Coldwell Banker found older Americans are transitioning to some smart home technology more quickly than younger consumers. Some 40 percent of those surveyed over 65 who own smart home products currently have smart temperature products, compared with 25 percent of those 18 to 34, it said. The real estate firm said Monday that 45 percent of Americans either own smart home technology or plan to invest in it this year. Of those, 36 percent don’t consider themselves early tech adopters. The most popular type of smart home technology that people already own is smart entertainment (44 percent), followed by smart security (31 percent) and smart thermostats (30 percent), it said.The survey was done in October by Harris Poll with 4,065 adults ages 18 and above, including 1,009 that owned at least one smart home product.

Yahoo shut down its online video distribution service Yahoo Screen, the Internet company said Monday. The video platform, which began as a video-sharing service, ended Wednesday, the company said. In a statement, Yahoo said the Yahoo Screen video content "has been transitioned from Yahoo Screen to our Digital Magazine properties so users can discover complementary content in one place."

Twitter said it's restoring Politwoops access to its application programming interface, resolving a more than four-month dispute with the Open State Foundation (OSF), which can begin again to publish deleted tweets by politicians (see 1508240020). OSF, the Sunlight Foundation and Access Now met with Twitter several times over the past two months before reaching an agreement, OSF said in a Thursday news release. The groups met with the social media company, which also blogged the announcement, after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said at its annual developer conference in October that the company has a "responsibility to continue to empower organizations that bring more transparency to public dialogue, such as Politwoops." OSF Director Arjan El Fassed said the organization's "next step is now to continue and expand our work to enable the public to hold public officials accountable for their public statements." OSF plans to expand Politwoops beyond the 30-plus governments -- including the U.S., U.K. and Holy See -- that it now monitors.

Microsoft already lets users know whether their Outlook.com email and OneDrive accounts have been targeted or compromised. But it will now tell them if a state sponsor is responsible for the attack. Scott Charney, corporate vice president-Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing, wrote Wednesday in a blog post the company is doing this "because it is likely that the attack could be more sophisticated or more sustained than attacks from cybercriminals and others." But he said the company doesn't plan to provide any more detailed information about the attackers or methods used. If users get such notices, it doesn't necessarily mean their accounts are compromised, he wrote, but it does mean there's evidence their accounts have been targeted. He listed several steps users should take to strengthen the security of their accounts.

The Jan. 14 FTC PrivacyCon conference will feature 19 presentations of original research on consumer privacy and security matters, said its agenda. The commission said in a news release Tuesday that the conference will present numerous discussions on policy implications of some of the research, and be divided into five major topic areas: the state of online privacy, consumers' privacy expectations, big data and algorithms, economics of privacy and security, and security and usability. Some of the original research will address consumers' understanding of their online privacy compared with the options they're provided, tools that analyze how consumer data is shared and used online, and effectiveness of programs that monitor security weaknesses, the FTC said. Chairwoman Edith Ramirez, Commissioner Julie Brill and FTC Chief Technologist Lorrie Cranor are to speak at the conference, which will be webcast live.

A spokeswoman for Hyatt Hotels said in an email that malware on computers that operate payment processing systems was detected on Nov. 30 as part of normal IT operations. It announced the malware last week. The spokeswoman said Hyatt immediately engaged "leading" third-party cybersecurity experts and the FBI in the ongoing investigation and will post updates on its website. "The malware we discovered targets information stored in the payment cards, including cardholder name, payment card number, internal verification code and expiration date," she told us. The spokeswoman again said Hyatt has "taken steps to strengthen the security of our systems, and customers can feel confident using payment cards" at hotels worldwide.

Photos of a new version of the Google Glass Enterprise Edition headset were posted by the FCC, though without any accompanying announcement from the manufacturer. The device is undergoing testing to certify it complies with FCC rules. The 9to5Google website reported Monday that the device is expected to target business users and appears similar to older devices, except it now appears to be foldable with a button-and-hinge system.

PsiKick, developer of a self-powered wireless device platform, secured $16.5 million in Series B financing, it said Wednesday. Funding was led by Osage University Partners and joined by existing investors New Enterprise Associates, the University of Michigan Investment in New Technologies Fund and angel investors. PsiKick said its technology building blocks -- wireless connectivity, robust node computation and energy harvesting -- enable scalable “batteryless” IoT. Series B funding will be used to hire additional engineers to develop completely batteryless systems to solve “high impact problems that can’t be solved today,” the company said.

The FTC put digital marketers and publishers on notice about using deceptively formatted advertising such as native ads or sponsored content that are "often indistinguishable from news, feature articles, product reviews, editorial, entertainment, and other regular content." The commission voted 4-0 approving an enforcement policy statement that lays out general principles used to determine "whether any particular advertising format is deceptive, in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act ... if the ad misleads reasonable consumers as to its nature or source, including that a party other than the sponsoring advertiser is its source." FTC also issued guidance Tuesday to help companies comply by offering examples of when disclosures are needed and how they should be displayed within native ads. Consumer Protection Bureau Director Jessica Rich said in a news release the policy "applies time-tested truth-in-advertising principles to modern media. People browsing the Web, using social media, or watching videos have a right to know if they’re seeing editorial content or an ad.” Center for Digital Democracy Executive Director Jeff Chester in an emailed statement said the FTC's action is a "wake-up call" for digital marketers who will be penalized for "failing to ensure that so-called 'native ads' are clearly recognized as paid pitches." But he said the policy statement and guidance don't specifically address a growing practice called "programmatic native," which is used to create and deliver native ads by data profiling individuals. "The FTC should have specifically addressed it in its guidance and not just in a footnote (cite 50)," he wrote. "Given the growing data-driven capability of native ads to be formatted to reflect a person’s interests and online behavior, as well as how it’s designed to work well on mobile devices and other screens, there are questions about the effectiveness of disclosure." The FTC's policy statement and business guidance were produced based on a December 2013 workshop on the topic plus two years of research, the release said.

Oracle is settling FTC charges that the company deceived consumers about security updates to its Java platform, standard edition software (Java SE) that's been installed in more than 850 million personal computers. The FTC said in a news release Monday that Oracle will be required to give consumers an easy way to uninstall older, insecure versions of Java SE under the proposed consent order. The company is also required to inform consumers via social media and its website about the settlement and how consumers can remove older versions of Java SE, which are vulnerable to hacking, the FTC said. The commission voted 4-0 to issue the complaint and accept the proposed consent order, which will be published in the Federal Register soon and then be subject to public comment until Jan. 20. At that time, the commission will decide whether to make the proposed consent order final. The FTC alleged Oracle had been aware of "significant security issues" with older Java SE versions, which support browser-based features such as calculators, online gaming, chat rooms and 3D images. The agency said the security flaws "allowed hackers to craft malware that could allow access to consumers' usernames and passwords for financial accounts" and launch phishing attacks. The FTC complaint also alleged Oracle promised consumers Java SE installed updates would protect their systems, but the company failed to say the update "automatically removed only the most recent prior version of the software" not earlier versions that might be installed. The agency said no versions released before Java SE version 6 update 10 were uninstalled. The FTC also alleged internal Oracle documents showed the company was aware of the problem in 2011 and "a large number of hacking incidents were targeting prior versions." Oracle had notices posted on its website about the need to remove older versions, but it didn't indicate the process didn't automatically remove older versions. Oracle did not comment.