Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts

HP sells webOS operating system to LG Electronics






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co said on Monday it will sell the webOS operating system to South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, unloading the smartphone software it acquired through a $ 1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in 2010.


LG will use the operating software, used in now-defunct Palm smartphones years ago, for its “smart” or Internet-connected TVs. The Asian electronics company had worked with HP on WebOS before offering to buy it outright.






Under the terms of their agreement, LG acquires the operating software’s source code, associated documentation, engineering talent, various associated websites, and licenses under HP’s intellectual property including patents covering fundamental operating system and user interface technology.


HP will retain the patents and all the technology relating to the cloud service of webOS, HP Chief Operating Officer Bill Veghte said in an interview.


“As we looked at it, we saw a very compelling IP that was very unique in the marketplace,” he said, adding that HP has already had a partnership with LG on webOS before the deal was announced.


“As a result of this collaboration, LG offered to acquire the webOS operating system technology,” Veghte said.


Skott Ahn, President and CTO, LG Electronics, said the company will incorporate the operating system in the Smart TV line-up first “and then hopefully all the other devices in the future.”


Both companies declined to reveal the terms of the deal.


LG will keep the WebOS team in Silicon Valley and, for now, will continue to be based out of HP offices, Ahn said.


HP opened its webOS mobile operating system to developers and companies in 2012 after trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry.


The company had tried to build products based on webOS with the now-defunct TouchPad tablet its flagship product.


HP launched and discontinued the TouchPad in 2010, a little over a month after it hit store shelves with costly fanfare after it saw poor demand for a tablet priced on par with Apple’s dominant iPad.


WebOS is widely viewed as a strong mobile platform, but has been assailed for its paucity of applications, an important consideration while choosing a mobile device.


(Additional reporting By Paul Sandle and Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Tim Dobbyn and M.D. Golan)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Facebook Inspires Hundreds to Attend a Funeral For a Man They Never Met






While Facebook might be best known as a means for some low-grade entertainment, as evidenced by our love of cat memes, it sometimes also proves to be a catalyst for an inspiring display of social good.


When 70-year-old James McConnell passed away last month in Britain’s Southsea, his nursing home staff reported that he had no known friends or family to attend his funeral. In fact, little was known about the man’s life before he came to the Bluebell Nursing Home, except that he had served in the Royal Marines.






Upon hearing the news, Rev. Bob Mason, who was charged with leading McConnell’s funeral, decided to enlist the help of Facebook; he posted a public plea, asking local residents to attend McConnell’s ceremony in order to provide the Marine Corps veteran a more dignified send-off.


According to ITV News, 200 people who had never so much as met McConnell showed up to mourn his passing.


What was supposed to have been a small, state-sponsored ceremony turned into a proper military farewell, despite the freezing temperatures; standard bearers from the Royal British Legion led a procession through the cemetery, followed by a group of flag-bearing motorcyclists. The service concluded with two buglers from the Royal Marines Band Service who played “Last Post,” the British equivalent of “Taps.”


Danny Marshall, also a former Royal Marine, was one of the attendees and he told ITV News, “It was mentioned wrongly that he did not have family. The corps family is bigger and better and than most people would know about. We are all family and always will be.”


Rev. Mason’s original post, which was shared heavily among the Facebook pages of Royal Marine Corps active and former members, included this personal appeal from the clergyman: “In this day and age it is tragic enough that anyone has to leave this world with no one to mourn their passing, but this man was family and I am sure you will agree deserves a better send off. If you can make it to the graveside for that time to pay your respects to a former brother in arms then please try to be there.”


During the ceremony, Rev. Mason said he was moved by the throng of mourners and their outpouring of kindness.


While this isn’t the first time social media has been used to galvanize a large group of people, those who attended McConnell’s funeral stand as exceptional for the simple fact that they had no personal stake in the outcome—showing up was simply the compassionate thing to do.


Related stories on TakePart:


• Clip of the Day: The First Lady and the First (Big) Bird Talk Snacks


• Teen Jeopardy Winner Delivers Best Final Jeopardy Answer Ever


• Did This 15-Year-Old Kid Just Change the Course of Medicine



A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer.  In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a webeditor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets | TakePart.com


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Why This 7-Year-Old Is the Doogie Howser of Videogame Design






It’s not unusual for a seven-year-old girl to dream of being a ballerina, but it’s unheard of for a child so young to design a computer game about it. Nonetheless, first-grader and computer science prodigy Zora Ball did just that, making her quite possibly the youngest videogame programmer ever.


Using an open-source software program called Bootstrap, the primary school student designed a mobile game app she titled Vampire Diamonds. In it, the player takes on the role of the main protagonist, a ballerina, whose goal is to search for a jewel that’s hidden in a nail salon, while trying to avoid an evil vampire.






The game debuted at FATE’s Bootstrap Expo last year and while widely acclaimed, some were suspicious that the first-grader may have secretly received help—most likely from her older brother, Trace Ball, a STEM Scholar of the Year. To prove them wrong, the seven-year-old reportedly reconfigured her app on the spot.


Bootstrap, and its functional programming language Racket, are usually taught to kids between the ages of 12-16 as a way to use videogame development to teach algebraic concepts to students. Zora learned it in an after-school program run by the educational nonprofit known as FATE, or The Foundation for the Advancement of Technology in Education.


Kelly Ohlert, FATE’s executive director, tells TakePart, “While Zora was able to follow the directions in order to write the code for her game, everything we know about cognitive psychology indicates that a seven year-old probably can’t yet comprehend the curriculum-based algebra that is the heart of Bootstrap. That being said, she understood enough of the coding side to make simple changes to her game upon request, which is huge.”


FATE’s mission is to promote the skilled and intelligent use of education technology. Ohlert tells TakePart, “Specifically, we are targeting the problem of not having enough students trained in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to meet the needs of the next-generation workforce.


According to the Brookings Institute, the U.S. is already suffering from a lack of professionals qualified for STEM careers. Part of that lack comes from the fact that so few women are involved in science-based professions. That’s why tech companies are targeting girls and young women for more education and employment opportunities. In addition to FATE, which targets boys and girls alike, Microsoft sponsors DigiGirlzHighTech Camp, “Girls Who Code” offers free summer workshops to female high school students, and Womens’ Tech Connect mentors young computer scientists involved in the science education program through NetHope.


While Zora Ball is still too young to think of her new role as the poster child for girls in science, her recent accomplishment is another kick in the slowly opening door for girls to embrace STEM-based fields.


Related Stories on TakePart:


• Girls Love Science Too: 5 Tech Toys to Inspire Your Daughter


• ‘Girls Who Code’ Combats the Gender Gap in Computer Sciences


• More Time in the Womb = Higher Math Scores



A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer.  In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a webeditor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets | TakePart.com


Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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7 million iPhones and iPads have been jailbroken in just four days






The Evad3rs Jailbreak Team on Monday released their evasi0n jailbreak tool for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices running iOS 6.0 or iOS 6.1. Jay Freeman, the man behind the jailbroken app store known as Cydia, announced that nearly seven million iOS devices have been freed from Apple’s walled garden in only four days, Forbes reported. The astonishing number makes evasi0n the fastest-adopted jailbreaking solution of all time. As of Thursday night, numbers from Freeman’s alternative app store revealed that 5.15 million iPhones, 1.35 million iPads, and 400,000 iPod touches were jailbroken with evasi0n. Jailbreaking an Apple device is similar to rooting an Android smartphone or tablet, and allows greater customization and opens the door to features such as wireless tethering.


