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Thursday, January 20, 2011

Google co-founder Page to replace Schmidt as CEO (AP) : Technet

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Google co-founder Page to replace Schmidt as CEO (AP) : Technet

Google co-founder Page to replace Schmidt as CEO (AP)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 07:40 PM PST

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke, Ap Technology Writer – 1 hr 47 mins ago

SAN FRANCISCO – Eric Schmidt, a technology veteran brought in as Google Inc.'s "adult supervision" a decade ago, is relinquishing the CEO job to Larry Page, one of the prodigies who co-founded the company behind the Internet's dominant gateway.

The surprise shake-up announced Thursday appears to be driven by Schmidt's desire to tackle other challenges as much as Page's personal ambition.

"Day-to-day adult supervision no longer needed!" Schmidt wrote on his Twitter account moments after Google dropped the bombshell that upstaged its fourth-quarter earnings. Schmidt, 55, will become executive chairman and remain available to advise Page, 37, and Google's other 37-year-old founder, Sergey Brin.

Under the new pecking order effective April 4, Page will reclaim the CEO job that he held for three years before the two venture capitalist firms backing Google in its early days insisted that a more mature leader be brought aboard.

That led to the 2001 hiring of Schmidt, a professorial engineer who was previously chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems Inc. and CEO of Novell Inc., both much bigger than Google at the time. After initially resisting Google's overtures, Schmidt bonded with Page and Brin to form a brain trust that proceeded to build the Internet's most powerful company.

Google now boasts a market value of more than $200 billion, a success story that has placed Page, Brin and Schmidt among the world's wealthiest people. The three men are Google's largest individual shareholders, stakes that turned them all into multibillionaires.

But as Google has grown into a company with more than 24,000 employees, its decision-making increasingly has bogged down into a bureaucracy. The managerial constipation and joint decision-making by the trio threatened to put Google at a competitive disadvantage as younger, more nimble Internet services such as Facebook pounce on new trends to lure away users and advertisers. At Facebook, 26-year-old founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls the shots in an entrepreneurial culture that has enticed dozens of engineers to leave Google to work for the social networking company.

"My goal is to run Google at the pace and with the soul and passion of a startup," Page said in a Thursday interview. "I think I will have time to do that given the way we have split up our responsibilities."

Schmidt concurred in the same interview, saying Google's triumvirate decided they needed to find ways for the company to run more crisply.

"I am not as concerned about the titles as I am winning," Schmidt said. "I am quite certain that this change will result in faster decision making and better value for the shareholders."

Google's stockholders have had little to complain about, not that it would have made a major difference because Schmidt, Page and Brin combined own a controlling stake in the company. Google is coming off a year in which its earnings climbed 30 percent to $8.5 billion and, although its stock price remains below its all-time high reached in 2007, it has more than doubled from its lows during the recession.

Google shares rose $8.23, or 1.3 percent, to $635 in extended trading after Thursday's announcement. In the regular session earlier, the stock fell $4.98, or 0.8 percent, to close at $626.77.

The stock peaked at $747 before the recession.

"Eric Schmidt has played his innings very well," said analyst Sandeep Aggarwal of Caris & Co.

The management reshuffling appears to be amicable. Both Page and Schmidt had high praise for each other during a Thursday conference call with analysts, with Schmidt describing Google's co-founders as his "best friends."

"I believe Larry is ready" to be CEO, Schmidt said during the call. "It's time for him to have a shot at running this."

Page hailed Schmidt as a "tremendous leader" whose contributions exceeded all expectations. "There is really no one else in the universe that could have accomplished what Eric has done," Page said.

Although he tried to debunk the idea in Thursday's interview, Schmidt may have been growing weary of all the attention and prosaic duties that come with running one of world's most scrutinized companies.

"I don't think Eric was pushed. I think he jumped," said Ken Auletta, author of "Googled: The End of the World As We Know It." "I think Eric is burned out."

There have been signs Schmidt would prefer doing something else.

For the first time last year, he started to sit out of Google's quarterly calls to discuss its earnings. More recently, he has expressed irritation about how some of his public remarks have been picked apart to support the idea that Google is an arrogant company that can't be trusted to protect people's privacy as its search engine and other services collect vast amounts of personal information.

In October, Schmidt drew fire for responding to a hypothetical question posed at a forum in Washington, D.C., about an implant that would let Google know what its users were thinking. He responded that Google's policy is to "get right up to the creepy line and not cross it," and an implant would cross the line.

He also said that as users voluntarily share information online, it doesn't need users to type in search queries for the company to tailor the results. "We don't need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about," he said.

Such comments have been repeated in online musings that portrayed Schmidt and Google as "creepy."

"The biggest thing I wonder is after a year or so of having various gaffes and statements taken out of context if he decided he no longer wanted to play that front-man role," said Danny Sullivan, the editor-in-chief of the SearchEngineLand news site.

In his new role, Schmidt indicated he will focus on meeting with Google's business partners and government officials around the world.

Wrangling with regulators is becoming a more common occurrence as Google tries to expand its empire even as it faces complaints that it has been abusing its dominance of Internet search to thwart competition. Schmidt, who has been called upon to give economic advice to President Barack Obama before and after he was elected, could be well suited to defuse the concerns in the U.S. He is also expected to play a key role in identifying Google's takeover targets, which makes sense if he is also going to be addressing antitrust concerns.

The change in command seemed long overdue to longtime Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle.

"Whenever you have a caretaker CEO, they're supposed to stay in place until the founders have enough experience," he said. "Larry had enough experience about four years ago."

Although he is more outgoing than Page, Brin has never shown any interest in being CEO. Now, he intends to concentrate on a few high-priority products. Some are believed to be social tools designed to counter Facebook's popularity, but Brin wouldn't discuss specifics in a Thursday interviews.

"I have a passion for several projects," he said. "I don't think anyone has heard of any of them and I don't think anyone will for a while."

As CEO, Page will lead product development and technology strategy and run day-to-day operations.

Schmidt, Page and Brin all still plan to remain with Google through at least 2024, reaffirming a promise they made to each other when the company went public in 2004.

The changes at Google come on the same day that Hewlett-Packard Co. announced its own shake-up, replacing four board directors with five new ones as HP's new leadership tries to dampen shareholder anger over the handling of CEO Mark Hurd's ouster in August.

Facebook and other up-and-coming Internet companies still have a long way to go to catch Google, as demonstrated by the way Google cranked up its Internet marketing machine during the holiday shopping season.

Google earned $2.5 billion, or $7.81 per share, during the final three months of 2010. That's a 29 percent increase from net income of $2 billion, or $6.13 per share, in the prior year.

Excluding stock-compensation expenses, Google says it earned $8.75 per share. That figure topped the average analyst estimate of $8.06 per share, according to FactSet.

Revenue climbed 26 percent from the prior year to $8.44 billion, from $6.67 billion.

After subtracting the commissions paid to Google's advertising partners, the company's revenue totaled $6.37 billion — about $300 million more than analysts anticipated.

Google has plenty of ammunition left to finance its ambitions for this year and beyond. It ended December with $35 billion in cash.

__

AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima in Los Angeles and AP Technology Writer Jessica Mintz contributed to this story.

4 HP directors step down in wake of Hurd fiasco (AP)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 07:17 PM PST

By JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Technology Writer Jordan Robertson, Ap Technology Writer – 2 hrs 12 mins ago

SAN FRANCISCO – Hewlett-Packard Co. is trying to put a fresh face on its scandal-scarred board, swapping out four directors in an extreme leadership makeover at the troubled technology icon.

