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Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Review: So many coupon sites, so little time (AP) : Technet

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Review: So many coupon sites, so little time (AP) : Technet

Review: So many coupon sites, so little time (AP)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 12:14 PM PST

By DANA WOLLMAN, AP Technology Writer Dana Wollman, Ap Technology Writer – Wed Feb 23, 3:14 pm ET

NEW YORK – If Groupon isn't as ubiquitous as, say, Facebook, it's getting there. The website, which offers daily coupons to local restaurants, bars and other businesses, has 60 million members worldwide, about half of whom live in North America. Those controversial Super Bowl ads surely introduced it to some new customers, too.

Groupon's business model is simple: It posts one deal a day, such as $10 for $20 worth of food at a local cafe, or 75 percent off a package of salsa lessons. Visitors have 24 hours to sign up for the deal.

I tested Groupon along with some copycat services. I came away with a handful of coupons to restaurants — and a temptation to splurge on things I didn't know I needed, like back massages. I learned that while the formula of these sites doesn't change much, the mix of bargains you find does.

Groupon (http://www.groupon.com)

What I like: Groupon sometimes offers deals at national chains — say, $25 for $50 worth of clothes at The Gap. The site also offers the best variety of deals, mixing things like restaurants, yoga classes and bowling. Many of the deals are good for a year, while others expire after 6 months or so. Each deal needs buy-in from a certain number of visitors to take effect, but because Groupon is well known, it usually does. Groupon has apps for the iPhone, Android and BlackBerrys.

What I don't: Because Groupon has so many members, deals sometimes sell out. People can only buy one coupon for themselves, though they can e-mail others as gifts to include friends in an outing. Other sites, such as Gilt City, let each person purchase up to 5 coupons.

LivingSocial (http://www.livingsocial.com)

What I like: True to its name, many of LivingSocial's deals were tailor-made for groups and couples. Buying a prix fixe dinner for two is easier than buying one coupon and giving the other away, as Groupon would have you do. Perhaps because the deals are so activity-focused, you'll see some that you won't on other sites, such as a six-week foreign language class. Its "Escapes" section sells hotel stays in locations as diverse as Cozumel, Mexico, and Cape Cod, Mass. The coupons last for six months to a year. In my testing, I also appreciated that LivingSocial's stores and restaurant deals were specific to my neighborhood in Brooklyn, as opposed to more remote parts of New York City.

What I don't: The only available phone app is for the iPhone. The service could use more restaurant deals. Because of this, I wouldn't subscribe to LivingSocial alone.

Scoutmob (http://www.scoutmob.com)

What I like: Scoutmob takes a refreshing approach: the coupon is free. If you see an offer you like, just click a button to receive the coupon via text message or e-mail. You'll only pay when you show up at a cafe, for example, and use it for half-off drinks. You can also claim deals using a free iPhone or Android app.

The result is a guilt-free experience. Often, I hesitate to pounce on deals from other sites because I worry I won't get around to using the coupons in time, especially if they require schlepping to an out-of-the-way neighborhood. And frankly, buying a coupon for every charming restaurant I see could be an expensive habit.

But with Scoutmob, I can rack up as many coupons as I want and know that I haven't lost anything if I forget to use them.

What I don't: For now, it's only available in New York, San Francisco and Atlanta, though it will soon launch in nine more cities. The deals only last one day, and they aren't as varied as Groupon's and LivingSocial's. With the exception of a day spa, they've all been for restaurants and bars. The deals also expire after about three months, compared to six months to a year for most Groupon offers.

DailyCandy Deals (http://deals.dailycandy.com)

What I like: DailyCandy, which sends e-mail newsletters to readers in 12 cities, already curates lists of restaurants, stores, theaters and galleries. So I trust DailyCandy as an arbiter of taste, perhaps even more than Groupon's persuasively snappy write-ups. As with Groupon, DailyCandy requires that you buy into the deal up front. The deals are good for about six months, which is standard among daily coupon sites.

What I don't: It's only available in New York and Philadelphia, with Los Angeles coming soon.

There is no dedicated phone app.

Some deals, such as a couples-oriented outing at a local ice skating rink that included cups of hot chocolate, expire quickly. I would have had to go ice skating within two weeks of purchasing the coupon. Because DailyCandy targets women, many of the deals are focused on beauty treatments, such as manicures and pedicures. Even I, a regular DailyCandy reader, would have liked to see more food and drink deals along with discounts at tanning salons.

Gilt City (http://ww.giltcity.com)

What I like: Gilt Groupe is a flash sale website, meaning it holds time-limited sales of small quantities of deeply discounted goods. As such, it's already in the business of selling luxury goods and hotel stays, so it's easy to imagine it hawking three-course dinners and other posh outings as well. Gilt typically lets people buy up to five coupons for each deal, making it easy to share these experiences with other people. And unlike Gilt Groupe, Gilt City doesn't require that you create a password-protected account to browse sales.

What I don't: Only available in a few cities, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and Boston. Even with the discount, some of Gilt's outings are pricey. One example was a $75 ticket to a wine and cheese tasting, down from $130. Many of the coupons also expire relatively quickly — in three or four months. Also, I noticed more instances of deals selling out, much like Gilt Groupe's discounted designer clothing. And, like LivingSocial, the only app is for the iPhone.

If you can tolerate the daily e-mails crowding your inbox, there's no harm in adding yourself to several deal websites' mailing lists. If you're wary of spam overload, Groupon, the pioneer of daily coupon sites, still offers a more balanced selection of deals than the competition. And do try Scoutmob if you're lucky enough to live in one of the cities it serves; with coupons you don't even have to pay for, there's no risk of buyer's remorse. I can't stop recommending it to my friends.

Apple shareholders nix CEO succession disclosure (AP)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 04:28 PM PST

By RACHEL METZ, AP Technology Writer Rachel Metz, Ap Technology Writer – Wed Feb 23, 7:28 pm ET

CUPERTINO, Calif. – Apple shareholders rejected a proposal Wednesday that called for the company to disclose a succession plan for its chief executive.

The rejection came a month after Apple CEO Steve Jobs went on an indefinite medical leave for unspecified problems — an absence that could be related to his previous bout with pancreatic cancer or his 2009 liver transplant. Jobs did not attend the meeting, which was led by Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook and general counsel Bruce Sewell.

Apple Inc. announced the preliminary vote on the non-binding proposal at its annual shareholders meeting at the company's Cupertino headquarters. The company did not provide the voting breakdown.

The Central Laborers' Pension Fund, which owns 11,484 shares of Apple stock, called for a succession plan to ensure "a smooth transition" in case Jobs leaves as CEO.

The proposal didn't ask Apple to name whom it planned to appoint, but it wanted the company to come up with a three-year plan for changing leadership and an emergency plan. The plan would be reviewed annually by Apple, and a report on it would be shared with stockholders.

Like many shareholder proposals, even if this one passed, it would only have served as a formal request that Apple share its succession plan, not a requirement.

Apple, which advised shareholders to vote against the proposal, said it already conducts such planning internally, but warned that its disclosure would reveal confidential information and hurt the company's ability to recruit and retain executives.

