App Smart: A Review of Video-Editing Apps for the Smartphone




App Smart: Video Editing:
Kit Eaton reviews apps that turn smartphone video into fun short films.







I’ll bet that your smartphone is full of lots of little video clips. You know, ones that you make when you see something cute, surprising or beautiful. They may be nice mementos, but I’ll also bet they are not great examples of cinematography. Instead of just leaving these clips in their raw state on your phone, you can use apps to trim off unneeded parts, string clips together or add special effects.









Cute Cut for iOS feels as if it might be for professional users.






Magisto — Magical Video Editor for iOS and Android does most of the tricky technical stuff for you.






Video Edit is a simple and straightforward app for iOS.






One great video editor for Apple’s iOS devices is called Cute Cut. This app feels as if it might be for professional users, with clean graphics and smartly designed menus. Advice windows pop up over its display to help get you started. Click on the plus button to create a new movie, and then select whether your final edited movie will be high-definition or standard, and in landscape display or portrait.


The app’s main editing window then pops up. Here is where you add and edit movie clips. Each clip is organized on the app’s timeline display, and you can stack several clips to be added together to make your final movie.


A double tap on each clip lets you crop its size, trim its length or tweak other features like the original audio volume. You can also add transitions which are movie effects, like a fade between clips. There are also options to add music or commentary, text boxes or still photos.


Cute Cut is very powerful, but occasionally its menu system is confusing. I found it tricky to add transitions between clips because the tools to do so weren’t obvious from the various icons and buttons in the app.


The basic app is free on iTunes, but it prints a “made with Cute Cut” watermark on your movies and limits their length. A $4 upgrade through an in-app purchase removes both these restrictions.


A similarly powerful app for Android, with a friendly icon-based interface, is called Andromedia Video Editor (free on Google Play). It can add transitions, insert still photos and edit the audio accompaniment. The app’s interface is simpler than Cute Cut’s. For example, each clip you are adding is represented by an icon on the main display. Special-effects transitions are shown as a different icon between your clip icons. To edit a clip or adjust a transition, you tap on its icon. When you are finished, you can save your movie or immediately share it on YouTube.


For free software, this app is both powerful and fun to use, but don’t expect precision editing powers or a wide array of video effects. I also managed to crash it a couple of times.


For a simpler and more straightforward video editing on iOS, I like Video Edit (free on iTunes) for its minimal design and easy-to-use interface, but it has limits. All you can do is stack movie clips from your video archive together into one bigger production. It does let you trim each clip (through a double-tap on the little thumbnail image representing the clips), but there are no clever cinemalike transitions available to link the clips.


When you are finished, a click on the tick mark saves your final movie or lets you share it by e-mail, Facebook or YouTube.


An alternative movie editing app that does most of the tricky technical stuff for you is Magisto — Magical Video Editor (free on iOS and Android). Use it to create cute movies and overlay them with special effects. Simply select clips and a special video effect (from options like “Sentimental” or “Let’s Party”). These add colors, blurs, sparkles and so on.


You can also add a song from its short list of music offerings. It takes a few minutes to produce the final video, and while it is often something that would be fun to share with family or friends on Facebook, it is not going to win you an Oscar.


On the downside, this app can be confusing to use, and it requires you sign up for an account before you can save your final movies.


Quick Calls


Epic Games has brought its 3-D graphics demonstrator Epic Citadel to Android. It’s free, and you will be amazed at the console-like imagery as you wander through a medieval castle. It’s also fun, even if there is no game to play, yet. ... The journal-keeping style of Moleskine paper notebooks is now available digitally through an app on Windows Phone, which is great for keeping track of ideas in the form of notes or sketches.


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Obama Orders Release of Drone Memos to Lawmakers





WASHINGTON — The White House on Wednesday directed the Justice Department to release classified documents discussing the legal justification for the use of drones in targeting American citizens abroad who are considered terrorist to the two Congressional intelligence committees, according to an administration official.




The White House announcement appears to refer to a long, detailed 2010 memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel justifying the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric who had joined Al Qaeda in Yemen. He was killed in a C.I.A. drone strike in September 2011. Members of Congress have long demanded access to the legal memorandum.