The shake-up announced Thursday comes as HP's new leadership tries to dampen shareholder anger over the handling of CEO Mark Hurd's ouster six months ago.

Hurd's abrupt exit caused billions of dollars in shareholder wealth to evaporate, and his generous severance triggered lawsuits accusing HP's board of squandering the company's money. Hurd's immediate move to rival Oracle Corp., which earned him a rich new employment contract, added to investors' ire.

The decision by four of HP's current board members to not stand for re-election at HP's annual meeting in March represents an unusually large exodus for a company of HP's size.

HP would only say that it "continually looks to bring new insight and perspective" to the company.

"With our new leadership, it's a natural time to assess the composition of the board," the company said in a statement. "We thank our current directors for their outstanding service to HP and welcome the opportunity to work with our new members."

HP's revelation came the same day that another technology heavyweight, Google Inc., disclosed a surprise reshuffling of its own: CEO Eric Schmidt is relinquishing the job to Google co-founder Larry Page.

HP's housecleaning comes less than three months after Leo Apotheker, a former CEO of German business software maker SAP AG, took over as HP's CEO, and Ray Lane, a former Oracle Corp. executive who famously clashed with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, assumed the chairmanship at HP.

It also comes as HP is opening a new investigation into the circumstances of Hurd's departure and severance, in response to shareholders' demands.

The investigation will be conducted by outside lawyers and directors who joined HP's board after Hurd left. Until Thursday's reshuffling, those new directors would only have consisted of Lane and Apotheker. Lane has loudly supported Hurd's ouster.

Hurd was forced out last year after a five-year reign in which HP's market value nearly doubled. He was accused of sexual harassment but HP's board found no evidence of that. Instead, he was ousted over inaccurate expense reports for his outings with his accuser, a former HP contract worker who helped organize networking events for executives, including Hurd.

Hurd got a $12.2 million cash payout and soon after leaving filed papers to sell some $30 million worth of stock that he got by exercising options that were part of his severance.

Spectators howled at the size of the severance and the fact Hurd went right to work for Oracle. Hurd and HP tangled again, and Hurd agreed to give back $14 million in restricted stock to HP to squash a courtroom battle over whether he should be allowed to work Oracle. Hurd is now co-president at Oracle.

A spokesman for Hurd declined to comment on the investigation. Hurd's resignation is also the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission probe.

Some industry analysts say the changes to HP's board are overdue given the company's inability in recent years to escape controversy. Among incidents were the firing of Hurd's predecessor Carly Fiorina in 2005, an episode of spying on journalists and board members' telephone calls in 2006, and finally the handling of allegations of sexual harassment against Hurd last year.

Of the board's 12 current members, 10 were there when Hurd resigned in August. Four are now leaving: Joel Hyatt, John Joyce, Bob Ryan and Lucille Salhany.

Salhany and Ryan were on the board for all three scandals. Hyatt and Joyce joined in 2007.

HP is replacing them and adding an extra seat to the board. The new board will have 13 members.

HP didn't provide specifics about why each of the four directors is being replaced. One person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that at least two of the directors were forced out because of their handling of Hurd's ouster.

The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Salhany and Ryan led the efforts to have Hurd removed and were key in persuading other board members to go along.

The person, who requested anonymity because of not being authorized to speak publicly about the matter, said that Hyatt and Joyce initially supported Hurd but later voted along with the rest of the board to have him removed.

Messages left by the AP for the departing board members were either not immediately returned or the directors declined to comment. HP wouldn't make any of them available.

The mass exodus raised some eyebrows.

"Four directors going out at once is unusual," said Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at University of Delaware. "Boards should not have this much drama."

At 72 years old, HP is one of the most storied companies in Silicon Valley, but its rise to become the world's biggest technology company by revenue has been interrupted by the explosive management scandals.

Gleacher & Co. analyst Brian Marshall said the changes HP is making are positive in light of the Hurd scandal.

"HP got its teeth kicked in last year and they're going through a process of healing," he said.

Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst Aaron Rakers said the board shuffle is more extensive than he expected, but he doesn't think it will really move the company's stock.

"It's interesting, but is it a big catalyst? Probably not," he said.

The new directors are: Shumeet Banerji, chief executive officer of the consultancy Booz & Co.; Gary Reiner, former chief information officer of General Electric Co.; Patricia Russo, former CEO of Alcatel-Lucent; Dominique Senequier, CEO of AXA Private Equity; and Meg Whitman, the former CEO of online auctioneer eBay Inc.

Marshall with Gleacher and Co. said he was most impressed with the addition of Whitman, saying her leadership style is something HP needs.

Whitman is a billionaire who spent more than any candidate for a statewide office in U.S. history in her Republican campaign for California governor last year. She spent at least $174 million, all but $30 million of it her own money, but was handily defeated by former two-term governor Jerry Brown in the November election.

Marshall added that the global telecom expertise of Russo will be important for HP as it grows its computer networking business.

Shares of HP, which is based in Palo Alto lost 31 cents to $46.47 after the announcement on the board shake-up. In regular trading earlier, it gained 46 cents, or about 1 percent, to close at $46.78 Thursday.

___

AP writers Rachel Beck and Barbara Ortutay in New York, Rachel Metz in San Francisco and Juliet Williams in Sacramento, Calif., contributed to this story.

Verizon challenges FCC's net neutrality rules (AP)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 03:58 PM PST

By JOELLE TESSLER, AP Technology Writer Joelle Tessler, Ap Technology Writer – Thu Jan 20, 6:58 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Verizon Communications Inc. on Thursday filed a legal challenge to new federal regulations that prohibit broadband providers from interfering with Internet traffic flowing over their networks.

In a filing in federal appeals court in the District of Columbia, Verizon argues that the Federal Communications Commission overstepped its authority in adopting the new "network neutrality" rules last month.

The rules prohibit phone and cable companies from favoring or discriminating against Internet content and services — including online calling services such as Skype and Internet video services such as Netflix, which in many cases compete with services sold by companies like Verizon.

The FCC's three Democrats voted to adopt the rules over the opposition of the agency's two Republicans just before Christmas. Republicans in Congress, who now control the House, have vowed to try to block the rules from taking effect. They argue that they amount to unnecessary regulation that will discourage phone and cable companies from investing in their networks.

Several key House Republicans, including House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan, welcomed Verizon's actions Thursday as "a check on an FCC that is acting beyond the authority granted to it by Congress." The court challenge had been widely expected.

In a statement, Verizon said that while it is "committed to preserving an open Internet," it remains "deeply concerned by the FCC's assertion of broad authority for sweeping new regulation of broadband networks and the Internet itself."

The company is taking the case to the same federal court that ruled last year that the FCC had exceeded its legal authority in sanctioning cable giant Comcast Corp. The agency had cited Comcast for discriminating against online file-sharing traffic on its network — violating broad net neutrality principles first established by the agency in 2005. Those principles served as a foundation for the formal rules adopted by the commission last month.

Last year's court ruling forced the FCC to look for a new framework for regulating broadband to ensure the commission would be on solid legal ground in adopting net neutrality and other rules. The agency currently treats broadband as a lightly regulated "information service," as opposed to phone service, which is more heavily regulated as a so-called "common carrier."

At one point, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed redefining broadband as a telecommunications service subject to common carrier obligations to treat all traffic equally. But he later backed down in the face of fierce opposition from the phone and cable companies, as well as many Congressional Republicans.

And he now argues that the agency has ample authority to mandate net neutrality under the existing regulatory framework for broadband — an assumption that will be tested in the Verizon challenge.