[More from BGR: Apple could release both the iPhone 5S and a five-inch ‘iPhone 6′ this year]






This article was originally published on BGR.com


Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Is It OK to Use Kickstarter to Make Money?






Three weeks early and $ 359,630 short, Björk’s Kickstarter project to make an Android version of the Icelandic superstar’s iOS-only educational Biophilia app has been canceled because few people wanted to give charity to a rich person. Kickstarter doesn’t bill itself as crowd-sourced philanthropy, rather describing itself as a “funding platform for creative projects.” But since the beginning, the spirit of the site has involved patronizing a ”creator [who] couldn’t get money through traditional channels,” as Rob Walker explained in a 2011 New York Times Magazine profile of the then-new company. So, the people took it as an abuse of the system when a famous person like Björk, who has enough money to buy herself a penthouse in Brooklyn Heights goes on there soliciting nearly $ 600,000. But it’s not like Björk is the first established rich person to go on there asking for money. Legendary video game designer Tim Schafer, for example, got $ 3.3 million to make his next game, and established designers have also had luck, too.


RELATED: With Multimillion Dollar Pebble Watch, Kickerstarter Really Grows Up






But, this time, something was different. The people have no sympathy for the failure of a millionaire. “A moment’s silence for multimillionaire Björk who couldn’t convince the public to fund her latest whim,” tweeted one particularly upset Mancunian DJ, echoing the sentiments of others who don’t approve of a “super high status persons using Kickstarter.” Even before she stepped away from the ambitious project, people questioned the move, with tweets like “something tells me @bjork probably has the resources to fund porting her paid music app without crowdfunding” and “struggling up-and-coming artist Björk launches a Kickstarterproject? Seriously?” All of a sudden it’s not OK for rich people to make money on Kickstarter again. What changed?


RELATED: What the Future of Our Crowd-Funded Products Will Look Like


The crowd-funding platform has combined elements of philanthropy and commerce, but these days one side can be emphasized more than other. In Jenna Wortham’s profile of the company in 2009, The New York Times described Kickstarter as a place where “Patrons Support Artists on the Web.” Two years later,  Wired‘s Carly Adler described it as a sort of a public research and development unit, calling it “a lab for daring prototypes and ingenious products.”  


RELATED: ‘Fifty Shades’ Outpaces Potter; Authors’ Drunk Texts Imagined


Kickstarter co-Founder Yancey Strickler explained how the service lived between those two poles to Walker. “Money demands answers,” he said. “People want to put money into things that they think will be successful, and to be successful you have to participate in the market, and the market has very specific rules.” At times, the market rewarded good ideas, like the multimillion dollar Pebble smartwatch. But it didn’t take too long for people to realize that money begets more money. Soon, bigger players with better PR and marketing came to the platform and succeeded, as Technology Review‘s David Zax laments: 



What I love about Kickstarter is that any scrappy entrepreneur with an idea can go out there and get funding for his back-of-napkin vision. When you look at the two most successful Kickstarter campaigns to date (here, the runner-up), they involve established or semi-established companies whose promotional videos wear their production value on their sleeve. These aren’t rogue designers, tinkerers, or DIY “makers.” And this isn’t, in a meaningful sense, a kick-start–it’s a 90-yard punt.



Kickstarter entered most people’s consciousness around this time, when it focused more on commercial success. The funding of huge projects like Pebble and that Tim Schafer project led to a saturation of crap on the site from people just trying to get rich quick. And it made some especially mad because it felt like people hitting friends up for money, not a deserved artist seeking philanthropy. The site has turned into more of an online panhandling forum, as Ryan Tate writing for Gawker explained last year, than the people’s republic of crowd-funding for the greater good. 


RELATED: Everything to Know About the Dan Harmon, Charlie Kaufman Kickstarter


Perhaps this huge Björk failure is the manifestation of those feelings. She should have succeeded, with her well produced Kickstarter video touting a project tied to an album with both commercial and critical success. It shouldn’t have mattered that Björk has a ton of her own money, she played by the market rules Strickler talked about. But, it didn’t work out like that. Perhaps that’s because her project, which mixed philanthropy with art, reminded people that the site was once for “starving artist” types, not for rich people to use as PR for their charities.  


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Xbox Hoax Leads Armed Cops to Family






Members of a Florida family were shocked to be awakened in the middle of the night to find their house surrounded by police with guns drawn shouting at them to put their hands up.


Police Lt. Mike Beavers said the commotion was “very rare” for the small town of Oviedo, about 20 miles northeast of Orlando.






“This is the first time I’ve heard of it happening in our little town,” Beavers told ABCNews.com.


The frightened family did not want to be identified but recounted the ordeal to ABC News’ Orlando affiliate WFTV.


“I heard the doorbell ring,” the father of two told WFTV. “We couldn’t see anybody at the front of the door. All we saw was the rifle barrel.”


The man said he and his wife originally believed they were being robbed.


“They have rifles, they have guns, and I said, ‘Let’s get out of the house,’ so we ran down the hallway and got our two boys up,” the father said.


“We were told to freeze and put our hands over our heads,” he recalled. “They said, ‘We’re the police,’ so that was a big relief.”


What the family didn’t realize was that an Xbox hoax had led the Oviedo police to its house. The police said they were responding to a call from AT&T saying it had received online messages from a person who said he was hiding inside the house, claiming that someone had been killed there and that others were being held hostage.


But when police arrived, all they found was a very surprised and confused family.


Upon investigation, police learned that the confusion all started when an Oviedo teenager living in another house called police saying his Xbox had been hacked.


The teenager said the hackers had threatened to call in bomb threats to his home if he did not meet their demands for gaming information.


When the teenager refused, the hackers sent fake messages reporting the killing and hostage taking at the teenager’s former home. His previous address, where police showed up, was still connected to his Xbox.


The teenager did some of his own investigating, police said, and provided authorities with some possible identifying information on the hackers.


“The caller gave information to officers regarding two possible suspects, including IP addresses, Twitter and Facebook accounts and a possible name of one of the suspects,” according to the police report. “The information provided to the officers revealed that both suspects were located in different states.”


The information has been turned over to Oviedo detectives for further investigation.


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Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Nebraska Lieutenant Governor Sheehy resigns over phone scandal






(Reuters) – Nebraska Lieutenant Governor Rick Sheehy, the leading candidate to replace the current governor in the next election, resigned on Saturday after a newspaper investigation raised questions about improper cell phone calls made to women.


The Omaha World-Herald investigation found that the 53-year-old Republican made about 2,000 late-night calls to four women, other than his wife, on his state-issued cell phone over four years. The newspaper plans to publish results of the investigation on Sunday.






