Buycott Inc.

App Name: Buycott

Price: Free

Available Platforms: iOS

What does this app do? Chances are you like to know what’s in the food you eat and where the money you pay to buy that food goes. For instance, those tomatoes from the grocery store may come from a manufacturer that supports genetically modified foods, and you may not want any part of that.

Ivan Pardo, a 26-year-old Los Angeles-based developer, created Buycott, an app that helps consumers manage where their money goes by allowing them to scan products, learn about what brands and companies own those products, and determine if those companies align with the causes a user wishes to support or boycott.

When it comes to using the app, think of it as a two-part process. Once you download it, you can search for and join available campaigns — “Boycott companies that sell FUR” or “Support Veterans,”  for example — or create your own. From there, the app can analyze the UPC barcode and discern the product’s brand and parent company.

What makes Buycott special, according to Pardo, is the app will then cross-check that information to see if those brands or companies conflict with causes a user selects.

At the moment, the app has over 100 campaigns and the list is growing. Pardo encourages people to create campaigns if there is a cause they want to see on the app. He does caution that people should read the “Terms of  Service” on the website: “Campaigns that attempt to infringe upon the rights of others based on race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation are not tolerated.”

Is it easy  to install?: Yes, sign up with your Facebook or email account and start scanning. This past Tuesday, the app experienced over 200,000 downloads, according to Pardo. As a result,  users may notice  some slow responsiveness. However, Pardo assured us he was working hard to amend any performance issues as he migrated the app to a more robust host server.

Should I try it?: Buycott’s layout and navigation are simple to use, and the app makes it easy to find campaigns and causes for which you might want to support or boycott. The app’s premise rests on the demand for more information about the choices we make as consumers. “It simplifies the discovery process,” said Pardo. If there’s a campaign you want to add, Buycott will work with you to make sure the information is accurate. The information, however, is only as accurate as a company’s public data—corporate structures and priorities change. To that end, its success will depend, in part, on users and how involved they are in staying on top of that information.

Image credit: Google+

Apparently at this week’s big I/O conference, Google didn’t show off all the fun features of the company’s new multiplatform text and video chat service: Hangouts. If you’ve been thinking your chats have been a little too text-heavy, you can now decorate them with some animated animals.

In the chat window, you can now punch in codes to add some fun animations. For instance, typing “/ponystream” into the chat window in the web interface and hitting “enter” will prompt dancing ponies to appear.

“Some of you may [have] already figured out the hidden Easter Eggs in the new Hangouts… Keep in mind that those codes only work with Hangouts on Google+ and the Chrome Extension. Not in video calls or mobile,” Google employee Moritz Tolxdorff wrote on his Google+ page.

Tolxdorff posted a cheat sheet (below) listing all the codes and commands to pull up the different animations and chat window tweaks. In addition to the stampeding ponies, there’s a shy dinosaur (/shydino), an angry, charging pitchfork mob (/pitchforks), and you can even change the chat background by inputting a variation of the Konami “Contra Code” with your keyboard.

Maybe these bits of fun will make happy those users who are disappointed in the current lack of SMS, or text messaging, support in the new Hangouts service. Though another Google employee recently mentioned on her Google+ page that SMS was “coming soon” to Hangouts, she later made an edit to the same post, saying, “Oops! We actually have nothing to announce at this time. My apologies.”

Regardless, enjoy the Easter eggs and Happy Hangouts, all.

Image credit: Google+

Image credit: Chris Angelini

We’ve seen Michele Bachmann and a half-naked blogger wear Google Glass over the last couple of weeks.

But those images don’t exactly warm your heart. But a two-year-old with the connected glasses on? That might be one of the cutest things you see on the Internet this week.

Chris Angelini, a writer and editor at tech site Tom’s Hardware, decided to put the glasses on his two-year-old son, Lucas. The result is an adorable video of Lucas telling people to “Look at my cool glasses!” Lucas only wears the glasses for 2 minutes and 42 seconds in the video, but that’s long enough for him to document the experience of getting some watered-down apple juice, show off his Lego collection and play catch with his dad.

It’s long enough for him to point out some of the bad things about Glass too. The video, shot in a low-light room, is hard to see at times, and at the end he screams, “They’re hot!” It’s true, the glasses do get fairly warm on the right side after shooting more than a minute of video or providing GPS navigation.

RELATED: ABC News’ Google Glass Guide and Video Review

The video is extremely cute, but it has also inspired some thoughtful comments from its 100,000-plus viewers, many of whom point out that Lucas’s generation will grow up with this new wearable technology. Google, however, does say that the glasses shouldn’t be worn by anyone younger than 13 since it could harm developing vision. Angelini, 33, said he doesn’t plan on allowing his son to wear the glasses at length and that when they were on, he made sure the boy was looking around and not at the small display.

But Angelini himself plans to wear them a lot and take lots of footage of his son. “As a dad, you don’t have to be passive in the child-rearing process. It allows you to be so much more active,” Angelini told ABC News. “People are trying to record every minute but they aren’t in the moment, that’s the killer app for Glass — being able to participate more in what he is doing.”

A  Texas startup has developed a “smart rifle”that barely needs to be aimed.

The maker of the gun, being shipped to stores this week, brags that “even a novice shooter can become an elite long-range marksman in minutes.”