Jennifer O'Dell, spokeswoman for the Laborers' International Union of North America, spoke in favor of the proposal, saying Apple has a responsibility to its shareholders to have a clear CEO succession plan in place, whether a transition is "planned in advance or a sudden decision."

After the proposal was defeated, O'Dell said it was likely something that would be presented again in future years.

But shareholders may feel the same then as they do now. Chris Kuhlman, a shareholder from Los Angeles, voted against the proposal. He said Jobs has laid the foundation for Apple, and he trusted that the company would make the right decision about a successor when the time comes.

"Apple will be just fine," he said.

The meeting was also an opportunity for shareholders to ask questions about Apple and its ailing CEO. But while the audience peppered management with questions about the health of its supply chain and competition between the iPhone and smart phones using Google Inc.'s Android operating software, there was little talk of Jobs.

Shareholder Kirk DeBernardi said shareholders had respect for the CEO and didn't come to the meeting to "badger management with questions" about his health.

Also on Wednesday, Apple e-mailed invitations to a media event in San Francisco. The company was expected to unveil the second generation of its wildly successful media tablet, widening its head start against competitors just starting to sell their first tablet computers. The invite shows a calendar page with the corner peeling away to reveal an iPad underneath.

Apple shares rose $4.01, or 1.2 percent, to close Wednesday at $342.62.

The i(Pad)s of March: Apple plans tablet event (AP)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 02:28 PM PST

By DANA WOLLMAN, AP Technology Writer Dana Wollman, Ap Technology Writer – Wed Feb 23, 5:28 pm ET

NEW YORK – March Madness could take on a whole new meaning if Apple gives the world another iPad next week.

Apple Inc. is expected to unveil the second generation of its wildly successful media tablet, widening its head start against competitors just starting to sell their first tablet computers.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company e-mailed invitations to a media event in San Francisco Wednesday that show a calendar page with the corner peeling away to reveal an iPad underneath. The large "2" on the calendar page denotes the event's March 2 date, but is also a hint that Apple is about to announce the follow-up to the original iPad.

The iPad, about the size of a large book, has been likened to an overgrown iPhone or iPod Touch, as it is powered by similar software and can run the same applications, or "apps."

But it has a bigger screen that makes reading e-mails, surfing the Web and watching movies easier on the eyes. With a starting price of $499, it's less expensive than many computers and, at 1.5 pounds, it also weighs less. Unlike small, inexpensive laptops such as netbooks, the iPad turns on instantly, so people don't have to wait through a sluggish boot-up. And the iPad also lasts about 10 hours unplugged, making it ideal for travelers and other people on the go.

Apple sold more than 15 million iPads in its first nine months on sale, including 7.3 million to holiday shoppers during the October-December quarter — about a million more for the quarter than analysts were expecting.

Since the iPad's launch, other consumer electronics makers have been scrambling to develop tablets of their own. For example, Samsung Electronics Co. began selling the Galaxy Tab last year, and Motorola Mobility Inc.'s Xoom tablet goes on sale this week. Many of these new tablets run Google Inc.'s Android software.

The iPad is the first tablet computer to win over mainstream consumers. A decade earlier, PC makers were selling tablets that ran Windows, the same operating systems found on most full-fledged PCs. While some businesses bought them, they never sold well among consumers. These tablets were heavier and had shorter battery lives. They were also more difficult to use as touch-screen devices, as Windows was meant to be used with a mouse and keyboard. Apple's iPad software, meanwhile, was designed from the start to be touched.

As usual, Apple has not said anything about the highly anticipated next version of the iPad, leaving rumors to swirl unchecked online. Some bloggers have speculated that the new iPad will have a front-facing camera, which would allow people to hold video chats using services such as Skype. If that were the case, its design would more closely match the iPhone 4, which went on sale last June with a front-facing camera and Apple's own video chatting software, called FaceTime.

Others have speculated that the new iPad will be thinner and lighter than the original, and will come with a bigger built-in speaker.

Also Wednesday, Apple shareholders rejected a proposal that called for the company to disclose a succession plan for its chief executive. The rejection came a month after Apple CEO Steve Jobs went on an indefinite medical leave for unspecified problems — an absence that could be related to his previous bout with pancreatic cancer or his 2009 liver transplant. Apple announced the preliminary vote on the non-binding proposal at its annual shareholders meeting, but did not provide a breakdown.

Apple shares rose $4.01, or 1.2 percent, to close Wednesday at $342.62.

Hands-on review: Motorola Xoom tablet (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 06:03 PM PST

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Wed Feb 23, 9:03 pm ET

Just think: a mere 12 months ago, many of us were still debating whether a consumer-friendly tablet like the iPad would make any sense. Today, the iPad is a certifiable hit, a new iPad is on the way, slates from the likes of HP, LG, Samsung, and RIM are in the pipeline, and come Thursday, a formidable new player in the budding tablet market—the Android-powered Motorola Xoom—will land in stores. Suddenly, it's raining tablets, a welcome development for gadget lovers.

The Xoom won't be the first Android tablet to take on the iPad, but it does bear the distinction of being the first tablet running on "Honeycomb," Google's new, made-for-tablets version of the Android OS. And while the previous Android tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Dell Streak 7 arrived with smaller, seven-inch displays, the Xoom's roomy 10.1-inch screen invites direct comparison to the similar-sized iPad.

Now, let's get something out of the way: the Xoom ain't cheap. At $800, the 3G-enabled, 32GB Xoom costs about $70 more than the 32GB iPad 3G, and there won't be a 16GB, $499 Xoom to ease the pain. (Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha has promised a Wi-Fi-only version of the Xoom for "about" $600, but there's no word on when it might go on sale.)

One way to shave a couple hundred bucks off the price tag is by signing a two-year contract with Verizon Wireless, the exclusive carrier (for now, anyway) of the Xoom. That means you'll also be on the hook for Verizon's 3G data plans, which start at $20 a month for 1GB of data.

Now, if you think $800 (or even $600) is too much to spend on a tablet (a reasonable view), be warned; nothing I'm about to say will change your mind.

And if you're not a fan of Android in general, or you're married to Apple's tight ecosystem of iOS products, you're probably better off waiting until next Wednesday, when Apple unveils the long-awaited (and probably much-enhanced) iPad 2. There's also the upcoming WebOS-powered HP Touchpad and RIM's BlackBerry Playbook to consider.

Still reading? Then prepare for a treat, because the Xoom is the most impressive tablet I've tested since the original iPad. With its peppy, dual-core processor, dual cameras (including one for video chat), and snazzy multitasking and notification features, the Xoom gives the iPad—well, the current iPad, at least—a run for its money, although it's not without faults: it's saddled with so-so Web browsing performance, some iffy design choices, and what looks to be an initially sparse selection of Honeycomb-ready apps.