Colleen Sheehy, his wife of 28 years, filed for divorce in July 2012, according to the newspaper.


Governor Dave Heineman announced the resignation of Sheehy, a rising star in state politics, at a news conference. The governor said he was “deeply disappointed” and that Sheehy had done good work, but “trust was broken.”


“Public officials are rightly held to a higher standard,” Heineman said at the news conference, provided on the Omaha World-Herald website.


Heineman will leave office in 2015 and Sheehy had announced that he would run for governor. He was considered a leading candidate. Heineman selected Sheehy as lieutenant governor in 2005 after moving into the governor’s office to replace Mike Johanns, who was tapped as U.S. agriculture secretary.


Heineman and Sheehy were elected to their first full term in 2006 and re-elected to a second term in 2010.


(Reporting by Mary Wisniewski; editing by Gunna Dickson)


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BlackBerry chooses more traditional route to drum up buzz over Super Bowl ad






TORONTO – After a week of massive hype for its new smartphones, BlackBerry has decided to remain secretive about its Super Bowl commercial in an effort to squeeze every bit of juice out of the pricey advertising campaign.


The Waterloo, Ont.-based company, formerly known as Research In Motion (TSX:RIM), released a single frame of the 30-second TV spot on Friday, without any explanation of what it was, or what it meant.






The move goes against the trend of unleashing Super Bowl ads on the Internet ahead of the big game in an effort to generate extra hype.


This year, smartphone competitor Samsung chose to release its commercial starring comedians Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd on Thursday. Other major companies like Mercedes and Coke have also put their ads online.


Recent statistics have shown that advertisers gain more traction from their Super Bowl TV spots if they’re released online before the event, which takes place on Sunday.


Last year, the Super Bowl ads uploaded to YouTube before the game were viewed 600 per cent more times, an average of 9.1 million views, compared to the ones that were put online after the game, according to the streaming video service owned by Google.


Going against the trend, the BlackBerry maker will keep smartphone users guessing about what their advertisement is about and who it might feature. Certainly the company’s publicity team carefully chose which frame to release as its sneak preview.


The frame shows an early 1980s Honda Accord is parked alongside a meter. Behind it, there’s a colourful explosion of powder in front of stairs leading up to apartment No. 437.


The clues would suggest harkening back to the birth of the IBM personal computer, introduced to the market in 1981 using the coding 437 as its original character set, or more simply, the appearance of its font on screen.


It may be a clue because BlackBerry chief executive Thorsten Heins has touted the launch of the new smartphones this week as a new era in mobile computing because the devices have nearly the same amount of processing power as a personal computer.


All of that won’t be proven true or false until the game on Sunday evening where the BlackBerry ad will air sometime after the third quarter, the company said.


The Super Bowl is the most-watched television event of the year, drawing 111.3 million U.S. viewers in 2012.


In Canada, last year’s broadcast drew a record 8.1 million viewers.


The event is also the most expensive event for advertisers, costing an average of $ 3.4 million for a 30-second spot on NBC last year, according to ratings firm Nielsen.


This year, estimates for how much CBS is charging for a 30-second spot vary wildly from between $ 3.6 million to $ 4 million. CTV declined to say how much it charges for Canadian airtime.


Also slated in the Super Bowl commercial lineup are advertisements from the Bank of Montreal (TSX:BMO), with different versions airing on both sides of the border.


In the U.S., the company has purchased airtime in the midwest where its banks have a strong presence under the BMO Harris Bank brand. In the commercial, dubbed “Dream Home,” a young couple ponders the possibilities of buying a home, before they’re surprised when a real estate agent throws up a “For Sale” sign right in front of them.


BMO has also bought airtime in Canada, though it will be showing a commercial that has already aired during prime time.


Last year, a Harris-Decima Canadian Press poll found that more Canadians planned to watch the Super Bowl ads than the football game itself.


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BSkyB to offer sports channels online for daily fee






LONDON (Reuters) – BSkyB will offer its popular sports channels online for a daily fee, seeking new customers to offset slowing growth at its core pay-TV service amid sluggish consumer spending.


Sky, Britain’s dominant pay-TV group which provides fixed-line telephony, TV and broadband to 10.7 million households, has adapted its strategy during the economic downturn after years of chasing new subscribers to its core TV offering.






The group added 25,000 subscribers to its pay-TV service in the three months to the end of December, well down on the more than 100,000 users it used to routinely add each quarter.


In response, it has focused on selling more products such as high definition TV and broadband to existing customers, and moving online to reach those not willing to sign up to a monthly contract. The approach has enabled the group to consistently post strong financial results and pay higher dividends.


“Although we expect the consumer environment in 2013 to remain challenging, we have a strong set of plans for the year ahead,” Chief Executive Jeremy Darroch said on Thursday.


Darroch said the group would offer its sports channels, which show everything from Premier League soccer to Formula One motor racing and cricket, on its new online service called Now TV in the next few months.


Viewers, who do not need to sign up to a contract, will be able to pay 9.99 pounds to watch all six Sky Sports channels for 24 hours. It has already shown movies via the online offering to 25,000 customers since its launch last year.


The new internet drive will help BSkyB compete with existing online services such as Lovefilm and with BT Vision, which has won the right to show its own sports content, but it is also having to bet that its existing customers will not downgrade to the cheaper online offering to save money.


CUSTOMER LOYALTY


The group’s performance in the first half of the year showed that, despite the pressures on consumer spending, customer loyalty had remained relatively solid, with subscribers spending on average 568 pounds a year, up 24 pounds on the year before.


“Net additions were slightly below our estimates reflecting the tough consumer environment,” analysts at Numis said. “(But) encouragingly, take up of new products continues to increase, driving customer satisfaction and loyalty.”


Those customers taking all three main services – TV, broadband and telephony – accounted for 33 percent of the user base, up 4 percentage points year on year.


The rise in customers helped the group to post first-half operating profit up 8 percent to 647 million pounds ($ 1 billion) against a forecast of 632 million pounds. Cost control helped the group pay an interim dividend up 20 percent to 11 pence.


“We believe the BSkyB investment case has evolved over the past year or so, with the challenging consumer environment making the addition of new households to the (pay-TV) service more difficult,” Numis said.


“The group has rightly prioritized the increased penetration of multiple products, notably HD and broadband, which drive average revenue per user and reduce churn over the medium/long term. We are supportive of investment in products such as Now TV which offer an attractive risk/return in our view.”


Shares in BSkyB were up 1 percent to 819 pence in mid-morning trade, following a 21 percent rise in the last 12 months, and valuing the group at 13.2 billion pounds.


(Reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Rhys Jones and Mark Potter)


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RIM rebrands as BlackBerry; launches nifty new devices






NEW YORK (Reuters) – Research In Motion Ltd on Wednesday unveiled the long-delayed line of smartphones it hopes will put it on the comeback trail, but it disappointed investors by saying U.S. sales of its all-new BlackBerry 10 devices will not start until March, sending its share price tumbling 12 percent.


Chief Executive Thorsten Heins also announced that RIM was abandoning the name it has used since its inception in 1985 to take the name of its signature product, signaling his hopes for a fresh start for the company that pioneered on-your-hip email.