A senior FCC official said Thursday that the agency is confident that its new net neutrality rules are legally sound and is prepared to defend them.

The rules represented an attempt to craft a compromise on an issue that has divided the telecommunications and technology industries. On one side, Internet companies such as Skype, as well as public interest groups, argue that strong rules are needed to prevent broadband providers from becoming online gatekeepers that can dictate where people go and what they do online.

But the big phone and cable companies insist that they need flexibility to manage Internet traffic to keep their networks running smoothly and preventing bandwidth-hogging applications from slowing down their systems. They also maintain that they should be able to charge extra for special services over their broadband lines and earn a healthy return on the billions of dollars they have spent on network upgrades.

New York-based Verizon is the country's fourth-largest fixed-line Internet service provider, with 8.3 million subscribers. It's investing more in home broadband than any other company, since it's upgrading about two-thirds of its local-phone network with optical fiber for ultra-fast Internet access.

The regulations adopted last month try to find a middle ground. The rules require broadband providers to let subscribers access all legal online content, applications and services over their wired networks. But they give providers flexibility to manage data on their systems to deal with network congestion and unwanted traffic, including spam, as long as they publicly disclose how they manage the network.

The new rules do prohibit unreasonable network discrimination — a category that would likely include "paid prioritization," which favors the broadband providers' own traffic or the traffic of business partners that can pay extra — but they do not explicitly bar the practice.

The regulations also prohibit wireless carriers from blocking access to any websites or competing services such as Internet calling applications on mobile devices, and they require carriers to disclose their network management practices, too. But they give wireless companies more flexibility to manage data traffic because wireless systems have less network bandwidth and can become overwhelmed with traffic more easily than wired lines.

Android-powered T-Mobile Sidekick poised to make a comeback (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 10:34 AM PST

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Thu Jan 20, 1:34 pm ET

It's been six months since T-Mobile retired the last of its venerable Sidekick handsets, but the carrier revealed Thursday that a new Sidekick — complete with speedy HSPA+ data access, plus Android under the hood — will be making its debut in 2011.

A T-Mobile spokesperson confirmed to me via email Thursday that the Sidekick 4G is slated to arrive in the carrier's lineup this year. PC Magazine was the first to report that a new, Android-powered Sidekick was in T-Mobile's 2011 pipeline.

The news comes more than six months after T-Mobile finally dropped the aging Sidekick LX, which first landed in stores in 2009, from its selection of messaging phones.

Rumors had been circulating for the past several months that an Android-based reboot of the Sidekick line might be headed for T-Mobile, and it's little wonder why. Andy Rubin, Google's designated Android guru, was a co-founder of Danger, the company that launched the original Sidekick almost a decade ago.

Danger was ultimately acquired by Microsoft, which recently tried — and failed — to launch its own line of casual messaging phones, the ill-fated Kin.

While T-Mobile went ahead and confirmed that an Android-powered Sidekick is in the offing, it wouldn't reveal any further details about the upcoming handset besides the name — Sidekick 4G — and the fact that the phone will support T-Mobile's HSPA+ network for speedy data access.

It could simply be that the new Android phone will be a Sidekick in name only, with a custom interface skin that resembles Sidekick handsets of old, but that's just a guess on my part.

The Sidekick has a long, proud history, with the original Sidekick models — particularly the Sidekick II, which was my personal phone in 2004 — delivering a slick, intuitive, and smartphone-like experience back when most mobile UIs were still clunky monstrosities.

The Sidekick's graphical, icon-based "jump" screen made it a snap to switch from, say, the Web browser to an app (yes, the Sidekick had apps, even in the pre-iPhone days), but its signature feature was the jumbo display that twirled up to reveal a full QWERTY keypad.

For years, the Sidekick was one of the few choices out there for mobile mavens who wanted a slick interface, a usable Web browser, and top-notch messaging features. It also became a red-carpet favorite, with Paris Hilton famously getting her Sidekick hacked back in 2005.

Slowly but surely, though, the Sidekick line began to fall behind the times, with no 3G or GPS support until the Sidekick LX landed in 2009. By then, of course, the iPhone had already managed to change the mobile game.

Then came the great Sidekick server meltdown of October 2009, which left millions of Sidekick users locked out of their e-mail and contact lists for days.

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

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New iOS beta (strongly) hints at front-facing camera for iPad 2 (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 08:07 AM PST

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Thu Jan 20, 11:07 am ET

Developers poking around a just-released beta for the next version of Apple's iOS platform say they've found a telltale image confirming — perhaps — that the next iPad will indeed boast a camera.

The image in question, according to MacRumors, is intended as a preview for iPad users looking to change their home-screen wallpaper.

The preview image already exists in the current version of iOS, but in the just-released beta for iOS 4.3, the image adds a trio of new home-screen icons: one for Apple's PhotoBooth app (which lets you apply "fun" filters like "Mirror," "X-ray," and "Kaleidoscope" to your digital snapshots), another for FaceTime video chat, and a third for the Camera app.

Taken together, that's a pretty strong sign that the long-anticipated iPad 2 (or whatever it ends up being called) will come with a camera -- a front-facing one, at the very least.

Of course, rumors have been brewing for months that a revamped iPad (which, for the record, hasn't been confirmed by Apple yet) would arrive with a camera or two, with leaked images of iPad 2 cases showing rear-facing holes clearly intended for a camera lens.

It's also hard to believe that Apple would crank out a new iPad without dual camera, given the bevy of iPad competitors coming to market with both front- and rear-facing snappers.

But the image discovered in the new iOS beta appears to be the most solid evidence yet that a new, camera-packing iPad is on tap.

Meanwhile, the new beta also indicates that the recently discovered multitouch gestures for iOS multitasking — you know, the ones that some thought might spell the end of the iPad's "home" key — will be disabled when iOS 4.3 finally ships, according to Engadget.

That's not to say that Apple is ditching the feature, which would allow users to jump to the home screen or switch to another app with a five-finger gesture. But for now, the idea appears to be little more than a "developer preview" intended to "gather input on how these gestures might work" on third-party apps, Engadget reports.

So, yes — it looks like the physical iPad home key is safe, for now.

Finally, the debate over whether the new iPad will arrive with a "retina display" still rages, with a new report from Taipei-based tech site DigiTimes claiming that the iPad 2 will indeed arrive with a 2048 by 1536 display, effectively quadrupling the total number of pixels on the original iPad's screen.

Such a move makes sense, given the ultra-dense retina display on the iPhone 4 — but would it be be feasible, given the processing power and expense that would be involved?

Daring Fireball's John Gruber, for one, doesn't think so, predicting instead that the new iPad will be analogous to the iPhone 3GS, with a "faster processor, more RAM, [and] better graphics support" but "the same display resolution as the current model."

The general consensus seems to be that the next iPad will finally arrive in April, a year after the first iPad went on sale, so we should have our answers soon enough. Stay tuned.

Related:
FaceTime, Camera and PhotoBooth Icons Confirm Camera in iPad 2 [MacRumors]
Apple to up iPad 2 resolution to 2048 by 1536 [DigiTimes]
iOS 4.3 beta 2 released, iPad multitasking gestures just a developer preview [Engadget]

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

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Samsung Galaxy 4G Landing on T-Mobile (PC World)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 10:59 AM PST

Ginny Mies Ginny Mies – Thu Jan 20, 1:59 pm ET

CES might be over, but the 4G phones keep trickling in. As a part of its aggressive 4G plans, T-Mobile announced that the Samsung Galaxy 4G will launch in the first half of 2011. But will it have the specs of the hot next-gen Galaxy phones? It doesn't seem like it.