Measuring 9.8 by 6.6 by 0.5 inches, the jet-black Xoom looks and feels—at first blush, at least—like a slightly smaller version of the iPad. Break out a ruler, however, and you'll find that the Xoom is actually a bit longer than the iPad, with its narrower display (which measures 10.1 inches diagonally) boasting a near-identical number of square inches (45.5, according to Motorola) as the iPad's wider, 9.7-inch display.

And while the Xoom is a hair thinner than the iPad (0.5 inches, versus 0.52 for the iPad), it's also a bit heavier at 25.9 ounces, compared to 24.1 for the iPad. Then again, the Xoom's grippier, more tactile back panel makes it much less slippery than the iPad.

Both Motorola and Google have made much of the Xoom's button-less front bezel—and indeed, the only physical controls on the Xoom are the twin volume up/down buttons on the left edge and the power/lock button that sits on the back, in the upper-right corner. You'll also find ports for power, microUSB, and mini-HDMI along the bottom of the tablet.

Instead of an actual "home" key, the Xoom's main navigation controls—Back, Home, and an icon that launches a thumbnailed column of recently-used apps—sit in the bottom-left corner of the display. Thanks to the Xoom's accelerometer, the screen orientation will twirl around automatically depending on how you're holding the tablet, meaning there's no "right" way to hold the Xoom (although you may notice upside-down Motorola and Verizon logos once in awhile).

It's an interesting concept, and after using the Xoom for a few hours, I didn't find myself missing the physical Home key that much. On the other hand, I was frequently annoyed at having to hunt around in back of the Xoom for the sleep/wake button. Personally, I would've preferred having the power/lock switch in easy reach (and in plain sight) along the edge of the tablet.

Once you click the "wake" button, the Honeycomb lock screen appears; unlocking the screen is a simple matter of touching and dragging an encircled padlock icon out of its protective sphere, at which point the home screen slides into view. You can also password-protect the display for greater security, same as with standard Android smartphones.

Google has already outlined the key ingredients of the made-for-tablets Honeycomb interface, but they're worth repeating. You've got the aforementioned navigation keys (Home, Back, and recent apps) in the bottom-left corner, with a notifications panel on the bottom right. In the top-left corner sits a Google search box (complete with a microphone icon for voice commands), while the applications launcher hangs out in the top-right corner of the display.

Zipping around the Xoom's various menus and apps is a breeze (not to mention smooth and fast, courtesy of the dual-core Tegra 2 processor purring under the Xoom's hood) thanks to the ever-present navigation controls in the corner. Another faithful companion is the new-for-Honeycomb navigation panel, which unobtrusively notifies you of incoming e-mail messages, recent Twitter mentions, apps that just finished installing themselves, and other relevant events. You can also tap the notification panel for a summary of recent happenings (which you can dismiss by clicking the "X" next to an item), or to get quick access to Wi-Fi settings, the screen orientation lock, display brightness, and other key settings.

Swiping back and forth takes you to the other available Honeycomb home screens—five in all—where you can drag app icons, install widgets, or add shortcuts for individual contacts (complete with quick links for firing off a message, mapping your contact's location, or viewing their latest tweets).

Among the best of Honeycomb's new features, though, is the multitasking button; tap it, and a column of medium-sized thumbnails pops up, each containing a snapshot of apps that are suspended (or still running, in some cases) in the background. It's a welcome, easy-to-scan representation of your recently-used apps, although it's worth noting that you'll only see five to seven thumbnails at a time, and you can't swipe the column to see additional background apps.

Speaking of apps, the Xoom offers us the first look at Google's core, built-for-Honeycomb apps—including Gmail, Maps, Books, Music, and Talk—and for the most part, they're terrific.

A key operating principle behind Honeycomb-enabled Android apps is that they allow for new buckets of content (such as additional columns or panels) that can be displayed or hidden depending on the orientation in which you're holding the tablet, or depending on whether you're using a tablet or a smaller smartphone.

You can see that principle at work in the two-column Gmail app, which starts with a list of folders in the left column and a list of messages on the right. Tap a message, and the columns slide from left to right to make room for the message body; turn the Xoom in a vertical orientation, and the app revents to a one-column view. Also nice: Honeycomb's new support for dragging and dropping e-mail messages into various folders.

Other Google apps take advantage of Honeycomb's tablet-friendly architecture in different ways; the new Music app, for instance, lets you flick through a carousel of jumbo-sized album covers, while the redesigned Android Market app boasts a trio of large graphic promos along the top, with a scrollable list of categories along the right side of the screen.

With its curved, swipable wall of videos, the new YouTube app is especially striking, as is the much-hyped Google Maps application, which now lets you tilt the map view with a two-finger gesture, complete with 3D buildings that change perspective as you swipe your way around the world. Nicely done (and effortlessly rendered by the Xoom's Tegra 2 processor, by the way).

The new Honeycomb Web browser on the Xoom is a mixed bag. I love the added support for tabbed browsing, as well as the Incognito mode borrowed from Google Chrome (and by the way: if you're a Google Chrome user and you've signed into your Google account, all your bookmarks will be automatically synced.)

But scrolling and zooming can be poky at times, with the browser often taking a moment or two before registering a tap or swipe—disappointing, given the Xoom's otherwise stellar speed and performance.

Another bummer—for now, at least—is the news that the Xoom won't support in-browser Flash on Day One, although Adobe promises a Flash update for the Xoom (and other upcoming Honeycomb tablets, for that matter) in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, developers of third-party Android apps are still busy updating their wares for Honeycomb, meaning there will be a paucity of built-for-Honeycomb applications in the Android Market come the Xoom's launch day. That's the bad news; the good news is that a variety of standard Android apps look pretty good in full-screen mode on the Xoom—indeed, they look far better than pixel-doubled iPhone apps on the iPad.

Angry Birds, for instance, looks so good on the Xoom that I had to double-check (again) that it hadn't been tweaked for Honeycomb; same for Pocket Legends, a 3D, "World of Warcraft"-style game for smartphones.

Other non-Honeycomb apps had a tougher time adapting to the Xoom's jumbo display, with large swaths of empty, unused space in some cases, or (even worse) glitchy performance in others. Both the Facebook and Twitter apps—two of the most popular apps in the Android Market—crashed repeatedly during my tests, although I was able to install a Twitter widget on one of the Xoom's home pages. (No such luck with Facebook, unfortunately.)

Such kinks will hopefully be ironed out soon as Android developers start rolling out their various Honeycomb updates. Still, early Xoom adopters should expect a bumpy ride when it comes to apps, at least in the first days and weeks after the tablet's release.

As with other upcoming tablets—Android-based and otherwise—the Xoom will arrive with a pair of cameras: a five-megapixel camera in back, capable of 720p video recording, and a 2MP camera in front that'll do video chat over Wi-Fi or 3G. Image quality on the Xoom's cameras was solid, with decent looking stills and video—in other words, pretty much what you'd expect from a recent, high-end smartphone.

Battery life on the Xoom was impressive during my tests—indeed, after more than 50 hours of on-and-off testing without a charge, the Xoom's battery still had about 32 percent in reserve. Your mileage will vary, of course, especially if you're doing a lot of surfing or video streaming over the tablet's 4G connection. For its part, Motorola is promising about 10 hours of video playback.

