Sponsoer by :

Friday, May 6, 2011

Is new Warner Music buyer a sucker or savant? (AP) : Technet

Sponsored

Is new Warner Music buyer a sucker or savant? (AP) : Technet

Is new Warner Music buyer a sucker or savant? (AP)

Posted: 06 May 2011 04:11 PM PDT

By RYAN NAKASHIMA, AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima, Ap Business Writer – Fri May 6, 7:11 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – Billionaire Len Blavatnik is spending $1.3 billion to buy Warner Music Group Corp. a decade into a steep decline in CD sales for the music industry.

That could make him a sucker in line for many more years of slashing staff, or a savant for buying the company at the start of a digital music revolution.

The deal values Warner Music at $3 billion including debt and cash — even higher than the $2.6 billion it sold for in 2004 when the music industry was twice as big.

Warner Music was formed in 1929 as a way for Warner Bros. Pictures to acquire the copyrights of music for films. Warner Bros. Records was created in 1958 to distribute movie soundtracks and went on to discover such artists as Neil Young and Grateful Dead.

Today, the company is home to Faith Hill, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Linkin Park and Josh Groban.

A decade-long battle with online piracy has devastated the industry. Although Warner is believed to have coped with it better than other recording companies, some industry analysts praised Warner's sellers for cashing out.

Standard & Poor's equity analyst Tuna Amobi calls it "one of the best deals in the music space of all time" — at least for the sellers.

His opinion of the buyer wasn't so rosy.

"Any time you have deep-pocketed investors in some glamor business, anything can happen," Amobi said.

It's possible Blavatnik's purchase, through the Access Industries company he controls, could turn out to be wise.

He's essentially buying into an industry that can't get much worse. And he'll be able to reap benefits from cutting duplicate jobs if he successfully bids for Britain's EMI Group Ltd., which Citibank is expected to sell soon.

Meanwhile, digital innovations could be preparing the industry for a revival.

Recent sales figures suggest the deal is well timed.

Sales of albums in the United States increased 1.4 percent in the first four months of the year to 146 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Although U.S. sales of CDs fell by 9 percent during the same period, that's less than the 20 percent drop in 2010.

If the gains continue, it could mark the first time that album unit sales, helped by digital downloads, have grown since 2004.

The lift didn't just happen because of one-time factors such as a slew of top artists releasing albums all at once, according to Nielsen analytics vice president David Bakula. Not even discounts can account for the gains; track sales rose even though most new ones now sell for $1.29 apiece, up from 99 cents a couple years ago.

Still, there's little question that people are paying less for music and expecting more. Total U.S. sales were just $6.3 billion last year, down from $14.3 billion at the peak in 2000.

People are demanding better ways to store, play and share music, on any device and at any time, and they don't want to pay a lot for it, said Adam Klein, the chief executive of digital music club eMusic.

Consumers' "perception of value has changed and will continue to change," he said. "The industry has got to move quite quickly to keep up with that or piracy will remain rampant."

Amazon.com Inc. has a new service that enables people to share, review and listen to music without having to store it on personal devices at all. Google Inc. and Apple Inc. are believed to be working on something similar.

Digital music is partly being held back by the huge costs of running music labels now and the high royalties they must demand from innovators, Klein said. Cutting costs will help foster the technology that will entice more people to pay for music.

It's a painful process that will undoubtedly mean more layoffs. Warner now has just 3,700 employees, down from 5,100 in late 2003.

Blavatnik, 53, doesn't face such hurdles blindly. The Russian-born investor was part of the group led by Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. that bought the company from Time Warner Inc. in 2004. He served on its board until 2008 and still has about a 2 percent stake.

Those investors slashed payrolls and took other measures such as signing artists to all-encompassing rights deals, which gave Warner Music revenue from concerts and merchandise to cope with declines in recorded music. They took the company public a year later to help recoup their investment.

Bronfman and partners Thomas H. Lee and Bain Capital have agreed to vote their combined 56 percent stake in favor of the deal. It would pay shareholders $8.25 per share when it closes. That's expected to happen by September.

Investors have already gotten back their $1.05 billion investment, plus 30 percent more thanks to special dividends and management fees over the years. The sale means they've nearly doubled their money.

"We believe this transaction is an exceptional value-maximizing opportunity that serves the best interests of stockholders as well as the best interests of music fans, our recording artists and songwriters, and the wonderful people of this company," Bronfman said in a statement.

