Blanc hints at PSG move for Hazard

The Ligue 1 giants could make a move for the Belgium international this summer as they aim to add some fresh blood to their squad

Paris Saint-Germain coach Laurent Blanc has hinted he could make a move for Chelsea winger Eden Hazard.

The Parc des Princes side were hit with a fine of €60million earlier this month after breaching Uefa's Financial Fair Play rules and PSG have agreed to significantly limit their spending for the next two campaigns.

However, Blanc is still confident the capital club will be able to improve their squad and has praised the individual qualities of Hazard as he draws up a list of summer targets.

"Hazard is the kind of player who can be decisive," Blanc told Le Parisien.

"You can talk about all kinds of things; tactics, strength of the team, individual class, but a player who is capable of beating three or four players is something else. You never know what to expect from him.

"Unfortunately for us, next year we'll be watched by Uefa. We will not be able to do what we want, but I think we will be able to improve the team anyway. We'll be working within UEFA's new constraints and want between two and four recruits.

"We already have a very good team in my opinion, so it does not take a lot of players. I think we'll get to do what we want to improve the team."

Blanc also confirmed that winger Jeremy Menez will leave the club and also hinted that defender Alex - whose contract expires at the end of next month - may depart as well.

"Menez will leave," Blanc added.

"With Alex the matter is more complex, but we think he may leave. Perhaps there will be movement with players under contract. We will try to anticipate their intentions."

Courtois: I don't have an emotional connection with Chelsea

The Belgian has spent the last three seasons on loan at Atletico Madrid but insists he is not seen as a stop-gap player by the fans or his team-mates at Vicente Calderon

Thibaut Courtois insists he does not "have an emotional connection" with Chelsea and says he is keen to remain at Atletico Madrid.

The Belgian , who has spent the past three seasons on loan at Vicente Calderon, is currently preparing to face Real Madrid in the Champions League final, having played a key part in the elimination of his parent club in the semi-finals.

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And Courtois claims he is not seen as a "loan player" by his team-mates, but believes it will be difficult to convince Chelsea to let him stay in Spain for the 2014-15 campaign.

"The fans and my team-mates at Atletico do not see me as a loan player," Courtois told Sport Bild.

"I do not have an emotional connection with Chelsea. They only signed me for €9 million back in 2011. But I have only been to London to undergo a medical.

"Chelsea were already reluctant to send me out on loan last year, but I really wanted to stay with Atletico.

"Everything will start all over again after this season and it will be even more difficult to come to a satisfactory decision."

OK Google' voice search makes way to Chrome

Google's "OK Google" featureGoogle

Google's "OK Google" voice search is now available in the latest release of the Chrome browser. Google announced the news Wednesday in a Google+ post and urged all "Chromies" to give voice search a try.

Once the feature is enabled, users can simply open a new tab in Chrome and say "OK Google." From there, the search engine will recognize that a voice command is coming and allow users to input a search query.

Google has long offered voice search, but that required users to click a microphone icon in its search bar to get going. The new Chrome feature requires no user input other than the "OK Google" command.

Google announced the feature for its Chrome Beta in February, saying that it would work with Windows,Mac, and Linux. Now that the latest Chrome distribution is available publicly, anyone who updates their Chrome browser will get the feature.

The "OK Google" command is also available in the latest version of Chrome OS, Google's browser-based operating system. The feature allows Chrome OS users to quickly search with just the voice command.

Facebook tightens the privacy of your updates

Facebook

Those of you who've ever accidentally shared a Facebook update with the entire world now have a better safety net in place.

As of Thursday, Facebook has changed the default audience for updates for new members. Instead of being shared with the entire public by default, updates will be shared only with friends. And just how does that work?

When you post an update on Facebook you can choose who you want to see it -- friends, only yourself, or the public. And by public, Facebook means a lot of people, specifically "people who are not your friends, people off of Facebook, and people who view content through different media (new and old alike) such as print, broadcast (television, etc.) and other sites on the Internet."

The new default setting applies to new people who join Facebook. But any member can switch the default setting for all updates and choose a specific audience for each update individually. Facebook users can also change the audience for any of their prior updates.

"First time posters will also see a reminder to choose an audience for their first post, and if they don't make a choice, it will be set to Friends," the social network explained on Thursday.

To protect you further, Facebook announced a new privacy checkup tool. Scheduled to roll out over the next few weeks, this new tool will help you review key settings, such as who can see your updates and which Facebook apps you use.

Facebook's move is certainly good news for any member who ever shared the wrong thing with the wrong crowd.

CEO defends Nest's un-Googley, ad-free business

The second-gen Nest Learning ThermostatLindsey Turrentine/CNET

Google already denied that it has plans to sell ads on its thermostats, but Nest CEO Tony Fadell went out of his way Wednesday night to separate his subsidiary's money-making methods from those of its parent company.