Unfortunately, the Xoom's micoUSB port won't charge the tablet; instead, you'll have to use the included AC adapter with its own tiny plug. And here's another odd quirk: for now, the Xoom's microSD memory expansion slot is useless, and will remain so until a "future" update arrives. Once the slot is enabled, however, you'll be able to add up to 32GB of additional storage.

Sharing space with the Xoom's microSD slot is a second, larger port for a SIM card, good for access to Verizon's just-launched 4G LTE network. Again, though, 4G support won't be available at launch; instead, Motorola and Verizon say an update will be coming in the second quarter of this year. Xoom owners will receive an e-mail from Verizon with instructions for upgrading their tablets, when the time comes.

Still, many of the Xoom's drawbacks—the lack of Flash and 4G access, the limited memory expansion, the paltry app selection of Honeycomb apps—will be addressed in the coming weeks and months. Others, like the weird placement of the power button and the tablet's overall heft, won't be going away. If you're uncertain whether you'll take to the Xoom's design, you might be better off waiting for another Android tablet, like the coming LG G-Slate or the new, 10.1-inch Samsung tablet.

And if you're not interested in going the Android way, there's always the HP Touchpad, which is based on the slick WebOS platform that powers the Palm Pre and its successors. Or there's RIM's PlayBook, which may appeal more to BlackBerry fans.

And yes, there's the impending iPad 2, which we'll finally get to lay eyes on next week.

In the end, though, the Xoom (for me, at least) makes for the most impressive Android tablet to date, as well as a promising start to the expected parade of Honeycomb-enabled tablets this year.

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

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Apple sends out invites for March 2 event: iPad 2, anyone? (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 08:33 AM PST

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Wed Feb 23, 11:33 am ET

Well, that didn't take long. Apple just sent out a wave of press invites for an event in San Francisco next Wednesday, just a day after a flurry of rumors that Cupertino was poised to announce the iPad 2.

The event will take place at 10 a.m. PT on March 2, at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the same venue where Steve Jobs unveiled the original iPad last January.

The Apple invite (as seen here on Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog) doesn't say anything specifically about a new iPad, but the graphic—a March 2 calendar page peeled back to reveal an iPad peeking out from behind—doesn't leave much room for doubt.

The none-too-subtle caption for the invite reads: "Come see what 2011 will be the year of."

News of a March 2 unveiling for the new iPad was first reported by All Things Digital's Kara Swisher on Tuesday, with the New York Times and Reuters quickly following up with confirmation.

The scoop also followed a series of rumors that claimed the iPad 2 and the next iPhoneâ€"neither of which have been officially announced, by the wayâ€"had been delayed, with Apple stock taking a significant hit in the wake of the chatter.

Word has it that the new iPad will be smaller and lighter than its predecessor, with at least one camera for FaceTime video chat and a souped-up processor.

Earlier rumors had raised hopes that the iPad 2 would arrive with a sharper, "retina"-style display, but the latest indications are that the screen on the revamped iPad will have the same 1024-by-768-pixel resolution as the original.

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

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Farewell, Blogs! Your Days Are Numbered (PC World)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 04:30 PM PST

Keir Thomas Keir Thomas – Wed Feb 23, 7:30 pm ET

So long, blogging, It was nice knowing you.

The demise of blogging is suggested by a Pew Internet report looking at Internet habits across 2010. It states that "only half as many online teens work on their own blog as did in 2006, and Millennial generation adults ages 18-33 have also seen a modest decline.

It's not all bad news. Those over age 34 blog slightly more than they did in 2008, the report continues, and we shouldn't forget that news blogging site the Huffington Post just sold for $315 million. But there's little doubt that blogging isn't the fresh young thing it was five years ago, back when having an RSS feed reader to track blogs was the height of coffee-shop sophistication. There are far fewer blog writers and readers.

So, what's changed? It's no coincidence that blogging is dying off at the same time as Facebook and Twitter have boomed. Both sites have been described as microblogging services, and that's often used to explain blogging's demise. Perhaps people have simply switched allegiances to an easier-to-use service.

But Facebook and Twitter offer far more than mere status updates. They're truly social in a way that blogging simply isn't. I'd argue that because of this, Facebook and Twitter offer much more value for business compared to blogging.

This makes me sound like a mad Internet evangelist, but bear with me while I explain.

I come across few blogs offered by businesses nowadays, but the ones I choose to follow show how blogging can be a powerful corporate tool, if used correctly. These blogs provide information about products, updates to existing lines, or important company information.

In other words, blogs have replaced public-relations tactics such as press releases. They allow consumers to directly access the source of the information, rather than have it filtered through a news service. A blog written by a product manager is likely to be far more engaging than a press release written by a marketing assistant merely trying to catch the eye of a bored news desk editor.

However, this is perfectly demonstrates how blogs are and always have been little more than a publishing platform. They allow businesses to climb onto a plinth and talk down to the public. The reason blogging is dying is because the trend right now is towards a more democratic, social media.

(Note: From this point onward I indulge in more new-media marketing speak but, again, stick with me.)

You see, people demand engagement from their media sources, yet that's just not on offer from blogs. Yes, we can comment on blog postings and share them via Trackbacks. But there's no real involvement or "social" element.

Compare and contrast to Facebook, which more corporations are embracing as one of their main marketing tools. Nowadays some TV or print ads for products don't even bother listing a corporate Web address. Instead, they list the Facebook address, inviting people to visit and "like" or "share" the product page, or the company's own Facebook page.

"Liking" and sharing are two of the most underrated features of Facebook. Although ostensibly trivial to Facebook users, they bond people to a product via a common interest. They make marketing a two-way process.

The act of "liking" a product gets reported in a user's Facebook feed via a brief sentence, while sharing a product page is even better because pictures and words are highlighted within the user's feed.

Liking and sharing are God's gift to marketers. Essentially, they let customers market your products on your behalf to all their friends. And it isn't even as if users think long and hard about liking or sharing. More often it's done on a whim in a split-second before moving on to something else. From a product marketing perspective, Facebook is beautiful to behold.

Creating a page on Facebook allows businesses to interface with customers in an unprecedentedly intimate way. You can offer product information, answer questions instantly, foster discussions, and create and embed simple games within the page. With the addition of traditional marketing exercises like competitions and giveaways, companies can continue interest in their products far beyond what could be offered by a mere static blog posting.

Blog postings are like gum; once chewed over, they're useless for anything else. But Facebook pages keep on giving.

And all the time Facebook offers data. Organizations can see how many people like their products. Facebook will even send them weekly updates showing rises and falls in visitor numbers.

Plus, all a Facebook product page requires in staff input, once it's been created, is one or two pairs of eyes to watch it. It's cheap and effective--two words all businesses like.

But it's important to emphasize that it's not just Facebook that's so cool; it's any social networking Website that encourages interaction with a company or its products. One of the key goals for anybody within an organization trying to use new media is to not only use Twitter and Facebook effectively, but also to watch for the next big thing.