Blavatnik may need to acquire other companies to achieve bigger cost savings to make the business work. Many people believe his decision to keep Bronfman as CEO means that Blavatnik is eyeing a bid for EMI, which Bronfman has tried and failed to buy in the past.

Citibank is looking to sell EMI after seizing it from Guy Hands' Terra Firma private equity group in February.

Other groups that lost out on bidding for third-ranked Warner — including No. 2 music company Sony Corp. — are also looking for parts that may be discarded from this deal, should antitrust regulators require that or should Warner need to raise cash.

In one possible scenario, Warner's new owner would try to buy No. 4 EMI in order to reap the benefit of slashing staff at a combined company. It would then shed certain music labels or get rid of one of the publishing divisions to satisfy regulators.

Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, ranked No. 1, is also looking to buy parts of Warner, EMI or both.

Easing worries about the sale is the fact that Blavatnik understands the digital business, said Fred Goodman, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine and author of "Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis." Blavatnik once licensed music recordings from Warner for an Internet and cellphone service he operated in Russia.

"Many of the people who were interested in buying Warner Music were not really interested in doing anything other than managing it down ... making the company smaller and smaller and taking profits out by shrinking," Goodman said. "I think Blavatnik's one of the few guys where you think that might not be the case."

Warner Music's stock rose 28 cents, or 3.5 percent, to close Friday at $8.18. It hit its 52-week high earlier in the day at $8.24, a penny short of the offer price.

T-Mobile USA posts record subscriber losses (AP)

Posted: 06 May 2011 12:10 PM PDT

By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson, Ap Technology Writer – Fri May 6, 3:10 pm ET

NEW YORK – T-Mobile USA lost a record number of subscribers in the first three months of the year, posing a conundrum for regulators as they look at whether to let AT&T Inc. buy the smaller carrier for $39 billion.

The argument against the deal is that it would eliminate one competitor in the wireless industry. But judging by results reported Friday, T-Mobile isn't competing successfully.

T-Mobile, the smallest of the four national carriers, lost a net 471,000 subscribers on contract-based plans. It was able to add subscribers through wholesalers, who pay much less than contract-signing customers, but it still lost 99,000 overall. Both figures are record losses for T-Mobile, the Bellevue, Wash.-based subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG of Germany.

"There's no bright spot in these numbers," said Roger Entner, a telecommunications analyst at Recon Analytics.

T-Mobile's quarterly revenue fell to the level it was at three years ago, just before it got a boost by buying a small regional carrier. In the same period, AT&T's wireless revenue grew 29 percent (it, too, was aided by some minor acquisitions).

AT&T announced the deal to buy T-Mobile in March. Regulators are expected to spend a year or more scrutinizing the deal before deciding whether to block it or allow it to proceed with substantial conditions.

Among the top four wireless carriers, the first quarter's subscriber results line up neatly in order of carrier size. Verizon Wireless, No. 1, did the best, followed in descending order by AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile.

It's a demonstration of the importance of scale in an industry where growth has slowed now that almost every American has a phone. The seven largest carriers provide service to 307 million devices in a country that has 309 million people.

To gain high-paying subscribers, phone companies have to poach them from rivals. The largest carriers have better access to the most attractive phones — the iPhone accounts for much of the pull at Verizon Wireless and AT&T. They also have more money to upgrade and expand their networks.

The No. 3 and No. 4 carriers, T-Mobile and Sprint, are losing subscribers. Sprint was ailing for years while T-Mobile did relatively well. Sprint is turning around, but its results are far from matching those of AT&T and Verizon Wireless. T-Mobile started losing subscribers a year and a half ago, a trend that seems to be accelerating.

That puts regulators who want to stimulate competition in a difficult position. If they block the merger to preserve competition, they risk watching T-Mobile decline into irrelevance.

"Almost the worst thing that can happen for the subscribers of T-Mobile is the merger not happening," Entner said. There's no way, he said, to force parent company Deutsche Telekom to invest enough in the network to make it competitive with AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

If regulators allow the merger, they would boost the overall health of the industry by hitching T-Mobile's fortunes to those of AT&T's. But consumers would have three national carriers to choose from, instead of four.