The company, TrackingPoint, has said its “world’s first” long range Precision Guided Firearms (PGF) integrate precision hardware, digital optics, and tracking technology to deliver an unmatched shooting experience. The line of rifles starts at about $22,500 and each comes packaged with an iPad mini including the interactive TrackingPoint mobile app.

“We’re taking centuries old tech, firearms and ammunition, and introducing 21st century technology to it,” TrackingPoint CEO Jason Schauble told ABC News.

The PGF line of rifles come equipped with what the company is calling the XactSystem, which uses a network tracking scope with digital display interface, laser tagging to “paint” a moving target, and a guided trigger that only lets the shooter fire when there is a high percentage shot.

The weapon is being introduced at a time when the debate over gun control has raised tempers on both sides of the argument.

Schauble said safety is paramount, just like with any other gun or rifle.  “It is a firearm. It is controlled by federal law,” he said.

He said a password can be set on the gun’s scope software. This doesn’t render the rifle useless, but it does lock any unauthorized users out of the precision technology.

Elliot Fineman, chief executive officer of National Gun Victims Action Council, said the “smart gun” is a “mixed proposition.”

“I’m very much in favor of the password protection, but [if the user opts not to utilize password protection] this product gives shooters a better accuracy than, on average, most cops,” Fineman said. He said the target accuracy of most police is three out of ten.

“To think that private citizens that are not trained could shoot better than 3 out of 10, it’s scary,” Fineman said.

David Chipman, a spokesman for Mayors Against Illegal Guns which lobbies for an expansion of background checks for people buying guns, said the PGF “is not your grandfather’s hunting rifle used for sport and recreation this is a weapon designed to kill with precision.”

“This technology potentially enables any two bit criminal to operate with the skills of a highly trained sniper,” Chipman said.

Josh Horwitz, executive director of  the Education Fund to Stop Gun Violence,  dismissed the significance of locking the software.

“This is an industry hell bent on making weapons more lethal and taking no measures to extend safety,” Horwitz said.  “If this type of technology is transferred into semi automatic and automatic weapons, it would make it even more lethal.”

The way the gun operates sounds like a video game. The visual scope on the PGF connects via WiFi the iOS app on an iPhone or iPad by way of ShotView. The feature shows a live video of the digital Heads Up Display (HUD) and video can also be recorded and shared online. Schauble said an Android app is on the way.

TrackingPoint is in the process of developing a dedicated, online community for TrackingPoint users to share videos and information with each other.

“There’s a young, digital generation that will want to hunt and shoot, so we’re not only developing a product for people that shoot today, but also the new digital generation,” said Schauble.

He  said the live streaming ShotView feature can be used to help instruct new shooters on the fly or to capture an impressive shooting range or hunting shot to show to others later.

“We’ve been surprised at how many older shooters and hunters embrace the product, too. This kind of tech helps them to still hunt for years or even take shots that may not be possible with traditional hardware,” he said.

The PGF rifles, TrackingPoint’s first product line, was introduced at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in January, but this week the company began fulfilling preorder requests with the first units shipping.

READ: State Department Orders 3D Gun Plans Offline

With this first run of PGF rifles, the CEO said TrackingPoint is  selling directly to customers.

Schauble said his company has signed a contract to provide technology to some less expensive, short range Remington firearms, and those products will be distributed through vendors, but the distribution of other runs of TrackingPoint product will be decided on a case by case basis.

But with TrackingPoint’s Precision Guided Firearms, Schauble said the main objectives are “trying to make existing, long-range shooters more capable.”

“Right now, we’re the most advanced tech company in outdoor shooting sports.”

                                                                                    (Image Credit: IshikawaLab/YouTube)

TOKYO – It’s not exactly the next big smartphone, but if you spend one too many hours searching for that misplaced iPhone, this could be even better.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo are developing a system that puts the mobile phone on the palm of your hand – literally. Using a special camera that combines high-speed vision and two rotational mirrors, Masatoshi Ishikawa and his team at the Ishikawa Oku Laboratory here say they’ve found a way to project a device’s display screen or keyboard onto the palm, or any other surface, so that you can operate it remotely in your home or office.

Ishikawa says the system can detect  the movement of a three-dimensional object every two milliseconds. Put simply, the high-speed vision allows the program to track moving objects, so users would be free to walk with the phone image in palm, without the display ever shifting.

That’s not all.

The computer system developed by Ishikawa beams ultrasonic wave emitters, so the user actually feels the keyboard pressing against their skin, without anything in their hand. The sensation is the equivalent to a 3-gram or 0.1- ounce object, he says.

“You won’t need a keyboard, you won’t need to carry a smartphone, or a computer,” Ishikawa says. “You can make a call without anything.”

The concept is similar to the one featured in the movie “Total Recall” last year. In the film, Colin Farrell’s character, Douglas Quaid, uses a phone embedded beneath the skin of his palm. The phone lights up, when a call comes in, allowing Quaid to answer by putting his hand to his ear.

Ishikawa says his system is far more advanced than anything featured in Hollywood, but he has yet to allow users to make actual calls from their palms. The researcher says he expects that to become reality in a year or two.

