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Samsung is making some bold choices with its new HDTVs. The company's upcoming, high-end LED-backlit and plasma HDTVs, the 8000 series, forego the traditional universal remote control entirely.

Instead, the new screens use a combination of camera, microphones, and touchpad to provide a control scheme that seems more like a cross between Microsoft Kinect and Back to the Future than normal home theaters. I played with the new interface system on Tuesday, at a Samsung press event.

The 8000 series HDTVs include Samsung's new Smart Touch Remote, a touchpad-based remote control with only a few purposeful buttons around a device that's primarily gesture- and voice-based. There are only 12 physical buttons on it, and no number pad or playback buttons at all. Instead, the touch pad in the middle nagivates the on-screen menu while most buttons bring up features like an on-screen number pad, the Media Hub menu, and a voice control prompt.

Voice control is the second part of the 8000 series' interface. By speaking either into the remote while holding the voice button or speaking directly to the screen, users can bring up menus, input commands, and even search on Google. The HDTVs come to life just by saying "Hi TV,"; after that, switching between sources and accessing different online services is a matter of a few words. Voice recognition understands words when using commands, and can convert speech to text when inputting text into the Webkit-based Web browser.

If touchpad input and voice control aren't enough, the 8000 series HDTVs also support Kinect-like gesture control. A small camera on the top edge of the bezel watches your movements and, with a shake of your hand, activates a motion-controlled, on-screen pointer for navigating menus and browsing the Web. That's not the only trick for the camera, though. It also incorporates face recognition, so it can automatically log on to social networks and show favorite services based on the user as soon as they sit down. With multiple users, a menu of all recognized faces show up, with logins for each.

To integrate the controls with a Blu-ray player or set-top box, the 8000 series include an IR blaster. The voice and gesture commands also sent commands to the cable box on display, changing channels when I told the HDTV to do so. These integration features will make switching away from a conventional remote much easier, and made the combination voice and gesture control system seem even more feasible. If you want a more conventional control system, an optional $99 Bluetooth keyboard will be available. The keyboard will also be compatible with all Samsung Galaxy Tab devices.

After playing with the controls, I'm optimistic about the change. While voice and gesture recognition wasn't completely accurate because of the noise and crowd of the venue, the basics were definitely there and the different features, in a quieter and more controlled setting, could be easy to control. We'll have a full review of the 8000 series HDTVs' control systems when we get a screen in the PCMag Labs in the near future.

The UNES8000 HDTVs, the LED-lit versions of the high-end screens, will range from $2,999 for a 46-inch model to $5,099 for a 65-inch model. The PNE8000 plasma HDTVs will range from $2,199 for a 51-inch to $3,949 for a 65-inch model. Both screens are scheduled to ship this month. The controls will also be available in the step-down UNES7500 LED-lit HDTVs, which range from $2,599 for a 46-inch model to $3,999 for a 60inch model. A 75-inch version of the UNES8000 is also planned, but pricing and availability has not yet been announced.

Samsung is staying with conventional remotes for its lower-end HDTVs, including its EH series of budget LED HDTVs, which from the 5300 series and up include built-in Wi-Fi. 32-inch EH5300 HDTVs will be available for just $579 and 50-inch models for just $1,199.

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Samsung's New HDTVs Destroy the Remote Control

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Israeli President Shimon Peres on Tuesday visited Facebook's California headquarters, where he blasted the Iranian government and said the social networking site is a way for people to bypass failed efforts of governments to seek peace.

The 88-year-old leader was scheduled to meet with the company's chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, and launch his official personal page on the site aimed at creating a dialogue with Arabs who live in countries that do not have diplomatic ties with Israel.

In an interview with Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg streamed live on the company's website, Peres repeatedly praised Facebook as a tool for positive social change by enabling citizens of different countries to connect.

"The matter of peace is no longer the business of governments but the business of people," Peres said. "Today the people are governing the governments. And when they begin to talk to each other, they are surprised: We should be friends."

In response to a question from Sandberg about Iran's nuclear program, Peres said he had nothing against the Iranian people. At the same time, he condemned the Iranian government as a seat of "moral corruption."

"They want to have nuclear weapon. The combination of viciousness and nuclear weapons is a real catastrophe, a real danger," he said.

Iran denies it is seeking a weapon and insists its nuclear program is for energy production and other peaceful purposes.

Peres' comments came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Barack Obama this week. The two remain at odds over the possibility of an Israeli military strike against Iran. Obama called for more time to let diplomacy work, while Netanyahu refused to rule out an attack in the near future.

In Israel, the presidency is an elected office but serves a mostly ceremonial role. The prime minister acts as the country's primary leader. Peres served as prime minister twice, once in the 1980s and once in the 1990s.

Peres' Facebook visit was part of a four-day swing through Silicon Valley to promote Israel's tech industry. Touring the region's marquee tech companies has become a rite of passage for politicians and celebrities passing through Northern California.