“From this point forward, RIM becomes BlackBerry,” Heins said at the New York launch. “It is one brand; it is one promise.”


RIM, which is already starting to call itself BlackBerry, had initially planned to launch the new BlackBerry 10 devices a year ago. But it pushed the release date back twice as it struggled to perfect a new operating system.


Ahead of Wednesday’s announcements, analysts had said that any launch after February would be a black mark for the Canada-based company.


“The biggest disappointment was the delay in the U.S., that it will take so long before the devices get going there,” said Eric Jackson, founder and managing Partner at Ironfire Capital LLC in New York.


Heins said the delays reflected the need for U.S. carrier testing, although carrier AT&T Inc offered few clues on what that meant. Instead, the carrier merely stated it was enthusiastic about the devices and would announce availability, pricing and other information at a later date.


“Carriers in all other parts of the world get their devices through the testing process significantly faster than the U.S. carriers do,” said John Jackson, an analyst at IDC, adding that the U.S. process can often take “weeks” longer.


Nevertheless investors were extremely disappointed with the delay and RIM shares on the Nasdaq ended the day 12 percent lower at $ 13.78. Its Toronto-listed shares fell by almost the same margin to close at C$ 13.86.


RIM launched its first BlackBerry back in 1999 as a way for busy executives to stay in touch with their clients and their offices, and the company quickly cornered the market for secure corporate and government emails.


But its star faded as competition rose and the BlackBerry is now a far-behind also-ran in the race for market share, with a 3.4 percent global showing in the fourth quarter – down from 20 percent three years before. Its North American market share is even smaller – a mere 2 percent in the fourth quarter.


RIM shares have tumbled along with the company’s market share and the stock is down 90 percent since its 2008 peak. Despite the pullback on Wednesday, RIM‘s share price has more than doubled over the last four months, reflecting the growing buzz about its new devices.


TOUCH COMPETITION


The new BlackBerry 10 phones will compete with Apple’s iPhone and devices using Google’s Android technology, both of which have soared above the BlackBerry in a competitive market.


The BlackBerry 10 devices boast fast browsers, new features, smart cameras and – unlike previous BlackBerry models – enter the market primed with a large application library, including services such as Skype and the popular game Angry Birds.


The BlackBerry Z10 touchscreen device, in black or white, will be the first to hit the market, with a country-by-country rollout that starts in Britain on Thursday.


A Q10 model, equipped with a small “qwerty” keyboard that RIM made into its trademark, will launch globally in April.


“I’m still confident that a lot of the subscriber base are going to want the upgrade to BlackBerry 10. It’s a very strong improvement over what they currently have. This is not going to cause mass defections from iOS and Android, but it doesn’t have to be a success for RIM. You’ve got to start somewhere,” said Jackson of Ironfire, which owns shares in RIM.


The Z10 device won a lukewarm review from The Wall Street Journal’s tech blogger Walt Mossberg, who complained of a shortage of apps.


On the other hand, David Pogue, who writes for The New York Times, apologized for describing BlackBerry as doomed in the past. The Z10 touchscreen device was “lovely, fast and efficient, bristling with fresh, useful ideas,” he said.


While technology analysts conceded that RIM has done quite a remarkable job on many of the features of BlackBerry 10 and on the array of its app selection for a new platform, many argue it will be a very tough slog for RIM to regain its crown.


“I don’t think that RIM will return to its glory days,” said Charles Golvin, analyst at Forrester Research. “Success for them looks like staunching the bleeding and clawing back a percentage or point or two of market share.”


Announcements about pricing so far have been in line with expectations. U.S. carrier Verizon Wireless said the phone would cost $ 199 for a two-year contract, while Canada’s Rogers Communications is quoting C$ 149 ($ 150) for certain three-year plans.


GLITZY LAUNCH


RIM picked a range of venues for its global launch parties, including Dubai’s $ 650-a-night Armani Hotel, which occupies six floors of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower.


The New York event took place in a sprawling basketball facility on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, just north of the Manhattan Bridge. The BlackBerry has been “Re-designed. Re-engineered. Re-invented,” RIM said.


RIM, which is splurging on a Super Bowl ad to promote its new phones, also introduced Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Alicia Keys as its global creative director.


“I was in a long-term relationship with BlackBerry and then I started to notice some new, kind of hotter, attractive, sexier phones at the gym, and I kind of broke up with you for something that had a little more bling,” Keys said at the New York launch.


“But I always missed the way you organized my life and the way you were there for me at my job, and so I started to have two phones – I was kind of playing the field. But then … you added a lot more features … and now, we’re exclusively dating again, and I’m very happy,” she said.


($ 1=$ 1.0029 Canadian)


(Writing by Janet Guttsman; editing by Frank McGurty, Lisa Von Ahn, Peter Galloway, G Crosse)


Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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New BlackBerry to Be ‘Most Comprehensive in Mobile History’






RIM is finally ready with its answer to Apple’s iPhone and the many Android smartphones. After months of delays, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins, along with others from the company, will take the stage Wednesday in New York to unveil the final version of BlackBerry 10, the next version of RIM’s phone software, and the phones that will run it.


“We expect tomorrow to really be the kickoff for the introduction of Blackberry 10,” RIM’s Chief Marketing Officer Frank Boulben told ABC News in a phone interview. “We have been engaged for quite a period of time with the two main constituents — the carriers and the developers — and we’ve already said we are in the labs of more than 150 carriers around the world.”






Column: BlackBerry Burden: What RIM Must Do to Come Back


With more than 150 wireless carriers around the world planning to offer the latest BlackBerry, Boulben says it will be the most “comprehensive launch,” not only for the company, but in the history of the mobile industry.


“This makes it the most comprehensive launch in mobile history. There has never been a platform launching with that many carriers,” he said. When the iPhone 5 made its debut in September it actually had more — Apple said there would be 240 carriers by December. But Boulben points out that BlackBerry 10 is an entirely new operating system that doesn’t share a single line of code with previous BlackBerry software; the iPhone 5 and iOS 6, by contrast, was essentially an upgrade.


At Wednesday’s event the company will show its new handsets in detail. RIM is expected to release a touch-screen device called the Z10 and another with a physical keyboard. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon have said they will carry devices that run the new software. Boulben also said RIM will highlight major differences between BlackBerry 10 and the other leading mobile phone platforms.


“We are highly differentiated in four areas,” Boulben said. The first is with communications — RIM has designed the software around a messaging hub and new multitasking features. The second: the touch keyboard, which predicts words as you are typing them. Lastly, RIM says its BlackBerry Messenger and its BlackBerry Balance feature, which separates work from personal uses on the phone, set it apart.


Boulben would not address specifically how much market share RIM is hoping to gain back in the U.S., having lost the lead it had in the last decade. According to Kantar Worldpane ComTech’s data released in November 2012, the BlackBerry brand only had 1.6 percent of the American smartphone market. The iPhone had 48.1 percent of the market and Android had 46.7.