The palm phone is the latest in a string of systems Ishikawa has developed, using high-speed vision technology. Last year, he unveiled a robotic hand designed to win the game rock-paper-scissors 100 percent of the time. Processing 1,000 frames per second, the hand moved 33 times faster than humans, staying a step ahead of the opponent.

Prior to that, Ishikawa developed a mechanical finger that could dribble the ball faster than the human eye can see. Years ago, he created a batting robot capable of hitting any ball within the strike zone, every single time.

Ishikawa now hopes to perfect the projection phone, so users can dial from their palms, and view 3-D images. The phone is strictly for indoor use only, and he doesn’t expect the complete system to be on the market for at least 5 to 6 years.

Image credit: Bing.com

Looking for work? Well, just finding out this job exists is work.

Microsoft has posted a sort of secret job listing for a Bing software development engineer inside the code of their Bing.com search site, as found by The Register. The only way to stumble upon the link to the job posting is to visit Bing.com using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with debug mode enabled.

Once the page is loaded, a pop-up will ask, “Do you want to debug this webpage?”

READ: Microsoft Adds Google Chat Support to Outlook.com in Hopes of Winning Over Gmail Users

Inspecting the page with the Internet Explorer developer tools console will uncover a message –  ”Interested in creating Bing.com experiences? Apply today.” – and a link to the job listing on the Microsoft careers website.

Be warned, the requirements for the position are more than just employing the skills to find the hidden listing. Applicants are expected to have at least a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and experience with multithreaded programming in C# and/or C++ and other web coding languages.

If this sounds like you, have a go at finding the link and good luck.

Subaru

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has released new crash test results for 13 small sport utility vehicle models.

According to the institute, it was the first time that small SUVs — some of the most popular cars on the road these days — were tested for “small overlap protection in a test that represents a crash in which only the front corner of a vehicle strikes another vehicle, or a tree or pole.”

The institute said these kind of crashes — one of the most common and deadly on the road — accounted for nearly 24 percent of serious injuries and deaths in frontal crashes.

Only two models got high marks from the institute: the redesigned Subaru Forester, which aced the small overlap test, and the Mitsubishi Outlander, which earned an “acceptable” rating.

Here is the complete list, from best to worst.

2014 Subaru Forester

Mitsubishi Outlander Sport

BMW X1

Nissan Rogue

Mazda CX-5

Honda CR-V

Jeep Wrangler (2 door)

Volkswagen Tiguan

Hyundai Tucson

Kia Sportage

Buick Encore

Jeep Patriot

Ford Escape

Image credit: Apple

Brandon Ashmore from Mentor, Ohio, hit the app jackpot Tuesday afternoon when he pressed the download button on a word game app called Say the Same Thing and sent Apple over the 50 billion app download mark,  winning the $10,000 prize.

Earlier this month Apple announced that it was nearing 50 billion iPhone and iPad app downloads since the launch of the store in 2008, and that it would award the person who downloaded that milestone app with a $10,000 gift card for the App Store.

According to Apple, the 50 billion download number does not include redownloads of apps or updates.  Steve Jobs announced the launch of the App Store in the summer of 2008 with 500 apps. It now has more than 850,000 iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch apps, with more than 350,00 iPad specific apps. Earlier this month, Apple also celebrated the 10th anniversary of iTunes. 

RELATED: Apple’s Upcoming iOS 7 Said to Have New Look

But the store’s closest competitor, Google’s Android store, isn’t far behind. During its Google I/O conference two days ago, Google announced its very own milestone: 48 billion Android downloads from its Google Play Store. Google also announced a host of new features and services for app developers, including ways to build apps that take advantage of the phones’ sensors  and how to  translate apps into other languages. The company also announced new consumer products, including Google All Access Play Music service and its new Hangouts Messaging app.

Apple will hold its developer’s event on June 10. The company is expected to detail the next versions of its iOS operating system, which is said to be getting a major design overhaul.

Image credit: Google

During a three-hour keynote at its Google I/O conference, Google didn’t talk at all about Glass, its glasses that overlay digital information in the physical world.

However, the company did talk about some features that we have now learned will be coming to the digital glasses.

At the event, Google announced a number of changes coming to its Google Plus social network and a new messaging app called Hangouts. When asked how Google was planning to integrate more social functionality into Glass, Google’s senior vice president of engineering, Vic Gundotra, told ABC News, “Hangouts is the answer. Our focus is on face-to-face to face communications. The Hangout app we just showed is going to be available for Glass.”

SLIDESHOW: Photos from Google’s Big I/O Conference 

Gundotra and  Vice President of Engineering for Google Plus David Besbris said their team was working on the Glass app now. When asked by ABC News if there will be deeper social tools – for instance, the ability to look at a friend and see some more information about them – Gundotra and Besbris said, “Stay tuned.”

While they didn’t detail how the app would work, Google has said that Glass apps shouldn’t be distracting.

“Glass is a new category; it is quite different than existing computing devices,” Google CEO Larry Page said at the end of the Google I/O keynote today. “Our main goal is to get happy users using Glass. We want to make sure we are building experiences that make users happy.”

Earlier this month, Google began shipping the $1,500 Explorer Edition version of Glass to early adopters and software developers. Currently, you can see notifications from your Google Plus account on the small display on the glasses and share photos to your account. You can also host a video hangout or a video chat with friends. Using the camera, you can share what you see with friends and you can see them in the screen.

