Many dogs and cats have it, and now a small company in Belgium says if people carried a personal identifying chip under their skin, modern life could become a lot easier. Others agree, but what if the technology changes? VOA’s George Putic reports.
…

A teenager in northwestern Cameroon has become the first African to win Google’s global youth coding challenge, despite an ongoing internet blackout in his hometown.

Nji Patrick Gbah’s tailor shop in Bamenda is buzzing with business and pride. His son, Collins, was recently named one of 34 grand-prize winners in this year’s Google Code-In, a global challenge for young programmers.

He used to punish his son for “joking” with the computer.

“I was feeling that he is just spending his time without doing house chores. At times I used to seize my computer and lock it in the house and I tell him not to use it anymore because I was believing that he is just spending time on that computer for nothing,” said the teen’s father.

Nji Collins Gbah has won a trip to Google headquarters in California this June with the other top finishers. 

The competition was open to students between the ages of 13 and 17. More than 1,300 young people from 62 countries participated this year.

“The only thing I want to say is focus on studies,” Collins said. “Get to know more about the opportunities that are around you and go to sites which have real information about opportunities like this.” 

But that may be hard at the moment for his fellow students in Bamenda. In mid-January, the internet was cut to English-speaking parts of Cameroon, amid ongoing unrest.

Collins had to plead with his uncle for travel money so he could go to to Mbouda, a French-speaking town 30 kilometers away, to get online and compete. He had just a few days to complete 842 programming tasks.

Many believe the government ordered the internet blackout, though there has been no official confirmation.

Teachers and lawyers have been on strike in the English-speaking regions since November. They have been joined by activists calling for secession. Some demonstrations have turned violent and dozens of people have been arrested.

Officials say activists have been using social media to spread anti-government messages.

Cameroon’s minister of post and telecommunication, Libom Li Likeng, told VOA there has to be a responsible use of technology. She says although social networks provide lots of opportunities, they have noticed that many people use them for unhealthy purposes.

African countries have been increasingly responding to unrest by cutting internet access. Uganda, Congo and Mali are just a few other examples.

Last week, a U.N. rights expert called the internet blackout in parts of Cameroon “an appalling violation” of freedom of expression.

Residents in affected areas say it is impacting the economy as money transfer services and ATM’s are not working.
…

The word “robot” was coined by Czech playwright Karel Capek almost 100 years ago. But robots have been around, in some form, for 500 years or more. London’s Science Museum has opened a “Robots” exhibit that traces the mechanical technology over the past five centuries. VOA’s Deborah Block has more.
…

Donald Trump was an avid Twitter user during his campaign for the U.S. presidency, and in his nearly three weeks in office, he hasn’t stopped. While most of Trump’s 24.4 million followers like the immediacy the commander in chief’s tweets provide, others are more critical.

“I don’t think there’s any connection between immediacy and sincerity. I think immediacy is overrated. It may be times when it’s absolutely necessary, but most of what President Trump tweets should be delayed and should be given more thought,” Theodore Glasser, professor of communication at Stanford University, told VOA.

“Do I love the different tweets that Trump has been putting out … absolutely not,” said Scott Goodstein, founder and chief executive officer of Revolution Messaging, a digital communications strategy company.

But as someone who’s spent the past decade pioneering digital strategy and technology for political campaigns, Goodstein said, “I love that in America I get the ability to organize and do rapid response on platforms like Twitter … the ability for the American citizenry to ask questions, engage and be part of that conversation they weren’t part of prior to Twitter, and social media has, to me, made our country better.”

Trump explained his use of Twitter as “a way of bypassing [the] dishonest media.” He has labeled the media the “opposition party” and says he calls “his own shots largely based on an accumulation of data.”

In January, he tweeted 206 times and had about 25 million interactions — consisting of retweets, replies and likes — more than any other world leader, according to data pulled from CrowdTangle, which tracks how links are shared on social media platforms.

But he is not the first U.S. president who has tried to use the popular medium of the moment to bypass mainstream media.

Radio, TV

Franklin D. Roosevelt used “fireside chats” on radio “to talk directly to the country, and that was done periodically and it was very effective,” Glasser said. Roosevelt led the nation through the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II, and some say that by using his radio broadcasts, he was able to quell rumors and directly explain his policies.

President John F. Kennedy is considered to be one who mastered the television medium, while President Richard Nixon “went out of his way to avoid the press and didn’t have a good relationship with them,” Glasser said.

Barack Obama was the first American presidential candidate to organize on major platforms like Facebook and YouTube, along with more niche platforms like Black Planet, Asian Avenue and others, said Goodstein, who was in charge of that during Obama’s 2007 election campaign. The Obama White House used digital technology to its fullest later to disseminate information. Right now, @BarackObama has 84.4 million followers, third highest on a list kept by twitaholic.com.