Google makes the vast majority of its money by selling ads, an approach that critics lambast because it means the company has a financial incentive to pry into user behavior to supply better ads. Nest doesn't work that way, but Fadell was apparently concerned the message wasn't getting through. He took to Twitter to say Nest is separate and makes money simply by selling products to consumers.

"Nest has a paid-for business model, while Google has generally had an ads-supported business model," Fadell tweeted. "We have nothing against ads, after all Nest does lots of advertising. We just don't think ads are right for the Nest user experience," he said.

Nest sells Internet-connected thermostats and air-quality sensors designed to make it easier to control the household environment, for example with smartphone apps for alerts and settings. Google acquired Nest for $3.2 billion in February.

Nest Labs CEO and founder Tony FadellStephen Shankland/CNET

Google itself spawned the new debate with a 2013 filing to regulators published on Tuesday that said, "a few years from now, we and other companies could be serving ads and other content on refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, and watches, to name just a few possibilities." On Wednesday, Google said the letter "does not reflect Google's product roadmap" and said Nest "does not have an ads-based model and has never had any such plans." Google has contacted the SEC to "clarify" the 2013 filing.

Critics of Google's advertising-supported business had pounced on the letter.

"You are the product with this creepy company," concluded Jim Dalrymple at The Loop, an Apple blog, meaning that Google users are the products being sold to advertisers. Daring Fireball blog author John Gruber added, "What a depressing, oppressive view of the future."

Nest evidently didn't want to be tarred with that brush.

"Nest is being run independently from the rest of Google, with a separate management team, brand, and culture," Fadell said.

Fadell also had another public-relations fire to put out Wednesday when the US Consumer Products Safety Commission issued a recall notice for the Nest Protect, an effort it said it made to bring an earlier problem to the notice of more people. "The CPSC press release issued today refers to the same corrective action referenced in our April Safety Notice," Fadell tweeted about the recall.

People can address the issue by connecting the Nest Protect to the Internet for a software update that disables the problematic feature. That feature let people hush the smoke alarms with a gesture for small problems like burning toast, but it also could potentially silence the Nest Protect when there's a real problem.

Brian Eno and Karl Hyde: How many shapes can dance on a record?

Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET

If you're a musician, it seems it's becoming de rigueur to dabble in the mobile app space. The latest to do so is Brian Eno, one of the strongest pioneers and innovators in ambient electronic, alongside Underworld frontman Karl Hyde.

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This isn't Eno's first foray into mobile apps. His previous efforts -- Bloom, Trope and Air -- are essentially sound-mixing tools, where the user can play with presets to come up with their own creations.

Eno • Hyde is quite different. It's powered by Lukasz Karluk'sHoloDecks, a project that is interested in exploring and transforming sound. Rather than producing sound itself, the app provides an interactive augmented-reality experience to be enjoyed in concert with the record of the pair's new album, "Someday World".

The app uses the label in the centre of the record as an AR marker. When you point your iOS device's camera at the label, a small world of geometric shapes appears on the surface of the record -- what Eno and Hyde dub "insider architecture". Users can tap to interact with the shapes, shattering them and watching them coalesce, forming structures that mirror the compositions on the album.

"A lot of the nicer cities I know are cities built on hills, and the cities are beautiful because the buildings have a challenge to adapt to," Eno said, explaining the duo's philosophy of 'building cities on hills'. " They have to mould themselves around the geology that they've formed upon. And that always makes for very interesting buildings, because they can't just be blocks, they have to somehow morph around the environment. A lot of the constructions on the album were deliberately irregular and awkward

Magneto' boots let X-men wannabe walk on ceiling

Oh what a feeling, when you're dancing on the ceiling.Video screenshot by Michael Franco/CNET

YouTuber Colin Furze is at it again. First he made some pretty realistic Wolverine claws. This week, inspired by X-Men's Magneto, he's flipped things up a bit by creating magnetic shoes that let him walk on the roof of his workshop.

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To create his shoes, Furze drilled holes in an old pair of Vans and fitted the sole of each shoe with an electromagnet. When the magnets proved to be too weak, he took things to the next level by heading to the local scrap yard, locating an abandoned microwave, and removing the transformer.

In a video about making the boots, Furze admits that there were easier ways to get a strong electromagnet -- like buying one -- but he also confesses to being a "tight git" and not wanting to "spend loads of money on massive powerful magnets."

So, once the transformer was freed from its microwave, Furze sawed it up to get at the magnetic coil it contained, ran some current through it, and found that the coil could easily hold his 176-pound frame. Custom-made plates attached to the magnets with straps that wrapped around his shoes were next, then came switches for each shoe that could cut the current and allow him to move one foot in the front of the other. The rest is ceiling-walking histor