The decision to release the legal memos to the intelligence committees came under pressure, two days after a bipartisan group of 11 senators joined a growing chorus asking for more information about the legal justification for targeted killings, especially of Americans. The announcement also came on the eve of the confirmation hearing scheduled for Thursday for John O. Brennan, President Obama’s choice to be director of the C.I.A. As Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, Mr. Brennan has been the chief architect of the drone program, and he is expected to be closely questioned about it at the hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee.


Critics noted that in 2009, Mr. Obama had ordered the public release of the classified memos governing C.I.A. interrogations under President George W. Bush and accused Mr. Obama of hypocrisy. Administration officials replied that the so-called enhanced interrogations had been stopped, while drone strikes continue.


Until Wednesday night, the administration had refused to even officially acknowledge the existence of the documents, which have been reported about in the press. This week, NBC News obtained an unclassified, shorter legal memo, described as a “white paper,” that officials said described the legal framework that officials follow in using the drones.


Administration officials said Mr. Obama had decided to take the action — which they described as extraordinary — out of a desire to involve Congress in the development of the legal framework for the use of drones. Aides noted that Mr. Obama had made a pledge to do that during an appearance on “The Daily Show” last year.


“Today, as part of the president’s ongoing commitment to consult with Congress on national security matters, the president directed the Department of Justice to provide the congressional Intelligence committees access to classified Office of Legal Counsel advice related to the subject of the Department of Justice White Paper,” the administration official said.


The official said that members of the intelligence committees would now get “access” to the documents. It remained unclear what kind of access that would be.


Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the president’s move “a small step in the right direction.” But he noted that the legal memo or memos were not being shared with either of the armed services committees, which have jurisdiction over Pentagon strikes, or the judiciary committees, which oversee the Justice Department.


The public should be permitted to see at least a redacted version of the relevant memos, Mr. Anders said. “Everyone has a right to know when the government believes it can kill Americans and others,” he said.


The Congressional intelligence committees were created in the late 1970s to exercise oversight after a series of scandals at the spy agencies. The law requires that the committees be kept informed of intelligence activities. But most administrations withhold at least some legal opinions, treating them as confidential legal advice to the president and agency officials.


Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, had proposed a clause for the annual intelligence authorization bill requiring that legal opinions on relevant matters be routinely shared with the committees. But the White House objected, and the measure was dropped from the bill.


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DealBook: The Politics of the R.B.S. Settlement

LONDON — The British government is taking aim at an unlikely target in the latest rate-rigging case: the British government.

The $612 million settlement that the Royal Bank of Scotland reached with authorities on Wednesday over rate manipulation will leave British taxpayers liable for part of the fine.

The government still owns a 82 percent stake in the bank, which was bailed out in 2008 during the height of the financial crisis.

The British government finds itself on the other side of its case as well because the Financial Services Authority, the country’s main financial regulator, has been part of the global investigation into the manipulation of benchmark rates like the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.

The case against the Royal Bank of Scotland has been politically charged after British politicians demanded that bankers’ bonuses should be used to pay for the settlement.

“There is a legitimate concern that British taxpayers, who already have bailed out the bank, will be asked to pay for past mistakes at R.B.S.,” said Pat McFadden, a British politician who is a member of the opposition party and part of the Parliament’s Treasury select committee that oversees the country’s finance industry. On Monday, George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, also called on the bank to use bonuses to pay the Libor fine.

To help pay for the global settlement, the British bank said it would claw back past and present bonuses totaling $471 million from both the traders implicated in the rate-rigging scandal as well as from employees in the bank’s operations, particularly its investment banking unit, which have not been part of the wrongdoing.

Bank officials said the clawbacks were related to the reputational damage caused to the bank, and would also cover potential future legal liabilities. But that money will be used primarily to pay the fines levied against the bank by the United States authorities.

The Financial Services Authority’s share of the fine is expected not to come from the bonuses. The money will, in a sense, be recycled since it will go to the British government’s coffers.

One of the casualties of the Libor scandal was John Hourican, head of the firm’s investment banking division, who resigned on Wednesday. He will forgo past and present compensation worth a combined $14.1 million. Mr. Hourican, who took over the investment banking unit in 2008 and has not been implicated in the wrongdoing, will receive a one-time payout from the bank of around $1 million.

Libor Explained

“This has been a soap opera for the last four years because of the ups and downs of this job,” the bank’s chairman, Philip Hampton, told reporters on Wednesday. “The bank was in a hell of a mess.”