The social media platform, created a little over a decade ago, had 317 million monthly active users as of the third quarter of 2016, according to statistics portal statista.com.

Brazil

In Brazil, ousted President Dilma Rousseff, who has 5.7 million followers, was a great example of someone “who used the tool [Twitter] during the election and then turned it off essentially and stopped listening when they started governing; that was a huge mistake,” said Goodstein, who also worked in that country.

He said Rousseff had the ability to build a giant Twitter following during her first election, and he criticized her for “not engaging in her base voters and her general electorate … around issues of people protesting building around the Olympics when it was first announced. She had the ability to go over the media, talk directly to her citizenry. Unfortunately, she did not, and you saw these protests grow bigger and bigger.”

Rousseff has vowed to appeal what she called a “parliamentary coup,” and some of her supporters continue to call her Brazil’s only legitimate president, as shown in a recent picture posted on her Twitter page.

Mexico

The feud between Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Trump continued when the U.S. president reaffirmed his campaign promise to build a wall along the border with Mexico, and that if Mexico wasn’t going to pay for the wall, Pena Nieto should cancel a scheduled visit in Washington a week after Trump was inaugurated.

In Mexico, after congratulating Trump and tweeting that his country would work with the U.S. to strengthen their relationship, Pena Nieto took to the same medium to inform his 6.21 million followers, and the White House shortly afterward, that he would not attend the meeting with Trump.

Gambia

While some leaders have been using the medium for years and have followings in the millions, others are just starting. Newly elected Gambian President Adama Barrow announced to his 11,000 followers that he was back after going into exile in neighboring Senegal, fearing his life was in danger. Barrow defeated President Yahya Jammeh in December’s elections, but the veteran leader of 22 years did not want to cede power.

Since joining Twitter in December, Barrow has sent 62 tweets, mostly about the postelection crisis, his return home and cabinet announcements.

Rwanda

Since June 2016, Rwandan President Paul Kagame has tweeted only 23 times, including one retweet to his 1.59 million followers. Mostly in English and sometimes in Kinyarwanda, the posts varied but included a congratulatory message to the Cleveland Cavaliers on their National Basketball Association title last year. He revealed that as a supporter of Cleveland’s opponent, the Golden State Warriors, he was outnumbered in his house by Cavs fans.

India

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined Twitter in 2009 and today has 27 million followers of his personal page and 16 million of the PM office’s page. He sent 233 tweets in January. Although not all tweets generate responses, he had about 2.8 million interactions.

The subjects of his tweets in English and Hindi have varied; he has asked for people’s thoughts about his new personal app, shared pictures of rallies he’s attended in Ghaziabad, and discussed such issues as demonetization, sanitation coverage in rural areas and defense of the sanctity of institutions above politics. He’s one of a few leaders who reply to their followers.  

Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s English-language page shows he sent about 15 tweets in January, and subjects included a conversation with Trump and a videoconference in which he was briefed on tests of a new jet fighter.

All the tweets have links to the official Kremlin website for longer articles. He has 489,000 followers on the page’s English version and 3.59 million on the official Kremlin page, which tweets in Russian.

Twitter’s problems

Whether one’s followers are in the millions or hundreds, people don’t always engage with every tweet. Goodstein said there are also problems Twitter needs to address, including spam, robot tweets and idle accounts. But he also said the Twittersphere is engaged enough that those who tweet authentically will be able to draw others into conversations.

The biggest mistake that politicians make on Twitter is that they want to use it as “a one-way communication and forget the word ‘social,’ ” Goodstein said. The medium is not meant to be used as a public relations device to send out old-fashioned press releases, he said.

Glasser said Twitter has a place in the political landscape but cautioned that it’s dangerous to use in matters of diplomacy. For example, he said, “it’s not a useful tool for announcing policy. One hundred forty characters doesn’t provide enough room for context, nuance and sophistication that public diplomacy requires.”
…

Twitter, Incorporated reported its fourth-quarter losses nearly doubled from the same period in 2015.

The online messaging company reported a quarterly loss of $167 million at the end of 2016. In 2015, the company reported a loss of $90 million over the same period.

The business said revenues in the fourth quarter were up 1 percent from $710 million in 2015 to $717 million in 2016. It was the the slowest revenue growth since the company went public in November of 2013.

There was one bright spot: The average number of active users rose 4 percent compared to a year earlier to 319 million.

Twitter has been failing to keep up with other social media platforms such as Facebook. Twitter recently reduced staff and an attempt to sell the company failed.

The 10-year-old Twitter has never made a profit, and despite tweaks to the format, has only seen modest growth in users.

Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, called 2016 a “transformative year.”

“We reset and focused on why people use Twitter: It’s the fastest way to see what’s happening and what everyone’s talking about,” he said. “We overcame the toughest challenge for any consumer service at scale by reversing declining audience trends and re-accelerating usage.”

He advised patience, saying revenue growth “will take time, but we’re moving fast to show results.”

