TOKYO - An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 struck off Japan's Hokkaido island late on Saturday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported.
The quake hit at a depth of 103 kilometres (64 miles) at 23:17pm (1417 GMT), about 109 kilometres west of Kushiro, Hokkaido, the USGS said.
A side-by-side test of Apple and Samsung ads.
WALTHAM, Mass.--The makers of Wheat Thins cereal may have a hit Super Bowl commercial on their hands.
I believe this because I watched the ad on my computer while another computer watched me watching it over the Internet. The ad combined a box of Wheat Thins, night vision goggles, fear of Bigfoot when there should have been fear of the Yeti, and a thieving neighbor. It seems my "emotional valence" score -- which can be roughly translated to mean my overall emotional reaction -- while watching all this was unusually high, at least once the Yeti and the the thieving neighbor made their appearance.
I had no idea a Yeti and Wheat Thins were a powerful combination, but after running the ad through a Web demonstration by the 3-year-old company Affectiva, I'm forced to conclude that's the case.>
Welcome to the future of advertising, where the wisdom of spending a reported $4 million for a 30-second spot in the Super Bowl doesn't have to be left to the imagination of an ad agency's creative team and the honesty of focus groups.
When you turn on the the Super Bowl tomorrow and watch that game within the game -- no, not Beyonce's performance, I mean the ads -- there's a good chance that at least several of those pieces have been tested using Affectiva's tools, which are being used by both Coca-Cola and Unilever, which owns brands ranging from Dove soap to Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Using a Web camera and with a user's permission (usually commissioned by an ad agency or research firm), Affectiva monitors a person's expressions while watching an ad.
Affectiva provides a topline measurement on a scale from 1 to 10 on something the company calls an Affdex score. That's a combination of involvement, a "feel good" index, and a "minus metric." Behind that, reaction over the length of the ad is monitored and charted. When did someone smile during the ad? When did they frown? When did they drift? It's all tracked and produced on tables.
There's deep science behind that report. Affectiva was founded in 2009 and is based on technology created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. The technology was originally intended to work with people who have autism. Because people with autism may have difficulty displaying emotional reactions, co-founders Rana el Kaliouby and Rosalind Picard created a mathematical model for monitoring hard-to-perceive changes in their expressions.
"I personally think it could be a standard for advertising," said Stephanie Tilenius, an executive-in-residence at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. Kleiner was part of a $12 million Series C funding round announced in August. The company was also a big attention-grabber at last month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
If you have a Webcam on your computer, you can run through the Affectiva demonstration yourself right here. You can also test a goat-related ad from Doritos (really, it kind of works), a Hyundai ad with a "don't tell mom" theme, and an already somewhat controversial ad from Volkswagen in which lots of people whom you wouldn't expect to have Jamaican accents sound a lot like Jimmy Cliff.
The first, most viable application for the Affectiva technology was in advertising, of course. But it could one day find its way into everything from medical devices to smartphones. Imagine, for example, if your phone could sense by your expression, pulse, and tone of voice how urgently you need an app or to make a phone call?
Affectiva made a splash after last year's Super Bowl with a public analysis of many of the ads shown during the Giants-Patriots nail-biter. Perhaps their most interesting conclusion was that the follow-up ad to 2011's hit "Vader kid" ad from Volkswagen did not test well among 400 participants. The ad involved a dog trying to lose weight and finally chasing a new, red Volkswagen. But when the ad transitions to a scene from Star Wars' cantina scene (a nod to the Vader kid), interest fell off the map and didn't recover.
An explanation of Affectiva's score.
Most likely, the ad testing technology will be used in addition to traditional ad testing, rather than replacing focus groups, said Graham Page, an executive at the market research firm Millward Brown. Last year, Millward Brown tested over 400 ads using the Affectiva technology and should use it for more than "several thousand" ads around the world this year.
A tour of Affectiva's technology is a bit of a tour of your own instincts. In seconds, you can see quantified what you already suspected about an ad. In a face-to-face test of Apple and Samsung pieces, for example, neither ad exactly floated my boat. (You can see my overly stern expression while watching them in the screenshot above this article.)