The Hangout app, which was announced today and is different from the video hangout feature, is available for Chrome, iOS and Android.

Google executives officially take the stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco today at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET, and ABC News will be liveblogging the entire event right here. Check back here for updates then.

Note: The updates in the CoverItLive module below will come through automatically when the event begins; no need to refresh the page. Just keep it locked here.

Image credit: Kimihiro Hoshino/AFP/Getty Images

SAN FRANCISCO — Google is gearing up for its annual Google I/O developers conference today, and like in years past it is set to announce a series of new software and hardware products.

During the three-hour long keynote, which is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. PT, the company is expected to talk about everything from its Android operating system to Google Maps to its Google Plus social network.

While Google has said that at this year’s conference it would focus more on the application developers and not the products, it appears the company still does have a set of new products up its sleeve. Technology website The Verge reports that the company will detail its new Spotify competitor. According to the report, the company has inked deals with three major music labels. Other reports indicate that Google will discuss a new gaming service called Google Play Games, which will allow users to play each other over the Internet.

RELATED: Android, Google Play Games and Other Things to Expect at Google’s Big Conference

At last year’s conference Google released the Nexus 7 tablet. According to 9to5Google, the company will update the $199 Android tablet today with a higher-resolution screen. It is also rumored to be ready to talk about the newest update to Android. While Google is working on the next major version of its mobile operating system, called Key Lime Pie, it is only expected to discuss smaller Android updates today. The company is also said to be planning to detail revisions to its Google Maps and Plus products.

ABC News will be on the ground at the Google event today, live blogging the entire three-hour long event. The updates will appear in the module below slightly before the event begins at 9 a.m. PT. You can also sign up for an e-mail reminder below. See you then!

Image credit: Google

Google has brought the arcade right to your image search window with its newest celebratory Easter egg game.

It’s the 37th birthday of the classic Atari game Breakout, and if you type “Atari Breakout” as a Google image search query, you can play the 1970s brick game right inside your browser.

The tiled image results shrink down to form the layers of bricks as the bouncing ball emerges from the bottom of the screen. You can use either the mouse or keyboard arrow keys to control the paddle.

Give it a few tries. When you rack up your best score, you can share it on your Google+ page  from right  inside the game.

READ: YouTube Adds a ‘VHS Mode’ for VCR’s 57th Birthday

There will be even more celebrating this week for Google as the Google I/O developer conference kicks off Wednesday  in San Francisco at 9 a.m.  local time. ABC News will be blogging live from the event as it happens.

In the meantime, you can also check out Google’s other interactive Easter egg at the Google I/O 2013 homepage. Punching in different binary combinations by clicking the giant “I” and “O” on the screen will unlock various  engaging pages – IIOIOOII is a Simon game, IIIOOIII is a two-button cat soundboard and IOOOOOOI is a Pong game.

OK, you all  should have enough to keep yourselves busy until Wednesday’s events begin.

Image credit: Gingrich Productions/YouTube

Newt Gingrich is “really puzzled.” No, not about whether he will run for office again — he’s got fairly clear answers to that — but about cell phones. Well, not about the devices themselves, he is more puzzled about what to call them now that the devices do much more than make a phone call.

The former House speaker and 2012 GOP presidential candidate took to the Gingrich Productions YouTube channel late last week to ask his viewers and fans what the modern-day cell phone should be called.

“Think about it. If it is taking pictures, it’s not a cell phone. If it has a McDonald’s app to tell you where McDonald’s is based on your GPS location — that’s not a cellphone. If you can get Wikipedia or go to Google — that’s not a cell phone. If you can watch YouTube — that’s not a cell phone. Or Netflix,” Gingrich says in the video as he holds up his iPhone. “This device is something new and different. I have been calling it a handheld computer.”

RELATED: Newt Gingrich: ‘I’ll take a Paul Ryan Position’ on the Possibility of a Political Run

However, Gingrich decides that that’s not the right word and that the term is misleading. “Its real power is not internal computation, its real power is networking,” he says.

Gingrich doesn’t refer to the term “smartphone” — the popular term for modern-day cell phones with touchscreens and app-based operating systems — in the video or post on the Gingrich Productions website. Commenters on the site and on the video have suggested that that the term “smartphone” is already the commonly agreed upon name.

When reached by ABC News, Woody Hales, Gingrich Productions Press Coordinator, said that Gingrich does not think the term “smartphone” fits either. “It’s not a smarter way to make phone calls,” Hales told ABC News. “The word still makes reference to a phone, but it’s not primarily a phone anymore,” he added.

Gingrich is no stranger to modern technology and has been a proponent of pushing forward innovations in health and manufacturing technology. “The development of 3D printing is revolutionary. The impact of regenerative medicine will be extraordinary. The potential of drones and robots is close to science fiction,” Gingrich wrote in an article on Human Events in March.

In the cell phone video he stressed the social, educational and economic impact of the should-be-named device. “What would you call this? So we can explain to people that they carry in their hand literally the potential to have a dramatic revolution in how we get things done, in how we take care of our own health, in how we interact with our government and in how we are productive.”

A Dutch scientist hopes he’ll change minds about the viability of test tube meat when his first genetically engineered hamburger, made from billions of stem cells, is served hot off the grill.

