ShoeBox App

ShoeBox, the mobile app that lets you scan old photos and post them online, is announcing Facebook Timeline integration.

Using the newly released version of the ShoeBox iOS application, users will be able to scan photographs of family and friends using their smartphone, tag users by name, and then share those photos to Facebook.

ShoeBox is one of the first Timeline-integrated apps that’s letting you post photos into the past.  That means you can edit the date on your photo, and it will post to the correct place on your Facebook Timeline.

Many older fans are excited of what 1000memories is doing with its ShoeBox app, something which probably shows their age, since they didn’t “grow up” on Facebook.  Their childhoods were captured by flash bulbs, printouts, and trips to the drug store to pick up prints – not smartphones and social networks.

ShoeBox provides an easy way to get those old photos online so they can actually be shared and enjoyed.

In its first release back in October, the ShoeBox app allowed you to quickly snap a smartphone photo of a printed photo, crop, flatten and rotate the image, then fill in missing information, like that which might be scrawled on the back of the printout (where the photo was taken, who’s in it, what you were doing, date, etc.)

However, until today, none of that information actually appeared in the correct format to be useful on Facebook. It only worked to supplement on 1000memories’ own website, its social network of days past at 1000memories.com.

With today’s launch of the new iPhone application, things have changed. Now you can find and follow Facebook friends in the app and tag your Facebook friends by name so they’re alerted when the photos go online, a much-needed addition.

You’re also now able to edit the date on the Facebook post to send it “back in time” to the date you specify.

Interestingly, this process of posting to the past could have been automated, but 1000memories says the team decided to use Facebook’s Photos API and not the OpenGraph API. Since the Photos API allows posts to appear on the Timeline in a different way – big and beautiful like Instagram now does – they decided to use it instead.

But the company is pushing Facebook to revive support for EXIF data for the ShoeBox app itself, which would allow users to automatically post pictures to the right spot while also still appearing in the attractive, larger format. EXIF (exchangeable image file format) is a standard format that contains a digital photo’s metadata information, – e.g., details about the camera’s make and model or the photo’s timestamp.

Facebook briefly supported EXIF data during Timeline’s tests, but stopped doing so because users were “freaked out” that Facebook knew when a photo was taken. Now Facebook is now more cautious about when and where it supports EXIF.

However, in a case like ShoeBox’s, using EXIF data would simplify the process of time-stamping these photos appropriately. Although the photo in question wouldn’t have been a digital photo to start, ShoeBox could still send Facebook EXIF data that relates to the scanned-in photo’s actual data of capture as indicated by a user’s caption (e.g., “Halloween 1985,” “beach trip 1997,” etc.).

The updated ShoeBox app is likely to be the first of many Timeline-integrated apps to come, now that the Facebook Timeline is mandatory. Although not everyone is thrilled about Facebook’s new look, when you can get past the knee-jerk “change is bad” mentality, there’s a pretty compelling use case here with the idea of filling out the missing Timeline dates with old photos.

With Timeline, Facebook is no longer just a utility for social networking, it’s a digital representation of our lives. For it to be a truer reflection those lives, however, properly supporting the 4 trillion printed out photos in the world would be a good start.

Solar Storm Triggers Auroras

The Northern Lights have lit up the skies above Scotland, northern England and northern parts of Ireland after the biggest solar storm in more than six years bombarded Earth with radiation.

The Canadian Space Agency posted a geomagnetic storm warning on Tuesday after residents were also treated to a spectacular show in the night sky.

Ken Kennedy, director of the Aurora section of the British Astronomical Association, said that the lights, also known as the aurora borealis, may be visible for a few more days.

The Northern Lights are sometimes seen from northern parts of Scotland but the unusual solar activity this week means the lights have also been visible from northeast England and Ireland, a rarity.

Geomagnetic storms cause awesome sights, but they can also bring trouble.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, problems can include current surges in power lines, and interference in the broadcast of radio, TV and telephone signals.

The National Weather Service may not sound like the most exciting of government bodies, but some really interesting things fall under their umbrella.

Take, for instance, the fact that it is responsible for the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), which “provides real-time monitoring and forecasting of solar and geophysical events which impact satellites, power grids, communications, navigation, and many other technological systems”.