The taxpayer stake in the bank sets the latest deal apart from the other two big Libor settlements. Last summer, the British bank Barclays agreed to pay $450 million to settle accusations that it reported false rates. In December, the Swiss giant UBS struck a sweeping $1.5 billion deal with authorities in which its Japanese subsidiary pleaded guilty to felony wire fraud.

But despite the vested interest of taxpayers, the Financial Services Authority did not take the government’s ownership stake into consideration when reaching the settlement, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The renewed scrutiny on the bank, however, could hinder the government’s ability to sell its stake for a profit, as private investors remain wary of the bank’s future liabilities. Since the bailout in 2008, the bank’s shares have plummeted, and are currently trading around 32 percent below the initial purchase price.

As part of plans to sell the government’s stake in the bank, Vince Cable, the British business secretary, said Royal Bank of Scotland should have been fully nationalized when it was bailed out in 2008. In a speech on Wednesday, he added that one option could be to return shares in the bank to British taxpayers.

“The early hope of reprivatization now looks a very long way off, unless at an unacceptable loss,” Mr. Cable said.

Government officials have held preliminary discussions with a number of investors about selling stakes in the Royal Bank of Scotland, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The potential losses facing British taxpayers contrast with the $182 billion bailout of the American International Group in 2008. Over the last two years, A.I.G. issued a series of stock offerings to reduce the United States government’s ownership, generating profit of around $22 billion for American taxpayers.

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SciTimes Update: Recent Developments in Science and Health News


Red Bull Stratos/European Pressphoto Agency


Felix Baumgartner of Austria jumps from 24 miles up in Roswell, New Mexico.







Tuesday in science, sharks with an image problem, good teeth get more dates, dog geniuses and remembering your dreams. Check out these headlines and other science news from around the Web.




Supersonic Skydiver: Skydiver Felix Baumgartner was faster than he or anyone else thought during his record-setting jump last October from 24 miles up. The Austrian parachutist known as “Fearless Felix” reached 843.6 mph, reports The Associated Press.


Stress Through Generations: For the first time, genes chemically silenced by stress during life have been shown to remain silenced in eggs and sperm in mice, possibly allowing the effect of stress to be passed down to the next generation, reports The Washington Post.


Man Bites Shark: A new study refutes the shark’s reputation as a bloodthirsty stalker of humans, reports Reuters. There’s no basis for believing that sharks have a taste for human flesh, the study argues. Human swimmers, often dressed in black wet suits and looking like seals, are instead mistaken for sharks’ usual prey.


What Singles Want: Good teeth, grammar and humor are important to singles, a new USA Today survey reports.


The Farmer’s Workout: Farmers -- the people counted on to feed the nation -- are facing weight gains of their own, reports Gannett News.


Yes, They Do Windows: The Wall Street Journal reports on window-washing robots.


Staying In: To keep patients out of the hospital, health care providers are bringing back revamped versions of a time-honored practice: the house call.


Spill Your Secrets: Teenagers who share their secrets in confidence with parents and friends have fewer headaches and depressed moods and are more confident in social situations than those who keep secrets to themselves, according to a report in The Journal of Adolescence.


Drilling on Mars: NASA’s Curiosity rover, the S.U.V.-sized robot exploring Mars, is getting ready to spin its drill bit for the first time, reports The Christian Science Monitor.


Couch Potatoes: Men who watch a lot of television have lower sperm counts than those who don’t watch any, reports ScienceNews.org.


Dream a Little Dream: Anyone who has ever awoken feeling amazed by their night’s dream only to forget its contents by the time they reach the shower will understand the difficulties of studying such an ephemeral state of mind, reports New Scientist.


Smart Dogs: Scientific American explores the science of dog intelligence.


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Well: Warning Too Late for Some Babies

Six weeks after Jack Mahoney was born prematurely on Feb. 3, 2011, the neonatal staff at WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, N.C., noticed that his heart rate slowed slightly when he ate. They figured he was having difficulty feeding, and they added a thickener to help.

When Jack was discharged, his parents were given the thickener, SimplyThick, to mix into his formula. Two weeks later, Jack was back in the hospital, with a swollen belly and in inconsolable pain. By then, most of his small intestine had stopped working. He died soon after, at 66 days old.