Mark Post, the head of physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, has spent years growing the synthetic hamburger from bovine stem cells, which his team turned into thin strips of muscle tissue before mincing them into a patty.

RELATED: Lab-Grown Meat: Food of the Future?

While the process has taken time and run up considerable expense — the project received $325,000 from an anonymous donor — Post told the New York Times he hoped the cost of cultured meat could come down in the future, making it a viable food source.

After conducting an informal tasting, Post  gave the synthetic tissue his seal of approval, telling the Times, it “tastes reasonably good” and that he planned to add just salt and pepper before serving it, perhaps at an event in London this summer.

Post told ABC News in 2011 that he expected meat consumption to double in the next 40 years.

“In my mind, meat consumption is here to stay, and if you want to do that at a higher efficiency than what is currently done by cows and pigs, you have to explore the possibility of doing that in the lab,” he said.

(Image Credit: Francois Lenoir/Reuters)

Image credit: Chris Hadfield/YouTube

On Sunday, the Canadian astronaut released a YouTube video of him performing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in space. In the video, which has been viewed over a half a million times in less than 24 hours, Hadfield hammed it up for the camera as he crooned about Major Tom, the intrepid, lonely and ultimately doomed space adventurer in the song. Hadfield stared wistfully out the window and strummed on an acoustic guitar aboard the space station.

Hadfield tweeted about the video on Sunday, May 12 at 5:00 p.m. EST. “With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here’s Space Oddity, recorded on Station. A last glimpse of the World,” Hadfield, who has been active on Twitter and YouTube while in outer space, tweeted out to his followers. The tweet, as of this writing, now has over 14,000 retweets.

The “Space Oddity” video even earned a response from Bowie himself, who tweeted out to Hadfield:

The music video isn’t the first humorous video the 53-year-old astronaut has shared while looking down at earth. On May 3, he tweeted a video of him having fun with a Quick-Don oxygen mask. In a separate video he sang a duet with Barenaked Ladies’ Ed Robertson.

In December, Commander Hadfield launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station. Luckily for him, he won’t suffer the fate of Major Tom, who was lost at space at the end of the song. Hadfield will head back to earth in a Russian Soyuz capsule on this evening and will land in Kazakhstan.

And with that we leave you with the video everyone is talking about.

Kirit Radia and Jean Fievet contributed to this report.

Viber

App Name: Viber

Price: Free

Available Platforms: Windows, Mac, IOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Nokia, and Bada

What does this app do?: With over 200 million users and a recent update to its mobile app including an overhaul to the Android interface, Viber has lot to offer these days. The app allows users to communicate with other Viber users via text message and voice calling.

For free.

The application, which requires a 3G or Wi-Fi network, functions ideally for travelers and those who want to avoid roaming charges. For instance, say you need to be in London for a business meeting, or you’re vacationing in Italy and want to make a call or send a message to a colleagues or a family member. Once you download the app, it scans your address book and displays those who also use the app in its contact list. From there, you can place a call or send a message for free. (If the person you want to reach doesn’t have the application, your mobile service provider will place the call).

Along with the most recent update to its mobile app, Viber also released a version for Windows and Mac desktops giving users the ability to integrate their contacts and transfer calls and messages between devices allowing you to effortlessly switch from your mobile phone to your desktop and back again.

For the moment, the company offers video messaging through the desktop application, too, but hasn’t yet released the feature for mobile devices.

Is it easy to setup: Yes. Download the app, and make sure you enable notifications. Once you provide your phone number, Viber will send you a pin number for you to enter and from there the app automatically syncs other Viber users in your contacts list. If you’re using the desktop application, you will need to download the app, too, in order to get started.

Should I try it?: Viber proves handy for those who want to save money, especially on international calls. A few years ago, Skype was the go-to free voice and message applications, and while that remains widely used, Viber has gained momentum; with an impressive list of supported languages,  platforms and devices as well as a  growing numbers of downloads, the app is soon to be ubiquitous.

Image credit: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Google’s YouTube is venturing into the world of paid subscription content with Thursday’s announcement of a pilot run of paid channels. Subscription prices start at $.99 monthly, but many offer a discounted yearly rate.

The program is launching with channels from National Geographic Kids, the Professional Golfer’s Association, Ultimate Fighting Championship and HDNet. Every channel currently offered has a 14-day trial period with monthly billing beginning immediately after.

Revenue for YouTube content creators have, up to this point, been ad based, but most of the paid channels in this initial offering are ad-free. Channels have subscription price and advertising information clearly posted by the “Subscribe” button, so users will know whether the channel will contain ads before signing up.

“YouTube’s decision to allow channel operators to charge monthly subscriptions gives YouTube a huge competitive advantage over Netflix and Hulu when it come to new episodic programming,” TJ Walker, a media analyst and producer/host of  YouTube news channel T. J. Walker News and Comment, told ABC News. “This could be the beginning of the end for traditional cable TV companies as well.”

Walker said he won’t be charging for his channel anytime soon, but certainly understands the desire for some YouTubers to create a sustainable business model by way of paid subscription offerings.

“If producers can reach viewers and charge them subscriptions directly through YouTube, it means a brave new world where middlemen like Netflix and Hulu get squeezed out and become as irrelevant as AOL dial-up service,” said Walker.