So what else did I learn about my advertising tastes? It appears I really hate commercials in which grown men act like children but I am a hopeless sucker for ads with real children. I've always sort of known this. But thanks to a demonstration of facial-tracking technology here at the offices of a young company called Affectiva I can say, with certainty, that, yes, Verizon, I was seriously annoyed by that dopey ad with the dopey guys playing basketball. But the kids in the AT&T ad? Adorable.
"Your negative reaction to that," said Avril England, vice president of product management and marketing at Affectiva, "was about as negative as it can get."
(CBS News) After four years as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was officially replaced by Sen. John Kerry Friday. An improbable pick after a tough primary battle with Barack Obama back in 2008, Clinton has used her celebrity status around the world to make changes both at home and abroad.
John Kerry sworn in as secretary of state
In a heartfelt goodbye to thousands of State Department employees Friday, Clinton said, "I am proud to have been secretary of state. I leave this department confident, confident about the direction we have set."
Friends and colleagues say there's a side to Clinton many people don't know. CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan talked to those people about Clinton and the legacy she's leaving behind.
She's not a typical Secretary of State saying goodbye. Anne Marie Slaughter, a former Clinton adviser said, "The first trip I took with her was like traveling with Madonna."
At times, Clinton's celebrity has overshadowed her diplomacy. But Slaughter said it shouldn't. "She elevated the roll of development. She's elevated social media, all sorts of new ways to reach people, ways of engaging youth, women, entrepreneurs."
Those tools are what Clinton calls "smart power" - finding ways to connect with people so that they then are able to influence their governments. She's said her extensive travel to 112 countries helped to build goodwill.
Others dismiss it as a vanity project. Critics also complain that she did not craft a clear policy to stop the war in Syria and point to security failures at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
However, longtime aide Philippe Reines disagrees. "For the last four years she has been, you know, working, literally killing herself for her country," he said.
He said her outreach made it possible to levy sanctions on Iran, North Korea, and to broker the November cease fire in Gaza. Reines has been aboard Clinton's plane for nearly every one of the almost one million miles she flew as secretary of state.
He told CBS News that most people don't know that how normal Clinton is. "I mean, she likes and dislikes a lot of the same things that you and I don't like or do like," he said.
He also said that she's not caught up on her future. "She does not sit around and do that as much as people think she does. It's more sitting around thinking, I saw 'Argo' and that's a great movie, did you see 'Argo?'"
Clinton is reluctant to make any decision yet about running for president in 2016. At a global town hall for students at the Newseum in Washington, Clinton talked about a bid for the presidency.
"I am not thinking about anything like that right now. I am looking forward to finishing up my tenure as secretary of state and then catching up on about 20 years of sleep deprivation," she said.
But few believe she'll stop working, and if you want to know what she'll do, aides say, look at what she's done.
A brother and sister who escaped the school bus where a 5-year-old autistic boy was taken hostage by a retired Alabama trucker are speaking out about the standoff and the man who threatened the lives of the children on board.
"I look up and he's talking about threatening to kill us all or something," 14-year-old Terrica Singletary told ABC's "Good Morning America." "He's like, 'I'll kill all y'all, I'll kill y'all, I just want two kids.'"
Singletary and her brother, Tristian, 12, said Jimmy Lee Dykes boarded the bus on Tuesday and offered the driver what appeared to be broccoli and a note, before demanding two children.
"The bus driver kept saying, 'Just please get off the bus,' and [Dykes] said, 'Ah alright, I'll get off the bus," said Terrica Singletary, "He just tried to back up and reverse and [Dykes] pulled out the gun and he just shot him, and he just took Ethan."
PHOTOS: Worst Hostage Situations
School bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, was fatally shot several times by Dykes.
The siblings and the rest of the students on board were able to get away unharmed, but were shocked by what had transpired just five days ago.
"I never thought I would have to go through a shootout," Singletary said.