A month later, the Food and Drug Administration issued a caution that SimplyThick should not be fed to premature infants because it may cause necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, a life-threatening condition that damages intestinal tissue.


Catherine Saint Louis speaks about using SimplyThick in premature infants.



Experts do not know how the product may be linked to the condition, but Jack is not the only child to die after receiving SimplyThick. An F.D.A. investigation of 84 cases, published in The Journal of Pediatrics in 2012, found a “distinct illness pattern” in 22 instances that suggested a possible link between SimplyThick and NEC. Seven deaths were cited; 14 infants required surgery.

Last September, after more adverse events were reported, the F.D.A. warned that the thickener should not be given to any infants. But the fact that SimplyThick was widely used at all in neonatal intensive care units has spawned a spate of lawsuits and raised questions about regulatory oversight of food additives for infants.

SimplyThick is made from xanthan gum, a widely-used food additive on the F.D.A.’s list of substances “generally recognized as safe.” SimplyThick is classified as a food and the F.D.A. did not assess it for safety.

John Holahan, president of SimplyThick, which is based in St. Louis, acknowledged that the company marketed the product to speech language pathologists who in turn recommended it to infants. The patent touted its effectiveness in breast milk.

However, Mr. Holahan said, “There was no need to conduct studies, as the use of thickeners overall was already well established. In addition, the safety of xanthan gum was already well established.”

Since 2001, SimplyThick has been widely used by adults with swallowing difficulties. A liquid thickened to about the consistency of honey allows the drinker more time to close his airway and prevent aspiration.

Doctors in newborn intensive care units often ask non-physician colleagues like speech pathologists to determine whether an infant has a swallowing problem. And those auxiliary feeding specialists often recommended SimplyThick for neonates with swallowing troubles or acid reflux.

The thickener became popular because it was easy to mix, could be used with breast milk, and maintained its consistency, unlike alternatives like rice cereal.

“It was word of mouth, then neonatologists got used to using it. It became adopted,” said Dr. Steven Abrams, a neonatologist at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. “At any given time, several babies in our nursery — and in any neonatal unit — would be on it.”

But in early 2011, Dr. Benson Silverman, the director of the F.D.A.’s infant formula section, was alerted to an online forum where doctors had reported 15 cases of NEC among infants given SimplyThick. The agency issued its first warning about its use in babies that May. “We can only do something with the information we are provided with,” he said. “If information is not provided, how would we know?”

Most infants who took SimplyThick did not fall ill, and NEC is not uncommon in premature infants. But most who develop NEC do so while still in the hospital. Some premature infants given SimplyThick developed NEC later than usual, a few after they went home, a pattern the F.D.A. found unusually worrisome.

Even now it is not known how the thickener might have contributed to the infant deaths. One possibility is that xanthan gum itself is not suitable for the fragile digestive systems of newborns. The intestines of premature babies are “much more likely to have bacterial overgrowth” than adults’, said Dr. Jeffrey Pietz, the chief of newborn medicine at Children’s Hospital Central California in Madera.

“You try not to put anything in a baby’s intestine that’s not natural.” If you do, he added, “you’ve got to have a good reason.”

A second possibility is that batches of the thickener were contaminated with harmful bacteria. In late May 2011, the F.D.A. inspected the plants that make SimplyThick and found violations at one in Stone Mountain, Ga., including a failure to “thermally process” the product to destroy bacteria of a “public health significance.”

The company, Thermo Pac, voluntarily withdrew certain batches. But it appears some children may have ingested potentially contaminated batches.

The parents of Jaden Santos, a preemie who died of NEC while on SimplyThick, still have unused packets of recalled lots, according to their lawyer, Joe Taraska.

The authors of the F.D.A. report theorized that the infants’ intestinal membranes could have been damaged by bacteria breaking down the xanthan gum into too many toxic byproducts.

Dr. Qing Yang, a neonatologist at Wake Forest University, is a co-author of a case series in the Journal of Perinatology about three premature infants who took SimplyThick, developed NEC and were treated. The paper speculates that NEC was “most likely caused by the stimulation of the immature gut by xanthan gum.”

Dr. Yang said she only belatedly realized “there’s a lack of data” on xanthan gum’s use in preemies. “The lesson I learned is not to be totally dependent on the speech pathologist.”