Specs for the Samsung Galaxy 4G on T-Mobile aren't clear, but we do know that it will have a Super AMOLED display--not the newest Super AMOLED Plus display. At CES, Verizon unveiled an unnamed LTE phone with a 4.3-inch display as well as a phone on AT&T, the Infuse 4G, with a monstrous 4.5-inch display. According to Samsung, Super AMOLED Plus displays have an increased number of sub-pixels by 50 percent and perform even better in bright light than the first-gen Super AMOLED displays.

On the Samsung Mobile website, the company is trumpeting the arrival of "something big" on Feb. 13, which coincidentally is the week of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The rumor mill is buzzing about what sort of specs the next generation of Samsung Galaxy phones will boast. A dual-core processor, an 8-megapixel camera and built-in NFC support are just a few of the exciting features the next-gen phones could sport.

As much as I'd like the Galaxy 4G to have some of these features, I have a feeling it won't be too dissimilar from the Samsung Vibrant-just with HSPA+ support. All we know about the T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy 4G is that it will run Android 2.2 (Froyo). T-Mobile tells us that they will provide more details (and hopefully provide some images of this thing).

The moniker "4G" implies faster and T-Mobile's HSPA+ network is certainly faster than its 3G network but right now, it is quite uneven in terms of coverage. And T-Mobile's claims that its 4G devices can achieve "theoretical" download speeds of 21 mbps have yet to be proved in our own speed tests. When we tested the T-Mobile G2's data speeds in several neighborhoods in San Francisco, we found the "4G-like" speeds of T-Mobile's HSPA+ network (4 to 6 mbps on downloads and 1 to 2 mbps on uploads) in roughly half of them. The fastest speed PCWorld achieved was 14 mbps and that was with the T-Mobile webConnect Rocket USB modem.

T-Mobile today also announced at an investor event that it plans to heavily promote its "4G" wireless network, improve in-home device coverage, and by offer low-price options for smartphone newbies.

Are Android Tablets Vapor? Or Just Not Here? (PC Magazine)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 06:12 AM PST

Michael J. Miller - PC Magazine Michael J. Miller - Pc Magazine – Thu Jan 20, 9:12 am ET

Everyone seems to have proclaimed that this was the "year of the tablet" at the Consumer Electronics Show. But while I certainly saw a whole lot of tablets at the show, what strikes me most, in retrospect, is just how unfinished nearly all the tablets were. I left intrigued by the possibilities, but more skeptical about the market than most of my colleagues.

Partly, there were so many tablets because it seems like every vendor thinks they fit into their existing market. Phone makers think of tablets as large smartphones -- with or without calling features. TV makers think of tablets just as smaller screens on which to watch video and other content. PC makers think of tablets as laptops without keyboards. Monitor makers think of them as portable monitors. Book sellers think of them as electronic book readers.

That's both good and bad. On the one hand, it's good because it means the concept is flexible, just like the PC was. On the other hand, it's not so good because, in a lot of cases, the vendors don't really seem to have much of an idea, other than just put Android onto a 7-to 10-inch screen and hope something develops.

Let's think about what was actually at the show. Probably the most interesting tablet shown was the Motorola Xoom, the first device running Google's 3.0 version of Android, known as Honeycomb.

 

Xoom CES 2011.jpg 



With an Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor and 10.1-inch 1280-by-800 screen, the Xoom looked intriguing in on-stage demos. But when you went to the booth, all you saw were devices running a video of the OS -- nothing that you could actually touch. That's a pretty good indication that it just isn't finished yet.

Meanwhile, there were dozens of other tablets that said they would be running Honeycomb, but were actually running the older 2.2 version, known as Froyo. So, you know they are at least several months behind. Motorola says the Xoom will be out this quarter, which seems aggressive; and the other Android tablets seem to be more like summer products.

But in sheer numbers, Android certainly dominated. Before the show, CES estimated there would be 80 tablets at the show. But that count turned out to be way low: if you walked around the little booths of importers, it wasn't unusual to find booths with tablets of every screen size from 4 inches to 10 inches, and if you asked, they would all say these tablets run Android (though most were without Google's approval or access to the Android Market). 

There must have been hundreds of such tablets sitting there -- all waiting for someone to slap their logo on it -- either for the Asian market or for developed markets at a really cheap price. I've seen $99 and $149 Android tablets, but they are slow and without easy access to most applications.

More disheartening, there didn't seem to be many differences among the Android tablets. Maybe it's too early and we can hope for some variations on the software side, but, for now, just about everything I saw looked almost identical.

If not Android, well what about Windows? There were certainly plenty of Windows tablets at the show. Some were slate designs, while others had keyboards that can become laptops. Some of the vendors treated this like it was a new idea even though such machines have been around for 10 years. 

But the issues that have stopped these from being a huge market mostly still remain. Battery life is starting to get addressed. Intel will have a chance to prove it with its upcoming Oak Trail version of Atom. The company seemed to purposely downplay that at the show in order to focus on the new Sandy Bridge Core chips for traditional desktops and laptops. Microsoft said it would do a version of Windows that would run on ARM, but no one expects that to actually ship this year.

Meanwhile, a lot of the vendors showed new "skins" for both Android and Windows that make their tablets more suited for playing media. Dell, for instance, has a new "Stage" interface that runs across its full line. I expect we'll see a lot more like this in the next few months.
Dell Stage CES 2011.jpg

Research in Motion was showing its Playbook tablet. For the first time, RIM gave us more details about the hardware, saying it will use a 1 GHz dual core Texas Instruments OMAP processor. I still think the QNX software looked quite good,  but it wasn't much more than what I saw at D: Dive Into Mobile. The company is calling for an "early 2011" release, with some rumors calling for March. We'll know more then.

Palm's WebOS was pretty much completely absent at the show. Instead, HP is setting a February 9 date for an introduction.

As for the tablet that matters so far, Apple's iPad was ubiquitous, even though Apple itself skipped the show. I saw far more cases, speakers, docks, and apps than I could count. This remains Apple's market, and with rumors of an iPad 2 in the works, we'll see if it can stay further ahead of the market.

Well-known market research firms have huge projections for the tablet market, with some saying more than 200 million will be sold in 2014 -- 10 times more than what happened in 2010. That may yet turn out to be true. Still, that's a huge number. And, with most of the products so immature, it seems to be just a wild guess.

With various companies trying to position themselves to be the top competitor to the iPad, a lot of these announcements have to been seen as placeholders. Whether any of them can actually do that -- which requires a combination of applications, user interface, and great hardware design -- is very much an open question.

Originally posted to Michael Miller's blog, Forward Thinking.

Smart phones foster dumb habits among pedestrians (AP)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 08:36 PM PST

By DAVID BAUDER, Associated Press David Bauder, Associated Press – 53 mins ago

NEW YORK – It was a miserable morning in New York, rain falling heavily and a 30 mph wind that made holding an umbrella difficult. Yet a man walked briskly up Fifth Avenue, balancing his umbrella and dodging pedestrians as he texted from his smart phone.

As a sheer physical act, it was almost Olympian in the strength, dexterity and concentration required.

It was also completely ridiculous.

It was RAINING. And cold. The man was, let's presume, minutes from some destination. At any moment, he could spear a fellow pedestrian with his umbrella because he was only marginally paying attention to where he was going. What message could possibly be so important that it couldn't wait?

While smart phones and other electronic devices changed popular culture by offering an ability to always stay connected, they have so swiftly turned into such a compelling need that a simple walk down the street is considered wasted time.