AT&T's arguments in favor of the merger are heavily based on the benefits of scale. It would be able to market its smartphone lineup, including the iPhone, to T-Mobile's customers. AT&T also promises to make more efficient use of T-Mobile's wireless spectrum, adding it to its own plans to create a new high-speed wireless data network.

AT&T also points out that aside from the national carriers, smaller, regional ones offer competition in most places. Two of them, MetroPCS Communciations Inc. and Leap Wireless International Inc., added more than a million customers combined in the first quarter.

The pattern of results in the first quarter plays straight into the hands of AT&T's arguments for the merger, said Rebecca Arbogast, an analyst who follows telecommunications issues in Washington.

"They don't need to show that T-Mobile is in decline, but it doesn't hurt," she said.

Although regulators are unlikely to draw conclusions from a single three-month period, continued poor performance from T-Mobile through the rest of the year might affect thinking at the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission, she said.

___

Peter Svensson can be reached at http://twitter.com/petersvensson

Sony CEO apologizes for massive data breach (AP)

Posted: 06 May 2011 04:20 AM PDT

By TOMOKO A. HOSAKA, Associated Press Tomoko A. Hosaka, Associated Press – Fri May 6, 7:20 am ET

TOKYO – Sony Corp. Chief Executive Howard Stringer apologized for "inconvenience and concern" caused by the security breach that compromised personal data from more than 100 million online gaming accounts.

In a blog post late Thursday, the head of the Japanese technology giant sought to reassure customers, saying the company is focused on investigating and fixing the hacker attack.

"We are absolutely dedicated to restoring full and safe service as soon as possible and rewarding you for your patience," Stringer wrote in his first public comments since Sony shut down its PlayStation Network on April 20.

Stringer said there is "no confirmed evidence" that stolen information has been misused.

He acknowledged criticism that Sony was slow to inform customers of the embarrassing breach, calling the issue a "fair question." As soon as the company discovered the potential scope of the problem, it suspended the network and hired technical experts to help, he said.

The network serves both the PlayStation video game machines and Sony's Qriocity movie and music services. The system links gamers worldwide in live play, and also allows users to upgrade and download games and other content.

Although Sony began investigating unusual activity on the PlayStation network on April 19, it did not notify consumers of the breach until April 26.

"I wish we could have gotten the answers we needed sooner, but forensic analysis is a complex, time-consuming process," Stringer said. "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 has said the attack may have compromised credit card data, email addresses and other personal information from 77 million user accounts. On Monday, it said data from an additional 24.6 million online gaming accounts also may have been stolen.

Along with assurances that it is strengthening security measures, Sony is enticing potentially wary customers with a "welcome back" program that includes complimentary entertainment downloads and a 30-day membership to its PlayStation Plus premium service.

It also launched an identity theft protection program for U.S. account holders. The service includes a $1 million identify theft insurance policy and will be free for 12 months after enrollment.

Sony signaled in a separate blog post Thursday that service could be restored soon. The company said it is in the "final stages of internal testing of the new system," though did not offer a specific timeline.

___

Tomoko A. Hosaka can be reached at http://twitter.com/tomokohosaka

Top in Tech: Sony loses account info for 24.6 million customers (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 06 May 2011 06:23 PM PDT

By Tecca tecca – 2 hrs 37 mins ago

Sony loses account details for 24.6 million customers Sony made headlines last week for a data breach of the PlayStation Network. This week Sony's online gaming network SOE joined the security scare, stating an additional 24.6 million customer accounts were compromised during the attack, with 12,700 European and Japanese credit card numbers stolen in the process. As compensation to the victims, Sony is offering 30 free days of service, as well as an additional day for each day the network is down. It will also offer assistance to those who want to enroll in identity protection monitoring.

Man accidentally liveblogs Osama raid As a U.S. Navy Seals team launched an assault on Osama bin Laden this week, leading to the death of the terrorist leader, Sohaib Athar — @ReallyVirtual on Twitter — was attempting to sleep nearby. The noise of the raid caused him to inadvertently liveblog the event, with tweets such as "A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty," and ending with a final tweet from the evening: "Bin Laden is dead. I didn't kill him. Please let me sleep now." Athar's tweets prompted several media outlets to contact him and even travel to his home to hear his account of the events.

