Sponsored
Chinese tech giants fight over 4G phones (AP) : Technet |
- Chinese tech giants fight over 4G phones (AP)
- Doctored bin Laden corpse photos go viral, global (AP)
- Stats: Top 9 reasons people use tablets (Yahoo! News)
- Sony lets loose pair of Xperia Mini smartphones (Yahoo! News)
- Shopkick Lands New Retail Partner, Hits 1.4 Million Users (Mashable)
- Sony CEO apologizes for Internet breaches (Reuters)
- Analysis: Skype, better with Facebook than Google? (Reuters)
- Large-screen Samsung Infuse smartphone to launch on May 15 (Digital Trends)
- iPhone & Android: To OTA or not to OTA? (Appolicious)
- Indian Country network calls for Geronimo support (AP)
- Sony Shifts Blame Back to Anonymous for PSN Attack (PC World)
- Burn It All tops iPhone Games of the Week (Appolicious)
- Tablets Cutting into Laptop/Desktop Use, Nielsen Finds (PC World)
- DirecTV earnings up 21 pct on subscriber gains (AP)
- Could Over-the-Air iOS Updates Brick Apple's iPhone? (NewsFactor)
- As Firefox Revs Its Engines, a New Browser Is Planned (PC World)
- RIM embraces BlackBerry rivals to remain relevant (Reuters)
| Chinese tech giants fight over 4G phones (AP) Posted: 05 May 2011 03:49 AM PDT BEIJING – Two of China's biggest technology companies have launched a court battle in Europe over mobile phone patents in a rare public clash between firms Beijing is promoting as national champions. The fight between Huawei Technologies Ltd. and ZTE Corp. highlights the challenge for communist leaders who need to manage Chinese corporate ambitions as they try to create global competitors in telecoms, energy and other fields. It is the first case of its kind between major Chinese companies, which usually settle disputes in private. "We're going to see more of this in this industry and others," said David Wolf, a technology marketing consultant in Beijing. "The government will find, wow, we've got these national champions, but now they're trying to kill each other." The dispute centers on fourth-generation mobile technology, which companies that are developing it say will deliver more stable connections, wireless broadband and other advances. It is in limited use in the United States and being tested elsewhere. Control of key patents could help decide which equipment suppliers are positioned to reap billions of dollars in sales once it is rolled out in other markets. Huawei and ZTE make network gear, the core of phone systems. They have multibillion-dollar annual sales in China, Africa and Latin America and see themselves as potential global 4G leaders. That fits with Communist Party hopes to transform China from a low-cost factory into a creator of profitable technology. Huawei announced last week it filed patent infringement lawsuits against ZTE in France, Germany and Hungary. ZTE rejected the claims and said it has asked a French court and Chinese regulators to invalidate a Huawei patent. Huawei and ZTE are among China's first wave of fledgling multinational companies. They compete with Nokia-Siemens Networks, Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent and have a small but growing U.S. and European presence. Their dispute comes amid mounting complaints by foreign business groups about Beijing's industrial policy. They say China is improperly supporting favored companies by limiting market access and providing low-cost loans and other support. Huawei's lawsuits accuse ZTE of infringing patents for data cards and improperly using a Huawei-registered trademark on some of its products. "We will do whatever is required to ensure that the use of Huawei's intellectual property by any company is based on internationally accepted protocols and practices," said Huawei's chief legal officer, Song Liuping, in a statement. ZTE said its lawsuit accused Huawei of infringing its 4G patents. The company said it also has asked a French court and China's State Intellectual Property Office to invalidate Huawei's patents for a rotary USB connector used to exchange data between devices. "ZTE respects the intellectual property rights of other companies, but it will not stop protecting its own intellectual property rights," said a company statement. Huawei, founded in 1987 by a former Chinese military engineer, has 110,000 employees and reported 2010 revenues of 182 billion yuan ($28 billion). ZTE, founded in 1985, has 70,000 workers and reported 2010 revenues of 70 billion yuan ($10.8 billion). Their status as industry leaders gives both high-level political influence. But Chinese leaders want both to succeed — a possible reason for a stalemate and the decision to go to court. An impartial ruling by a European court also might add to the winner's appeal for potential customers by reinforcing its status as a technology creator, rather than a Chinese policy tool. "They are making an interesting statement by filing those lawsuits not in Chinese courts but overseas, because Chinese courts are perceived to be very political, and they want this matter obviously adjudicated on the legal merits," said Wolf, CEO of Wolf Group Asia. Huawei and ZTE are unusual among major Chinese companies because they compete directly with each other, offering similar products in the same markets. Authorities who want China's potential global companies to focus their competitive energies on foreign rivals have tried to head off