Julie Mueller’s daughter Addison was born full-term and given SimplyThick after a swallow test showed she was at risk of choking. It was recommended by a speech pathologist at the hospital.

Less than a month later, Addison was dead with multiple holes in her small intestine. “It was a nightmare,” said Ms. Mueller, who has filed a lawsuit against SimplyThick. “I was astounded how a hospital and manufacturer was gearing this toward newborns when they never had to prove it would be safe for them. Basically we just did a research trial for the manufacturer.”

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Media Decoder Blog: Twitter Is Acquiring Bluefin Labs

Twitter confirmed on Tuesday that it was acquiring Bluefin Labs, a company that analyzes online chatter about TV shows and companies and sells its findings.

Twitter is paying nearly $100 million for Bluefin, according to a person with direct knowledge of the sale, making it the Web site’s biggest acquisition to date. The person insisted on anonymity because the terms of the deal were not disclosed publicly.

The deal suggests a new line of business for Twitter, which is under pressure to increase its revenue. Bluefin calls itself a social TV analytics company, one of many that have cropped up as Facebook and Twitter have created an instantaneous stream of commentary that helps inform television producers and distributors. Companies like CBS, which televised the Super Bowl on Sunday, pay Bluefin for information about what is being said about them online.

“We believe that Bluefin’s data science capabilities and social TV expertise will help us create innovative new ad products and consumer experiences in the exciting intersection of Twitter and TV,” the Twitter chief operating officer, Ali Rowghani, said in a blog post about the deal.

Bluefin’s backers have invested about $20 million in the company to date. The impending deal with Twitter was first reported on Monday afternoon by Business Insider.

Bluefin will remain a separate arm of Twitter. Bluefin’s office in Cambridge, Mass., will become an outpost for Twitter.

The acquisition comes six weeks after Twitter and Nielsen announced a partnership to provide a “Nielsen Twitter TV rating” for broadcasters and advertisers. Nielsen and one of its joint ventures, NM Incite, bought a smaller competitor of Bluefin’s, called SocialGuide, in November. The terms of that sale were not disclosed, but SocialGuide’s technology will be used in the Twitter TV rating service, expected to be available in the fall.

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Bulgaria Implicates Hezbollah in Deadly Israeli Bus Blast


Reuters


Bulgaria's Burgas airport on July 18 after an explosion on a bus carrying Israeli tourists outside the airport.







SOFIA, Bulgaria — The clues to a fatal bomb attack on Israeli vacationers in Bulgaria included a charred tour bus, a decapitated head and a fake driver’s license.




With help from the United States and Israel, investigators here broke the case — and linked it to Hezbollah — using a tip from a secret source and a some old-fashioned detective work, tracing the printer that had produced two forged licenses back to Lebanon.


On Tuesday, Bulgaria’s interior minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, announced that two of the people behind the July 18 bombing, which killed five Israeli tourists, a Bulgarian bus driver and the bomber, were believed to be members of the military wing of Hezbollah.


Though investigators did not release names, they identified two of the plotters as a man with an Australian passport, believed to be the bombmaker, and a man with a Canadian passport, both of whom lived in Lebanon.


“We have followed their entire activities in Australia and Canada, so we have information about financing and their membership in Hezbollah,” Mr. Tsvetanov said at a news conference.


Hezbollah has denied responsibility for the bombing.


The announcement could force the European Union to reconsider designating the Lebanon-based group as a terrorist organization and cracking down on its fund-raising. That would upend Europe’s policy of quiet tolerance of the group, which, in addition to operating schools and social services, is an influential force in Middle East politics, considers Israel an enemy and has extensive links with Iran.


Mr. Tsvetanov did not mention Iran, but the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a statement on Tuesday, “This is yet a further corroboration of what we have already known, that Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons are orchestrating a worldwide campaign of terror that is spanning countries and continents.”


The United States, too, urged the European Union to condemn Hezbollah. John O. Brennan, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser and his nominee to run the C.I.A., responded in a statement Tuesday: “We call on our European partners as well as other members of the international community to take proactive action to uncover Hezbollah’s infrastructure and disrupt the group’s financing schemes and operational networks in order to prevent future attacks.”