“It’s a change in smartphone experience — the dominant paradigm, introduced six years ago, was great and revolutionary at the time. But six years is a long time for a technology cycle, with a new user experience with a clear focus we have the opportunity to take market share back,” Boulben said.


RIM CMO: BlackBerry 10 Will Make Others Look Outdated


While RIM is of course bullish about its new products, it faces one big challenge it might not be able to control: apps. While the platform might be innovative, it will trail behind the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in variety of apps. Boulben says the momentum around apps is strong and that Wednesday the BlackBerry World store will launch with 70,000 new apps.


RIM BlackBerry 10 Launch


Apps that worked on previous BlackBerry 7 devices won’t work on the BlackBerry 10 platform, since it is completely new. Analysts say that apps are bound to be the pain point for the platform, but it’s not too late to rule out RIM from taking back at least some of what it has lost.


“Given the speed that the market is moving, it’s hard to be dismissive of RIM given the strength of their brand and continued loyalty of many users,” Michael Gartenberg, Gartner Research Director, told ABC News. “It will be important for RIM to show tomorrow how they’ve evolved the BlackBerry to meet the challenges of other platforms and at the same time show positive differentiation.”


And that seems to be exactly RIM’s plan. “The time was right to switch to a new platform, one that will allow us to continue true to our DNA but also take it to the next level,” Boulben said. “It is a major undertaking for the company. It has been two years in the making, but we are ready.”


RIM’s BlackBerry 10 event begins at 10:00 a.m. ET on Jan. 30, 2013. ABC News will be reporting on the news throughout the day.


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His cat, his lunch and a high five: Harper’s day chronicled on Twitter






OTTAWA – One of the cardinal rules of social media: no one cares what you had for lunch. Unless, perhaps, you’re the prime minister.


The people behind Stephen Harper‘s Twitter account are using the first day of Parliament’s winter sitting to provide an intimate look at how the prime minister spends his day.






The posts include a video of Harper’s ride to work, photos of breakfast with his cat Stanley and a lunch that included fruit and a Diet Coke at his desk.


The behind-the-scenes look is the latest move by Harper’s team to bolster his presence on social media platforms.


Digital public affairs analyst Mark Blevis says it’s likely an effort to rebrand Harper in the lead-up to the next election, where he’ll face off against politicians far more adept online.


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Vine Has a Porn Problem Because Of Course It Does






It’s actually pretty surprising that it took everyone three days to figure out that Twitter’s new cell phone camera-powered video sharing app, Vine, is perfect for porn. Vine has it all. It can record reasonably high quality videos of anything you want, on-the-go, and post it publicly for all the Internet to see. You add hashtags so that people can easily find special interest content. There’s even a little comments section so that you can share your thoughts about the distinctively addictive six-second loops. Heck, we’d be surprised if people didn’t immediately start to post pictures of their genitals doing what genitals do. They probably did, actually. Everyone else was just too busy watching pictures of their friends pets and children to notice.


RELATED: The Chinese Want to Know Why Their News Is on Twitter and They Aren’t






But alas, by Sunday everyone had noticed. Although it had already been mentioned on smaller tech blogs, the Vine porn problem started to become widely known after New York Times reporter Nick Bilton tweeted, “Friend: ‘So are people using Vine for porn yet?’ Me: “‘Nah, I don’t think so.’ Friend: ‘Check the hashtag #porn.” Both: “Holy ****!’” And the thing is, he’s totally right. TechCrunch published a post on the NSFW trick — #NSFW works for porn seekers, too, by the way — broaching the topic of Apple‘s App Store coming down hard on the adult-only content. It’s against the rules, see, and Apple has a history of yanking apps that become magnets for all things naughty. The Verge followed up a few minutes later with the headline, “Apple has a porn problem, and it’s about the get worse.”


RELATED: How Not to Get Censored on Twitter


This got us thinking: These App Store restrictions on pornographic content have been around as long as the App Store. Surely in the past five or so years, the moderators know a porn magnet when they see one. Vine is hardly the first video-sharing app to make it through the approval process, not to mention the many photo-sharing apps. (And Apple’s certainly not afraid of enforcing those rules, as we learned when it yanked the 500px app after it started to become home to “pornographic images and material.”) It’s no anomaly that Vine made through, though. As virtually every new video- or photo-sharing service has shown us since the dawn of the Internet, from Flickr to ChatRoulette, it’s very difficult to keep these sites or apps G-rated. So the companies either learn how to police it well, like Flickr does, or they wither and die, as ChatRoulette did.


RELATED: Twitter’s New Hashtag Project Sounds Risky


So it’s hard to believe that the App Store didn’t consider the fact that people might upload pictures of their penises to Vine. It’s more likely that they did and decided to see how Twitter would deal with it, when it became a problem. After all, Vine is not going to be the last video-sharing app to be built and it certainly won’t be the last porn-friendly app to be built either. So Twitter gets to play guinea pig and navigate the tricky terrain of moderating user-generated content in real time. It’s a good thing they already have a boatload of experience doing that on Twitter! See, look how fast they came up with a solution. A company statement reads:


RELATED: The Good, the Bad, and the Fuzzy of Twitter’s New Censorship Rules



Users can report videos as inappropriate within the product if they believe the content to be sensitive or inappropriate (e.g. nudity, violence, or medical procedures). Videos that have been reported as inappropriate have a warning message that a viewer must click through before viewing the video.


Uploaded videos that are reported and determined to violate our guidelines will be removed from the site, and the user that posted the video may be terminated.



Twitter being Twitter — that is, big proponents of the free flow of information — they stop short of defining “inappropriate” in Vine’s terms and conditions. Unlike Twitter, which has been free to operate on the whole of the Internet, however, Vine lives in Apple’s house now. If Twitter’s hands off policy doesn’t do enough to keep smut off the iPhone, Apple will surely pull the plug, and then, well — then we’ll be back to where we were last week.


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Google reportedly ‘actively exploring’ the smartwatch market







In October, Google (GOOG) was granted a patent for a smartwatch with a flip-up display, however it was assumed that the concept, like most patents, would never move beyond the drawing board. A new report from Business Insider claims that the company is now “actively exploring” the idea of producing its own smartwatch and is even looking into ways it could market such a device. Information is slim and it is unclear what size the device would be or if it would even run the company’s Android operating system. Business Insider cautioned that the project is still in a “very early stage” and “it remains to be seen if Google will actually end up bringing a smart watch to market.” As the Pebble has shown, however, there is clearly a market for smartwatches.


[More from BGR: Unlocking your smartphone will be illegal starting next week]






This article was originally published on BGR.com


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Apple’s China dilemma: market share or cachet?






HONG KONG (Reuters) – Apple Inc’s third straight disappointing quarter signals an urgent need for the global technology leader to drum up new revenue – and China may provide the answer.


Now more than ever, analysts say, Apple needs to get it right in the world’s most populous country, where it ranks only sixth in annual smartphone sales and Samsung Electronics remains the runaway leader.






Apple’s best plan of attack remains securing a deal with the country’s top mobile carrier by far, China Mobile Ltd. It also needs to push the development of more localized apps and extend installment financing to bring its pricey smartphones within the reach of an urban populace with an average annual income of just $ 3,500.