One too many times stepping around a shuffling pedestrian immersed in e-mail led me to conduct a social experiment. I decided to count the number of people I saw distracted by their electronic devices during my 25-minute morning walk to work from New York's Grand Central Station to the far West Side.

Some ground rules: Cell-phone conversations count, along with texting and looking at the devices. I didn't consider listening to music to be a distraction — that, um, would require counting myself — but people who looked at their iPods while walking made the list. Pulling over to the side to use an electronic device didn't count, because that's what a courteous pedestrian should be doing.

So those three construction workers who stood together talking on their phones off Fifth Avenue were safe from wrath. Same for the woman who frequently asks for spare change next to St. Michael's Church on 33rd Street when she's on her cell. She's usually sitting.

In 15 mornings of counting in late November and December, the average was 48.6 people. The most was 67. The fewer was 28, on the rainy day our Fifth Avenue textlete felt he had room to maneuver. Generally speaking, it was about one in 10 pedestrians.

In that time, I saw a woman nearly flattened by a taxi when she stepped off a curb into traffic while looking into her cell phone. A bicycle messenger rode and talked on his phone at the same time. One gabber pushed a baby stroller. One morning two police officers were on the phone. A man nearly bumped into me after swiveling his head mid-step from his screen to watch the backside of a woman passing by.

Even people not using their smart phones kept them in their hands, like drawn weapons. It's become an accepted part of urban posture.

Mind you, this is winter in the Northeast; the temperature was finger-numbing on many mornings. No problem: I pass by a bus shelter with an advertisement for gloves specially equipped to work touch-screens. There are also smart phone apps that encourage texting while walking, using the device's camera to show a picture on the screen of where a person is walking, visible as a backdrop behind what they're typing.

Smart phones have replaced tourists as New York pedestrians' biggest headache. We used to disdain people from out of town when they wandered slowly on the sidewalks, looking skyward at tall buildings and muttering as we walked by with purpose.

Now we're the menace.

We also used to walk with a certain amount of hyperawareness. Remember muggers creeping from dark corners? Pickpockets who worked the crowds? Now many people walk down the street oblivious to their surroundings, fiddling with an electronic device worth hundreds of dollars.

One New Yorker who followed my daily Facebook count of distracted pedestrians admits she's one of them. In fact, she often walks down city streets with her husband, both engrossed not in each other, but in their smart phones.

"I find that my walk to the subway or home at night is the only time I can actually focus on myself," said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of looking silly. "All of the other times of the day I'm surrounded by people who are constantly grabbing for my attention. I am the classic multitasker."

While she walks, her mind's usually racing with things she needs to remind co-workers or contacts, things she must tell the baby sitter.

Why not do it in the moment?

"I get a lot of dirty looks on the street, from people who are frustrated that I'm not looking where I'm going," she said. "I try hard to be respectful of the other pedestrians and look up and down very frequently."

A clip posted on YouTube last week of a woman who fell into a fountain while walking and texting at the Berkshire Mall in Wyomissing, Pa., near Reading, has been seen by more than 3 million people. The Pennsylvania woman, Cathy Cruz Marrero, appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" Thursday with a lawyer and said they're looking into who was responsible for spreading the video. What was so important that she had to text right away? Someone she knew from church had e-mailed to ask when was Marrero's birthday.

It could be the permanent state of things; smart phone use is growing fast. The Nielsen Co. said that 95 percent of American adults have cell phones. Nearly a third of those are smart phones.

I'll confess that the devices have driven me to a few minor episodes of sidewalk rage. I've lightly bumped into distracted pedestrians on purpose a couple of times. Not to cause harm — just to snap them from their virtual worlds and make them aware of the real one.

I've been to parties where clumps of people stared into devices, or texted, instead of actually conversing with humans around them. I always marvel upon landing on a redeye flight from the West Coast at how many people immediately take out their phones and begin dialing. It's 5:30 a.m. — 2:30 in the city they've left. Who are they calling?

William Powers once saw two women in New York crashing baby strollers into one another because they were both concentrating on phones. Powers, a former Washington Post reporter, wrote the book "Hamlet's BlackBerry," about how an addiction to technology prevents people from doing their best work or forging healthy relationships.

"We're hard-wired from our primitive ancestors to pay attention to novelty," he said. It happens whenever there are major technological shifts, like the establishment of printing presses, he said. Author Henry David Thoreau, famed for writing about a life in solitude around Walden Pond, once observed in the 1850s that people had become addicted to going to the post office.

"Didn't we say the same thing a while back about boom boxes and Walkmen?" noted Lizabeth Cohen, professor of American Studies in Harvard University's history department. "Maybe the constant is change."

Powers believes things will calm down as people become more accustomed to the technology. Knowing you can check your e-mail at any time may become as satisfying as actually doing it, and more phones will stay in the pocket. Society, in its natural course, may impose a new set of behaviors. When cell phones were new, he noted, many people didn't think twice about answering a call while sitting in a theater. Now that's much more rare.

Changes are noticeable in another part of my journey to work, too. Cell phone conversations used to be fairly commonplace on the commuter train. Now they are widely frowned upon, a new social order set informally by fellow passengers.

So there's hope. In the meantime, look out for yourself on the street. No one else is.

How a Sentiment Analysis Startup Profits By Checking Emotion in E-mail (Mashable)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 03:00 PM PST

Jennifer Van Grove Jennifer Van Grove – Thu Jan 20, 6:00 pm ET

This post is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark as a new part of the Spark of Genius series that focuses on a new and innovative startup each day. Every Thursday, the program focuses on startups within the BizSpark program and what they're doing to grow.

Whether intended or not, our text-based communication often carries emotional undertones that can often undermine (or give away) our true intentions. Nowhere is this more apparent than in e-mail, which most of us use as our primary means of digital communication and can, on occasion, get us in trouble if we choose the wrong words.

Having experienced this first-hand one too many times, Matt Eldridge sought out a solution to the problem. We have spell check to save us from making an egregious spelling faux pas and grammar check to keep our subjects and verbs in agreement, so there must be a tool for tone check, he reasoned. In fact, there was not, so Eldridge left his day job, found a technical co-founder in Josh Merchant and together the two started sentiment analysis startup Lymbix.

In July of 2010, after one and a half years of heavy research and development, Lymbix released an early stage version of ToneCheck, an Outlook plugin that uses detailed sentiment analysis to check the emotional tone of content in e-mail. The tool proved to be an instant hit with e-mail senders, 20,000 of whom downloaded the plugin in the first month after release.

Lymbix is now working on a faster, lighter and smarter version of ToneCheck scheduled for release in late February. It's just one of many things the young but sufficiently funded company -- Lymbix has raised more than $2 million in angel funding and pulls in revenue from licensing deals -- has in store for the year. "This year is our coming out party," says Eldridge.

Check Yourself

The feverish early response from users validated the need for product, says Eldridge, who also admits that version one of ToneCheck is a bit too intrusive and cumbersome.

The Microsoft Outlook add-on is currently easy to use, but rather manual in nature. Users first compose their e-mail, then hit "Run ToneCheck," at which point the software analyzes text content and alerts the e-mail sender to phrases that don't meet the user's predefined tone tolerance settings.

The next iteration dramatically improves on that experience with automatic and real-time tone checking -- similar to how spell check works. A Tone Alert bar sits below the e-mail message and visually alerts the writer that the tone of a particular sentence may be too aggressive or upsetting.

Corporate Tone Tolerance

What if there was a way for a corporation to set a baseline for tone that would apply to all outgoing e-mail? Alternatively, what if a business could route inbound messages based on their sentiment? Would the end result be more positive communication, better sales and an improved bottom-line? Eldridge believes so, which is why Lymbix is working on an enterprise product called ToneFilter for just that purpose.