READ: Warner Brothers Copycatted YouTube Images, Suit Claims

The Google TV platform, sold in the form of set-top boxes and televisions from companies like Sony and Vizio, features a dedicated YouTube app that supports the new paid channels.

A spokesperson for YouTube told ABC News, “Currently you can watch paid channels on many recent TVs running the new YouTube TV app, Xbox and Boxee devices.” The Apple TV is not yet supported, but the YouTube representative said, adding: “We’re working to expand this to more devices, as well as giving you the ability to subscribe to paid channels from these devices.”

Walker does believe, however, the ability to easily stream this YouTube content on the big screen means huge things moving forward.

“Younger people simply think in terms of video they want to watch when and wherever they want to watch it. And thanks to devices like Apple TV and iPhones that turn into great remote controls, the traditional TV set is now just another extension from the cell phone screen and the iPad screen.”

Watch Walker’s video on paid YouTube channels below:

Image credit: Meetearl.com

Jon Perry says his inspiration behind making a tough, reliable and rugged expedition gadget came from his long-time outdoorsy companion – his dog Earl. Now the world’s first backcountry survival tablet, also named Earl, is in development and asking for some crowdsourcing support.

Through June 9, you can be a project backer and reserve your own unit for just $249, 30 percent below the expected retail cost. Unit production is on track to begin in July, according to a post on the project website.

Earl is solar-powered, features a 6″ flexible Amazon Kindle-looking E-ink touch screen and is water/dust/shock/mud-proof. The tablet runs a version of Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) and keeps you connected while braving the wild with GPS onboard, FRS, GMRS and MURS two-way radio connectivity for up to 20 miles, and a built in AM/FM/SW/LW radio tuner.

The device can reach full charge on five hours of sunlight and that’s enough power for 20 hours of operation. Other mountain man features are “glove friendly” touch, gyroscope motion controls and the ability to measure temperature, humidity and barometric pressure.

READ: Barnes & Noble Nook HD and Nook HD+ Get Google Play Store, Become Real Android Tablets

The project site says Earl is compatible with thousands of already available Android apps and the device also supports EPUB, MOBI and PDF e-reader formats.

Earl should be in backers’ hands “by the end of the Summer.” For the time being, Perry and his developers are offering these Vine clips to display the development progress:

Image credit: Nokia

Nokia says it’s aiming to make “high-end design and quality accessible to more people” with the launch of the Asha 501 and its software platform. The unsubsidized cost of the Asha 501 will be $99, but the phone is not lacking in valuable features.

Appearing as a smaller variant of the Lumia Windows Phone series, the Asha 501 comes in a variety of colors (red, blue, black, yellow, white and green) and the hardware packs a 3″ multi-touch screen, Wifi and Bluetooth connectivity, a 3.2 Mega Pixel camera and a MicroSD memory option, expandable up to 32 GB.

The 1200 mAh battery on the palm-sized device enables 17 hours of talk time, 56 hours of music playback and 48 days of standby time on 2G networks, according to Nokia.

Though the Asha 501 doesn’t support 3G or 4G data speeds, the phone comes packaged with the new Nokia Xpress Browser. Xpress Browser compresses Internet data by “up to 90 percent,” according to Nokia, making mobile browsing a real possibility in emerging markets and offering lower cost data options to all users.

Nokia’s new Asha mobile operating system has already attracted app developers from some of the most popular content creators for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, including CNN, ESPN, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, The Weather Channel, Twitter, Electronic Arts and Gameloft.

READ: Nokia Lumia 820 and 920: Wireless Charging, High Hopes

Nokia has teamed up with wireless carrier Airtel and Facebook to provide Asha 501 users on Airtel neworks in Africa and India with free data access via the Asha Facebook app and all mobile Facebook web pages.

“The collaboration with Nokia is in line with our strategy of enabling people to access data in Africa as we seek to bridge the digital divide across the continent,” Andre Beyers, Chief Marketing Officer for Airtel Africa, said in statement about the partnership. “The provision of free Facebook access is an excellent proposition to the millions of Airtel consumers.”

The Nokia Asha 501 will be available to purchase in Asia Pacific, India, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Europe starting June 2013, a spokesperson for Nokia told ABC News. Individual country announcements will be made at a later time.

Less than 48 hours after kidnapping victims Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michele Knight were freed from the home of Ariel Castro, a campaign is running to help support the women and organizations that will assist them.

Speaking in front of the home of Gina DeJesus this afternoon, Cleveland City Councilman Matt Zone announced the Cleveland Courage Fund, an initiative that will see 100 percent of proceeds going to the three women.

Amanda Berry, center, with her 6-year-old daughter, embraces older sister Beth Serrano after being reunited in a Cleveland hospital, May 6, 2013. (Family Handout courtesy WOIO-TV/AFP/Newscom)

Zone announced that the page for the fund was already up on Facebook.

Cleveland’s City Council Twitter page confirmed the same:

Cleveland Courage Fund info facebook.com/ClevelandCoura…

— CleCityCouncil (@CleCityCouncil) May 8, 2013

The Facebook page has been a bit buried beneath other tidbits of news so far today, only gaining around 100 “likes” at the time of this writing. It offers several ways to donate to the rescued women, accepting funds through the Cleveland Foundation at clevelandfoundation.org or by mailing Cleveland Courage Fund, care of the Cleveland Foundation, 1422 Euclid Ave. Suite 1300, Cleveland, Ohio. 44122.