But it should resist the temptation to just put out a cheaper iPhone, some analysts say. Introducing a long-rumored lower-cost version of the gadget could backfire by diluting Apple’s premium brand – one of its most valuable assets.


“If you think of Apple, it’s like a bright star in the galaxy, shining so brightly and everyone is looking at it. But it might have dimmed a bit as other stars such as Samsung have popped up,” said TZ Wong, an analyst at research firm IDC.


“I don’t think it’s in Apple’s interest to further dim its star power by stepping into the low-end segment.”


With Apple’s product pipeline guarded with the same zeal accorded state secrets, some analysts are focusing instead on what the world’s largest technology company needs to do to finally become a major player in the world’s No. 2 economy.


While iPhone sales leapt 60 percent last quarter, investors worry that, in the longer term, the company may be pricing itself out of a golden opportunity while Samsung and local rivals from Huawei Technologies Co Ltd to ZTE blanket the market with cheaper phones that rival the iPhone in quality and usability.


A deal with China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile phone carrier with more than 700 million users, will prove instrumental but analysts say that may not happen until the issuance of 4G wireless licenses, which could take place later this year or even in 2014.


“The competitive landscape has definitely cranked up a few notches from a year ago. So there is more urgency for Apple to explore its ways to grow,” IDC’s Wong said.


CEO Tim Cook has made it no secret that China is an area of intense focus for the iPad and iPhone maker, especially given the still-low penetration across the country of smartphones and tablets. Apple has said it will continue to expand its retail network there, and in January, Cook flew to Beijing for at least the second time in a year, to meet with pivotal carrier China Mobile.


A STAR IS DIMMED


On Wednesday, Apple missed revenue forecasts for the third straight quarter after iPhone sales came in below expectations, fanning fears that its dominance of consumer electronics is slipping.


Apple’s revenue in China, including neighboring Hong Kong and Taiwan, totaled $ 7.3 billion in the December quarter, up 60 percent from a year earlier.


But there are signs that Apple’s vaunted cachet in the world’s most populous nation is waning.


Recent product launches for the mini-iPad and the iPhone 5 have drawn a relatively subdued response from Chinese consumers, in stark contrast to the fist-fights and egg-hurling at its Beijing store a year ago when sales of the iPhone 4S were delayed.


Since the iPhone 5 went on sale in mid-December, transactions have fallen by half, according to the Taobao Index, the consumer research data website of Internet giant Alibaba Group.


The iPhone is also losing out as consumers opt for bigger screens to watch Chinese soap operas while travelling on trains, or affordable smartphones in the sub-1,000 yuan ($ 160) category made by local vendors.


“When I started using a bigger screen, there was no turning back for me. Small screens don’t work anymore,” said a business executive surnamed Wen, as he swiped the screen on his Samsung Galaxy Note during lunch in Beijing.


Around half of the more than 60 million smartphones shipped in China in the third quarter last year had screens that were bigger than 4 inches, based on IDC’s latest figures. The iPhone 5 comes with a 4-inch screen, while the Galaxy Note II’s screen is 5.5 inches.


Also, local vendors such as Coolpad smartphone maker Yulong Computer Telecommunication Scientific (Shenzhen) Co Ltd, which offers cheaper alternatives, and Meizu Technology Co Ltd, known for its minimalist designs, have seen its legion of fans grow.


Price is a key factor, especially in the Chinese market where around 80 percent of the more than one billion mobile phone users are still on 2G networks.


On the online Taobao website, Coolpads and low-end models made by Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corp are selling at below 1,000 yuan, a sweet spot for many consumers switching from basic phones to smartphones.


Apple has moved to address that, partnering with China Merchants Bank to offer financing and installment options so that buyers can pay with the bank’s credit card when they shop online, media reports said.


Finally, expanding the number of applications customized for China will help grow Apple’s market share but that might need tighter collaboration with Chinese companies, such as Baidu Inc and Tencent Holdings Ltd.


“Consumers will definitely welcome closer cooperation between Apple and Chinese tech firms to customize the iPhone for the use of apps such as Tencent’s WeChat,” said Frederick Wong, executive director of Avant Capital Management (Hong Kong) Ltd, a fund that invests in Apple-related options.


(Editing by Edwin Chan and Richard Chang)


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Samsung puts lid on capex for first time since financial crisis






SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics Co turned cautious on spending for the first time since the global financial crisis, keeping its annual investment plan unchanged at 2012 levels, as demand for computer chips wanes and the smartphone market slows.


Samsung, one of the industry’s most aggressive spenders, has ramped up capital expenditure every year since 2004 except 2009 to meet soaring demand for its array of consumer electronics and mobile devices. It sold a record 700,000 smartphones a day in the last quarter.






But with the personal computer market shrinking for the first time in 11 years, the global smartphone market growing more slowly, and Apple Inc moving to buy fewer of Samsung‘s microprocessors used in the iPhone and iPad, the South Korean IT giant is now forced to keep a lid on spending.


“Overall its earnings momentum remains intact, and smartphone shipments will continue to grow even in the traditionally weak first quarter, as Samsung’s got a broader product line-up and Apple appears to be struggling in pushing iPhone volumes aggressively,” said Lee Se-chul, a Seoul-based analyst at Meritz Securities.


Samsung, which reported a record quarterly and annual profit on Friday, said it would keep 2013 capital expenditure unchanged from 2012.


“The key word for us in investment in 2013 is flexibility. We’ll decide as the market demand dictates,” Robert Yi, head of Samsung’s investor relations, told analysts.


Data from the company shows Samsung started to slow down planned investment in the last quarter.


Samsung said it spent 4.4 trillion won in October-December, pushing its 2012 investment to a record 23 trillion won ($ 21.5 billion). But the company said in October that it was on course to spend 25 trillion won in 2012.


Analysts had expected a 4-20 percent cut in Samsung’s 2013 capital spending.


By contrast, Taiwanese rival TSMC is planning to raise its capital expenditure to $ 9 billion this year, aimed in part at winning Apple orders away from Samsung.


Shares in Samsung fell 2.1 percent as of 0250 GMT, lagging a 1.1 percent decline in the wider market.


RECORD EARNINGS


Samsung had poured money into factories to boost production of chips and panels used in Apple products and its Galaxy range devices, pushing its operating profit to 8.84 trillion won in the last quarter. The 89 percent increase from a year earlier was in line with its earlier estimate.


Profit at its mobile devices division, which makes phones, tablets and cameras, more than doubled to 5.44 trillion won in the quarter from a year earlier, lifted by a broader offering of smartphones – from the very cheap to the very expensive.


The division accounted for 62 percent of Samsung’s overall fourth-quarter profit, up from 55 percent a year earlier.


Samsung is also seeing strong sales of its Note phablet, which analysts expect to help Samsung get through any seasonal weakness better than rivals.


Samsung, which doesn’t provide a breakdown of smartphone sales, is estimated to have sold around 63 million smartphones in the last quarter, including 15 million Galaxy S IIIs and 7 million Note IIs.