Once completed, ToneFilter will offer businesses company-wide outbound e-mail safeguards and the ability to automatically route inbound messages based on their sentiment to appropriate personnel. The corporation could define an acceptable tone for company e-mail, as well as get a disgruntled customer's e-mail routed to the best customer service representative or an enthusiastic message to a savvy salesman.

The enterprise product will also come with reporting that monitors the tone trends of e-mails across the company.

Money in Emotion

Eldridge says that Lymbix may release a premium, for-charge version of ToneCheck for consumers at a later date, but for now he's content to keep the Outlook add-on free of charge. That's because the company is pulling in revenue from API licensing and several soon-to-be-announced partnerships, according to Eldridge.

"Our core technology is understanding and analyzing the emotion in text communication," says Eldridge. And, that technology is in high demand. "Licensing our API is a very lucrative business for us."

Lymbix strategically choose to build alongside Microsoft's e-mail client to reach the more than 500 million Outlook users, but Eldridge reports that there's been significant interest from partners to build ToneCheck for web-based email programs and social sites like Facebook.

Spell check and grammar check have become like crutches supporting our daily work and communication tasks. Should Lymbix's ToneCheck and API make emotional spell check a commodity we can't live without -- whether it be in e-mail, on social networks or in any other text-based form of communication -- then it will surely have a bright future.

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, ayzek and Flickr, whatsupbuttercup

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Google's Android Market policing could affect Amazon's app store (Appolicious)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 12:39 PM PST

Makers of mobile homes for FEMA near settlement (AP)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 04:27 PM PST

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press – Thu Jan 20, 7:27 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS – Companies that manufactured mobile homes for the Federal Emergency Management Agency after Hurricane Katrina are nearing a settlement to resolve thousands of claims that Gulf Coast storm victims were exposed to potentially dangerous fumes, court records show.

A proposed class-action settlement involving about two dozen mobile home manufacturers and their subsidiaries is expected to be filed Friday. A court filing Tuesday says the companies and plaintiffs' attorneys are "very close" to finalizing an agreement, which would have to be approved by a federal judge in New Orleans.

A lead plaintiffs' attorney and a lawyer for the companies that made mobile homes for FEMA wouldn't comment Thursday on the financial terms of the settlement.

The settlement doesn't involve claims for residents who lived in FEMA travel trailers, which housed the majority of hurricane victims. Government tests found that travel trailers had significantly higher average formaldehyde levels than mobile homes, which are larger and sturdier.

The mobile home companies involved in the expected settlement include Cavalier Home Builders, Patriot Homes Inc., CMH Manufacturing and Champion Home Builders.

The deal could benefit several thousand families in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Alabama who lived in government-issued mobile homes after the 2005 storms and claim they were exposed to dangerous levels of formaldehyde. The chemical is used in building materials and can cause breathing problems and is classified as a carcinogen.

"It's a slow and steady process, but this is a large step in the right direction toward the hopeful resolution of all claims," said plaintiffs' attorney Justin Woods.

If U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt approves the deal, it would be the second mass settlement of claims over formaldehyde exposure in the government-issued housing units that FEMA ordered after the 2005 storms.

Fleetwood Enterprises Inc., which supplied FEMA with travel trailers, agreed last year to a settlement resolving about 7,500 to 8,000 claims, according to attorney Jerry Saporito, who represented the company, which filed for bankruptcy in 2009. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

Three cases against companies that manufactured and installed FEMA travel trailers have been tried before Engelhardt, who is presiding over a batch of hundreds of consolidated lawsuits. The juries in all three trials sided with the companies and didn't award any damages.

Engelhardt has dismissed all the claims against FEMA brought by residents of Alabama and Mississippi and limited the case against FEMA for Louisiana residents to gross negligence claims. Plaintiffs' attorneys are appealing the rulings.

In May 2009, Engelhardt dismissed some of the state law claims filed against mobile home makers, ruling they were barred under federal law. Engelhardt said Congress never intended to allow states to set higher safety standards for mobile homes than those imposed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

More than 143,000 families received temporary housing from FEMA after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

FEMA initially downplayed concerns that elevated levels of formaldehyde were jeopardizing their health. In February 2008, however, the agency announced it would rush to move tens of thousands of residents out of travel trailers.

Government tests on hundreds of trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi had found formaldehyde levels that were, on average, about five times what people are exposed to in most modern homes.

Google co-founder Page takes over, targets Facebook (Reuters)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 07:18 PM PST

By Alexei Oreskovic Alexei Oreskovic – 2 hrs 11 mins ago

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc co-founder Larry Page will take over as CEO from Eric Schmidt, a surprise move to make the company more nimble at a time when competition heats up with fast-growing rivals like Facebook.

Page's assumption of day-to-day operations marks a return to Google's technological roots, 13 years after he and fellow Stanford University student Sergey Brin founded what has become the world's No. 1 Internet search engine with $29 billion a year in revenue.

"Day-to-day adult supervision no longer needed!" Schmidt tweeted after the announcement.

The news came as Google reported earnings and revenue that blew past expectations.

While Google has dominated Internet search for a decade, the company has struggled to find its footing in social networking, with a new crop of Web companies such as Facebook and Twitter stealing Web traffic and engineering talent.

"As spending was curbed and order restored over the last few years, some of that Google magic was lost," said Tricia Salinero, managing director of Newforth Partners, a mergers and acquisitions advisory firm, in an email.

Schmidt, who will step aside on April 4 and make way for Page, told Reuters in an interview that the change was "not a reaction to competitors."

Rather, he said, it was an effort to speed up decision making at the company, which ended the year with about 24,000 employees.

"Google has many different businesses and the issue that we have been getting into is there's too many ways (in) which these businesses can be slowed down," Schmidt said.

Schmidt, who became CEO in 2001 to bring more management experience to a then-fledgling company, will assume the role of executive chairman, focusing on deals and government outreach, among other things. Brin will concentrate on strategic projects.

Shares in the Internet search and advertising leader rose about 2 percent to $639 in extended trading.

Just days ago, Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs announced a leave of absence, leaving lieutenant Tim Cook in charge of day-to-day operations. Like Google, Apple also announced results this week that blew past Wall Street's estimates.

"The Street will think it's a negative, that there is probably some issue going on. Google is trying to get more efficient and trying to get a tech guy in the seat to compete with Facebook," said UBS analyst Brian Pitz. "I don't think it changes anything strategically where the company is headed."

News of the change came as Google reported a 29 percent surge in both net profit and net revenue that beat forecasts.

Net income, excluding items, of $8.75 a share outstripped Wall Street's average forecast of $8.10.

Net revenue, excluding fees paid to partner websites, was $6.37 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S, on average, were expecting net revenue of $6.06 billion.

GOVERNMENT OUTREACH

The world's top Internet company is recruiting and going on an acquisitions spree, aiming to ensure its online products remain popular as surfers turn to new services like Facebook -- now the most heavily trafficked website -- and wireless gadgets.

On a conference call with analysts, Google CFO Patrick Pichette said a 10 percent, across-the-board pay raise instituted late last year was a direct attempt to staunch a flow of talent to hot Web upstarts in the Valley.

Google is also facing increasing regulatory scrutiny as its influence on the Web grows and as the company expands into other markets.

The company's planned $700 million acquisition of airline ticketing software company ITA software is being reviewed by U.S. regulators, while European regulators are looking into Google's search practices.