clashes in other industries by assigning different markets or products to individual enterprises. In aerospace, a plan to create a homegrown jetliner to compete with Boeing Co. and Airbus Industrie was assigned to one state-owned company while a potential rival was told to develop a smaller regional jet instead. Huawei has suffered setbacks as it tries to expand in the United States. It was forced in February to unwind its acquisition of 3Leaf Systems, a maker of cloud computing technology, after it failed to win approval from a U.S. security panel. In a separate case, Huawei won a court order that temporarily blocked the sale of Motorola Solutions Inc.'s network business to rival Nokia-Siemens Networks. Huawei said the deal might reveal business secrets because Motorola sold Huawei equipment. Motorola settled with Huawei for an undisclosed fee. Also this month, Ericsson said it has filed lawsuits against ZTE in Britain, Germany and Italy accusing the company of infringing patents for handset and network technology. The Swedish company asked the courts to block ZTE from selling mobile phones that contain the disputed technology and some network products. ___ Huawei Technologies Ltd: http://www.huawei.com ZTE Corp.: http://www.zte.com.cn |
| Doctored bin Laden corpse photos go viral, global (AP) Posted: 04 May 2011 10:53 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO – The images are bloody, grotesque and convincing: Osama bin Laden lies dead, the left side of his head blasted away. But the pictures are fakes. Doctored photos purporting to show bin Laden's corpse rocketed around the world on television, online via social media and in print almost as soon as his death was announced. The pictures have spread without regard for their origin or whether the images are real. Meanwhile, scammers have piggybacked on the popularity of the images and spiked supposed online links with computer viruses. Newsrooms and the public have been left in the tough spot of deciding what to believe when software has made doctoring photographs easier than ever. And the hunger for visual evidence of bin Laden's death may only grow now that President Barack Obama has said the government's photos will remain classified. "I don't think society tolerates the invisible anymore," said Fred Ritchin, a professor of photography at New York University who has written about digital technology undermining trust in the veracity of photographs. "Everything has to be imaged." The photos on the Internet did not come from the operation that killed bin Laden, according to a senior defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the mission was classified. Still, the appetite for images remains. In perhaps the most widely distributed photo, a bloodied bin Laden appears to be missing his left eye, and he is grimacing as if he died in pain. The White House says bin Laden was shot above his left eye. Reuters reported on its photography blog that the mouth, ear and beard in the picture exactly matched a photo the news agency had snapped of bin Laden at a news conference in 1998. The upper half of the face appears to be from a different corpse. Another photo released on the website liveleak.com shows bin Laden lying on his back with a wound over one eye as a soldier with an American flag insignia on his shoulder stands over the body. The photo is in green and black, as if taken with a night vision lens. The website has since retracted the photo, which liveleak.com indicated was made with a photo of bin Laden digitally stitched into a still from the 2001 movie Black Hawk Down. Another picture, by far the most gruesome, shows an extremely bloody face that resembles bin Laden with most of the skull missing and brain visible. Hany Farid, a professor of computer science at Dartmouth University who specializes in forensic photographic image analysis, examined the photo for The Associated Press and said it appeared altered. "In today's world where even the cheapest cameras are a few megapixels in resolution, it doesn't make sense why such an important image would only be available at this very low resolution," Farid said. "From the perspective of photo tampering, however, smaller is better since it makes it harder to analyze." The spread of fake photos and the ease of making them have forced news organizations to be more vigilant than ever. "The challenge here is these techniques are quite sophisticated," said Santiago Lyon, director of photography for The Associated Press. "A good Photoshop forger ... can make it very difficult at first glance to detect whether an image has been manipulated or not." Experienced photo editors can often spot telltale inconsistencies such as shifts in color, contrast or light source that signal a fake, Lyon said. For the most newsworthy photos that also raise suspicions, the AP has access to software that can analyze photos down to the level of the pixel, the basic building block of all digital images. At least as important as the image itself is vetting the credibility of its source, Lyon said. The AP did not escape from the lightning spread of doctored photos. The news service pulled from its wires a total of six photos — one of a Pakistani television broadcast, three of an Afghan television broadcast and two of a Bulgarian newspaper — that included the doctored images of