They said they had seen Dykes, 65, working on his fence, and described him as a menacing figure.
"He was very protective of his stuff," Tristian Singletary said. "Whenever he stares at you, he looks kinda crazy."
Dykes has been holed up in his underground bunker with his 5-year-old hostage named Ethan near Midland City, Ala. for five days now. Neighbors told ABCNews.com that Dykes has been known to retreat underground for up to eight days.
READ: Alabama Hostage Suspect Jimmy Dykes 'Has No Regard for Human Life'
While Dykes, who was described as having "no regard for human life," has allowed negotiators to send Ethan's medicine, as well as coloring books, into the bunker for the boy through a ventilation pipe that leads into the 6 by 8 foot subterranean hideout 4 feet underground, authorities are staying quiet about their conversations with Dykes.
While negotiations continue and it was reported that Ethan is physically unharmed, an official told the Associated Press that the boy has been crying for his parents.
Meanwhile, his peers are steadfast that he will return home soon.
"Ethan will make it out there, Ethan will make it out there," said Tristian Singletary.
ABC News' Kevin Dolak and Gio Benitez contributed to this report.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish leftist group DHKP-C claimed responsibility on Saturday for a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Ankara, according to a statement on a website close to the group.
"Our warrior Alisan Sanli carried out an act of self-sacrifice on Feb 1, 2013, by entering the Ankara embassy of the United States, murderer of the peoples of the world," the statement on "The People's Cry" website said.
The statement was posted next to what it said was a picture of the bomber, dressed in a black beret and military-style clothes with what appeared to be an explosives belt strapped around his waist.
The attacker detonated explosives strapped to his body, as well as a hand grenade, inside an embassy gatehouse, killing himself and a Turkish security guard and critically wounding a journalist on her way to visit the ambassador.
(Reporting by Seltem Iyigun; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
LONDON: Force India unveiled their new car for the forthcoming Formula One season at Silverstone on Friday, but they are still to confirm the identity of British driver Paul di Resta's teammate.
The vacancy next to Di Resta is one of only three across the grid for the 2013 season, which begins with the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on March 17.
French driver Jules Bianchi, the team's third driver in 2012, was expected to be announced as Di Resta's teammate.
However, he was present at the launch of Ferrari's new F1 car on Friday as he is a member of the Italian team's academy.
Former driver Adrian Sutil and ex-Sauber man Kamui Kobayashi have also been linked with the role.
Force India team principal Robert Fearnley refused to be drawn on the identity of the new driver at the launch, telling reporters: "We do not want to confuse the two stories."
The VJM06 is the third of four cars unveiled so far for the 2013 season that have jettisoned the stepped nose design that featured widely in last year's world championship.
The Indian team finished seventh in last season's constructor championship, but saw German driver Nico Hulkenburg leave to join rivals Sauber at the end of the year.
- AFP/de
The BlackBerry Z10 with the UK flag Photoshopped onto its screen
Two days ago, the company formerly known as RIM pulled out all the stops at a super-swanky event in New York to launch two new phones that will either kill or cure the company.
But despite the global launch happening in the US, America is the last of the first batch of countries to see the Z10, BlackBerry's first phone to ship with its new OS, BB10. Americans have to wait until March to buy the phone, but it was available to buy in the UK yesterday. That's six days ahead even of BlackBerry's home market in Canada. On the face of it, this seems like a strange decision -- why release the Z10 in a relatively small country first?
The overriding reason, according to Francisco Jeronimo, Research Manager for European Mobile Devices at IDC, is that the UK is the biggest BlackBerry market in the world. Contrast his figures: in the third quarter of 2012, BlackBerry had a 12% market share in the UK, with Apple at 25%. In the US, BlackBerry accounted for just 2% to Apple's 25%.
Speaking at the UK launch to CNET's Luke Westaway, BlackBerry's Andrew Bocking echoed this point: "the UK has been a key market for us for so long. We have over 8 million BlackBerry users today in the UK and we are very excited for them to be on the leading edge getting access to BB10 on the Z10".