Google tried to buy fast-growing online local-shopping service Groupon for $6 billion but was rebuffed, Chicago Breaking Business, a Tribune Newspaper website, and other news outlets reported.

The question is whether Facebook's success could start to cut into Google's business, as investors debate whether marketers will advertise on both online services, or shift advertising dollars from Google to the world's largest social network.

Google said the management change was made as part of a plan to "streamline" decision making and create clearer lines of responsibility and accountability at the top.

"It's a good move. It (the triumvirate management structure) was always one of things that concerned us a little bit," said Ryan Jacob, portfolio manager with the Jacob Internet Fund. "It should streamline the decision-making process. They're in a fast-moving industry."

Schmidt now plans to sell about 534,000 shares of Class A common stock, the company said. Based on Google's closing share price of $626.77 on Thursday, he would earn about $334.7 million on the stock sale. He would still own about 2.7 percent of Google's outstanding capital stock, down from 2.9 percent before selling the shares.

"As Google has grown, managing the business has become more complicated. So Larry, Sergey and I have been talking for a long time about how best to simplify our management structure and speed up decision making," Schmidt said in a posting on the company's official blog.

"And over the holidays we decided now was the right moment to make some changes to the way we are structured."

Google also reported fourth-quarter financial results, beating Wall Street's net revenue expectations.

Schmidt said on his blogpost that Page, the son of a Michigan State University computer science professor, will now lead product development and technology strategy, areas that are "his greatest strengths."

"It will be interesting to see what he'll do that's different, what he could not have done in his prior role," said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Additional reporting by Alexandria Sage, Dan Levine; Editing by Edwin Chan and Richard Chang)

Nike Gets Buzz From Mysterious Kobe Bryant Project [VIDEO] (Mashable)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 01:53 PM PST

Todd Wasserman Todd Wasserman – Thu Jan 20, 4:53 pm ET

Nike is building buzz on YouTube for a mysterious project directed by Robert Rodriguez and starring Kobe Bryant called The Black Mamba.

Nike has released a couple of 15-second trailers for the film that have collectively gotten about 50,000 views since going live earlier this month with no promotion. One trailer features Bryant, who is presented as "the world's best basketball player" encountering "his biggest challenge yet." The camera then pans to a pool of gasoline that is lit just before reaching Bryant's feet. Another trailer, released earlier this month, shows Bryant tossing a ball at the camera.

A Nike rep says the film highlights the Nike Zoom Kobe VI and will premiere in early 2011 in the U.S. and China. The rep declined to discuss further details. According to a report in Entertainment Weekly, the Rodriguez film runs 8 minutes and will launch next month during the NBA's All-Star weekend.

The effort comes after Nike has had some success with long-form, Internet-based video. The brand's three-minute Write the Future epic, celebrating last year's World Cup hit 7.8 million views in its first week and has received more than 21 million views in 2010, according to YouTube.

Apple tightens the screws on iPhone 4: sources (Reuters)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 06:12 PM PST

By Gabriel Madway Gabriel Madway – Thu Jan 20, 9:12 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc is giving a whole new meaning to locking your phone with its new screws.

In line with its infamous philosophy of maintaining absolute control over its products, sources said U.S. Apple stores are replacing screws on iPhone 4s brought for servicing with tamper-proof screws to prevent anyone else from opening the device.

Kyle Wiens, chief executive of iFixit, a prominent Apple repair and parts supplier, said the purpose of the new screws is to keep people out of the iPhone and prevent them from replacing the battery. He said he noticed in November that screws were being switched.

"If you took your car in for service and they welded your hood shut, you wouldn't be very happy"," he said, comparing it to shutting owners out of their iPhones.

IFixit, based in San Luis Obispo, California, has become famous in the technology world for performing "teardowns" of Apple devices, often within hours or minutes of a new product launch. The company promotes repair to cut down on electronic waste that goes to landfills.

According to two people with first-hand knowledge of the practice, when a customer brings an iPhone 4 into a U.S. Apple store for repair, tech staff swap out commonly-used Phillips screws, with which the device is shipped, and replace them with so-called "Pentalobe" screws.

Customers are not told about the switch, these people said.

It was not clear how widely used the replacement screws are, but one of these people said the screw swap was begun in the fall and is now standard practice at U.S. Apple stores. This person said the iPhone 4 shipped with Pentalobe screws in Japan.

Apple had no comment for this story, but it is well-known that Apple discourages individual modifications of its products.

The iPhone 4 went on sale last summer and became Apple's fastest-selling version of the iconic device, starting at $199 with a two-year wireless contract. More than 16 million iPhones sold in the quarter ending December.

Apple will replace iPhone batteries free if the device is under warranty, but otherwise charges $79.

Wiens said that with the old screws the iPhone 4 battery was easy to change although that was not known to many customers. "Apple wants to be in the business of selling you the new battery," Wiens said.

The world's largest technology company acts swiftly to protect its secrets. When an iPhone prototype was found by an outsider in a bar last year and sold to tech blog Gizmodo, Apple kicked up a furor and investigators raided a journalists' home.

Pentalobe screws require a screwdriver that is not commercially available, Wiens said. The screw is similar to a commonly used Torx screw, but has five points instead of six.

Wiens said iFixit, which sells repair kits for iPhones and other Apple products, searched everywhere for a Pentalobe screwdriver before specially commissioning a supplier to make one for them -- and even that is not a perfect match, he said.

The Pentalobe screw first appeared on the battery section of a Macbook Pro laptop in 2009, Wiens said. It also can be found on the exterior of Apple's new MacBook Air notebook.

(Editing by Edwin Chan, Kenneth Li and Richard Chang)

Working in Google Docs Keeps Getting Better (PC World)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 02:47 PM PST

Keir Thomas Keir Thomas – Thu Jan 20, 5:47 pm ET

Google has been quietly adding a raft of new features to its Google Docs online office suite over the last few months, and there are rumors even more significant features are due very soon.

Here we take a look at some of the more interesting upgrades.

Fonts

Google Docs now features the Calibri, Consolas, and Cambria fonts found on Windows Vista and Windows 7, along with the Droid font set created for use on Android mobile phones. There's also a new cursive-style font called Corsiva. None of these fonts need to be installed on the user's system to appear in Google Docs; they're downloaded to the user's web browser as needed using Google's Font API (something that can be easily utilized on any website). Even more fonts are to come soon.

Drag and Drop

Users of Chrome, Firefo,x and Safari can now drag and drop files onto the file upload area of Google Docs. File upload, introduced early in 2010, lets you use your Docs space as a store for just about any file, with Microsoft Office documents being automatically converted to Google Docs format.

Additionally, you can drag and drop images into the browser window when editing documents for instant insertion at the cursor position, again provided that Chrome, Firefox, or Safari are in use. No Internet Explorer support? It's almost as if Google's trying to tell us something.

Automatic Substitution

I remember when autocorrect and autoformat came to Microsoft Word back in the 1990s. They were obvious but insanely useful features. Well, they're now part of Google Docs too. Type 3/4 and it'll be instantly converted to ¾ . Type (c) and it'll be converted to ©. You can create your own autocorrects too--click Tools --> Preferences, and enter it in the list. No more typing recieved without realizing!

Better Charts

Google Docs' charting feature has been massively overhauled and now features prettier graphics, an improved chart editor, and new types of charts that help visualize data across time periods, such as motion charts. Organizational charts are also now on offer.

Charts can also be published to the Web, so they can be viewed independently of the data. Any changes made to the data will instantly be reflected in the chart. Just select the chart you've created, click the menu at the top left of the frame, and select Publish Chart from the submenu. You'll then be given HTML code to insert into your Web page.