bin Laden's corpse. The AP made the decision not to accompany this story with any photos claiming to show a dead bin Laden to avoid any appearance of vouching for their authenticity. The photos have caused headaches for more than just news organizations. Viruses are being spread by links on Facebook pages, which have become home to a brisk trade in conspiracy theories. While some politicians have criticized Obama's decision not to release the actual photos, visitors to a Facebook page called "Osama Bin Laden NOT DEAD" claim the doctored images themselves are evidence of a cover-up. Some commentators on the page, which as of Wednesday had more than 1,300 fans, claimed without evidence that the U.S. government itself released the doctored photos. They claimed the faked photos were proof the Obama administration had fabricated the news of bin Laden's death. "The immediate assumption is that you can fabricate any image," Ritchin said. "The photograph itself doesn't have the legitimacy that it used to have in our society." ___ Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report. ___ Follow Marcus Wohlsen at http://twitter.com/marcuswohlsen |
| Stats: Top 9 reasons people use tablets (Yahoo! News) Posted: 05 May 2011 05:29 PM PDT
When it comes to tablet sales, Apple's iPad continues to lead by a mile, commanding a whopping 82% of the market. The original Samsung Galaxy Tab came in a very, very distant second place, in the paws of a paltry 4% of tablet owners. Of course, no tablet stat can stagger quite like the revelation that the iPad absorbed over 99% of total tablet computing revenue in 2010. According to the report, tablet computers seem to be cutting into our time spent with other kinds of computers. 35% of desktop computer owners reported using their tablet's not-so-mobile counterpart "less often or not at all." Tablets had the same effect on 32% of consumers who own both a laptop and a tablet and 25% of portable game console owners. [Via:Fortune]
|
| Sony lets loose pair of Xperia Mini smartphones (Yahoo! News) Posted: 05 May 2011 04:44 PM PDT
Sony's gaming division may be working tirelessly to sew up the loose ends of its PlayStation Network, but Sony Ericsson, the company's smartphone branch, is having no such woes. Today they unveiled a pair of brand new Android smartphones to join the company's Xperia handset line. The Xperia Mini and Xperia Mini Pro bring a decidedly diminutive touch to Sony's handset offerings — much like the Veer has done for HP. Both the standard Mini and Mini Pro will run Android 2.3 Gingerbread right out of the gate, a notable feature considering much of the Android market is still using version 2.2 Froyo. The phones sport 3" touch displays, 720p HD video recording capability, integrated Facebook features, and Sony's DLNA connection technology that allows users to toss media from the phone to compatible Bravia TVs. The Pro model ups the ante and adds slide-out "Smart Keyboard" which automatically predicts what you want to use it for. For example, if you're surfing the web and slide open the keyboard the cursor automatically jumps to the search or address bar. No word on a specific launch date was given, but Sony expects to release the new pair in the fall. (Source)
|
| Shopkick Lands New Retail Partner, Hits 1.4 Million Users (Mashable) Posted: 05 May 2011 02:53 PM PDT When last we heard from Shopkick, a location-based shopping app, the startup was touting 750,000 users and more than 100 million checkins. Shopkick is announcing Thursday though that it's nearly doubled its user base to 1.4 million users and has found a new mega retailer friend in housewares seller Crate and Barrel. Crate and Barrel will begin doling out kickbucks -- Shopkick currency redeemable for rewards -- and special offers to Shopkick users who visit any of its U.S. stores. [More from Mashable: Choose Your Own Adventure Film Promotes Range Rover [VIDEO]] With Crate and Barrel in the mix, Shopkick, which also partners with the likes of Target, Best Buy and Macy's, will have a presence in nearly 1,500 retail locations and 160 malls across 39 states. Shopkick partners purchase and deploy in-store devices that detect application users as they walk in to stores. The device is meant to measure in-store foot traffic and automatically check the user in to the location so he can receive kickbucks as an incentive for visiting. [More from Mashable: The PR Pro's Guide to Facebook] The startup's hardware and application approach to location-based shopping is unique enough to have netted it $20 million in pre-launch funding. Now, in addition to logging millions of checkins, Shopkick is reporting that users have also scanned five million partner products since its August launch. Shopkicks competes directly with CheckPoints, another location-based shopping app. This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| Sony CEO apologizes for Internet breaches (Reuters) Posted: 05 May 2011 08:27 PM PDT TOKYO (Reuters) – Sony Chief Executive Officer Howard Stringer apologized to users of its PlayStation Network, breaking his silence on one of the biggest Internet security break-ins ever, but failing to provide a date when services would resume. Stringer's comments come after he faced criticism of his leadership since Sony revealed hackers had compromised the data of more than 