But countries including France and Germany have been wary of taking that step, which could force confrontations with large numbers of Hezbollah supporters living within their borders.


Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s high representative for foreign policy, responded with caution. “The implications of the investigation need to be assessed seriously as they relate to a terrorist attack on E.U. soil, which resulted in the killing and injury of innocent civilians,” she said in a statement.


Secretary of State John Kerry called Ms. Ashton to discuss the danger presented by Hezbollah, among other issues, including his statement on Tuesday urging governments around the world, particularly in Europe, “to take immediate action to crack down on Hezbollah.” Asked if Mr. Kerry had pressed the European Union to blacklist Hezbollah, Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokeswoman, said Ms. Ashton “knows where we want to go.”


New details continued to emerge about the bombing, which analysts have called an episode in a shadow war pitting Israel against Iran and Hezbollah. Israel is believed to be behind the killings of Iranian nuclear scientists. Operatives of the Iranian Quds Force, an elite international operations unit within the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, in turn were blamed in plots against Israeli targets in Thailand, India, Georgia and elsewhere.


Amin Hotait, a retired general in the Lebanese Army who is close to Hezbollah, said the Bulgarian decision “lacks unequivocal evidence.”


“The party doesn’t usually retaliate against Israeli attacks by killing civilians,” Mr. Hotait said. “This decision is political in nature, since Bulgaria is not an independent country, but politically dependent on the West.”


After the attack, Mr. Netanyahu immediately blamed Hezbollah and Iran. United States officials privately supported that view, based on intercepted communications.


Bulgarian officials, wary about jumping to conclusions and concerned about alienating European Union allies, needed more proof before they would determine that the attack had been the work of Hezbollah.


Indeed, Mr. Tsvetanov chose his words carefully on Tuesday, leaving room for uncertainty. “A reasonable assumption, I repeat a reasonable assumption, can be made that the two of them were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah,” he said.


Nicholas Kulish and Matthew Brunwasser reported from Sofia, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Jodi Rudoren contributed reporting from Jerusalem; Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon; and Michael R. Gordon from Washington.



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Zynga at a Crossroads in Mobile Quest


SAN FRANCISCO — Zynga has been on a monumental losing streak. Hits have been rare, profits nonexistent and crucial employees are fleeing.


The story of the company, which developed the notion of social gaming and persuaded tens of millions of people to try it out on Facebook, illustrates how suddenly the fortunes of hot Internet companies can shift. Two years ago, as Zynga was first being pushed for a public offering, it was said to be worth $20 billion.


By the time the offering took place, a little over a year ago, it was for less than $10 billion. And Zynga has spent most of the time since then sliding downhill. The value of the company Tuesday, as it released mediocre but nevertheless better than expected fourth-quarter results, was about $2 billion.


In the next few months, Zynga faces a crucial test that will determine if even that sum is excessive: Can it successfully put its most popular Web games, starting with Farmville, on mobile devices?


“Do I wish that we would have gone all-in on mobile and made a bigger commitment to it earlier?” Mark Pincus, Zynga’s founder and chief executive officer said in an interview after the earnings release. “Yes.”


Mr. Pincus called 2013 “a year of investment and transition.”


“While we are excited about the long-term growth opportunity on mobile, and the opportunity to make games even more accessible to people in more parts of their day, we need to build a compelling network around it,” he said.


That is because social gaming on mobile is not necessarily social.


“It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?” Mr. Pincus said. “You’re holding a phone, an inherently social device. Yet the experience we have is a more fragmented one.”


The pain accompanying Zynga’s transition to mobile was evident in the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report. Revenue was $311 million, flat with the year before. Daily users of the games were down 6 percent from the third quarter, a clear measure of flagging interest. More casual users dropped as well.


Earnings per share were a penny, better than the 3-cent loss that analysts had been expecting on an adjusted basis. And Zynga’s cash hoard of $1.65 billion was untouched.


For the full year, revenue was $1.28 billion, up 12 percent from 2011. Not exactly what you would expect from a growth company. Nor were its immediate prospects cheerful. Zynga warned that it would release few new games in the first quarter and that its revenue would drop from 2012.


Weak as the results were, however, they were not as bad as some feared. Zynga shares immediately rose in after-hours trading by 7 percent. In regular trading they were also up 7 percent to $2.73. That jump was fueled by an analyst upgrade from Merrill Lynch, which said the stock was so beaten down it now accurately reflected the company prospects.