The SWPC has been tracking the largest solar storm since 2005, which began after a large solar flare Sunday night and is accompanied by a radiation storm expected to continue at least until tomorrow morning.

Solar storms resulting from these kinds of flares come in three stages. Electromagnetic radiation comes first, followed by radiation via protons. We are still in the midst of this radiation storm, which has remained at a classification of S3 (Strong) all day but is expected to peak and start declining soon.

This is the highest level from a solar storm in years, but still not enough to prompt astronauts on the International Space Station to take any additional or unusual steps to protect themselves from it

According to NASA’s Cosmicopia, a Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are “balloon-shaped bursts of solar wind rising above the solar corona, expanding as they climb”. They are the largest explosions in our solar system, emitting up to 220 billion lbs of plasma, travelling at speeds of around 2 million mph, and equaling almost the same power as one billion hydrogen bombs.

CMEs are so powerful that they can cause disturbances in Earth’s magnetosphere, disrupt power grids, and make the Northern Lights visible farther south than they naturally would.

Doug Biesecker says we shouldn’t expect such dramatic results from this CME, though. A physicist at the space weather center, Biesecker told USA Today that, while this CME is traveling at an unusually quick speed of 4 million mph, it will likely only reach levels of moderate or possibly severe.

Google Plus

Google CEO Larry Page trotted out an impressive statistic during last week’s quarterly earnings call: Google+ now has 90 million users, double what it had three months ago.

Even better, 60 percent of those users are engaged daily, and 80 percent weekly.

But those users aren’t necessarily engaging with Google+. Any action taken during a logged-in Google session, whether it be searching the Internet, checking Gmail or using Google Docs, counts as engagement under the statistic Page used.

Google has refused requests from journalists and interested bystanders to reveal exactly what percentage of those 90 million signed-up Google+ users actually view Plus content each day, week or month.

Instead, Google is arguing that it doesn’t matter: Google+ is so integrated into the overall experience that what matters is the number of users interacting with any Google site.

Combined with other steps Google has taken to integrate Plus into search results and other Google properties, the message is clear: Eventually, Google Plus will just be there whether you want it or not.

Facebook has 800 million active users, and 50 percent of them log in each day, an impressive feat given that Facebook is really just one site (albeit one with hooks into many other websites). Given the vast number of services Google offers, and the simple fact that Google performs a large majority of Internet searches, it’s not surprising that most Plus users interact with Google sites each day. 

Still, 90 million people signing up for a service in just over six months is a big number, a quite impressive one if it was all due to organic growth; people consciously deciding to create a Google+ account and use the site in the same way they’ve done with Facebook and Twitter. But it turns out the act of creating a Google+ account is often just an incidental byproduct of signing up for other Google services.

On Friday, the Google Operating System blog (not affiliated with Google) wrote a post titled “New Google Accounts Require Gmail and Google+.” While this isn’t strictly true, the blog demonstrates how Google is making it difficult for new users not to sign up for Google+.

“If you try to create a Google account from Google’s homepage, you’ll notice that Google redesigned the page, but that’s not all. You’ll now have to create a Gmail account, a Google Profile and you’ll automatically join Google+,” the blog states.

“Until now, creating a Google account was quite simple. You could either use an existing e-mail address or create a Gmail account. The redesigned form includes new fields: name, gender (required for Google+) and mobile phone number (not required).”

One exception is that Google+ accounts are not created for users who are under 18 years of age.

Another story on the matter states that the new signup process was put into effect Friday. But it’s actually been in place for a couple of months. We checked with Google’s public relations team on Friday, and were told that the new signup process was rolled out in November.

That helps explain why Page was able to announce such a large increase in the number of Google+ signups, while avoiding any mention of how often people actually use Google+.

“We hadn’t changed our Google Accounts sign-up flow in more than seven years so it was due for a refresh,” Google tells us. “We’re working to develop a consistent sign-up flow across our different products as part of our efforts to create an intuitive, beautifully simple, Google-wide user experience. Making it quick and easy to create a Google Account and a Google profile enables new users to take advantage of everything Google can offer.”

Google notes that once you’ve signed up, you can delete your entire Google account, or just your Google+ profile in the account settings page.

