. In honor of National Coffee Day on Monday, Sept. 29, we're rounding up the best apps you can use to get your coffee fix.

1. Starbucks, Free 

 The official app from the coffee giant has a wide variety of handy features. Find the store closest to you with the store locator, view nutrition information, and build your own drink.
You can even manage your Starbucks Card balance, track your Stars in the Starbucks Rewards program, and send an eGift to a friend.

2. CoffeeGuru, $1.99 
 If you love coffee but big chains aren't your thing, this app will make it easy to find independent coffee shops wherever you happen to be. CoffeeGuru lists more than 7,200 coffeehouses in the U.S., U.K., and Canada, so check this app before you travel to a new city.
Use the app's flavor wheel to impress your friends with your description of the coffee's taste. This app will also give you more info about Direct and Fair Trade roasting and which coffee shops roast their own beans.

3. Spro, $1.99 
Learn to make your favorite coffee drink at home with Spro, an app that provides step-by-step instructions for a ton of different caffeinated beverages. It also includes facts and proper pronunciation for coffee drinks.

4. Percolator, $2.99
 Love the bubbles on top of your coffee? This app makes them appear on your photos. Adjust the size and color of circles to turn your photos into coffee-inspired mosaic masterpieces. This app is only superficially about coffee, but it's still fun.

5. Art of Coffee, $2.99
 If you ever wondered how your local barista makes those artful foam designs on top of your morning latte, look no further. Art of Coffee teaches users how to make 30 different patterns out of foam, from a rosette to a heart.

6. New York: Coffee Guide, Free
Find reviews, ratings, and photos of independent coffee shops around New York City. This app saves time by only showing coffee shops that are open near you at the time of your search, and you can easily see which stores have free WiFi right from the search results.

7. CoffeeTalk, $0.99 
 Learn the lingo with CoffeeTalk, a dictionary of coffee terms like "affogato," "Americano," and "skinny moo."

Read More

Microsoft opening New York store close to Apple’s iconic cube

Microsoft opening New York store close to Apple’s iconic cube

Tom Warren

The Verge 

Microsoft is opening a retail store in the heart of New York City. The software maker has confirmed to the Wall Street Journalthat it plans to open a store just a few blocks away from Apple’s iconic cube on Fifth Avenue, following rumors from last month. Microsoft’s new retail location will replace an existing Fendi store and serve as the company’s first full retail store in Manhattan. "As our first flagship store, it will serve as the centerpiece of our Microsoft Stores experience," says David Porter, corporate vice president for Microsoft retail stores, in a statement to the WSJ. "This is a goal we've had since day one — we were only waiting for the right location. And now we have it."
A true retail presence in NYC

The location is close to Apple’s flagship New York City store, and it allows Microsoft to finally have a presence in the upscale shopping district of New York City. Microsoft has used pop-up stores previously, including a temporary retail store in Times Square for the original Surface launch, and a speciality store in Staten Island. Despite less of a focus on “devices and services” and more on cloud and mobile under CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft continues to open stores regularly.

The latest New York City location will join more than 100 Microsoft retail stores in the US, and Microsoft is planning to create an "experiential space" within its new Fifth Avenue store to turn the shop into more than just the average Microsoft Store. It’s not clear exactly what that will entail, but the new location will serve as a flagship to demonstrate upcoming Lumia devices and the company’s Surface Pro 3 tablets. Microsoft has not yet confirmed when its New York City store will launch, but the company is also opening new retail locations in Toronto, Tulsa, Bethesda, and Cerritos before the end of the year.

Read More

Ello Users Experience Further Downtime After DDoS Attack

Ello Users Experience Further Downtime After DDoS Attack

Kyle Russell

TechCrunch

The suddenly hip social networking site Ello experienced its first major outage today, suffering a Distributed Denial of Service attack that brought it down for approximately 45 minutes. The company says that it was able to fix the issue by blocking the IP addresses responsible for the attack.
However, it seems that the site is still going through some instability, as users are still occasionally taking to Twitter to say that it has gone down or that posts refuse to upload. Anecdotally, I occasionally get the above image on attempting to load the site. We’ll update this post if Ello confirms whether these are aftershocks from the attack or simply growing pains from the site’s rapid user acquisition in recent days. 

Read More

iPhone 6 and 6 Plus bending fears 'seem overblown'

iPhone 6 and 6 Plus bending fears 'seem overblown'

Samuel Gibbs

The Guardian 

User reports and fears that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus phones are bending in trouser pockets are overblown, according to independent testing by the US non-profit Consumer Reports.
In fact, its tests found that HTC’s One M8 phone bent under the same force as the iPhone 6 - and that the “phablet-size” iPhone 6 Plus was stronger than both. The tests showed, though, that the new phones are substantially less strong than 2012’s iPhone 5, whose body is also used in 2013’s iPhone 5S.