Above all, companies need to understand that online media is not just a platform from which they can announce things, which is why blogging is so weak. The instinctive response should be to engage with your customers, and to use social media in any way possible to allow this.

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

Samsung launches ultra-slim notebook, targets Apple (Reuters)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 07:01 PM PST

– 2 hrs 43 mins ago

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd launched an ultra-slim notebook on Thursday, seeking to bolster its presence in the high-end mobile computer segment dominated by Apple Inc.

Samsung, emerging as one of the strongest rivals to challenge Apple in the booming smartphone and tablet computer market, is eyeing the notebook market, in which Apple is seeking to replicate the success of the iPhone and iPad with its MacBook series.

Samsung launched the lightweight 9 Series notebook on Thursday to compete with Apple's ultra-thin MacBook Air, introduced in October. Samsung said the new laptop would cost 2.5 million won ($2,218) in Korea and would launch globally launched from next month in the Americas and Europe.

Apple displaced Hewlett-Packard Co last quarter as the world's top mobile PC maker, propelled by strong sales of its iPad tablet, according to research firm DisplaySearch. It shipped more than 10 million notebook and tablet computers last quarter for a 17 percent market share, nearly a million more than HP, which had a 15.6 percent market.

Samsung said on Thursday that it wanted to become the global No.6 player in the mobile PC market this year from last year's seventh place.

(Reporting by Miyoung Kim and Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Chris Lewis)

Nokia engineers hope for best as job cuts loom (AFP)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 09:15 PM PST

by Aira-Katariina Vehaskari Aira-katariina Vehaskari – 28 mins ago

HELSINKI (AFP) – Sami Sallmen likes to say he saw the birth of Symbian -- as a young developer he joined the world's largest mobile phone company Nokia to help a vibrant group of engineers create what they were told was the best and boldest future for the industry.

Now he will see his project buried as he and thousands of other developers in Finland wonder whether they will still have jobs after Nokia closes the page on Symbian for good, opting instead for a tie-up with Microsoft.

"I've walked its whole life span ... I really don't want to see it buried but the decision has been made, so you just have to get used to it," the 36-year-old engineer said at a development site in Espoo in southern Finland, where hundreds of people are still working on a technology whose days are numbered.

Earlier this month, chief executive Stephen Elop said Nokia, so far unable to fight off competition from iPhone, Blackberry and Google, would abandon its own mobile operating system and start using one designed by Microsoft instead.

With thousands of Nokia's 12,000 Finnish employees dedicated to Symbian development, Elop's announcement was a huge blow.

"I haven't really thought about what I'd do if I lost my job. I don't know. I'm hoping I will still have a job in Nokia," Sallmen says.

The worst, he says, is not knowing how many jobs will go, or when, amid speculation that up to 6,000 could be at risk, with hundreds or thousands more lost among subcontractors.

"It's hard to say whether this is exaggeration because Nokia isn't saying anything at all," says the chairman of the Union of Professional Engineers in Finland, Pertti Porokari.

It would be a "catastrophe" for Finland's IT sector if Microsoft does not share its mobile platform coding jobs with Nokia, he said.

The news did not go down well at Nokia's largest Symbian development site in the western city of Tampere, where thousands of employees watched Elop speaking at a Nokia strategy conference in London via webcast.

"We heard the strategy and then ... we realised that the media knew much more than we did and the government knew more than we did and that just wasn't right," says Kalle Kiili, a senior Symbian engineer and shop steward for the developer site in Tampere.

And so in a protest which Kiili says was spontaneous but calm, one by one the engineers turned off their computers and stepped out into the -20 degree Celsius (-4 degree Fahrenheit) chill until around 1,000 people had left the building.

For many Nokia workers in Finland, this was the last straw in a string of corporate re-organisations and job cuts over the past few years as the company floundered to find a viable competitive formula.

"We haven't been given the space to work in peace, there's been a constant cycle of upheaval ... and now the organisation is being changed around again and in the end it will still be the same people in charge," Kiili says, adding that if it had been managed better, Symbian would have been far more competitive than it is now.

"We have the world's best people, the best equipment, the best brains and high motivation. So who screwed this up? You have to ask who screwed up the potential that was here?"

Kiili nonetheless remains optimistic that Nokia will not slash as many jobs as some fear, insisting that engineers will be needed to develop Microsoft's platform while competitors like Android will likely snap up out-of-work developers.

"It's all just speculation at this point. It's too early to start saying, oh, we're all going to lose our jobs and no one will hire us."

Some employees are at the latest twist in fortunes as a chance for a new start.

Juha Hara, a 34-year-old test engineer in Espoo, has been working for Nokia for 12 years.

"We all knew Symbian wasn't selling and development was slow. I think we kind of suspected on some level this might happen," Hara says.

Although he thinks it would have been smarter to try out Microsoft Phone first before dumping Symbian, he says he is confident that Finland's IT sector can absorb most of the impact from the job cuts.

Some colleagues, he says, are already talking about setting up their own start-ups, but "personally, I could be interested in seeing how things are done in Silicon Valley for a change."

Ind. official out of job after live ammo tweet (AP)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 04:03 PM PST

Motorola's Xoom: The iPad Gets Some Serious Competition (Time.com)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 06:30 PM PST

By HARRY MCCRACKEN Harry Mccracken – Wed Feb 23, 9:30 pm ET

When Steve Jobs strode onstage and unveiled the iPad in January of 2010, he should have ended his presentation by firing a starting pistol. The news left nearly every other big computer and consumer-electronics maker racing to get into the tablet market that Jobs' iPad had suddenly created.

As it happens, the competition turned out to be a marathon. More than a year later, we're still talking about tablets that are huffing and puffing their way towards the showroom floor. There's RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook, slated to arrive by the end of March. HP's Web OS-based TouchPad is due this summer. And dozens of other models are on their way. The pace has been so plodding that Apple's second-generation iPad - which it will announce next week - will apparently beat most other companies' first-generation models to market. (See the latest geek culture stories at Techland.com.)

Then there's Motorola's Xoom, which goes on sale at Verizon retail locations this Thursday. (I've been testing a pre-release unit provided by Motorola and Verizon for the past few days.) It's the first honest-to-goodness, no-qualifications-necessary iPad rival from a major manufacturer to hit stores. That's in large part because it's also the first to pack Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the operating system that Google designed specifically with tablets in mind. The Xoom has its fair share of raw edges, but it's a great leap beyond earlier Android-based tablets such as Samsung's Galaxy Tab, which took the unsatisfying shortcut of using earlier versions of Android that were meant for smartphones.

Verizon will sell the Xoom for $799.99, a hefty $300.99 premium over the current iPad's starting price of $499; you can get a $200 discount if you commit to two years' worth of data service. The pricing disparity between Motorola and Apple isn't as alarming as it looks at first blush, though. With its built-in Verizon wireless connection and 32GB of storage, the Xoom is most directly comparable to the $729 AT&T version of the iPad. And it has far beefier specs than any Apple tablet, including a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, 1GB of RAM, and two cameras - a 2-megapixel model up front for Google Talk video calls and a 5-megapixel one in back for taking snapshots and capturing HD video. (The first-gen iPad has a single-core processor, a quarter of the Xoom's RAM, and zero cameras.)