As for Android, a Google spokesperson tells us the latest version of the mobile OS lets users sign up for Google+ when creating a Google account, but it’s optional.

The Google Operating System blog also notes that the old Web-based signup page, which doesn’t force you into Google+, still exists, and you can access it if you know the URL. This process lets you create a Google account, including Google Docs access, without being forced to create a Gmail address or Google+ profile.

LightSquared Seeking FCC Approvals

LightSquared is currently seeking final FCC approval to build a nationwide 4G wireless wholesale network.

The company is now complaining that tests which appear to show its service interferes with GPS signals were rigged.

The tests were carried out by Air Force Space Command on behalf of the Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Executive Committee (PNT EXCOM).

The tests concluded that the company’s proposed service – which uses the Mobile Satellite Services (MSS) frequency band adjacent to Global Positioning System (GPS) frequencies, raised serious concerns.

“It is the unanimous conclusion of the test findings by the National Space-Based PNT EXCOM Agencies that both LightSquared’s original and modified plans for its proposed mobile network would cause harmful interference to many GPS receivers,” EXCOM co-chairs Ashton Carter and John Porcari wrote to the Department of Commerce.

“Additionally, an analysis by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has concluded that the LightSquared proposals are not compatible with several GPS-dependent aircraft safety-of-flight systems.”

But the tests were a fiddle on the part of GPS manufacturers and government end users, claims a furious LightSquared.

“The GPS manufacturers cherry-picked the devices in secret without any independent oversight authority in place or input from LightSquared,” it says.

“The testing protocol deliberately focused on obsolete and niche market devices that were least able to withstand potential interference.”

In any case, claims LightSquared, the testing standard was unreasonably harsh, defining failure as a single decibel of interference.

“Independent experts agree that a one dB threshold can only be detected in laboratory settings and has no impact on GPS positional accuracy or user experience,” says the company.

“In fact, GPS devices are designed with the ability to withstand eight dB or more of loss of sensitivity due to man-caused and natural interference.”

“By setting the definition of interference at one dB, the testing was rigged to ensure that most receivers would fail.”

It’s calling for further testing from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). If it doesn’t succeed, though, the project appears to be doomed.

Zappos Website Hacked

Online shoe and clothing retailer Zappos, which is owned by Amazon.com, began emailing its 24 million customers Sunday, advising them that its site had been hacked, and some customers’ personal details and account information likely stolen.

Zappos has stated that no credit or debit card information had been accessed by attackers.

Zappos tells 24 million customers to change passwords.  A special password-reset website was unavailable to non-U.S. customers.

“We were recently the victim of a cyberattack by a criminal who gained access to parts of our internal network and systems through one of our servers in Kentucky.

We are cooperating with law enforcement to undergo an exhaustive investigation,” said Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh in an email that was sent to all Zappos employees Sunday, shortly before the company sent an email to its customers, warning them about the breach.

The stolen data, said Hsieh, may have included each customer’s name, email address, billing and shipping address, the last four digits of their credit card number, and a “cryptographically scrambled” version of their website password.

Such encryption, however, might not prevent attackers from eventually recovering passwords.

Likewise, any customers who reused their Zappos password on another website that had suffered a breach would be at risk from attackers using that password to access their Zappos account.

Accordingly, Zappos has expired all customers’ passwords, and directed customers to reset their passwords via a dedicated password-reset page.

Tuesday, however, customers located outside of the United States were unable to access either the Zappos website or the password-reset feature, and instead received a message saying that Zappos was working to resolve “a few technical issues.”

Those technical issues involve preparing the systems to handle an anticipated surge in website traffic. “As a result of preparing their systems for the volume of emails and customers changing their passwords, they are undergoing some system updates and they hope to open up to non-U.S. users soon,” said Zappos spokeswoman Diane Coffey of PR agency Kel & Partners, via email.

In its email to customers, Zappos also warned them to beware future email or telephone scams that might attempt to use the data breach to trick users into divulging their personal details. “As always, please remember that Zappos.com will never ask you for personal or account information in an email,” it said.

Xbox 360 Game Console

Microsoft’s taking its annual video game victory lap, this time celebrating Xbox 360 sales for 2011, during which the 360 outsold both the PlayStation 3 and Wii (tied for second place) by over 2.7 million units.