Consumer Reports tested the iPhone 6, 6 Plus and iPhone 5 against the LG G3, Samsung Galaxy Note 3, and HTC One M8 using a compression testing machine to apply a “three-point flexural test”, where a metered force is applied to the centre of the phone while it is supported at each end.
It concluded that “while nothing is (evidently) indestructible, we expect that any of these phones should stand up to typical use.”

It found that the 4.7in iPhone 6, which is 7.1mm thick, would show permanent bending with the equivalent of a 70lb (31.8kg) weight placed on the centre of its back. The 5.5in iPhone 6 Plus deformed at 90lbs, and the 4in iPhone 5 - which is 7.6mm thick - at 130lbs.
The 5in HTC One M8 also bend under a 70lbs weight, and its case separated at 90lb, while the iPhone 6 resisted to 100lb.

The 5.5in LG G3 resisted bending up to 130lbs, the same as the iPhone 5, and the 5.7in Samsung Galaxy Note 3 150lbs.

“While not the strongest smartphones on the market, fears of a serious structural design flaw in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus seem overblown,” explained Glenn Derene, electronics editor for Consumer Reports in a video of the tests.

Most of the phones continued to work after deforming, and required an extra 20 to 30lbs to bend enough to separate the screen from the phone’s case.
Consumer Reports bend testing the iPhone 6, 6 Plus and iPhone 5 with their Android competitors. Apple tests its smartphones using a similar method to Consumer Reports by applying 55lbs of weight to the back of the phones to test resilience to bending, or approximately the weight required to break three ordinary pencils.

Apple said that it only received nine complaints about iPhone 6 Plus phones bending and that it tested 15,000 smartphones during its own investigations.

Previous smartphone tests, which showed the iPhone 6 Plus bending, have used a a less scientific method, with a reviewer applying pressure manually with thumbs pushed into the back of phones.

‘I have a bent iPhone 6 Plus’

Initial reports by users of bending iPhone 6 Plus phones were followed up by video tests displaying a bent 6 Plus. Some reviewers of the smartphone have also found that their iPhone 6 Plus phones were either bent initially or bent during the course of their testing. The Guardian has not seen bending during testing of the iPhone 6 Plus, though it was not carried in trouser pockets.

“Like a lot of people, I have a bent iPhone 6 Plus. It’s almost imperceptible, but it’s there: a slight warp right at the buttons on the side. Put the phone screen down on a table, and it wobbles,” said Mat Hohan in a review of the iPhone 6 Plus for Wired. “I haven’t purposefully bent it and I don’t recall sitting on it (but I probably have).”

How many iPhone 6 Plus phones have been bent in users’ pockets is still unknown. Apple claims that it is not an issue for normal use, but phones from other manufactures have suffered similar bending issues.

As smartphones become thinner and longer with bigger screens, their relative strength decreases while the force applied to them inside pockets can increase due to a lever effect. 

Read More

Artificial Atoms Talk ... and Scientists Listen

Artificial Atoms Talk ... and Scientists Listen

By Kelly Dickerson

LiveScience

For the first time, physicists have figured out how to communicate with an artificial atom using sound instead of light.
Scientists already know a lot about how atoms and light interact. When atoms get charged up with energy, they often emit subatomic particles of light called photons. The photons belong to the wacky world of quantum mechanics where they behave as both particles and waves, and scientists have been studying their bizarre behavior for decades. But now researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have designed an artificial atom that can emit sound particles (called phonons) instead of photons after it's charged up.
"We have opened a new door into the quantum world by talking and listening to atoms," Per Delsing, a professor of microtechnology and nanoscience at Chalmers, said in a statement. [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]

Making phonons
To create the stream of sound particles, the researchers used a superconducting circuit, which represented an "artificial atom." Artificial atoms can be charged up across multiple energy levels just like a real atom, and scientists can study the quantum behavior of the particles they emit.
For the experiment, the researchers cooled the artificial atom to near absolute zero so that heat would not disturb the delicate quantum system. The artificial atom the team used is only 0.0004 inches (0.01 millimeters) long. The setup also included a speaker and microphone to record the sound emitted.
Artificial atoms are usually coupled to light but for this experiment the researchers linked the artificial atom to sound. They put the superconducting circuit between two electrodes covered with piezoelectric fibers. The piezoelectric surfaces convert vibrations into an electric charge and then convert that electricity into a sound wave.
The researchers then fired the sound wave at the artificial atom. The artificial atom absorbed the sound wave and its energy level increased, reaching what scientists call an "excited state." As the atom relaxed back into a "ground state," it released phonons. The researchers measured and recorded the behavior of the phonons, and discovered the bond between an artificial atom and sound is much stronger than the bond created between an artificial atom and light. The stronger bond makes it easier to manipulate the phonons.