100 million accounts. Kazuo Hirai, his likely successor, led a news conference and apology on Sunday. Sony issued its first warning on the break-in a week after it detected a problem with the network on April 19, infuriating many PlayStation users around the world. Sony said it needed time to work out the extent of the damage. "I know some believe we should have notified our customers earlier than we did. It's a fair question," Stringer said in comments posted on Sony's U.S. PlayStation blog. "I wish we could have gotten the answers we needed sooner, but forensic analysis is a complex, time-consuming process. Hackers, after all, do their best to cover their tracks, and it took some time for our experts to find those tracks and begin to identify what personal information had - or had not - been taken." Sony previously said it would offer some free content, including 30 days of free membership to a premium service to existing users and in some regions pay credit card-renewal fees. "I know this has been a frustrating time for all of you," Stringer said. "To date, there is no confirmed evidence any credit card or personal information has been misused, and we continue to monitor the situation closely," he said in a statement dated May 5. Stringer said Sony would restore network services "in the coming days," but gave no date. "That's all well and good, but when exactly is the PSN going to be back up? "Coming Days" could be tomorrow or it could be weeks from now," a user called Morac said on the PlayStation blog. Stringer also said the company had launched a data theft insurance policy for its PlayStation Network and Qriocity users. By 0240 GMT, shares of Sony Corp were down 3 percent in a weak market, extending its total losses to 7 percent since it revealed the breach. The Nikkei is up around 3 percent over the same period. DAMAGE Sony's revelation of a second Internet breach on Monday came just a day after it said measures had been put in place to avert another cyberattack like that which hit its PlayStation Network, leading to the theft of information on 77 million user accounts. The Internet breaches sparked thousands of comments on the official PlayStation fan page on Facebook, some of them from users who said they would switch to Microsoft's Xbox Live games network. One analyst said security concerns could weigh on sales of Sony gadgets and hurt growth prospects for its network services. "There is a real concern that trust in Sony's business will decline," Kota Ezawa, analyst at Citigroup Global Markets Japan, wrote in a note ahead of the comments from Stringer. "The network business itself still only makes a small direct contribution to earnings, but we see a potential drop in hardware sales as a concern." Although video game hardware and software sales have declined globally, the PlayStation Network is a key initiative for the electronics company, which one analyst estimates brings in around $500 million in annual revenue. Sony is looking to its insurers to help pay for its data breach, an amount that one expert estimates could exceed $2 billion, but others said insurers may balk at ponying up that kind of money. "We have a variety of types of insurance that cover damages. Certain carriers have been put on notice," said Sony spokesman Dan Race. The hackers have not been identified, but Internet vigilante group Anonymous, which had claimed responsibility for previous attacks on Sony and other corporations, denied involvement. The group's statement came after Sony said Anonymous was indirectly responsible for the attack on the company. Sony, which is set to report its annual earnings on May 26, has yet to specify the financial effect of the network breach. Tokyo financial markets were closed from Tuesday to Thursday for national holidays. (Additional reporting by Taiga Uranaka; Writing by Anshuman Daga; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Dean Yates) |
| Analysis: Skype, better with Facebook than Google? (Reuters) Posted: 05 May 2011 06:52 PM PDT NEW YORK (Reuters) – As two Internet powerhouses slug it out to tie the knot with Skype, Facebook looks likely to be a more aggressive suitor than Google, and the world's largest social network may make for a better fit. Reuters reported Wednesday that Facebook and Google are separately weighing partnerships with Skype, the popular web video telephony service used by millions around the globe for communication. Talks with Facebook and Google are still preliminary, but any deal could involve an outright takeout or a joint venture partnership, two sources told Reuters. A deal involving Skype, which is readying for an IPO, could be valued at $3 billion to $4 billion, the first source said. Skype's public offering is expected to raise about $1 billion, several other sources said. Analysts and technology observers are betting on Facebook, in the belief the two make better companions and that Skype completes Facebook by providing assets it does not have. "It's not surprising to me that both these companies are interested," said Eric Jackson, founder and manager of the investment firm Ironfire Capital. "It's a much more valuable asset to Facebook than to Google." Google already has voice chat and video capabilities, though Skype is a more robust product, said Rory Maher, an analyst with Hudson Square Research. It