Unlike the current iPad, the Xoom will also be a 4G wireless device, thanks to Verizon's zippy LTE network - but not until the second quarter of this year, according to Motorola. For now, it comes with 3G and the promise of a free upgrade. That's one of several telltale signs that it was rushed out the door. Adobe's Flash Player software, which will let Xoom owners get at Flash Web videos and games that don't work on the iPad, won't be ready for a few weeks. And there's a dormant slot for MicroSD memory cards that Motorola plans to enable it in an upcoming software update.

Even if the Xoom is a work in progress, it already does many things well. The tablet is sheathed in a plastic case rather than the iPad's aluminum, but it's pleasing to the eye and touch; slightly thinner than the iPad, the Xoom tips the scales at an identical 1.6 pounds. It also out-iPads the iPad by doing away with even that tablet's single physical button on the front. (Curiously, however, there's a button on the back - the power switch, which sits next to the right-hand speakers.) (See the best netbooks and netbook accessories.)

The display measures 10.1" diagonally, giving it a skosh more elbow room (and more pixels) than the iPad's 9.7" screen. When you meet a Xoom in person, though, the most striking difference is aspect ratio, not size. Apple's tablet has a 4:3 display that's reminiscent of a book or magazine; Motorola's has a 16:10 widescreen that makes it look more like a miniature HDTV.

Of course, wider isn't always better: The iPad's less exaggerated dimensions are superior for reading e-books and other text-centric tasks. But in landscape orientation, the Xoom's extra space makes for comfier typing on the on-screen keyboard. It's also well-proportioned for HD movies.

For more on the Xoom, check out this post at Technologizer.

Download TIME's iPhone, BlackBerry and Android applications.

You may have noticed that I didn't unequivocally say that the Xoom's screen beats the iPad for movies. That's because it doesn't. I found videos, photos and other graphics to be blockier, blurrier, and/or duller than on the iPad and the Galaxy Tab. Video calls in Google Chat, which you can make over both 3G and Wi-Fi connections, also looked murky. The display looked better when I manually cranked up the brightness - it may err on the dim side to conserve battery juice - but it was still no knockout.

(Speaking of battery life, I haven't had the tablet long enough to render any definitive verdicts about its endurance; Motorola claims ten hours of video playback on a charge, which seems plausible based on my limited experiences so far.) (See "Laptop Battery Life Has Officially Reached Insane Levels.")

On the software side, the Xoom brings major benefits in the form of Honeycomb, an operating system which upsizes Android for bigger screens and also solves some long-standing flaws. It's slicker and less nerdy than earlier versions of the OS as seen on phones such as Samsung's Nexus S and Motorola's Atrix, and no longer reliant on physical buttons and menus that tend to obscure features rather than reveal them.

Instead of using an excess of buttons, Honeycomb puts options such as the ability to step backwards through apps on a control strip that lives at the bottom of the screen no matter how you hold the tablet - a much more elegant and approachable solution than previously used. There are still menus, but they're at the top of the screen where they're easier to spot, and they feel less like they've had a kitchen sink's worth of features jammed into them.

Honeycomb also smartly reworks the standard Android apps, including a browser, Google Maps, Google Talk, YouTube, a music player, a photo album, a calendar, and more to take advantage of a spacious tablet display. YouTube, for instance, incorporates both a video viewer and thumbnail images of clips on a single screen. Like the iPad's Mail program, the Gmail and Email clients show folders on the left and the contents of your inbox on the right. (Yes, there are still separate email apps for Gmail and for everything else, continuing a lingering Android mystery.)

Several more-powerful-than-the-iPad features which feel cramped or overcomplicated on Android phones realize their full potential on the Xoom. A status panel in the lower right-hand corner is a slicker version of Windows' System Tray, tracking incoming mail, downloads in progress, and the like. Widgets - itty-bitty applets that sit directly on the desktop - benefit greatly from the roomier display.

All in all, the Honeycomb-powered Xoom feels like Motorola and Google took a powerful subnotebook computer, sheared off the keyboard, and replaced it with a nicely-designed touch interface. That's a very different experience than the ultra-streamlined, push-button world of the iPad, but it's a legitimate one in its own right. (Can you be in love with your gadgets? Study says yes.)

As with other aspects of the Xoom, parts of Honeycomb do have a not-quite-finished quality. Both the browser and the photo viewer have crashed on me - one time apiece - and I've encountered a few odd freezes that were likely the result of glitchy software rather than underpowered hardware. Otherwise, the tablet's high-end innards delivered an experience at least as fluid as the iPad, even when I had a bunch of programs open.

The fact that the Xoom will be joined by Honeycomb devices from Dell, Lenovo, LG, Toshiba, and other manufacturers should encourage third-party developers to build apps that take advantage of this Android upgrade. Honeycomb is compatible with existing apps in Google's Android market (most of them, anyhow - I had trouble with Facebook and Twitter). But they tend to wind up with vast amounts of unused screen space, as if they were wearing an XXL user interface when they'd really fit into a Small. Like iPhone apps on the iPad, phone-sized Android programs are really just stopgaps until a critical mass of true tablet apps come along. (The iPad got over that hump quickly - there are now 60,000+ apps designed just for it.)

At a recent Google press event, developers demoed some attractive upcoming Honeycomb programs, such as a version of TIME's sister mag Sports Illustrated; I was also able to try a few promising ones on the Xoom, including the Pulse news reader. Apps for streaming or downloading music and movies will be particularly essential: There are rumors of an imminent Google Music service, but the Xoom I tried doesn't incorporate anything that competes with Apple's iTunes Store.

So, what's the best buying strategy for would-be tablet buyers now that the Xoom is here? That's easy: Wait! At the very least, you want to see what Apple has to say about the new iPad next Wednesday. Bide your time a bit longer, and you'll have even more tablets to choose from. Chances are that the Xoom will remain a contender no matter what the next few months bring. And the Xoom of the near future - with 4G wireless, Flash, a working SD slot, more tablet apps, and, with any luck, a less crash-prone version of Honeycomb - will be that much better equipped to compete.

McCracken blogs about personal technology at Technologizer, which he founded in 2008 after nearly two decades as a tech journalist. His column for TIME.com, also called Technologizer, appears every Thursday.

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6 Dirty SEO Tricks You Must Avoid (PC World)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 03:05 PM PST

Katherine Noyes Katherine Noyes – Wed Feb 23, 6:05 pm ET

The past several months have afforded several high-profile examples of how search engine optimization, or SEO, should not be done. Last fall it was DecorMyEyes and the case of the abusive business proprietor, and just recently it was JCPenney and the case of the short-lived black hat success.

Such stories are by no means the only ones out there, of course--they've just drawn more publicity than most. Either way, examples like these are a rich source of instruction for the rest of us and a good reminder that in SEO--as in so many aspects of life--there's a right way to do things, and there are wrong ones.