And the company says December was the cherry on top: The Xbox 360 sold 1.7 million units alone in December 2011 (though down from the record 1.9 million units sold in December 2010) and accounted for roughly half of December’s total retail outlay on games, consoles and accessories, totaling more than $1.5 billion.

According to Microsoft, “This marks the tenth consecutive month Xbox 360 has held more than 40 percent of the current-generation console market share, and twelfth straight month Xbox 360 was the top-selling console in the U.S.”

NPD Group’s retail data shows the Xbox 360 was the fastest-growing console of the year as well, capturing 49% of consumer retail spend and accounting for a record $6.7 billion in total sales — about $4.6 billion on games and accessories and $2.1 billion on the Xbox 360 games console itself.

Microsoft says that brings its worldwide Xbox 360 sales to over 66 million units, 16 million Kinect sensors and 40 million Xbox LIVE members (that’s counting both paying and non-paying members — the interesting takeaway here is that, for some reason, roughly one-third of Xbox 360 owners haven’t signed up for a basic, no-frills LIVE membership).

Sony PR’s version of damage control is to say as little as possible about the PlayStation 3, so we can’t do an apples-to-apples comparison. The company says it sold over 6.5 million PS3 units worldwide, but not how many it sold in the U.S. If we backtrack to Microsoft’s 2010 wrap-up, where the company said it sold 50 million Xbox 360 units worldwide by close of 2010, we can see Microsoft sold roughly 16 million Xbox 360′s worldwide in 2011.

Sony, by comparison, lumps its PlayStation-brand devices into one number — 6.5 million units globally — and limits the window to “this holiday season.” If the goal’s to prevent a number-off by obfuscating, mission accomplished, guys!

In any event, pundits have long predicted the PS3 would eventually catch and bypass the Xbox 360 in global unit sales. I’d say Sony’s window to do so as we head into this generation’s final year or two has probably passed.

Overall, 2011 was a slump year for retail video game numbers. NPD says sales plummeted 21% in December 2011, year-on-year (from about $5 billion to about $4 billion) and 8% for the year total (from about $18.6 billion to about $17 billion). What we don’t know: How much of that drop involves the shift to online game sales.

NPD doesn’t yet have all that sorted, so the retail picture’s misleading if you want to take the game industry’s pulse. I wouldn’t be surprised if that “missing” $1.6 billion (or more) were tied up in online spend, from online roleplaying subscriptions to full game downloads to content packs and more. I spent far more buying full versions of games digitally this year, for instance, than I did at retail.

The top-selling game of 2011 was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. In second place was Just Dance 2.

Google Revamps Search Formula

Google is reportedly sifting through the photos and commentary on its blossoming social network so its Internet search results can include more personal information.

The additional personal touches coming out Tuesday mark another step toward one of Google’s most ambitious goals.

The Internet search leader eventually hopes to know enough about each of its users so it can tailor its results to fit the unique interests of each person looking for something.

Different people should start seeing different search results more frequently now that Google Inc. is importing content from its 6-month-old Plus service, a product that the company introduced in an attempt to counter the popularity of Facebook’s online hangout and Twitter’s short-messaging hub.

Google’s main search results page also will start highlighting more content from an older online photo service called Picasa.

Facebook and Twitter pose a threat to Google because they don’t allow Google’s search engine to log the avalanche of photos, links and observations tumbling through those services.

That’s troublesome to Google because its search engine could become less useful if its system can’t analyze what people are signaling is important to them so those preferences can be factoring into the results.

Google is tackling that challenge with an addition to its results called “Search, plus your world.”

The feature will be automatically turned on beginning Tuesday for all English-language searches made by users logged into Google. Turning off the personal results permanently will require changing a setting in Google’s personal preferences. The personal results can also be excluded on a search-by-search basis by clicking on an icon of the globe on the results page (the personal results will be denoted by a button featuring a human’s silhouette).

If the new formula works as Google expects, the search results will include pertinent information culled from the requestor’s Plus account. For instance, a query about the San Francisco 49ers might include links and comments made about the football team by other people in one of the social circles on the user’s Plus account. A search request that includes the name of a dog owned by the user or a friend might turn up photos of the pet that have been posted on Plus and Picasa.