could incorporate Skype into Google Voice, and even get some social-media credibility after it failed in an attempt to do so with Buzz. "There are benefits that Google has from combining Skype, but I think it's less clean than it is for Facebook," says Maher. Conversely, Facebook has that much more incentive to snap up Skype because it would encourage people to spend more time on the site than they already do -- virtually the social network's raison d'etre. "Communication is core to what Facebook users do," said Mo Koyfman, a principal at the venture capital firm Spark Capital. "Owning that platform would be very interesting." Google, Facebook and Skype declined to comment. THE ART OF SKYPE Skype is still on track for an IPO later in 2011, raising as much as $1 billion by some estimates. That it has become the belle of the ball, attracting the interest of the Internet's two most dominant powers, bodes well for its debut. Last year, Skype boasted about 124 million connected users every month by the end of June. But just 8.1 million were paying customers, using Skype to make calls to traditional phones at discounted rates. The company was founded in 2003 and bought by eBay two years later for $3.1 billion. Ebay then sold a majority stake in Skype to an investor group in 2009, while keeping about a third of the company. Now, both Skype and Facebook could tap new users worldwide while Facebook stands to gain a new revenue stream, Koyfman said. Facebook had net income of $355 million in the first nine months of 2010 on revenue of $1.2 billion. It is one of a handful of Internet companies including Twitter, Groupon and Zynga that have stoked interest from investors eager to jump on the social media bandwagon. And it has also put the big Internet guns -- including Google -- on alert. Indeed, some speculate that Google could be bidding for Skype just to keep it out of the hands of other companies. "Any deal that takes a great asset away from Facebook is a win for Google," suggested Ironfire Capital's Jackson. (Reporting by Jennifer Saba; Editing by Edwin Chan and Steve Orlofsky) |
| Large-screen Samsung Infuse smartphone to launch on May 15 (Digital Trends) Posted: 05 May 2011 07:07 PM PDT
We first ran into this eye-catching piece of kit at CES 2011 and were immediately impressed by its specs. And it's the huge 4.5-inch Super AMOLED screen that really grabs your attention. It's the biggest of any Samsung phone – any bigger and you're in tablet territory. Indeed, this might just be big enough for some consumers to leave off buying a tablet (and having yet another device to lug around). Samsung's Infuse smartphone sports an auto-focus 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash, and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for chat. As you'd expect, you can also shoot HD video (at 720p). The phone packs a single-core ARM 1.2-GHz processor and runs Android 2.2, though hopefully a more recent version of the OS will be offered before long. It weighs 4.9 oz, features up to 400 hours standby time and up to 8 hours talk time. The Korean company also says the phone will have "super fast 4G data connection speeds with HSPA+ (Download speed up to 16+ Mbps in selective locations)." AT&T is offering the device, and it'll be available to consumers from May 15 priced at $199 with a two-year contract. The decent spec sheet tells us that this phone will be turning more than a few heads of those on the hunt for a new phone. And fans of Angry Birds will be pleased to know that the Infuse comes pre-loaded with a special version of the game, created for it by makers Rovio. Bet you can't wait… |
| iPhone & Android: To OTA or not to OTA? (Appolicious) Posted: 05 May 2011 05:00 PM PDT |
| Indian Country network calls for Geronimo support (AP) Posted: 05 May 2011 04:48 PM PDT ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A media network aimed at Native Americans is urging social network users to change their profile pictures to an image of Geronimo in honor of the legendary Apache warrior. Indian Country Today put out the call to its Facebook and Twitter followers Thursday in response to the U.S. military's use of Geronimo as a code name for Osama bin Laden. It asks followers and others to use the photo for the next two days to "honor the true spirit" of the 19th century warrior. Geronimo profile pictures started popping up at the beginning of the week, after details of the raid that killed bin Laden came to light. The code name also prompted statements of disapproval from tribes, a call for President Barack Obama to apologize and scores of angry comments on social network sites. At a hearing Thursday, tribal leaders told Congress that comparing Geronimo to a terrorist tarnished the raid's achievement. |