Want to improve your company's search rankings? Then make sure you don't try to play any of these dirty SEO tricks.

1. Cloaking Your Content

The No. 1 top offending SEO technique, according to both SEO software firm SEOmoz and Google's own guidelines, is to design your Website so that search engines see one thing while human visitors see another. This is commonly called "cloaking," and it's generally considered the dirtiest trick there is.

Car maker BMW kindly provided a vivid illustration of this technique a few years back, as well as what happens to those who try it. Specifically, it was discovered that BMW's German Website was using what are called "doorway pages," or text-heavy pages sprinkled with select keywords, to attract the attention of Google's indexing system. The particular search term it focused on was "used cars."

So, when users searching for "used cars" found the BMW site at the top of Google's rankings, they were naturally tempted to click on it. What happened then, however, was that a JavaScript redirect would send them directly to BMW's main page, on which used vehicles featured minimally if at all.

BMW's reward for its cloaking efforts? Google unceremoniously kicked the BMW site out of its index, as Google engineer Matt Cutts explained in a blog post from 2006.

2. Acquiring Links from Brokers, Sellers or Exchanges

The second worst dirty trick, according to SEOmoz, as well as one apparently employed by both DecorMyEyes and JCPenney, is to pay a link broker or participate in other link schemes so as to get numerous links to your site from all across the Web.

The reason this trick is tempting is that Google's page ranking system factors in the number of links pointing to a page when it tries to evaluate that page's importance. It's also tempting because it can work well--at least in the short term, as JCPenney recently demonstrated.

Why shouldn't you use it? Well, mostly because it's in direct violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines, and it can get you severely punished, as JCPenney learned. If you participate in a link exchange program--whereby you link to a spam site in exchange for their links to you--the outbound links you install are also another factor that will negatively affect your rankings.

3. Duplicating Content

If a Website operator offers the same content on multiple pages, subdomains, or domains, it can result in extra traffic and higher rankings--or at least, so the thinking goes. Unfortunately, it's another violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines, and it can get you kicked out of its index.

Other instances in which content sometimes gets duplicated include affiliate programs that offer little or no original content, auto-generated content that's packed with keywords but makes little sense to human visitors, and content "scraped" from legitimate sites and then modified minimally.

Not only will such techniques get you punished by Google, but they'll also turn away human visitors. Note that when content is duplicated legitimately, such as for printer-friendly versions of articles, there are ways to alert Google so it doesn't misunderstand.

4. Keyword Stuffing

The keywords used on any Web page are a major factor in that page's ranking, but it's a bad idea to use them indiscriminately or deceptively. That includes using too many of the keywords you're hoping to optimize on--thereby exceeding any kind of naturally plausible keyword density--and it also includes packing keywords in hidden text, different-color fonts and tiny type.

Once again, Google engineer Matt Cutts offered some additional explanation in a 2007 blog post, along with an illustration: Alex Chiu, whose Web page featuring "immortality devices" was at the time stuffed with irrelevant keywords. Guess what? Chiu didn't show up in Google's index. (Since then, it appears to be back, presumably because the keyword stuffing has been corrected.)

A useful test, as Google points out in its guidelines, is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

5. Banking on Negative Reviews

Although it was disputed by at least one SEO expert, the owner of the DecorMyEyes site believed that the more negative reviews and comments his site got--and there were many, thanks to his atrocious customer service--the better the site's rankings, primarily as a function of all the extra links and traffic. For a time, too, his strategy worked pretty well, for whatever reason.

In response to the case, however, Google says it has since tweaked its algorithms, though it didn't explain specifically how. My assumption is that the overall sentiment of a site's reviews are now a factor. So, lest anyone be tempted, this is not a sustainable strategy, nor a smart one.

6. Automatic Queries

If you're like most Website owners, you wonder how your pages rank on various keywords at any given moment in time. Lo and behold, there are even tools that will perform automatic queries for you, to find out the truth from Google itself.

The only problem is, Google doesn't like that at all. Tools such as WebPosition Gold, it asserts, "consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service." Better avoid them.

There are other dirty SEO tricks out there, to be sure, but these are some of the worst ones. If you handle your company's SEO yourself, make sure you don't stray into these dangerous waters. If someone else handles SEO for you, manage them carefully so none of these slip by.

Follow Katherine Noyes on Twitter: @Noyesk .

New Startup Aims to "Make Paper Sexy" With Crowdsourced Designs (Mashable)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 03:01 PM PST

Sarah Kessler Sarah Kessler – Wed Feb 23, 6:01 pm ET

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Chirply

Quick Pitch: Chirply asks its community which user-submitted designs it should print.

Genius Idea: We didn't see it coming, but Chirply claims it has found a way to "make paper sexy." The Y-Combinator startup asks users to submit their own designs, and then leaves it to a popular vote to decide which of the designs it prints on notebooks, greeting cards, and wrapping paper. The winning designers get $300 upfront, and then a $.10 royalty on every card Chirply sells.

"There are a lot of companies that do print on demand, and the downside is that if the designs aren't curated, the quality is all over the map," explains Gagan Palrecha, who co-founded the crowd-curated printing company with his brother Neel.

Decidedly not sexy, we'll admit. Traditional card companies don't do much better. It's hard to find what you're looking for, you have to lug yourself to a physical store, and many of the designs aren't really, in Palrecha's words, "something you love."

The startup's theory is that drawing from a wider pool of talent will result in better designs. Meanwhile, it can afford to sell them for less than other upscale paper product vendors because it doesn't incur the cost of a physical storefront or full-time designers.

Chirply's founders cite craft marketplace Etsy and crowdsourced t-shirts design company Threadless as its inspiration, but it also has features that remind of us of other established tech companies. Like Digg, user votes aren't taken at face value. Depending on your past behavior on the site, your vote might have more or less influence (this prevents designers from getting all of their friends to vote exclusively on their design, for instance). Like Hot or Not, rating designs from one to five turns into a game. Once you rate one, another pops up.

While the startup is too new to have answered all of the questions that it will need to (Can users buy prints that they like, but haven't won the monthly contest? What about posters?), it's off to a decent start. In the two weeks since it launched, about 90 designers have participated in the contest. Some of them have been voted on as many as 300 times.

Image courtesy of gregoryelang

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, 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.

Envisioning IBM’s Watson computer as a smartphone app (Appolicious)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 03:55 PM PST

Windows Phone 7 Glitch: A Stumble Microsoft Can't Afford (PC World)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 03:04 PM PST

Jeff Bertolucci Jeff Bertolucci – Wed Feb 23, 6:04 pm ET

When you're a bit player in the ultra-competitive mobile phone market, you can't afford to make a lot of mistakes. But that's what Microsoft did this week when it delivered a buggy software update of its Windows Phone 7 operating system to its mobile phone customers, an upgrade that unfortunately bricked a small number of Samsung handsets.

Microsoft quickly pulled the update and owned up to the snafu. In a statement, the company said that it had identified the technical glitch, and that would reissue the upgrade "as soon as possible." The troublesome patch had been delivered when users connected their Windows 7 Phones to their computers via USB cable.