Many online stock sites, by contrast, have been portraying the company as going the way of Pets.com or MySpace. “Zynga’s Earnings May Reveal Its Impending Demise” read the headline at one.


Michael Pachter, a managing director of Wedbush Securities, wrote in an e-mail that Zynga management was “definitely saying the right things, now all they have to do is execute.”


Aside from Mr. Pincus, it is a largely new team. Just last week, Zynga suffered another defection when its chief games designer, Brian Reynolds, quit, saying he wanted to experiment “more than might be appropriate for a publicly traded company.”


As recently as two years ago, Zynga had only 20 people working on mobile issues. Then the team ballooned into the hundreds. In the last few months, the team members have integrated into each game.


The central issue overshadowing even the mobile transition is whether Zynga first became successful merely because it was in the right place at the right time, a condition also known as dumb luck. Zynga’s rise was inseparable from Facebook, which gave the developer preferential treatment.


That era is over. In March, Zynga will lose its special status on Facebook.


There are other perils for Zynga, plenty of them. Analysts have been pointing to the rise of King.com’s games, including Candy Crush, which makes the latest version of Farmville look as complicated as advanced physics.


“Who thought crushing candy would have been popular?” said Brian Blau, a Gartner analyst.


King.com is touting itself as a new, improved Zynga, which underscores the volatile nature of the gaming business. “This is a hits driven industry, and Zynga could not sustain their hits,” Mr. Blau said. “Game players are fickle.”


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Well: Expressing the Inexpressible

When Kyle Potvin learned she had breast cancer at the age of 41, she tracked the details of her illness and treatment in a journal. But when it came to grappling with issues of mortality, fear and hope, she found that her best outlet was poetry.

How I feared chemo, afraid
It would change me.
It did.
Something dissolved inside me.
Tears began a slow drip;
I cried at the news story
Of a lost boy found in the woods …
At the surprising beauty
Of a bright leaf falling
Like the last strand of hair from my head

Ms. Potvin, now 47 and living in Derry, N.H., recently published “Sound Travels on Water” (Finishing Line Press), a collection of poems about her experience with cancer. And she has organized the Prickly Pear Poetry Project, a series of workshops for cancer patients.

“The creative process can be really healing,” Ms. Potvin said in an interview. “Loss, mortality and even hopefulness were on my mind, and I found that through writing poetry I was able to express some of those concepts in a way that helped me process what I was thinking.”

In April, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, whose members include both medical doctors and therapists, is to hold a conference in Chicago with sessions on using poetry to manage pain and to help adolescents cope with bullying. And this spring, Tasora Books will publish “The Cancer Poetry Project 2,” an anthology of poems written by patients and their loved ones.

Dr. Rafael Campo, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, says he uses poetry in his practice, offering therapy groups and including poems with the medical forms and educational materials he gives his patients.

“It’s always striking to me how they want to talk about the poems the next time we meet and not the other stuff I give them,” he said. “It’s such a visceral mode of expression. When our bodies betray us in such a profound way, it can be all the more powerful for patients to really use the rhythms of poetry to make sense of what is happening in their bodies.”

On return visits, Dr. Campo’s patients often begin by discussing a poem he gave them — for example, “At the Cancer Clinic,” by Ted Kooser, from his collection “Delights & Shadows” (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), about a nurse holding the door for a slow-moving patient.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

In Ms. Potvin’s case, poems related to her illness were often spurred by mundane moments, like seeing a neighbor out for a nightly walk. Here is “Tumor”:

My neighbor walks
For miles each night.
A mantra drives her, I imagine
As my boys’ chant did
The summer of my own illness:
“Push, Mommy, push.”
Urging me to wind my sore feet
Winch-like on a rented bike
To inch us home.
I couldn’t stop;
Couldn’t leave us
Miles from the end.

Karin Miller, 48, of Minneapolis, turned to poetry 15 years ago when her husband developed testicular cancer at the same time she was pregnant with their first child.

Her husband has since recovered, and Ms. Miller has reviewed thousands of poems by cancer patients and their loved ones to create the “Cancer Poetry Project” anthologies. One poem is “Hymn to a Lost Breast,” by Bonnie Maurer.

