Luxury watchmakers announced smart watch intentions at the start of the Baselworld watch and jewelry showcase event in Switzerland Thursday. They were as reluctant to provide product details as they were eager to trumpet their technology partners. At a news conference announcing a relationship among luxury watch icon TAG Heuer, Google and Intel, TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver called it “my biggest announcement ever” in his 40 years attending Baselworld. Biver prefaced a brief Q&A with the caveat that he wouldn’t provide pricing, availability or product features of the TAG Heuer smart watch. Biver called the announcement something he could “never have imagined,” a partnership that would “give birth to the greatest connected watch.” The Silicon Valley companies supplying the technology to TAG Heuer also are providing the tech foundation for Fossil Group’s upcoming smart watches (see 1503060058). That led to a question in Q&A on how the partnership with TAG Heuer differs from that with Fossil. Michael Bell, general manager-Intel's new devices group, responded for the group and said, “What we’re talking about here is a very nice luxury Swiss smart watch” and called Fossil “also a phenomenal partner.” The TAG Heuer smart watch will reside on a software platform called Android Wear, a version of the Android operating system tailored for the connected watch, said David Singleton, director-engineering of Google's Android Wear. The brains of the watch are made by Intel. Because of the collaboration among the three companies, and the fact that the watch's "brain" is made by Intel, the upcoming watch won’t be able to be labeled what has been a point of pride for TAG Heuer’s other watches: “Swiss Made.” Also at Baselworld, Gucci Timepieces said it partnered with i.am+ and will.i.am to develop wearable technology. In announcing the collaboration, Gucci Timepieces CEO Stéphane Linder, who left TAG Heuer as CEO in December, said he coined the term “fashionology” to describe the merging worlds of fashion and technology. The Gucci device will operate as a “completely standalone smartband, untethered from any smartphone,” said the company. The feature list of the smart device includes: the ability to make and receive phone calls, send and receive text messages and emails, music, maps, calendar, fitness functions and a “sophisticated personal assistant activated by voice command,” the company said.

The NTIA’s Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program (BTOP) has been a success, NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said Wednesday at a Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy event on the National Broadband Plan. “We all know there’s still much more work to be done,” he said. BTOP grantees have deployed more than 113,000 miles of new or upgraded broadband connections and connected more than 25,000 “community anchor” institutions. Hundreds of thousands of Americans now have broadband as a result of the program, he said. The plan itself was key in raising an early alert about the need for more spectrum for wireless broadband, Strickling said. “It seems obvious today, but I don’t think it was quite so obvious back in 2010, the speed with which wireless devices were going to take over,” he said.

Enough Is Enough is partnering with 75 other organizations to lead its “National Porn Free Wi-Fi Campaign,” delivering 46,500 petition signatures to the CEOs of McDonald’s and Starbucks, said a news release from Enough Is Enough. The campaign and petition ask the companies to filter all pornography on their public Wi-Fi services. Organizations that joined the campaign include the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family’s Citizens Link, Home School Legal Defense Association, National Children’s Advocacy Center, Parents Television Council and Salvation Army. Neither McDonald’s nor Starbucks commented Tuesday.

Facebook received more than 35,000 government requests for user data between July and December, said the company’s transparency report released Monday. More than 14,000 of those requests came from the U.S., it said. India sent more than 5,000 requests; U.K., more than 2,000, it said.

“Widespread use" of computers and cellphones "created a market for malicious software that allows perpetrators to surreptitiously intercept their victims’ communications,” Leslie Caldwell, U.S. assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice Criminal Division, said in a blog post Friday. “For a small fee, people can purchase this software and download it onto a victim's device.” The Obama administration has a proposal that would “expand the statute that already provides for the forfeiture of surreptitious interception devices themselves to include forfeiture of proceeds from the sale of spyware and property used to facilitate the crime,” Caldwell said. “Violators of the surreptitious interception device statute often engage in money laundering by transferring funds through multiple overseas accounts to conceal the profits of their criminal enterprise,” she said. “Because the spyware statute is not listed as a predicate offense in the money laundering statute, however, prosecutors are unable to charge defendants for money laundering activities related to the sale of spyware unless they can link it to some other crime, which will often be difficult or impossible," she said: The proposal "adds violations of the spyware statue to the list of money laundering predicate offenses."

Security updates for Adobe’s Flash Player were released Thursday after “multiple vulnerabilities” allowing a remote hacker to “take control of an affected system” were discovered, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team said Thursday in a news release. Users and administrators are asked to review the Adobe Security Bulletin and update Flash Player to the latest version, as the update for Windows, Macintosh and Linux isn't automatic, Adobe said.

Streaming audio increased 41 percent in January from the year-ago month in average active sessions (AAS), said Triton Digital in listing top-performing digital audio stations and networks measured by the Webcast Metrics platform, in a news release Thursday. Thirty-six percent of all audio streaming listening happened on iOS, 30 percent on Android, 9 percent on Flash Player and 8 percent on Google Chrome, Triton said. Android and iOS remain the favored platforms for streaming audio, it said. In the top 20 markets, Denver experienced the largest listening gain compared with December, with a 33 percent increase in AAS, it said. The next markets with listening gains were Tampa with 26 percent, Chicago with 21 percent, New York with 21 percent and San Francisco with 20 percent, the industry researcher said.

EarthLink selected Level 3 to provide secure, global connectivity to support enterprise customers from EarthLink’s Middle East location, a Level 3 news release Wednesday. It said the selection was made in the face of demand for enhanced online security and connectivity to worldwide markets from customers in sectors such as the financial services and oil industries.

The White House is “taking steps to improve” privacy and is now using encryption by default HTTPS on its website WhiteHouse.gov, the site’s Twitter account tweeted Wednesday morning. Last week the FTC became the first government agency to use encryption by default on its site (see 1503060055).

The market for streaming video devices priced at $99 and below is becoming increasingly crowded and competitive, with Apple, Amazon, Google and Roku competing for the top spot. Last year, Google shipped 8.7 million Chromecast sticks, beating out Apple TV’s 8.3 million units, analyst Paul Erickson of IHS Technology forecasts in a new report. Shipments of Chromecast sticks are expected to continue exceeding those of Apple TV by a close margin for the near future; though Apple TV has dropped to $69 neither its fundamental capabilities nor its iOS-centric market focus has changed, Erickson said. To beat Google, Erickson said, Apple needs to continue expanding overall capabilities and the selection of marquee content partners as well as release updated hardware.