Investors may not be as patient, as Twitter shares were down about 10 percent in Thursday pre-market trading.
…

Physicist Arthur Rosenfeld, who spearheaded breakthroughs in energy efficiency for lighting, refrigerators, televisions and other electronics while working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has died. He was 90. 

Rosenfeld died January 27 at his home in Berkeley, said Lawrence Berkeley National Lab spokeswoman Julie Chao.

Rosenfeld was known to his colleagues as California’s “godfather” of energy efficiency, a field he is credited with creating.

Worked with Nobel Prize winner 

A native of Alabama, he was known for his detailed calculations, but also for his talent in translating the results into terms that could be easily understood.

A particle physicist, he moved to Berkeley in the 1950s to work in the particle physics group of Luis Alvarez, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1968.

A turning point in his career came in 1973 when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries declared an oil embargo. Knowing he would have to wait in a long line the next day to buy gas, he decided to calculate how much energy could be saved by turning off unused lights. 

“After 20 minutes of uncovering light switches (and saving 100 gallons for the weekend), I decided that UC Berkeley and its Radiation Laboratory should do something about conservation,” he wrote in a 1999 autobiography of his career, The Art of Energy Efficiency.

Many honors

He received numerous awards and honors, including the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2011, the nation’s highest honor for technological achievement, for the development of energy efficient building technologies.

Gov. Jerry Brown said that during his first term as governor in 1975, Rosenfeld told him that simply by requiring more efficient refrigerators, California could save as much energy as would be produced by the then-proposed Sundesert Nuclear Power plant.

“We adopted Art’s refrigerator standards and many others, did not build the power plant and moved the country to greater energy efficiency,” Brown said in a statement after Rosenfeld’s death was announced. 
…

We know that preventive care saves lives and money. The idea is that regular doctor visits can help catch diseases early, and avoid expensive emergency room visits. Soon, new technology will allow patients to do some preventive care at home, and send the results to their doctor. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports
…

The college application process is complex and stressful for many students. Colleges not only look for students who do well academically, but also pursue passions and interests outside of school. A new app now allows students to present themselves to colleges in a creative and personal way. VOA’s Helena Djordjevic has more on how the ZeeMee app gets students noticed.
…

Many urban areas in the U.S. experience large traffic jams that extend well beyond the usual rush hours. While rapid mass transportation has developed considerably in other parts of the world, such as Japan, China and Western Europe, the idea has not caught on as enthusiastically among Americans. Some entrepreneurs say instead of high-speed rail lines, it would be better to build high-tech underground tubes through which passenger pods would zoom at dizzying speeds. VOA’s George Putic reports.
…

Psychologist Niels Birbaumer has spent a great part of his career dealing with people whose bodies have failed them. He published a paper in 2008 about the quality of life among people who have lost the ability to control their bodies, many of whom needed a breathing tube to live. In new research published this week, Birbaumer reports he has found a way to communicate with people who are literally trapped in their bodies. VOA’s Kevin Enochs has details.
…

Alphabet’s YouTube said it was rolling out live streaming from mobile devices for users with more than 10,000 subscribers, adding a feature that will help them make money, as it takes on Facebook Live.

YouTube said in a blog post Tuesday it would roll out the feature to other contributors soon.

YouTube also launched Super Chat, allowing users to highlight their messages for a fee. “Super Chat is like paying for that front-row seat in the digital age,” YouTube said.

Any fan watching a live stream would be able to purchase chat messages that are highlighted in bright colors and stay pinned to the top of the chat window for up to five hours.

Live video is becoming a highly competitive feature on social platforms, with companies competing to stream major sports events and exclusive videos from high-profile events such as the Oscar and Grammy awards shows.

While YouTube has been supporting live streaming on its website since 2011, Facebook Live, which offers streaming video in real time, was launched in 2015.

Twitter started allowing live broadcasts from its mobile app last year.

The live videos will have all the same features as regular YouTube videos as they can be searched for, found via recommendations or playlists, and protected from unauthorized use, YouTube said.
…

Twitter says it is stepping up efforts to prevent “abuse and harassment” on its microblogging platform.

On Tuesday, the company announced several steps it is taking.

First, Twitter says it will identify people who have been banned for online abuse and prevent them from creating new accounts.

Additionally, the company says it will create a “safe search” feature so that “tweets that contain potentially sensitive content and tweets from blocked and muted accounts” will be removed from search results. Those tweets will still exist, but Twitter says they will not clutter search results any longer.

The company also says it will begin “identifying and collapsing potentially abusive and low-quality replies so the most relevant conversations are brought forward.”

Twitter has been failing to keep up with other social media platforms such as Facebook. Twitter recently reduced staff and an attempt to sell the company failed.

The 10-year-old Twitter has never made a profit, and despite tweaks to the format, has continued to see its user base shrink.
…