(Image Credit: Paul Caffrey/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

A 70-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton that was illegally smuggled into the United States was returned today to the Mongolian government, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs officials.

The tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton, which is 24 feet long and eight feet tall, will be flown free of charge from New York City to Mongolia by Korean Air,  U.S. officials said.

The  nearly complete skeleton is believed to have been smuggled out of the country between 2005 and 2012 by Eric Prokopi, 38,  a self-described “commercial paleontologist.”

(Image Credit: Paul Caffrey/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

The artifact was seized by federal agents after it was sold at a Manhattan auction last year for $1.05 million.

Prokopi pleaded guilty in December to illegally importing the fossilized remains of several dinosaurs, according to ICE.

“We cannot allow the greed of a few looters and schemers to trump the cultural interests of an entire nation,” ICE director John Morton said in a statement. “We undo a great wrong by returning this priceless dinosaur skeleton to the people of Mongolia.”

The tyrannosaurus bataar was a carnivorous dinosaur native to Mongolia that lived during the late Cretaceous period, approximately 70 million years ago.

According to Mongolian law, any dinosaur fossils found in the country belong to the government and its people.

Credit: whitemenwearingglass.tumblr.com

Take a look at the marketing videos for Google’s Glass and you’ll notice a diverse group of people are wearing the digital glasses. But a new website has popped up that highlights that the first group of people wearing them might not exactly be so heterogeneous.

A new Tumblr website, White Men Wearing Google Glass, features a number of pictures of, yes, white men wearing the glasses. “In its favour, if Google Glass didn’t exist, all these Silicon Valley guys would be having affairs or buying unsuitable motorbikes,” the tagline of the blog reads.

The site, which is run by an anonymous author, has been shared thousands of times in the last few days on Twitter.

When reached by ABC News, Google would not comment on the ratio of male to female Google Glass explorers, which is the group of people who applied to test the first round of the product.

Google has begun testing an Explorer Edition of the glasses, which overlay digital information in the world, in the last few weeks with select application developers and early adopters. Yes, one of the men even tested them in the shower.

RELATED: Google Glass: What It Can and Can’t Do 

“Glass is designed by and for people from all walks of life and we hope everyone will have a chance to enjoy it down the road. Our next step is to make Glass available to participants of our #ifihadglass initiative, which was designed to bring a diverse group of people into the Explorer program,” Google said in a statement.

The #ifihadglass initiative opened up Glass availability to the public. The current wave of glasses are being given to those who signed up at the Google I/O developer conference last year when the glasses were first previewed. However, the #ifihadglass contest, which was launched this year, allowed anyone to submit their ideas of what they would do with the glasses.

But while Google might not be firing back at the Tumblr, another group is – women. In response to the original site, a new Tumblr called Women with Glass has popped up. The site was started by Christina Warren, a senior writer at Mashable.com, and a few other female technology journalists who have been testing Glass.

“I thought, ‘Why do we not have a women-with-Glass Tumblr? We aren’t unicorns!’” Warren told ABC News.

Warren admitted there are “considerably less women” Explorers, mostly because there are fewer female software developers.

“Most of the first females to have this are journalists,” Warren said. “Other than those at Google proper, there doesn’t seem to be that many female developers who have the Explorer Edition.

The underrepresentation of women in the tech world, especially the world of software developers and coders, is, of course, nothing new — though there has been a great effort to change that. Groups like Girls Who Code and Change the Ratio have formed with the goals of recruiting and supporting more females in the technology world. In fact, Google will be holding a women in technology gathering at its upcoming Google I/O conference.

“When you are talking about developers, you are looking at a more lopsided gender ratio,” Rachel Sklar, the founder of Change the Ratio, told ABC News. “It highlights what we already know is an issue, which is that we have a very homogenous class of people with access to next-gen technology.”

But while it might not be the norm, there are some female software developers out there not only wearing Glass but making apps for it. Macy Kuang, 25, ordered her pair last year at Google I/O and received them last week.

“I started working on a bike-sharing app last night. I want to be able to use them to find where a nearby bike station is,” Kuang told ABC News.  ”I don’t have any plans to make other apps, but there are a lot of possibilities.”

Image credit: Apple

Apple’s is celebrating its approach of the 50 billion App Store download milestone with a big bucks contest.

Be the lucky user to download the 50 billionth app and Apple will send you an App Store gift card worth $10,000. The very next 50 app downloaders after number 50 billion will each get a $500 App Store gift card.

Before you Apple users go app download crazy, know that the contest will only register 25 entrants per account per day. To be eligible, users must also be at least 13 years old.

READ: iTunes Celebrates a Decade, Faces New Challenges

Now the big question is: how would you spend a $10,000 App Store gift card?

There’s obviously plenty of music, movie, and book content to sift through, but if you need app suggestions, Business Insider put together a list of some of the most expensive apps available for iPhone and iPad.

There’s BarMax CA, priced at $999 and created by a group of Harvard alumni as a study app for law students preparing for the California bar exam. Or maybe DDS GP Yes!, the graphic presentation app for dentists to educate their patients on dental procedures, for $499.

The Internet can’t get enough Cats, everyone knows that. But copyright holders of some popular online cat images claim media giant Warner Brothers swiped their cat images then refused entreaties to pay for them.

Warner Brothers has been slapped with a copyright infringement suit for their “unauthorized use” of two  popular YouTube cat characters.

The suit is “Nyan Cat” and “Keyboard Cat” vs. Warner Brothers and 5th Cell Media, the makers of WB’s Scribblenauts puzzle action video game series. The claims is that the games released for Nintendo and PC platforms have, without consent, featured the likeness of Orlando Torres’ “Nyan Cat,” a flying cartoon cat with a Pop-Tart body and rainbow trail, and Charles Schmidt’s “Keyboard Cat” video, which shows his cat, Patso, propped up on a keyboard made to look like he’s playing a song.

“When Chris Torres, the creator of the Nyan Cat meme, found out that Warner Bros. put his character in its newest Scribblenauts game, “Scribblenauts Unlimited,” without his permission, he says he  tried to negotiate with the entertainment conglomerate.

“Warner Bros. called him a nuisance,” Stephen D. Rothschild, attorney for Torres and Schmidt, told ABC News. ”Warner Bros. did the same thing with Charles Schmidt’s creation, the Keyboard Cat meme—put the character in “Scribblenauts Unlimited” and earlier Scribblenauts games without permission.”

"Nyan Cat" (Image credit: Chris Torres/LOL-Comics)

Professor Shyam Balganesh with the University of Pennsylvania Law School told ABC News that he sees this suit as an interesting case of role reversals.

“When the public thinks of copyright today, it’s often big corporations as plaintiffs going after individual copiers and users,” said Balganesh. “This is an instance of that being reversed. Copyright’s excessive litigation costs have been a major deterrent for smaller plaintiffs.

“This is a welcome instance of individual plaintiffs willing to take that chance and go after a big corporation that used their works.”

Balganesh also said that he thinks Torres and Schmidt do have a “good case.”

"Keyboard Cat" (Image credit: Charlie Schmidt/YouTube)

“Looking at the two designs, I would say that the Nyan Cat clearly implicates both the reproduction right and derivative works right in equal measure,” he said. “The Keyboard Cat, however, was converted from video to cartoon, and likely implicates the derivative works right more than it does the reproduction right. I think the plaintiffs do nonetheless have a good case for the Keyboard Cat as well.”

The attorney for the plaintiffs said that this could have all been avoided had the game makers just gone about using these cat characters in the way other brands and media companies have. Rothschild told ABC News that both “Nyan Cat” and “Keyboard Cat” have been used with permission to market brands like Vitamin Water, Nike, Old Spice, Sprint, Starburst Candy, and Google.

A spokesperson for Warner Brothers told ABC News that the company has no comment on this legal case.

"Scribblenauts Unlimited" (Image credit: 5th Cell)

Credit: Acer

Ever since Windows 8 was announced last year a slew of crazy-looking computers have been introduced. Take Lenovo’s IdeaPad Yoga laptop, which has a screen that rotates all the way around to turn into a tablet. Or Asus’ Taichi with its two screens, which allow you to use the device as a laptop and then close the lid to make it a tablet.

But Acer has just upped the ante in the funky Windows 8 computer game. Today, at an event in New York City, the company introduced the Aspire R7,  a full-fledged 15.6-inch laptop with a “floating” screen. The screen hinge allows the touchscreen to be propped up and then angled, like a desktop monitor or all-in-one computer. You can then even flip the touchscreen around, so if a person is sitting across the table they can see it. The idea, Acer says, is that all the touchscreen Windows 8 laptops are awkward to use — you have to reach out over the keyboard and trackpad. This brings the screen closer to you.

Speaking of the keyboard and trackpad, Acer decided that putting the trackpad below the keyboard was just a bit too traditional. On the R7 it put the trackpad above of the keyboard so that when the screen is folded down you can still use the keyboard.

RELATED: Five Reasons PC Sales Have Taken a Nose Dive

Acer will begin selling the R7 on May 17 for $1,000. Best Buy will carry a special “Star Trek Into Darkness” version, which will come with a free download of the “Star Trek: The Video Game.” The laptop comes standard with a 15.6-inch 1920 x 1080-resolution screen, a Core i5 processor, 6GB of RAM, and a combo 500 GB hard drive with a 24 GB solid-state drive.

Last month it was reported that the PC market has seen the steepest decline in its history. Research firm IDC’s data showed that shipments of PCs plunged 14 percent in the first quarter of this year. That’s the sharpest decline in sales of personal computers since the firm started tracking the industry in 1994. Technology experts and pundits have hypothesized about the causes of the ailing personal computer market. IDC, specifically, cited Windows 8, Microsoft’s new computer and tablet operating system, as one of the main reasons people turned away from buying computers.

“While some consumers appreciate the new form factors and touch capabilities of Windows 8, the radical changes to the UI, removal of the familiar Start button, and the costs associated with touch have made PCs a less-attractive alternative to dedicated tablets and other competitive devices,” Bob O’Donnell, IDC Program Vice President, said in a statement last month.  

Acer, however, doesn’t seem to be too worried about that. In addition to the Aspire R7, it released the Aspire P3, an “ultrabook convertible,” or a Windows 8 tablet with a detachable keyboard dock.  It is available now, starting at $799.99.