Some of the biggest buyers of BlackBerry phones in Britain are teenagers, partly because the phones are very cheap, partly because of the appeal of BBM, the free instant messenger program. So popular has BBM become in Britain that the 2011 riots in London were blamed on the service by some politicians and members of the police, although its role was likely exaggerated.
Jeronimo argues that it's not just teenagers with BlackBerry phones: "Most companies have their corporate emails running on BlackBerry servers. To change the entire mobile infrastructure is not cheap or something that can be done overnight... when we ask if companies want to move to another platform, it is very clear that the majority don't".
Leaving the size of the UK market aside, market watchers have a few other ideas about why Britain is first up with the Z10. Ian Fogg, analyst for IHS made the point to me that a successful launch in the UK could have more global impact than a US launch, as the owners of UK carriers are present in other countries, whereas the US carriers are more self-contained.
Several analysts made the point to me that they have been impressed with the speed BlackBerry has shipped its phones. Jeronimo says: "I don't remember the last time a major vendor launched a flagship device and made it available in stores the day after. BlackBerry probably didn't get the same support in the USA and therefore decided to launch it later."
Now that the Z10 is shipping, what's BlackBerry's game plan from here? Over to Ben Wood, Chief of Research at CCS Insight:
"Its first concern will be the long-time older BlackBerry owners who initially had a BlackBerry for business and have continued to tough it out in recent years. It must also convince former BlackBerry users, [although] many of these guys will be locked into a contract so it could be some time before they can even consider going back to BlackBerry."
"The final group It needs to nail are the teenagers and 20-somethings who are still hooked on a BlackBerry because of BBM and Facebook. This group is unlikely to be able to afford the Z10 or Q10, so the next milestone in the UK market will be getting some cheaper products available."
(MoneyWatch) The Labor Department said 157,000 jobs were created in January and the unemployment rate edged up to 7.9 percent from 7.8 percent. There were positive revisions to November and December, which amounted to an extra 127,000 jobs. Those revisions are consistent with recent data that showed firming throughout the month: Weekly claims dropped to the lowest level since 2008; manufacturing reports have been improving; and the National Federation of Independent Business showed small business hiring edged up.
The Labor Department also released its annual benchmark revisions: From April 2011 to March 2012, the economy added about 422,000 more jobs than previously reported and for 2012, the economy added an average of 181,000 jobs a month, an improvement from the 153,000 pace originally reported. Additionally, there was real progress in the average duration of unemployment, which dropped to 35.3 weeks, the lowest level since January 2011.
But there is still a long way to go after the deepest recession since the Great Depression: 8 million jobs were lost in 2008 and 2009, before the recovery created 5 million over the last three years. Additionally, 12.3 million Americans out of work and of those, 38 percent have been without work for over six months.
Businesses complain that it's tough to make hiring decisions when the economy is only growing by 2 to 2.5 percent annually. 80 percent of small owners surveyed said they made no changes in their employment levels in recent months, due to caution about the economy. Whether that caution can be attributed to political uncertainty surrounding the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling and other Washington battles, is tough to know. What is certain is that as the nation prepares for $110 billion worth of across the board spending cuts in March ("sequestration"), there is little expectation for a growth surge that would help create jobs.
Many have brushed aside the lousy fourth quarter GDP (the economy shrank by 0.1 percent) report as a one-off event, driven lower by a drop in defense spending and inventories. At the Fed's policy meeting this week, the central bankers noted the recent "pause" in economic activity is temporary. It could be that Q3 and Q4 were both anomalies. When averaged, the numbers are fairly consistent with the first half of the year. What's more important is that even if the preliminary fourth quarter GDP is revised higher from the initial reading of -0.1 percent annualized growth, 2013 is unlikely to produce the number of jobs needed to move the needle on the unemployment rate.
Maybe we should be thankful that the numbers are slowly improving. But with so many still out of work, it's hard to get out the pom-poms. Without a real jobs initiative (it's hard to count the president's recently-disbanded jobs council as a significant effort), it's hard to see how the jobs situation will dramatically improve any time soon. As a result, the long slog continues.