What does an atom sound like?
The stream of particles that came from the artificial atom is the weakest sound that can be detected, though the researchers didn't measure the actual decibels. It's much too high-pitched for the human ear to detect. The researchers measured the frequency at 4.8 gigahertz, not far from microwave frequencies used in wireless networks. On a musical scale, that's a D28 note, or about 20 octaves above the highest note on a grand piano.
Studying phonons instead of photons could provide new insights into the quantum world that scientists still don't fully understand.
"Due to the slow speed of sound, we will have time to control the quantum particles while they travel," lead study author Martin Gustafsson, a researcher at Columbia University, said in the statement. "This is difficult to achieve with light, which moves 100,000 times more quickly."
It's difficult to study the behavior of quantum particles, because their quantum state collapses as soon as researchers start poking around and measuring the particles. Artificial atoms already give scientists more control over quantum systems, but slow-moving sound waves will make it even easier to manipulate the particles. Learning more about quantum particles could help scientists get closer to developing technology like superfast quantum computers and quantum cryptography for secure communication.

Details of the experiment were published Sept. 11 in the journal Science Express.

Read More

Members of Congress agree on this: No cellphone calls on planes

Members of Congress agree on this: No cellphone calls on planes

Hugo Martin

Los Angeles Times 

If passengers can divert a commercial plane by feuding over reclining seats, imagine the squabbles that will erupt if fliers are allowed to make loud telephone calls while crammed together in an airline cabin.

That was one of the arguments more than 75 members of Congress made in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission and other federal regulators, urging the government to continue to ban voice calls on commercial flights.

The FCC took the first step toward allowing cellphone calls on planes in December when it began to consider adopting a rule to reverse its long-held ban on inflight calls. The FCC finished accepting public comments on the proposed new rule in February but has yet to schedule further hearings.
Even if the FCC adopts the proposed rule, each airline would have the choice to install the technology needed to allow cellphone calls that do not interrupt cellphone communications on the ground.

The members of Congress who signed the letter last week said the FCC needs to consider how cellphone calls might cause disruptions in a crowded cabin.

"Arguments in an aircraft cabin already start over mundane issues, like seat selection, reclining seats and overhead bin space, and the volume and pervasiveness of voice communications would only serve to exacerbate and escalate these disputes," according to the letter signed by dozens of Republicans and Democrats, including David B. McKinley (R-W.Va.) and Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.).
The feuds over reclining seats mentioned in the letter refers to three incidents in late August and early September when onboard squabbles among passengers over intrusions into their seat space forced the pilots to divert the flights.

To read more about travel, tourism and the airline industry, follow me on Twitter at @hugomartin.

Read More

Facebook launches new tools to grow advertising

Facebook launches new tools to grow advertising

Julia Boorstin

CNBC

Facebook (FB)is making its big and long-anticipated move to grow its reach and take on Google's (GOOGL) DoubleClick. Its new Atlas advertiser tools, which it unveiled this morning, will allow advertisers to track and measure the impact of their campaigns—not just on Facebook, but across browsers and devices.

The social giant is taking on Google, and particularly in mobile ads, where Facebook has a huge advantage. The company knows who you are and what ads you've seen on other platforms—even when you're on mobile devices, which are usually limited by the fact that "cookies," or traditional tracking technology doesn't work on mobile devices.


Omnicom (OMC) is signing an agency-wide ad serving and measurement partnership with Facebook—the first ad conglomerate to do so.

"This idea of "people-based marketing" that Facebook is premiering with the launch of Atlas is really getting us closer to the one to one marketing solutions we've been talking about for so long," said Omnicom Digital CEO Jonathan Nelson. "It allows us to put the right message in front of the right person at the right time on the right device. Facebook's giving us a little more insight into who the customer is on the other side of the media transaction."

For Omnicom and other ad agencies, this should translate into far more efficient buying—and fewer redundant ad purchases reaching the same people on multiple devices. As for the question of whether this better positions Facebook to compete with Google's DoubleClick, Nelson says: "It better positions Facebook in all of advertising overall."
In a blog announcing the news, Facebook says the changes are designed to "make your media budget more effective."

Facebook isn't announcing all its partners in this endeavor. It did however mention Instagram, which is, no surprise, enabled with Atlas to measure and verify ad impressions. Atlas works with any publisher that accepts third-party tags, which now is 60,000 publishers—Atlas-seved ads can be seen on Yahoo and CNBC.com among others. 

Read More