Oh let it fly
let it fling
let it flip like a pancake in the air
let it sing: what is the song
of one breast flapping?

Another is “Barn Wish” by Kim Knedler Hewett.

I sit where you can’t see me
Listening to the rustle of papers and pills in the other room,
Wondering if you can hear them.
Let’s go back to the barn, I whisper.
Let’s turn on the TV and watch the Bengals lose.
Let’s eat Bill’s Doughnuts and drink Pepsi.
Anything but this.

Ms. Miller has asked many of her poets to explain why they find poetry healing. “They say it’s the thing that lets them get to the core of how they are feeling,” she said. “It’s the simplicity of poetry, the bare bones of it, that helps them deal with their fears.”


Have you written a poem about cancer? Please share them with us in the comments section below.
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Well: Expressing the Inexpressible

When Kyle Potvin learned she had breast cancer at the age of 41, she tracked the details of her illness and treatment in a journal. But when it came to grappling with issues of mortality, fear and hope, she found that her best outlet was poetry.

How I feared chemo, afraid
It would change me.
It did.
Something dissolved inside me.
Tears began a slow drip;
I cried at the news story
Of a lost boy found in the woods …
At the surprising beauty
Of a bright leaf falling
Like the last strand of hair from my head

Ms. Potvin, now 47 and living in Derry, N.H., recently published “Sound Travels on Water” (Finishing Line Press), a collection of poems about her experience with cancer. And she has organized the Prickly Pear Poetry Project, a series of workshops for cancer patients.

“The creative process can be really healing,” Ms. Potvin said in an interview. “Loss, mortality and even hopefulness were on my mind, and I found that through writing poetry I was able to express some of those concepts in a way that helped me process what I was thinking.”

In April, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, whose members include both medical doctors and therapists, is to hold a conference in Chicago with sessions on using poetry to manage pain and to help adolescents cope with bullying. And this spring, Tasora Books will publish “The Cancer Poetry Project 2,” an anthology of poems written by patients and their loved ones.

Dr. Rafael Campo, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, says he uses poetry in his practice, offering therapy groups and including poems with the medical forms and educational materials he gives his patients.

“It’s always striking to me how they want to talk about the poems the next time we meet and not the other stuff I give them,” he said. “It’s such a visceral mode of expression. When our bodies betray us in such a profound way, it can be all the more powerful for patients to really use the rhythms of poetry to make sense of what is happening in their bodies.”

On return visits, Dr. Campo’s patients often begin by discussing a poem he gave them — for example, “At the Cancer Clinic,” by Ted Kooser, from his collection “Delights & Shadows” (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), about a nurse holding the door for a slow-moving patient.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

In Ms. Potvin’s case, poems related to her illness were often spurred by mundane moments, like seeing a neighbor out for a nightly walk. Here is “Tumor”:

My neighbor walks
For miles each night.
A mantra drives her, I imagine
As my boys’ chant did
The summer of my own illness:
“Push, Mommy, push.”
Urging me to wind my sore feet
Winch-like on a rented bike
To inch us home.
I couldn’t stop;
Couldn’t leave us
Miles from the end.

Karin Miller, 48, of Minneapolis, turned to poetry 15 years ago when her husband developed testicular cancer at the same time she was pregnant with their first child.

Her husband has since recovered, and Ms. Miller has reviewed thousands of poems by cancer patients and their loved ones to create the “Cancer Poetry Project” anthologies. One poem is “Hymn to a Lost Breast,” by Bonnie Maurer.

Oh let it fly
let it fling
let it flip like a pancake in the air
let it sing: what is the song
of one breast flapping?

Another is “Barn Wish” by Kim Knedler Hewett.

I sit where you can’t see me
Listening to the rustle of papers and pills in the other room,
Wondering if you can hear them.
Let’s go back to the barn, I whisper.
Let’s turn on the TV and watch the Bengals lose.
Let’s eat Bill’s Doughnuts and drink Pepsi.
Anything but this.

Ms. Miller has asked many of her poets to explain why they find poetry healing. “They say it’s the thing that lets them get to the core of how they are feeling,” she said. “It’s the simplicity of poetry, the bare bones of it, that helps them deal with their fears.”


Have you written a poem about cancer? Please share them with us in the comments section below.
Read More..