January jobs report
-- Jobs created: +157K (Revisions from Nov and Dec: +127K)
-- Private jobs created: +166K
-- Government jobs lost: -9K
-- Unemployment rate: 7.9 percent (from 7.8 percent; rate has been 7.7 - 7.9 percent since September, 2012)
-- Broad unemployment rate: 14.4 percent (includes the official rate plus "marginally attached workers," those who are neither working nor looking for work, but say they want a job and have looked for work recently; and people who are employed part-time for economic reasons, meaning they want full-time work but took a part-time schedule instead because that's all they could find)
-- Total unemployed: 12.3 million
-- Long-term unemployed: 4.7 million, representing 38.1 percent of the total unemployed
-- Average duration of unemployment: 35.3 weeks, lowest since January 2011.
-- Participation rate: 63.6 (below the 66 to 67 percent rate that was normal over the last 20 years; 2/3 of recent decline is due to demographics)
-- Average work week: 34.4 hours
-- Hourly earnings: $23.78 (Over the past 12 months, up 2.1 percent)
-- Retail: +33K
-- Construction: +28K (since Jan 2011 lows, up 296K; still 2 million fewer jobs from April 2006 peak)
-- Health services: +23K
-- Manufacturing: unchanged
Editor's note: CBS MoneyWatch initially published an Associated Press story on the unemployment report, which we have since replaced with this staff-written article. You can find the initial AP report and reader comments here.
At least one person was killed in what the State Department called a "terrorist blast" outside the U.S. Embassy in Turkey today.
The explosion, which occurred at a checkpoint to the embassy in Ankara in the early afternoon local time, claimed the life of an embassy guard and wounded a Turkish citizen, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardione told reporters.
A Turkish provincial governor said the blast was the work of a suicide bomber, according to a report by the BBC.
Television footage from the scene showed damage to a part of an outer gatehouse, which is adjacent to the main building.
U.S. officials said that Turkish police are investigating the incident.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
ANKARA (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed a Turkish security guard at the U.S. embassy in Ankara on Friday, blowing the door off a side entrance and sending smoke and debris flying into the street.
Ankara Governor Alaaddin Yuksel said the attacker was inside U.S. property when the explosives were detonated. The blast sent masonry spewing out of the wall of the side entrance, but there did not appear to be any more significant structural damage.
The bomber was also killed.
U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone emerged through the main gate of the building, which is surrounded by high walls, shortly after the explosion to address reporters, flanked by a security detail as a Turkish police helicopter hovered overhead.
"We are very sad of course that we lost one of our Turkish guards at the gate," Ricciardone he said, thanking the Turkish authorities for a prompt response.
A Reuters witness saw one wounded person being lifted into an ambulance as police armed with assault rifles cordoned off the area.
"It was a huge explosion. I was sitting in my shop when it happened. I saw what looked like a body part on the ground," said travel agent Kamiyar Barnos whose shop window was shattered around 100 meters away from the blast.
One witness said the blast was audible a mile away.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The British Consulate-General to Turkey said the blast a "suspected terrorist attack".
Islamist radicals, far-left groups, far-right groups and Kurdish separatist militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past.
The main domestic security threat comes from the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), deemed a terrorist group by the United States, European Union and Turkey, but the PKK has focused its campaign largely on domestic targets.
Turkey has led calls for international intervention in neighboring Syria and is hosting hundreds of NATO soldiers from the United States, Germany and the Netherlands who are operating a Patriot missile defense system along its border with Syria, hundreds of kilometers away from the capital.
The U.S. Patriots were expected to go active in the coming days.
The most serious attacks of this kind in Turkey occurred in November 2003, when car bombs shattered two synagogues, killing 30 people and wounding 146. Authorities said the attack bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda.
Part of the HSBC Bank headquarters was destroyed and the British consulate was damaged in two more explosions that killed a further 32 people a week later.
(Writing by Nick Tattersall and Daren Butler; Editing by Jon Hemming)
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