The company also said 2012 operating profit rose 86 percent to an all-time high of 29 trillion won.


SAMSUNG VS APPLE


Samsung sold 213 million smartphones last year and enlarged its share of the global market to 30.4 percent from around 20 percent in 2011, a report by market research firm Strategy Analytics showed on Friday. The sharp increase reflects Samsung’s aggressive marketing of its wide product range.


Apple’s share of the market shrank slightly to 19.4 percent from 19.0 percent in 2011, according to the report.


Globally, sales of smartphones surged 42.7 percent last year to 700 million, Strategy Analytics said.


Samsung said on Friday it expects the global smartphone segment to shrink in January-March from the seasonally strong fourth quarter, and that growth of the overall handset market will slow to the mid single-digits this year.


The forecast is in line with industry estimates, with signs of a slowdown having already emerged.


Apple shipped 47.8 million iPhones in the three months ended December, a record that nonetheless disappointed many analysts accustomed to years of outperformance. The Cupertino, California-based company also missed Wall Street’s revenue forecast for a third straight quarter as iPhone sales lagged expectations.


Apple shares have dropped by more than a third since mid-September as investors fret that its days of hyper growth are over and its devices are no longer as ‘must-have’ as they were.


By contrast, shares in Samsung have risen 12 percent in the same period as the company once seen as quick to copy the ideas of others now sets the pace in innovation.


At the world’s biggest electronics show in Las Vegas this month, Samsung unveiled a prototype phone with a flexible display that can be folded almost like paper, and a microchip with eight processing cores, creating a buzz that these may be used in the next Galaxy range.


“It’s very probable to us that the Exynos 5 Octa (processor) will find its way into the Galaxy S4,” UBS analyst Nicolas Gaudois wrote in a recent note.


“It also looked as if the curved display is close enough to finished product. We came away even more convinced that displays will provide significant differentiation to Samsung devices, and application processors will materially grow over time,” Gaudois said. ($ 1 = 1066.2000 Korean won)


(Reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Ryan Woo)


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Apple’s iPhone disappointment fans doubt on growth






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc missed Wall Street’s revenue forecast for the third straight quarter after iPhone sales came in below expectations, fanning fears that its dominance of the mobile industry was slipping.


Shares of the world’s largest tech company fell 10 percent to $ 463 in after-hours trade, wiping out some $ 50 billion of its market value – nearly equivalent to that of Hewlett-Packard and Dell, combined.






On Wednesday, Apple said it shipped a record 47.8 million iPhones in the December quarter, up 29 percent from the year-ago period. But that lagged the 50 million that analysts on average had projected.


Expectations heading into the results had been subdued by news of possible production cutbacks by some component suppliers in Asia, triggering fears that demand for the iPhone, which accounts for half of Apple‘s revenue, and the iPad could be slowing.


But many investors clung to hopes for a repeat of years of historical outperformance, analysts said.


“It’s going to call into question Apple‘s dominance in the space. It’s still one of the strong players, the others being Samsung and Google. It’s still a two-horse race, but Android continues to grow rapidly,” said Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu.


“If you step back a bit, it’s clear they shipped a lot of phones. But the problem is the high expectations that investors have. Apple‘s conservative guidance highlights the concerns over production cuts coming out of Asia recently.”


Apple projected revenue of $ 41 billion to $ 43 billion in the current, second fiscal quarter, lagging the average Wall Street forecast of more than $ 45 billion.


Fiscal first quarter revenue rose 18 percent to $ 54.5 billion, below the average analyst estimate of $ 54.73 billion, though earnings per share of $ 13.81 beat the Street forecast of $ 13.47, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.


Apple also undershot revenue targets in the previous two quarters, and these results will prompt more questions on what Apple has in its product pipeline, and what it can do to attract new sales and maintain its growth trajectory, analysts said.


Net income of $ 13.07 billion was virtually flat with $ 13.06 billion a year earlier on higher manufacturing costs. The year-ago quarter also had an extra week compared to this year.


Gross margins consequently slid to 38.6 percent, from 44.7 percent previously.


“You can’t just keep rolling out iPhones and iPads and think that everybody needs a new one,” said Jeffrey Gundlach, who runs DoubleLine Capital LP, the $ 53 billion bond firm. “The mini? What is that all about? It is a slightly smaller iPad — so what? So that is our new definition of innovation?”


“There are plenty of competitors like Samsung and other legitimate competitors like them,” added Gundlach, one of the highest-profile Apple bears. He maintains a $ 425 price target.


Shares of several of Apple‘s suppliers crumbled. Chip suppliers Skyworks and Cirrus Logic both fell more than 6 percent. Qualcomm Inc slipped 1.8 percent.


CHINA IS NEXT BIG GROWTH DRIVER


Apple shares are down nearly 30 percent from a record high in September, in part on worries that its days of hyper growth are over and its mobile devices are no longer as popular.


Intense competition from Samsung‘s cheaper phones – powered by Google’s Android software – and signs that the premium smartphone market may be close to saturation in developed markets have also caused a lot of investor anxiety.


Meanwhile, sales of the iPad came in at 22.9 million in the fiscal first quarter, roughly in line with forecasts.


On the brighter side, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer told Reuters that iPhone sales more than doubled in greater China – a region that Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has vowed to focus on as its next big growth driver.


The company will begin detailing results from that country going forward. Revenue from the region totaled $ 7.3 billion, up 60 percent from the year-ago December quarter.


“These results were OK, but they definitely raised a few questions,” said Shannon Cross, analyst with Cross Research. “Gross margin trajectory looks fine so that’s a positive and cash continues to grow. But I think investors are going to want to know what Apple plans to do with growing cash balance.”


“And other questions are going to be around innovation and where the next products are coming from and what does Tim Cook see in the next 12 to 18 months.”


ADDRESSING PRODUCTION RUMORS


In an unusual move for Apple, which typically does not respond to speculation, Cook addressed the production cutback rumors at length on the conference call and questioned the accuracy of rumors about its plans.


Media reports earlier this month said the company is slashing orders for iPhone 5 and iPad screens and other components from its Asian suppliers.


“Even if a particular data point were factual, it would be impossible to accurately interpret the data point as to what it meant for our overall business, because the supply chain is very complex,” he said, adding that Apple has multiple sources for components.


“Yields might vary. Supplier performance can vary. The beginning inventory positions can vary. There’s just an inordinately long list of things that would make any single data point not a great proxy for what’s going on,” he said.


Apple‘s initial iPhone and iPad mini sales were hurt by supply constraints, but Cook expects supply to balance demand for the iPad mini this quarter. He also acknowledged that iPad was cannibalizing its high-margin Macintosh computers, but said it was a huge opportunity for the company.


“On iPad in particular, we have the mother of all opportunities here, because the Windows market is much, much larger than the Mac market is,” he said. And I think it is clear that it’s already cannibalizing some.”


In another departure from tradition, Apple intends to tweak the way it both reports results and publishes forecasts.


Apart from breaking out results from China, the company also will no longer provide a single revenue or gross margin outlook. From Wednesday, it began providing the range it expects to hit, rather than the often-ludicrously conservative estimates that Apple was once notorious for.