| Sony Shifts Blame Back to Anonymous for PSN Attack (PC World) Posted: 05 May 2011 03:38 PM PDT In a response to a congressional inquiry into the hack of the PlayStation Network, Sony appears to have shifted the blame back to the hacktivist group Anonymous. According to the response, published on Sony's PlayStation blog, Sony has discovered a file named "Anonymous" planted on one of the Sony Online Entertainment servers. The file reportedly contains the words "We are Legion," which is the unofficial slogan of the unofficial group. Anonymous has responded to the indirect accusation by insisting that it is not responsible for the attack. In a public statement on Wednesday, Anonymous said that "No one who is actually associated with our movement would do something that would prompt a massive law enforcement response," and that "Anonymous has never been known to have engaged in credit card theft." Sony and Anonymous: Not the Best of Friends It's not far-fetched to suggest that Anonymous may have had something to do with the recent PSN outage--after all, around the same time as the shutdown occurred, Sony and Anonymous were at odds with each other. In mid-April, Anonymous took issue with Sony's hard-handed treatment of PlayStation hacker George "Geohot" Hotz. Anonymous was allegedly in the process of conducting denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against Sony around the same time as the PSN shutdown. Anonymous was quick, however, in the days following the PSN shutdown, to stress that it was not at fault for the attack. Of course, it's important to note the decentralized nature of Anonymous--there is no structure within the group, and anyone can be a part of Anonymous. Thus, it's possible that a renegade cell identifying with Anonymous may be responsible for the data theft. No Explicit Accusations The letter to Congress, written by Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sony Computer Entertainment America, Kazuo Hirai, does not explicitly accuse Anonymous of hacking the PlayStation Network. Rather, the letter says that Sony is working with law enforcement to identify the responsible parties, and is leery of sharing too much information at the moment. "The information is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation and also the information could be used to exploit vulnerabilities in systems other than Sony's that have similar architecture to the PlayStation Network," Hirai writes. However, Hirai does point out that Sony found a file labeled "Anonymous" on one of its servers, and that the PSN hack occurred at the same time as Anonymous was allegedly conducting DDoS attacks. This suggests that Sony may have had a change of heart--or discovered more evidence--since Sunday, when Hirai publicly stated that Sony had no evidence that Anonymous was responsible for the attack. For more tech news and commentary, follow Ed on Twitter at @edoswald and on Facebook. |
| Burn It All tops iPhone Games of the Week (Appolicious) Posted: 05 May 2011 03:00 PM PDT |
| Tablets Cutting into Laptop/Desktop Use, Nielsen Finds (PC World) Posted: 05 May 2011 02:59 PM PDT We are leaving our laptops and desktop computers scorned in favor of a new mistress: the tablet. So says The Nielsen Company--best known for its TV ratings--in new research on mobile connected devices. Nielsen asked tablet owners how their usage of other devices had changed since they joined the tab/pad army. More than a third (35 percent) said they use their desktop computer less or not at all, while 32 percent said they use their laptop less. Nielsen reports 77 percent of tablet users use a tablet for tasks that they previously would have done on a laptop or desktop. The most popular reason cited for favoring tablets is unsurprising: they're easy to carry around. Thirty-one percent of tablet owners responded that portability was the main reason for using a tablet over a laptop or a desktop. Ease of interface or operating system and fast start-up and power-off times were the second and third most common reasons given. Another interesting finding is that tablet-sharing doesn't seem to be the norm in American households - only 43 percent said they share their tab with others under the same roof, and half said they were the only ones using their particular tablet. As for the effect on other devices? Twenty-seven percent of respondents said they pick up their e-readers less often, and a quarter of respondents have cut back on their portable game console use. Tablet purchases seem to have the least effect on the use of Internet-connected TVs and smartphones. |
| DirecTV earnings up 21 pct on subscriber gains (AP) Posted: 05 May 2011 01:12 PM PDT NEW YORK – DirecTV Group Inc., the nation's largest satellite TV operator, on Thursday said its profit rose 21 percent in the first quarter as it continued to grow faster than rival Dish Network. El Segundo, Calif.-based DirecTV added a net 611,000 subscribers in the January to March period, the second-best result in a decade after the fourth quarter's 667,000 additions. As has been the trend in the last two years, DirecTV's Latin American operations accounted for most of the new subscribers. But the company also added 184,000 U.S. subscribers, up from 100,000 a year ago. Dish Network on Monday reported adding 58,000 subscribers in the same period. DirecTV shares hit a new all-time high of $49.64 on Thursday, but retreated during a conference call that executives held with investors and analysts. In afternoon trading, the shares were down 20 cents, or 0.4 percent, at $48.30. CEO Mike White said on the call that he'd seen an increase in competing offers in the U.S., which caused an uptick in "churn," or the rate of customers leaving. However, he doesn't think this puts the company's full-year forecast at risk. In Latin America, the strong performance in the first quarter prompted the company to raise its revenue