The software bug comes at a sensitive time for Microsoft's fledgling mobile OS, which debuted in October 2010 and is just now starting to gain market share, albeit at a slow pace.

According to research firm The NPD Group, Windows Phone 7 held a 2-percent share of the U.S. smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2010. And while that may sound reasonable for a new platform-after all, Windows Phone 7 bears little relation to Microsoft's older mobile OS--it's a lower market share than that which was enjoyed by Google's Android and Palm's WebOS after their respective launches.

Meanwhile, Android's worldwide growth appears unstoppable. Britain's Sky News Online reports that half of the top ten mobile phones in the UK now run Google's OS, according to comparison site uSwitch.

One bad update won't ruin Windows Phone 7's chances of success, of course, but it also won't inspire confidence among tech's early adopters, the folks who could spread the word-of-mouth gospel praising Windows Phone 7, and the type of support that Microsoft needs to slow the Android juggernaut.

And considering that few consumers are planning to buy a Windows Phone 7 handset, according to a December survey by research firm ChangeWave, Microsoft faces a daunting marketing challenge.

On the plus side, Redmond's recently announced deal with Nokia, which plans to run Win Phone 7 on its upcoming smartphones, may boost the mobile OS's visibility among consumers. Certainly, Microsoft needs all the help it can get. Windows Phone 7 may be a good smartphone OS, but more glitches and gaffs like this week's Samsung phone screw-up could very well doom it to also-ran status.

Contact Jeff Bertolucci via Twitter (@jbertolucci) or at jbertolucci.blogspot.com.

MTV to debut `O' Music Awards, with the `O' TBD (AP)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 09:10 PM PST

By JAKE COYLE, AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle, Ap Entertainment Writer – 34 mins ago

NEW YORK – MTV is naming its new digital music awards the OMAs — and leaving the "O" up for grabs.

The network is to announce Thursday that the O Music Awards will take place April 28. MTV is leaving the "O" undefined and open to interpretation from viewers.

The awards, the network said, "honor the migration of music to the digital space, and celebrate the art, artistry and technology of digital music." MTV plans to present an untraditional, heavily interactive award show, spread out across multiple screens, including the Internet, social media and mobile.

MTV hopes the show will do for digital music what its Video Music Awards, launched in 1984, did for the music video.

"We think this space now needs an award show," said Dermot McCormack, head of MTV Music Group digital. "We think we're fairly well qualified to come up with a way of rewarding achievement in these new categories."

MTV, which is part of the Viacom-owned MTV Networks, will later announce a "hub" for the event and categories. Categories could include things like best app and best Kanye West tweet. Social media buzz will play a role in choosing the winners.

___

Online:

http://www.omusicawards.com

Apple stockholders keep CEO succession plan secret (AFP)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 05:50 PM PST

– Wed Feb 23, 8:50 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Apple stockholders have voted down a proposal that would have compelled the notoriously secretive technology star to reveal how it would handle the departure of chief executive Steve Jobs.

Apple's board had recommended the proposal to be rejected at the annual meeting of shareholders at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California, on the grounds it would give rivals inside information.

The meeting was presided over by Apple chief operating officer Timothy Cook, who has been at the company's helm since January 17 when Jobs went on an indefinite leave of absence for medical reasons.

Jobs, who turns 56 years old on Thursday, has reportedly been taking meetings at home, keeping in contact by phone and even visiting Apple's campus to remain involved with the company.

Last month Jobs stepped aside, his third medical leave since 2004, but did not say how long he expected to be away or provide any details about his latest health issues.

He underwent an operation for pancreatic cancer in 2004 and received a liver transplant in early 2009. He appeared gaunt but relatively healthy at recent Apple public events.

Apple's fortunes have been uniquely linked to Jobs, who returned to the then flagging company in 1997 after a 12-year absence and introduced innovative and wildly successful products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Some analysts and investors have criticized Apple for not clearly outlining how it would replace Jobs if the need arises.

A proposal by a pension fund holding Apple stock made it to the ballot and, if passed, would have required require Apple to lay bare its CEO succession plan.

The shareholder meeting came on the same day that Apple sent out invitations to a March 2 press event in San Francisco at which the company is expected to unveil the second-generation iPad.

Apple finished last year with a record quarterly net profit of $6 billion on an unprecedented $26.74 billion in revenue.

DotNetNuke Acquires Social Collaboration Vendor (PC World)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 02:00 PM PST

Joab Jackson Joab Jackson – Wed Feb 23, 5:00 pm ET

Web Content Management Platform provider DotNetNuke has acquired Active Modules, a vendor of social collaboration software, the two companies announced Wednesday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

DotNetNuke plans to fold Active Modules' software into its own Microsoft ASP.NET-based content management system. Will Morgenweck, founder of ActiveModules will stay on as DotNetNuke's director of social products.

Active Modules offered a number of different plug-in modules for the DotNetNuke platform.

The Active Forums module can be used to build an online community. The Active Purchase module allows small businesses to run e-commerce functionality on their websites. The Active Social module allows users to interact with one another through messaging, journals, commenting and other means. The software also offers the ability for users to set up their own profiles, set up public and private events and connect their Twitter feeds to their home pages.

All these modules will be incorporated into the DotNetNuke platform in various ways. Active Forums will replace DotNetNuke's own forum module. Some of the features of the Active Social module will be ported into the DotNetNuke open source core framework, making it available to all editions of the platform. Other features will only be included in the paid DotNetNuke Professional and Enterprise Editions. Active Purchase will be folded into the DotNetNuke Professional and Enterprise editions.

Founded in 2006, DotNetNuke has estimated that over 600,000 production websites use its platform. The company has garnered over 1,100 subscription customers for the supported version of its software.

Active Modules was based in Charleston, South Carolina

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

Sprout Social Picks Up $10 Million To Help SMBs With Social Media Management (Mashable)

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 09:37 AM PST

Jennifer Van Grove Jennifer Van Grove – Wed Feb 23, 12:37 pm ET

Sprout Social, a startup building social media management tools for small and local businesses, has raised $10 million in a Series B round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Money will be allocated toward growth and product development.

Businesses can use Sprout Social to manage, monitor and track their presence on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn and Yelp.

By specifically serving small and local businesses with low-end monthly subscription plans, Sprout Social has squeezed out a middle market in the social media management space. The product offering is meant to be robust enough for a small brand or agency; it's a bit meatier than the likes of HootSuite, but not as pricey as Vitrue or Buddy Media.

"Sprout Social is embracing an increasingly powerful segment of the market in online commerce -- the local business," says Harry Weller, NEA General Partner. "Sprout Social's powerful platform will allow those businesses to manage and extend their relationships with customers across a range of social media channels."

Sprout Social's Series B represents a larger trend: Investors continue to remain enamored with startups working to solve social media management challenges for businesses of all sizes. Vitrue also just closed a $17 million round, for instance, and Buddy Media and Involver have completed sizable rounds of their own.

at 9:55 PM

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