The new policy took many by surprise.


“Before people could always ignore the guidance,” said Dan Niles, Chief Investment Officer of AlphaOne Capital Partners, LLC. “Apple is telling investors that they need to pay attention to the guidance and you can’t ignore it, which is basically what we all did in the past.”


(Additional reporting by Alistair Barr and Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco and Jennifer Ablan in New York; Editing by Bernard Orr and Edwin Chan)


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FTC study taking aim at online marketing of booze






LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans this summer to recommend ways that the alcoholic beverage industry can better protect underage viewers from seeing its advertisements online.


Distillers, brewers and wineries pour millions of dollars into brand promotion on Twitter, Facebook and other social media, and industry critics contend they are not doing enough to prevent young consumers from receiving these messages.






“We’re doing a deep dive on how they’re using the Internet and social media,” said Janet Evans, a lawyer with the FTC, which is conducting a year-long study due to be released by early summer. “We’re focusing on underage exposure.”


She would not elaborate on any potential recommendations that might come out of the study, which began in April 2012.


The FTC is reviewing data from 14 big producers, Evans said, including Beam Inc, the maker of Jim Beam, Diageo Plc, home to Johnnie Walker, and Constellation Brands Inc, which makes Robert Mondavi and Ravenswood wines.


The FTC report “is something we take seriously and place at high priority,” said Karena Breslin, director for digital marketing at Constellation.


The FTC has made two requests for information since the study began, she said.


The regulatory agency has not said it intends to impose restrictions on liquor company social media advertising but it can make recommendations to the industry.


The FTC is empowered to file suit to ensure consumers are protected from deceptive marketing practices, Evans said, but she stressed that studies of this nature are meant to promote better self-regulation, not provide a basis for a case.


Industry executives say alcohol makers and distributors voluntarily adhere to the same industry-set standard for marketing to underage viewers on social media sites that the industry set for its ads on TV and other media. That requires that at least 71.6 percent of an audience consists of adults 21 and older.


“No one in their right mind would want to advertise to people who can’t legally buy their product,” said Frank Coleman, senior vice president for Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), the trade group that sets the industry’s advertising codes.


Coleman also cited recent data showing the audiences for Facebook and Twitter are skewed heavily towards viewers who are above the legal drinking age.


“According to Nielsen’s latest data, the demographic audience for Facebook is 83.5 percent 21 years and older, and for Twitter it is 85 percent,” Coleman said.


In June 2011, DISCUS revised its code upwards to 71.6 percent from 70 percent, after the FTC recommended it review the standard to better reflect U.S. Census population data.


Industry critics, including David Jernigen, director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Johns Hopkins University, and Sarah Mart, research director of the advocacy group Alcohol Justice, contend the industry didn’t go far enough and should raise the standard further.


Jernigen said it needs to be at least 85 percent to effectively protect youth, so there would be no more than 15 percent exposure to the underage drinking population.


“The industry says its self-regulating but it’s ineffective and social media opens up a whole new set of problems because their ads are everywhere,” said Mart.


Coleman said the group now requires members to install age-checking tools via instant messaging as a gateway to Twitter feeds and other branded Web platforms that ask the user for a birth date before admitting them.


In the first nine months of 2012, beer, wine and spirits manufacturers spent an estimated $ 35 million for paid Web display advertising, but industry executives estimate many millions more were spent on website creation, video production for platforms like Google’s YouTube and social media marketing efforts.


“We’ve significantly adjusted more money to digital for online video, websites, Facebook and Twitter content,” said Kevin George, global chief marketing officer for Jim Beam, which spends 30 percent of its media spend for online outlets, up from 10 percent in 2008, he said.


Many companies are expanding their digital staff. Wine maker Constellation hired Breslin three years ago to initiate digital marketing and now has a team of five reporting to her.


Many alcoholic beverage companies flocked to Facebook because it requires users to post their birth dates when signing up.


Last year Twitter partnered with Buddy Media to offer a screening tool that sends a direct message to fans who click on an alcoholic brand. The message sends the fan a link to a site that asks for date of birth.


Salesforce.com bought Buddy Media last June, which is now folding the platform into its marketing cloud portfolio.


Health advocates and industry critics are crying foul. “Facebook and other interactive platforms are poorly monitored and not well age-protected,” said Jernigen of Johns Hopkins University. “Anyone can say they’re 21 and click yes.”


(Reporting by Susan Zeidler; Editing by Ron Grover, Alden Bentley and Phil Berlowitz)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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At Obama’s church service, hymns, prayers – and a tweet?






WASHINGTON (Reuters) – There was preaching, praying and singing at President Barack Obama’s church service on Inauguration Day on Monday. But was there tweeting, too?


As Atlanta pastor Andy Stanley wrapped up his sermon at St. John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House by urging Obama to leverage his power for the greater good, a tweet went out from the president’s own Twitter feed.






“I’m honored and grateful that we have a chance to finish what we started. Our work begins today. Let’s go. -bo,” said the tweet, which went to more than 26 million Obama followers.


Obama typically designates tweets that he writes himself by signing his initials in lowercase: “-bo.” That led to questions over whether the president had tweeted from church – and perhaps provided a new chapter in the debate over the appropriate use of social media.


But a White House spokesman said Obama did not send the tweet in the middle of the church service.


That means it could have been done by Obama in advance and timed for release while he was in church, or that it was posted by Organizing for Action, the non-profit group that now operates the president’s Twitter account.


The new group, which is led by Obama’s former campaign team, plans to try to build public support for the president’s policies.


The group did not immediately comment on the authorship or timing of the tweet.


Even if Obama had sent out the tweet from church, such messages from the pew are no longer taboo, said Scott Williams, a pastor and consultant from Edmond, Oklahoma, who works with ministries to use social media to spread the word and engage members.


“It’s definitely OK – it’s relevant,” he said. He cited a verse from the prophet Isaiah: “Like a crane or a swallow, so did I twitter.”


“‘Thou shalt twitter in church’ is a way that I present it,” Williams said in an interview, noting that many people now used Bible apps on their mobile devices in the pews.


Stanley’s North Point Community Church in Atlanta produced a Christmas music video for iPhones and iPads that has been viewed 3.7 million times on YouTube, said Williams, who is familiar with the 33,000-member ministry.


Stanley delivered his sermon in a very “old-school” setting. St. John’s, a yellow church with white trim, was built in 1816 and often is called the “Church of the Presidents” because every president since James Madison has attended it at least occasionally.


The service included a mix of traditional hymns such as “Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past,” a gospel solo by singer Ledisi, and an African-American spiritual, “Great Day.” It also included readings and prayers from Jewish, Christian and Catholic clergy.


Stanley talked about a passage in the Bible where Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, setting an example of equality.


“What do you do when it dawns on you that you’re the most powerful person in the room? You leverage that power for the benefit of other people in the room,” Stanley said.


“Mister President, you have an awfully big room,” the pastor said. “It’s as big as our nation. At times, as you know, it’s as big as this world.”


(Editing by David Lindsey and Peter Cooney)


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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