growth forecast for the full year to 30 percent from 20 percent. The company is benefiting from the rise of the middle class on the continent, particularly in Brazil, but its Latin American operations make up only 22 percent of overall revenue. DirecTV ended the quarter with 19.4 million U.S. subscribers, keeping its position as the second-largest provider of pay-TV in the U.S., after cable company Comcast Corp. DirecTV said its net income rose to $674 million, or 85 cents per share, from $558 million, or 59 cents per share, a year ago. Analysts polled by FactSet expected earnings of 71 cents per share, on average, though they were likely excluding a $25 million pretax gain from the sale of a stake in Game Show Network. Revenue grew 13 percent to $6.32 billion from $5.61 billion, helped by both subscriber growth and higher monthly fees. Analysts expected $6.23 billion. |
| Could Over-the-Air iOS Updates Brick Apple's iPhone? (NewsFactor) Posted: 05 May 2011 02:38 PM PDT Apple and Verizon Wireless may be planning over-the-air downloads for iOS 5. News reports are heralding an end to the days when users have to plug an iPhone into a computer and connect to iTunes to get the latest version of the mobile operating system. Over-the-air downloads are nothing new. Google's Android-powered phones do it. Microsoft Windows phones do it. Hewlett-Packard's Palm phones do it. So why shouldn't Apple? Michael Disabato, managing vice president of network and telecom at Gartner, can think of several reasons why over-the-air downloads of iOS 5 would be a bad idea. Reliability Questions "AT&T's network isn't reliable enough for me to want to download a 200MB file directly into the phone -- the same with Verizon," Disabato said. "Even if they are putting in the operating system, it doesn't mean that the network operators are going to let this happen -- and if they are smart, they won't. The day Apple announces they have the new iOS out, half of the iPhone population would try to download it, and it would crash the network." Although an over-the-air download is interesting in that it eliminates the need for iTunes as part of the updating process, Disabato doesn't anticipate Apple relinquishing control. Updating apps over the air is one thing, he said, but over-the-air updates of the operating system are another. A 'Dangerous' Notion "The iOS is a huge file. It took me 18 minutes last night to download it on a six-megabit-per-second connection. You don't get six megabits per second on over the air," Disabato said. "So you are looking for an hour download to update your phone, and it could abort in the middle and brick your phone. Then you have to plug your phone into iTunes to do the download." As Disabato sees it, the over-the-air method would have to be bulletproof and unsinkable for people to even attempt the feat -- and after the first horror story, no one would want to do it again. Essentially, if any part of the download is corrupted along the way, the iPhone turns into a stylish brick. That could happen on a wired download, too, but it's much less likely. "This is dangerous. The first thing that happens when you do an iOS update? It backs up your phone. What do you back your phone up to if you are doing an over-the-air download? If you don't have a backup, then you brick your phone. You can go to the Apple store to get your phone unbricked, but you don't have a backup of your data," Disabato said. "I think this is an incredibly bad idea and I don't see Apple allowing it." |
| As Firefox Revs Its Engines, a New Browser Is Planned (PC World) Posted: 05 May 2011 01:42 PM PDT Mozilla's Firefox 4 may be the browser's most popular release yet, but the project is already looking ahead with a new just-in-time (JIT) compiler for JavaScript that promises to outperform the software's current JägerMonkey technology. Dubbed IonMonkey, the new compiler is designed to enable "many new JavaScript optimizations," according to the project's wiki page. "In particular IonMonkey will feature much more organized and explicit data structures typical of advanced compilers," the project team explains. "This goal of being clean and flexible will be extremely important for future optimization work and experimentation." The Tor Browser Bundle What kinds of improvements IonMonkey brings about remain to be seen. In the meantime, however, plans are afoot to create a fork of Firefox called the Tor Browser, bringing yet another player into the already competitive browser arena. For those who aren't already familiar with it, Tor (short for "The Onion Router") is a global network of servers that offers anonymous Web surfing by randomly routing traffic through multiple servers, thereby masking a user's true IP address. Currently, those who want to use Tor for anonymous surfing must install the Torbutton extension in their Firefox browser as well as additional Tor software. A toggle system allows users to surf anonymously or normally through Firefox, depending on whether they have the Tor software turned off or on. 