“This is going to open up a whole new avenue in search,” said Ben Gomes, a Google fellow.

Google isn’t the first to do this. Microsoft Corp.’s Bing search engine has been mining some of the preferences and other information shared on Facebook since May. But Google’s emphasis on more personal results figures to attract more attention because its search engine is so dominant. It handles about two-thirds of the Internet search requests made in the U.S. while Bing processes less than one-third, including the activity that it comes through a partnership with Yahoo Inc.

Facebook, though, has greater insights into personal tastes. That’s because its nearly 8-year-old social network boasts more than 800 million users who share more than 1.5 billion photos alone each week. In October, Google said Plus had more than 40 million users.

Google hasn’t updated the information since then, although some external studies have estimated Plus began the new year with 60 million to 70 million users.

Some of Google’s changes may help prod more people into joining Plus. As part of Tuesday’s expansion, the profile pictures of Plus accountholders will appear in the drop-down suggestions on Google’s search box. In another twist, searches on general topics such as “music” and “sports,” will generate suggestions on people, companies and places that have Plus accounts.

While Google is hoping the addition of more personal results will make its search engine even more useful, the changes also could spook some people as they realize how much information is being compiled about them.

Google tried to minimize privacy concerns by recently switching to technology that encrypts all its search results to protect the information from slipping out.

Previous privacy missteps by both Google and Facebook resulted in both companies entering into settlements with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

The FTC agreements require Google and Facebook to submit to external audits of their privacy practices every other year. 

Meteor Shower

Little-known Quadrantid meteor shower could rank among the best of the year.

If you enjoy the sight of “shooting stars,” then make plans to look skyward before dawn on Wednesday, when a strong display of Quadrantid meteors may appear.

This first meteor shower of 2012 may end up being one of the best.

To paraphrase Forrest Gump: The Quadrantid meteor shower is like opening up a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get! 

Indeed, the Quadrantids are notoriously unpredictable, but if any year promises a fine display, this could be it.

Peak activity is due to occur early on Wednesday at about 2:30 a.m. ET and favors eastern North America. The Quadrantid meteor shower sky map shows where to look to see the display.

The Quadrantids (pronounced KWA-dran-tids) provides one of the most intense annual meteor showers, with a brief, sharp maximum lasting but a few hours. Adolphe Quetelet of Brussels Observatory discovered the shower in the 1830s, and shortly afterward it was noted by several other astronomers in Europe and America.

The meteors are named after the obsolete constellation Quadrans Muralis, the Mural Quadrant (an astronomical instrument). Quadrans Muralis was depicted in some 19th-century star atlases roughly midway between the end of the Handle of the Big Dipper and the quadrilateral of stars marking the head of the constellation Draco. The International Astronomical Union phased out Quadrans Muralis in 1922. [Amazing meteor shower photos]

The parentage of the Quadrantids had long been a mystery. Then, Peter Jenniskens, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., noticed that the orbit of 2003 EH1 — a small asteroid discovered in March 2003 — ”falls snug in the shower.” He believes that this 1.2-mile (2-kilometer) chunk of rock is the source of the Quadrantids; possibly this asteroid is the burnt-out core of the lost comet C/1490 Y1.

According to Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society, maximum activity this year is expected on Wednesday morning (Jan. 4) at 2:30 a.m. ET.

For those in the eastern United States, the radiant — that point in the sky from where the meteors will appear to emanate from — will be about one-third of the way up in the east-northeast sky. The farther to the north and east you go, the higher in the sky the radiant will be. To the south and west, the radiant will be lower, and the meteors will be fewer. 

Although the moon will be at a bright waxing gibbous phase, it will set by 3 a.m., leaving the sky dark for prospective meteor watchers until the first light of dawn appears at around 6 a.m.

Quadrantid meteors are described as bright and bluish with long silvery trains. Some years produce a mere handful, but for favorably placed observers, this could be a shower to remember; at greatest activity, according to Lunsford, “Eastern observers may be able to see 60-75 Quadrantids per hour.”

Microsoft Booth At CES

Microsoft reportedly has decided to drop from the Consumer’s Electronic Show (CES) for 2012.

Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw said in a blog post today that the company, which has been a mainstay attraction at the show for years, would no longer make a keynote presentation or host a booth at the show after the one scheduled for January.

“We’ll continue to participate in CES as a great place to connect with partners and customers across the PC, phone and entertainment industries, but we won’t have a keynote or booth after this year because our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing,” Shaw said.

The company has been increasingly using its own events to make major product announcements, an underlying trend that other technology companies have followed.

Apple and Google have long avoided CES, even as Google has had a major presence at other conferences such as Mobile World Congress. Motorola Mobility likewise canceled its press conference for the upcoming show.

Microsoft is just the latest to reconsider its presence at CES, which is a large and costly event in which companies risk getting drowned out by the onslaught of announcements that come out. Instead, companies have been looking at smaller, individual events where they don’t have to compete with other news.

Many are looking to emulate the model made successful by Apple, in which it is able to generate a huge amount of buzz and attention for an event that it puts on.

The Consumer Electronics Association said it has already received interest from other exhibitors for Microsoft’s old booth space.

“Both CEA and Microsoft have agreed that the time has come to end this great run, and so Microsoft will not have a keynote at the 2013 CES,” the trade group said in a statement today. “Microsoft is an important member of CEA and we wish them all the best as they evolve their plans for new ways to tell consumer stories.”

“As we look at all of the new ways we tell our consumer stories – from product momentum disclosures, to exciting events like our Big Windows Phone, to a range of consumer connection points like Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft.com and our retail stores – it feels like the right time to make this transition,” Shaw said.

Microsoft’s press conference in January of this year was mostly a recap of existing products, including the Xbox 360 and its then-recently launched Windows Phone platform.

The big new piece of news was Windows 8, which itself had been detailed with compatibility for ARM processors at a separate press event ahead of the company’s keynote.

The company, however, stayed mum on any new operating system features, saving those details for its Build conference in September. It’s also held separate, smaller events to promote its Windows Phone mobile operating system.

Large Hadron Collider

The Higgs boson – may have been glimpsed, say researchers reporting at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva.

The particle is purported to be the means by which everything in the Universe obtains its mass.

Scientists say that two experiments at the LHC see hints of the Higgs at the same mass, fuelling huge excitement.

But the LHC does not yet have enough data to claim a discovery.

Finding the Higgs would be one of the biggest scientific advances of the last 60 years.

It is crucial for allowing us to make sense of the Universe, but has never been observed by experiments.

This basic building block of the Universe is a significant missing component of the Standard Model – the “instruction booklet” that describes how particles and forces interact.

Two separate experiments at the LHC – Atlas and CMS – have been conducting independent searches for the Higgs. Because the Standard Model does not predict an exact mass for the Higgs, physicists have to use particle accelerators like the LHC to systematically look for it across a broad search area.

At a seminar at Cern (the organisation that operates the LHC) on Tuesday, the heads of Atlas and CMS said they see “spikes” in their data at roughly the same mass: 124-125 gigaelectronvolts (GeV).

Guido Tonelli, spokesperson for the CMS experiment, said: “The excess is most compatible with a Standard Model Higgs in the vicinity of 124 GeV and below, but the statistical significance is not large enough to say anything conclusive.

“As of today, what we see is consistent either with a background fluctuation or with the presence of the boson.”

Prof Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director-general of Cern, told BBC News: “Such signals can come and go… Although there is correspondence between the two experiments, we need more solid numbers.”

None of the spikes seen by the experiments is at much more than the “two sigma” level of certainty.

“We can be misled by small numbers, so we need more statistics,” but added: “It is exciting.”

If it exists, the Higgs is very short-lived, quickly decaying – or transforming – into more stable particles. There are several different ways this can happen, which provides scientists with different routes to search for the boson.

They looked at particular decay routes for the Higgs that produce only a handful of events, but have the advantage of having less background noise in the data. This background noise consists of random combinations of events, some of which can look like Higgs decays.

Prof Stefan Soldner-Rembold, from the University of Manchester, called the quality of the LHC’s results “exceptional”

He added, ”Within one year we will probably know whether the Higgs particle exists, but it is likely not going to be a Christmas present.”

The simple fact that both Atlas and CMS seem to be seeing a data spike at the same mass has been enough to cause enormous excitement in the particle physics community.