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Peres: Social media helps with peace process

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Social email provider harmon.ie today announced it is helping Microsoft Outlook users embrace social networking by making IBM Connections available through a social sidebar in the users email inbox. The resulting cross-platform product will aggregate IBM Connections social objects, Microsoft SharePoint documents, presence awareness and unified communications into a single email window to streamline user access to social business tools.

This project leverages harmon.ies social aggregation technology to enable users to access multiple social and collaborative activity streams without leaving the email interface where they spend a large portion of their workday. harmon.ies ability to enable typical business users to adopt new collaboration tools without changing their daily work habits has helped enterprises worldwide increase end user adoption of collaboration platforms from an average of 20 percent to as high as 80 percent in just a few months time.

Just because a company chooses to use another email platform does not mean they should miss out on becoming a social business, said Jeffrey Schick, Vice President of Social Software, IBM. Social-enabling email is the first step to connecting people with people, and people with information, in the context of a business users daily work habits.

A recent uSamp survey validates the choice of email as the hub for multiple computing activities. In the survey, 78% of respondents reported a greater willingness to use collaboration and social business tools if they are accessible in the familiar email work environment. Nearly nine out of 10 users indicated that they publish documents and/or emails on a collaboration platform when they can do so from within email, a 75% increase over those without an integrated email option.

Enterprises are eager to accelerate the adoption of social platforms. The most successful adoption strategy is an evolutionary one that exploits the ubiquitous use of email to incorporate collaboration and social tools into the business users current workflow rather than attempting to change the way people work , said Yaacov Cohen, co-founder and CEO at harmon.ie. This collaboration with IBM advances that strategy by providing a cross-platform solution that combines access to the Connections social experience and SharePoint document collaboration in the same email window.

The new cross-platform product will be available later this year.

About harmon.ie

harmon.ie (pronounced 'harmony') is a provider of software solutions that advance social business by aggregating document collaboration, enterprise social networking, unified communications and other social tools into the email client and other locations where users already spend their workday, saving time and eliminating point solutions that that complicate usability. Thousands of businesses already use harmon.ie to vastly increase user adoption of applications such as Microsoft SharePoint and Google Docs for social and collaboration functions. For more information, visit http://www.harmon.ie/.

All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

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harmon.ie to Make Outlook Social with IBM Connections

05-03-2012 13:03 Create Your First WordPress Site http://www.thesisvideotutorials.com In this video we will configure WordPress so that visitors to our site are not shown the subfolder that we have used to install our WordPress site.

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Create Your First WordPress Site - WordPress Installation Pt 3 - Video

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LOS ANGELES Kim Novak is clarifying why she used the word "rape" to describe how she felt about The Artist.

The 79-year-old Vertigo actress, who will be honored next month at the TCM Classic Film Festival, said during a phone interview Monday that hearing the score from the Alfred Hitchcock film used in the recent Oscar-winning homage to the silent-film era reminded her of the same feelings she experienced when she was raped as a child.

"It was very painful," said Novak. "When I said it was like a rape, that was how it felt to me. I had experienced in my youth being raped, and so I identified with a real act that had been done to me. I didn't use that word lightly. I had been raped as a child. It was a rape I never told about, so when I experienced this one, I felt the need to express it."

Novak, who played the dual role of both a suicidal trophy wife and a morose working girl opposite Jimmy Stewart in the 1958 thriller, said in a statement released in January by her manager that she "wanted to report a rape" and that the filmmakers of The Artist had no reason "to depend on Bernard Herrmann's score from Vertigo to provide more drama."

Novak's comments drew criticism from rape crisis groups, who noted that plagiarism was not the same as a sexual assault. Other actors have similarly been chastised for misusing the word "rape." Johnny Depp and Twilight star Kristen Stewart both issued apologies after they compared having their photos taken to being raped in respective interviews.

OPINION: Why Kim Novak Is Wrong About 'The Artist'

"I never reported my real rape, so I felt the need to report this one," said Novak, who left Hollywood in the 1970s for Big Sur, an isolated section of California coastline, before eventually relocating to Oregon. "I felt that someone needed to speak up because the music has been taken advantage of too much. I hope that in the future, maybe somehow it will do some good."

Michel Hazanavicius, the writer-director of The Artist, which won five Academy Awards last month, including best picture and original score, responded to Novak in January, noting that the film was "a love letter to cinema" and that he loves "Bernard Herrmann, and his music has been used in many different films, and I'm very pleased to have it in mine."

Novak said that the motion picture academy sent her a letter disapproving of her making the statement while The Artist was in Oscar contention. She acknowledged that after getting "over the shock" that the Vertigo love theme was used in The Artist, she actually enjoyed the film and thought it deserved its Oscar glory except for the best original score trophy.

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Kim Novak Clarifies 'Rape' Comments on 'The Artist's' Use of 'Vertigo' Music