'The Average User Is Horribly Confused' Now, however, the Tor Project wants to do away with the Torbutton as an independent add-on and offer a new, Tor Browser bundle instead. "The average user is horribly confused by both the toggle model and the need to install additional software into Firefox (or conversely, the need to *also* install Tor software onto their computers after they install Torbutton)," wrote developer Mike Perry in a blog post on Monday. "I also think that the average user is not likely to use this software safely. They are likely to log in to sites over Tor that they shouldn't, forget which tor mode they are in, and forget which mode certain tabs were opened under. These are all nightmare situations for anonymity and privacy." Maintaining the Torbutton software has also been difficult in the wake of updates and bug fixes in Firefox itself, Perry noted. For Linux, Mac and Windows Instead, the free Tor Browser will be a separate browser that includes Torbutton by default. "We will no longer recommend that people use Torbutton without Tor Browser," Perry explained. "Torbutton will be removed from addons.mozilla.org, and the Torbutton download page will clearly state that it is for experts only. If serious unfixed security issues begin to accumulate against the toggle model, we will stop providing Torbutton xpis at all." The self-contained Tor Browser bundle lets you use Tor on Linux, Windows or Mac OS X, and it can run off of a USB flash drive. It can be downloaded from the Tor Project's site. The video below explains the premise in more detail. Have you ever used Tor to surf the Web? Would you be willing to use a new browser to keep being able to do that? Please share your thoughts in the comments. |
| RIM embraces BlackBerry rivals to remain relevant (Reuters) Posted: 05 May 2011 11:12 AM PDT ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) – Research In Motion's decision to open its highly secure Enterprise servers to Apple and Android smartphones is a once-unthinkable concession that could save the BlackBerry maker's skin. RIM, once the dominant force in out-of-office communications for business professionals, had little choice but to offer to manage communications sent over rival devices. The key question is how much it can charge for the privilege. "On the one hand, this sounds like very bad news as RIM acknowledges implicitly that their Enterprise business is under attack," said Sanford Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu. "On the other hand, it might be the wiser thing to do in order to defend the service revenues of RIM that are about half their profits." The change comes as companies increasingly allow their employees to access corporate data from Apple's iPhone and iPad, as well as devices using Google's Android software, even though the rivals don't boast the same security features as RIM's trademark BlackBerry. It means workers accustomed to the features of competing phones no longer have to use their company-issued BlackBerry, viewed by many as clunky and outdated. To bridge the divide, smaller companies are now offering their own software and management services as an alternative or addition to a BlackBerry service. The upstarts can ease IT department concerns about leakage of confidential information. PLAY THE GAME RIM's decision, announced this week during the BlackBerry World 2011 conference in Orlando, Florida, aims to stop its big business customers from looking elsewhere to manage the growing mobile arsenal. The trade-off would likely protect RIM's sky-high margins for managing mobile devices, which previously came only from BlackBerrys that access corporate email, databases and other internal applications. Even so, Ferragu questioned how much RIM could charge businesses to manage an iPhone, for example, which would offer limited integration with RIM's infrastructure. The nascent device management sector was worth some $150 million last year and could grow up to 20 percent over the next three years, tech industry research company Gartner said in a report. RIM's move to play the game rather than stand aloof will raise the pressure on security software companies such as privately held Good Technology and Symantec, which help to beef up security credentials for non-BlackBerry devices. RIM has said the service, to be available later this year, would not offer its push capabilities or data-squeezing technology, nor its just-released Balance software that separates business and personal applications on a BlackBerry. The smaller middlemen say RIM's move will push them to be more nimble and focus on what sets them apart as the industry grows. "We like to think of ourselves as Switzerland and being able to play fair between all the different operating systems out there" said Robert Tinker, chief executive of Mobile Iron, a mobile device management company. Mobile Iron, with 130 employees, added 160 enterprise customers last quarter and expects that to grow sharply. "Mobile allows people to do work at home but also allows people to do home at work. Your personal and your work life intersect somewhere in the middle of your mobile device." Rival Boxtone said it manages 70,000 devices at its largest customer, a financial services firm. It expects to increase that to 300,000, a business-enabled smartphone for every employee, within two years. RIM's U.S.-listed shares rose 1.03 percent on Thursday to $47.86, well off their 52-week high of $70.54. (Editing by Janet Guttsman and Frank McGurty) |
Why use a 
| You are subscribed to email updates from Yahoo Tech News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment