Sponsoer by :

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Apple's iPad to go on sale in S.Korea on Nov. 30 (AFP) : Technet

Sponsored

Apple's iPad to go on sale in S.Korea on Nov. 30 (AFP) : Technet

Apple's iPad to go on sale in S.Korea on Nov. 30 (AFP)

Posted: 20 Nov 2010 09:08 PM PST

– 17 mins ago

SEOUL (AFP) – South Korea's wireless operator KT said Sunday it would start selling Apple's iPad on November 30 amid growing competition in the potentially lucrative tablet computer market.

KT, the nation's sole distributor of Apple's iPhone and iPad, said the popular tablet PC would start at 218,000 won (192 dollars) with a two-year contract, rising to 865,000 won with additional features.

More than 40,000 South Koreans have pre-ordered the popular gadget since November 17, a KT spokesman said, adding the company would begin sending out products on November 30.

The announcement comes after South Korea's Samsung Electronics launched its own tablet computer last week in the domestic market in a bid to get the jump on Apple.

Apple has sold more than 7 million iPads worldwide since its market debut in January.

Samsung Electronics, which has already introduced Galaxy Tab in countries like the US and Italy, aims to sell over a million units globally by the end of 2010.

Global computer and handset makers have scurried to respond to the roaring success of Apple's iPhone and iPad.

Tablet PCs feature bigger screens than smartphones and have no keyboards, instead employing touch screens or stylus pens.

The global tablet PC market is expected to expand to 30 million units next year from 13 million this year, according to industry data.

News Corp. set to unveil iPad newspaper, 'The Daily' (AFP)

Posted: 20 Nov 2010 06:25 PM PST

by Chris Lefkow Chris Lefkow – Sat Nov 20, 9:25 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – After months of top secret development, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. appears poised to take the wraps off a digital newspaper for the iPad called "The Daily."

News Corp. has been tight-lipped about the project but the Australian-born media mogul acknowledged its existence for the first time in an interview last week with his Fox Business Network.

Asked what "exciting projects" his sprawling media and entertainment company was working on, the 79-year-old Murdoch cited The Daily but offered no further information about the tabloid for Apple's touchscreen tablet computer.

Details about the project have been dribbling out in the US media for weeks, however, and The New York Times, citing two employees who requested anonymity, said News Corp. intends to launch The Daily before the end of the year.

The Times said Sasha Frere-Jones, music critic at The New Yorker magazine, would become its culture editor. Others reported to be involved include Jesse Angelo, executive editor of Murdoch's New York Post, Richard Johnson, former editor of the Post's gossip page, and Greg Clayman, the former head of Viacom's digital division, who has been tapped to head business operations at The Daily.

Forbes magazine put the total staff on the project at around 150 and said News Corp. has budgeted 30 million dollars for the first year of the launch.

The Daily brings together three of Murdoch's passions -- newspapers, the iPad and finding a way to charge readers for content online in an era of shrinking newspaper circulation and eroding print advertising revenue.

Murdoch began his career with a single newspaper in his native Australia and while he has expanded into television, movies and book publishing, the News Corp. chairman has always been clear that newspapers are his obsession.

At the same time, Murdoch has a serious crush on the iPad, calling it a "game-changer" and potential savior of the struggling newspaper industry.

In an interview in April with The Kalb Report, Murdoch called the iPad a "glimpse of the future."

"There's going to be tens of millions of these things sold all over the world," he said. "It may be the saving of newspapers because you don't have the costs of paper, ink, printing, trucks.

"I'm old, I like the tactile experience of the newspaper," Murdoch admitted, but "if you have less newspapers and more of these that's OK."

"It doesn't destroy the traditional newspaper, it just comes in a different form," he said.

Whether Murdoch plans to charge readers a subscription fee for The Daily is not yet known but the News Corp. chief has made making consumers pay for news online his personal crusade.

The Wall Street Journal requires a subscription for full access to WSJ.com and Britain's The Times and The Sunday Times, two other News Corp. newspapers, recently erected pay walls around their websites.

Murdoch has vowed to begin charging for online access to all of his titles and said in August that he believed most US newspapers would eventually end up doing the same.

"You'll find, I think, most newspapers in this country are going to be putting up a pay wall," he said, dismissing arguments that readers used to getting news on the Internet for free would be reluctant to pay.

News Corp. chief digital officer Jon Miller told top technology and media executives at a gathering in Aspen, Colorado, in July that the iPad may allow the news industry to start charging for content online after years of giving it away for free.

"I think we're seeing a fundamental shift in where content is consumed and it's on to these kinds of devices," he said. "These tablets are heavy media consumption devices, much more than the Web by itself and even smartphones."

He said the iPad and other tablets being developed offer "very media rich experiences that I think do allow a re-set, perhaps a do-over for the media industry, a chance to get it right."

Telenor finds no irregularity with India licences (Reuters)

Posted: 20 Nov 2010 12:19 PM PST

By Gwladys Fouche Gwladys Fouche – Sat Nov 20, 3:19 pm ET

OSLO (Reuters) – Norway's Telenor denied on Saturday that its Indian subsidiary Uninor had won mobile phone licences in an irregular manner, the Norwegian news agency NTB reported.

India's telecoms regulator has called for 38 mobile licences, including some held by Uninor, to be canceled amid a political scandal that is shaking the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The regulator said on Thursday that the licences were awarded too cheaply, and may have cost India a potential $31 billion. The accusations have led to the sacking of Telecoms Minister Andimuthu Raja.

"We have now investigated how our licences were awarded and have not found any irregularities," Telenor spokesman Glenn Mandelid told NTB.

Telenor had not yet established itself on the Indian mobile market when the licences were awarded in 2008. Later that year it bought stakes in local firm Unitech, which was awarded the permits. That firm is today called Uninor.

Mandelid said the award system in 2008 was not the same as today's. "Indian authorities feared the telecoms market would turn into a monopoly so they operated under a 'first come first served' principle," he said.

"The award system was the same from 2000 to 2008 when Unitech got its license. Since then they have gone over to an auction system."

Telenor has about 13.5 million customers in the country's highly competitive mobile market.

It has praised its strong market development in the third quarter but said its Indian operations would post and EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) loss of 4.5 billion crowns ($775 million) in 2010.

(Editing by David Stamp)

Social media 'one part' of Google strategy: CFO (AFP)

Posted: 20 Nov 2010 09:14 PM PST

– 12 mins ago

SYDNEY (AFP) – Internet giant Google said social media was "absolutely" part of its strategy and would be embedded in "many of our products" but played down its rivalry with networking icon Facebook.

Chief financial officer Patrick Pichette on Sunday said Google was at the centre of an exploding digital economy where computer power was "relentlessly, dramatically increasing" and innovation was crucial to survival.

"Search is clearly the core product of Google but many of our other products are having phenomenal trajectories," Pichette told Australian public television.

"The first driving principle of Google is in fact not money -- the first driving principle of Google is understanding that the Internet is changing the world," he added.

Pichette said Amazon and Apple were "winning" in the new technology race and Microsoft was a "formidable" competitor, but played down as media hype suggestions that Facebook was Google's next big rival.

"The digital world is exploding and it has so many chapters -- it has cloud computing, it has mobile, it does have social, it has searches, it has so many elements. Within that... social (networking) is just one chapter," said Pichette.

"Yes, absolutely it will be part of our strategy, yes it will be embedded in many of our products. But at the same time remember it's one chapter of an entire book."

It follows Facebook's launch of a next-generation messaging service this month, seen as a major challenge to Google's Gmail and fellow web-based email providers Yahoo! and Microsoft.

Microsoft's Hotmail currently has the most users, 361.7 million as of September, according to online tracking firm comScore, followed by Yahoo! with 273.1 million and Gmail with 193.3 million.

Pichette said Google's Android platform for mobile devices was a "fantastic opportunity" for the company, powering 200,000 handsets every 24 hours.

Android users also performed searches 50 times more frequently than people using other mobile devices, with obvious benefits for Google, he added.

"Now that everybody has a smartphone everybody searches, so these few hundred engineers (who developed Android) have accelerated (a market that) would have taken 10 years to develop into a few years," he said.

"My payback is absolutely unreal."

Happy 25th Anniversary, Microsoft Windows (Mashable)

Posted: 20 Nov 2010 09:55 AM PST

Josh Catone Josh Catone – Sat Nov 20, 12:55 pm ET

It was 25 years ago today that Microsoft released Windows 1.0. The world's most popular operating system has gone through a number of versions since then, and the next iteration, Windows 8, is expected within 2 years.

At the time it launched, Windows actually wasn't a full operating system. Rather, it was a graphical user interface (GUI) that ran on top of DOS. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said at launch that Windows 1.0, which carried a suggested retail price of $99 in 1985, was "unique software" that would provide "unprecedented power to users today and a foundation for hardware and software advancements of the next few years." (You can read the full, 32-page Windows 1.0 press kit at this link.)

While that uniqueness has long been up for debate, it is certainly easy to argue that Gates was right about Windows laying a foundation for the future of the personal computer. Windows has been the dominant operating system for the past two decades. Its future as such, however, is in doubt. Computing seems to be undergoing a fundamental shift away from the PC paradigm and toward mobile and tablet-based interfaces.

The graphic below, from ZDNet UK, illustrates the progression of Windows from November 20, 1985 to today.

The following image is a screenshot of Windows 1.0, which sat on top of Microsoft's command-line operating system, MS-DOS.

What are some of your memories of Windows over the years? Share them in the comments.

Stuxnet may be part of Iran atom woes: ex-IAEA aide (Reuters)

Posted: 20 Nov 2010 02:13 AM PST

By Fredrik Dahl Fredrik Dahl – Sat Nov 20, 5:13 am ET

VIENNA (Reuters) – Iran has been experiencing years of problems with equipment used in its uranium enrichment program and the Stuxnet computer virus may be one of the factors, a former top U.N. nuclear inspections official said.

Olli Heinonen, who stepped down in August as head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog's inspections worldwide, said there may be many reasons for technical glitches that have cut the number of working centrifuges at Iran's Natanz enrichment plant.

"One of the reasons is the basic design of this centrifuge ... this is not that solid," Heinonen, a former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and now a senior fellow at Harvard University, told Reuters on Friday.

Asked about the Stuxnet virus, he said: "Sure, this could be one of the reasons ... There is no evidence that it was, but there has been quite a lot of malfunctioning centrifuges."

Security experts have said the release of Stuxnet could have been a state-backed attack on Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran says is designed to produce electricity but which Western leaders suspect is a disguised effort to develop nuclear bombs.

Any delays in Iran's enrichment campaign could buy more time for efforts to find a diplomatic solution to its stand-off with six world powers over the nature of its nuclear activities.

Iran has tentatively agreed to meet with a representative of the powers early next month, for the first time in over a year.

Earlier this week, experts said new research showed definitively that Stuxnet was tailored to target the kind of equipment used in uranium enrichment, deepening suspicions its aim was to sabotage the Islamic Republic's nuclear activities.

Centrifuges are finely calibrated cylindrical devices that spin at supersonic speed to increase the fissile element in uranium so that it can serve as fuel for nuclear power plants or, if refined to a much higher degree, for atomic bombs.

EQUIPMENT PROBLEMS

The Islamic state's P-1 centrifuges, adapted from a smuggled 1970s European design, have been plagued by breakdowns since a rapid expansion of enrichment in 2007-08. In September, an IAEA report said the number of producing centrifuges had fallen to 3,772 from 3,936 a few months earlier. It did not give a reason.

But Iran is testing an advanced, more durable model able to refine uranium two or three times faster, and says it intends to introduce the model for production in the near future.

Heinonen said the P-1 centrifuge was quite brittle and prone to outages. He also cited other quality problems and "poor workmanship" as possible factors.

"They have some problems but you don't know what the real reason is for those problems and there may be many reasons."

Stuxnet, a malicious computer worm of unknown origin that attacks command modules for industrial equipment, is described by some experts as a first-of-its-kind guided cyber missile.

New research by cyber security company Symantec unearthed evidence that apparently supports the enrichment sabotage theory, pointing to tell-tale signs in the way Stuxnet changes the behavior of equipment known as frequency converter drives.

A frequency converter drive is a power supply that can alter the frequency of the output, which controls the speed of a motor. The higher the frequency, the higher the motor's speed.

"They have had some problems with the frequency converters ... but that is a way back," Heinonen said, citing Iranian media information from a few years ago.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Chinese bloggers meeting cancelled for being too sensitive (AFP)

Posted: 20 Nov 2010 08:56 AM PST

– Sat Nov 20, 11:56 am ET

BEIJING (AFP) – A grassroots bloggers conference to be held in Shanghai has been cancelled after authorities decided it was too sensitive, participants said Saturday, as officials tighten control over social media.

It is the first time the Chinese Blogger Conference had been cancelled since it began six years ago, said Zhou Shuguang, who had booked the venue at the Shanghai Jiaotong University for the meeting this weekend.

Organisers were told by university officials on Friday afternoon that the Shanghai government had decided "the content of the meeting was sensitive" and could not be held at the proposed venue, Zhou, who is also a blogger, told AFP.

A "back-up venue" at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics was also cancelled, Zhou said.

Rebecca MacKinnon, a US-based Internet analyst and blogger, confirmed to AFP that the meeting had been cancelled.

"The organisers were told they should cancel it so they did," said MacKinnon, who had travelled to Shanghai to attend the conference.

MacKinnon said participants would meet informally.

AFP calls to the universities were not answered and Shanghai government officials said they were not aware of the conference.

The cancellation comes after a Chinese woman was jailed to a year in a labour camp for retweeting a Twitter posting mocking anti-Japanese protesters and suggesting they attack the Japanese pavilion at Shanghai's World Expo.

Human rights groups said Cheng Jianping could be the first person in China persecuted over a tweet, after she was convicted last Monday of "disturbing social order".

It also comes as Beijing faces intense criticism over its tough response to the awarding of this year's Nobel Peace Prize to jailed dissident writer Liu Xiaobo, who is serving an 11-year sentence for subversion.

Liu's win last month prompted an angry response from Beijing, which has responded by muzzling his family members.

Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are blocked by the government, but many users access them on the mainland via virtual proxy networks.
at 9:27 PM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

My Blog List