Maximize Screen Space

A common criticism of Google Docs, especially when it's being accessed on netbooks, is that it's wasteful with screen space. Above the document editing area there's a lot of empty space showing little more than the filename, for example.

This can all now be hidden, in two different ways: clicking View --> Compact Controls on the menu will simply hide the aforementioned white space, while clicking View --> Hide Controls will also get rid of the toolbar and menu (hitting Esc will return things to normal). The latter essentially dedicates the entire program window to editing, and can be combined with a browser's full-screen mode (usually View --> Full Screen on the browser's menu) to dedicate your computer's full screen to distraction-free editing.

Revision History

The capability to view revisions and revert to earlier drafts is an area where cloud-based office suites beat traditional software hands-down. Revision history in Google Docs has now been enhanced so that it's possible to view all previous document states. Essentially, it's like stepping back in time to see how the document looked at a previous time or date. Click File --> See Revision History to get started, although be aware this only works with more recent files you've created. Any old files that haven't been edited recently will probably have the same old revisions listing that doesn't offer this degree of functionality.

Connectors in Drawings

claims to have unearthed some interesting forthcoming features via a comb-through of the Google Docs code.

Sync services are to come soon, too, which could address one of the outstanding failings of Google Docs: offline storage. Keeping a backup on your computer was once possible using Google Gears but this has been withdrawn in favor of functionality offered in HTML5. However, it hasn't yet arrived, and most users consider it essential.

All in all, if you haven't looked at Google Docs recently, it's definitely worth a look. Steady progress should mean it'll put up a strong fight when Microsoft's own cloud office offering, Office 365, arrives later this year.

Keir Thomas has been writing about computing since the last century, and more recently has written several best-selling books. You can learn more about him at http://keirthomas.com and his Twitter feed is @keirthomas.

Winning Ideas for the Future of B-Schools (BusinessWeek)

Posted: 20 Jan 2011 05:08 AM PST

By Alison Damast Alison Damast – Thu Jan 20, 8:08 am ET

Alice Stewart has spent the past year working with colleagues to develop a proposal for an MBA program at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, a process that got her thinking about ways business education could be transformed. As a professor of strategic management, she had observed that business students coming into her classroom might become more effective managers if they had a better grasp of more specialized knowledge, such as engineering or biotechnology, when they get into the workforce.

When she learned that the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) was holding a contest asking for ideas to improve management education, she jotted some musings on paper. She envisioned professors from different disciplines creating micro-curriculums, where they'd weave content together from business education, engineering, and the sciences. Students who completed the classes, which she dubbed "stackable knowledge units," would get a certificate. Eventually, they could combine these certificates to earn a business degree, she wrote in her proposal, thereby allowing students to customize their education track.

"We are trapped by the concept of a degree and the concept of a curriculum," Stewart said. "There needs to be a rethinking of what it is we are supposed to be doing in higher education."

Stewart's bold idea has had a big payoff. Today she learned she is the first-place winner of GMAC's Ideas to Innovation contest and will be receiving the top cash prize of $50,000. Hers was one of 20 winning entries from professors, students, and executives who will share the $262,500 in prizes that the Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), set aside for the contest.

Open>

The testing organization launched the contest in July, asking people to submit a one-page summary of an idea they believed had the potential to improve management education. GMAC's Management Education for Tomorrow (MET) Fund, a $10 million fund that seeks to improve business education globally, is overseeing the contest and providing funding. It is the first time that GMAC has launched such a contest and the organization decided to open it to anyone around the world who had a suggestion, whether he or she was involved in the management education world or not, says Dave Wilson, president and chief executive officer of GMAC.

"There have been lots of blue-ribbon commissions and studies of management education that have come out and talked about the future of management education, but what we realized is every one of those things pretty much brings together the same minds who have thought about it before," says Wilson. "This contest opened up the idea phase to absolutely anyone. Even a taxi driver could make a submission."

GMAC may not have received submissions from taxi drivers, but the contest did get an overwhelming response that exceeded GMAC's expectations. By the submission deadline in the fall, GMAC had received more than 650 entries from 60 countries around the world, including India, China, the U.K., Israel, and the United Arab Emirates, Wilson says. Of the ideas, 57 percent came from students, alumni, and prospective students, while 11 percent were from faculty and school staff.

"Building>

So what made Stewart's idea stand out from the pack? Allen Brandt, director of the GMAC MET Fund, calls it "a very interesting way of taking something that exists in a school and repackaging it in a new way that no one has thought of." Says Brandt: "This is essentially building your own degree based on creating stackable units. It is something that is different enough and could help you, as an individual student, in approaching a program in the way you want to do it without a wholesale change to the existing way a school is working."

The judges, who included corporate executives, whittled that list down to 20 winning entries, picking one first-place winner, four second-place winners, 10 third-place winners, and five honorable mentions. The contest winners include a business professor from Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management (Owen Full-Time MBA Profile), a biochemistry research technician, an intelligence officer from the Defense Intelligence Agency, a corporate psychologist, MBA alums, and current B-school students.

For example, Dawn Iacobucci, the Vanderbilt professor and a second-place winner, proposes that MBA students be required to submit a business plan in order to graduate from their program. An MBA student from France who took third place, Orsolya Oszabo, says she'd like to see the business school admissions process overhauled, with a special emphasis placed on evaluating students' social skills. Pritesh Sikchi, an entrepreneur from India who also took a third-place prize, suggests that GMAC build a global business library for its member schools, where they could share reports and case studies and network with each other.

The next phase of the contest is putting some of these ideas into action, which will require the input and involvement of business schools and not-for-profit organizations around the world, says Wilson. All of the top ideas are now posted on the MET Fund's website; business schools have until next September to submit a proposal that discusses their favorite idea and how they would implement it at their institution. Judges will review the entries, pick the most promising, and then award grants from the MET Fund that will allow the schools to start moving forward.

"I'm sure some of these ideas will fall on the cutting-room floor at a certain point, but there may be a handful that are real victories that will be able to be used by business schools," says Alex Sevilla, chair of GMAC's board of directors and assistant dean of the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business Administration (Warrington Full-Time MBA Profile).

Opportune>

The GMAC contest comes at an opportune time for the management education world, says Srikant Datar, co-author of Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads and an accounting professor at Harvard Business School (Harvard Full-Time MBA Profile). In the wake of the financial crisis, business schools were besieged by criticism, and many observers questioned the direction that business schools were headed, as well as the value of an MBA, Datar says. Since then, some B-schools have begun to strengthen areas like leadership development and critical or integrative thinking, and develop more flexible curriculums. But innovation needs to be more widespread in the business school world, a sentiment that is expressed by the wide range of ideas submitted to GMAC, Datar says.

"I am thrilled that a very different set of people are feeling a similar set of concerns about what the unmet needs are in business education," Datar says. "And, of course, the next step is how do we go about changing some of what is currently being done in order to reform or change management education."

GMAC is hoping that some of these ideas will have a profound and long-lasting impact on management education for future generations, says GMAC's Wilson, who served as one of the judges in the final round of the contest. Business schools that submit proposals to GMAC in the coming months will be bidding for a "good chunk" of the $10 million in the MET Fund, he says. But the seed money that GMAC will be giving the business schools may, in some cases, be just enough to get these ideas off the ground, he says.

"The $10 million in the MET Fund may sound like a lot of money, and to GMAC it is, but for business schools it may well take fives times or 10 times that to have any influence," he says. "What we really hope is that this can be seen as an angel investment, or as a catalyst, for long-lasting change."
at 9:40 PM

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