/>Apple updates iMac line Apple updated its iMac line this week, adding Thunderbolt high-speed transfer technology and FaceTime HD cameras to the all-in-one computers. The computers are up to 70% faster than the previous model. They come in both 21.5" and 27" sizes, with prices starting at $1,199.

Apple releases iOS 4.3.3 Apple released iOS 4.3.3 this week in an attempt to address privacy concerns over the operating system's location tracking feature. Before the update, iOS kept track of all of the locations that users traveled with their iPhone or 3G iPad devices, backing up that information to iTunes as well as transferring it to a replacement device. With the update, the cache of stored information is now reduced; the information is no longer backed up to iTunes, and all of the information is deleted if a user turns off the Location Services option.

American Airlines testing in-flight streaming American Airlines is testing a service that would allow you to stream content to your own personal device over American's in-flight wifi. With the program, you would have access to a store where you could purchase content to view on your device during your flight. Pricing will be comparable to pay-per-view prices at home. The streaming service is currently being testing on 2 planes and is expected to roll out to all of American's planes in the fall, if testing goes well.

HP Veer on sale May 15 After being acquired by HP last year, the HP Veer will be the first phone to hit the market running webOS. The small, 3.5" smartphone is 4G-capable and has a 2.6" screen, a full QWERTY keyboard, and a 5-megapixel camera. You can pick one up on May 15 at AT&T for $100 with a new 2-year contract from the carrier.

/>AT&T challenging Groupon AT&T's Yellow Pages brand is getting into the deals game. A new program will offer a daily deal for a good or service at a deep discount, much like popular sites Groupon and LivingSocial. The Program will be launching first in Atlanta, Dallas, and LA, with more cities nationwide expected to be added in the future.

TV ownership down TV ownership in the United States is down, according to a study done by The Neilsen Company. In the recently study the company found that only 96.7% of American homes have a television set; that number is down from 98.9% of homes last year. Movement toward streaming options such as Netflix and Hulu, which can be displayed on a computer or laptop, is thought to have contributed to the decline.

Post by Emily Price
tech news roundup

Walmart to start selling Amazon’s Kindle e-reader (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 06 May 2011 05:28 PM PDT

By Tecca tecca – Fri May 6, 8:28 pm ET

amazon kindleWalmart just announced that it will be adding Amazon's Kindle to its stock of e-readers. The Kindle will join the two similar devices the mega retailer already carries — the Barnes & Noble Nook Color and Borders' e-reader the Kobo.

The Kindle, which has been available in select Target and Best Buy stores for some time now, will be sold at 3,200 Walmart locations across the United States. It will be priced at $189 for the wifi with 3G model, $139 for the wifi-only model, and $114 for the wifi with "special offers" model — matching Amazon's own prices.

E-books have been enjoying a steady growth of success and support over the past couple of years, with virtual bookstores offering an ever-expanding selection of books and features. New uses for e-books are cropping up every day, and soon you might even be able to check out Kindle ebooks at your local library branch.

Story by Jacob Bolm

[Via: Engadget]

(Source)

ebooks news

Google Experimenting With Redesigned Search Results Page [SCREENSHOT] (Mashable)

Posted: 06 May 2011 03:13 PM PDT

Ben Parr Ben Parr – Fri May 6, 6:13 pm ET

Google has begun testing a new design for its search engine results page, one that sports a new color scheme and a lot more white space. A Google representative confirmed to us the company is conducting one of its user tests. As you can see from the screenshot below, the redesign results page incorporates a tweaked color scheme. The greens, purples and blues are not as harsh as the current set of colors used on Google.com.

[More from Mashable: Demand Media Revenue Surges as Google Threat Lingers]

The bigger changes focus on separating and spacing out individual search results. There is simply a lot more white space around each search result and each link. Also, each search result is divided by a dashed line.

Combined, the changes are rather dramatic for a search engine used by millions of people daily. Google is gathering data on how people react to the new changes. Those numbers will determine whether or not these changes will move out of testing and become permanent.

[More from Mashable: You'll Soon Be Able To See Inside Buildings With Google Maps [VIDEO]]

This isn't the only Google experiment to make headlines this month. On Monday, the tech giant began testing Voice Search integration on Google.com.

Check out screenshot, and let us know what you think of the changes in the comments.

Screenshot courtesy of TwitPic, chanian

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Fusion of work and play shapes Lenovo laptops (AFP)

Posted: 06 May 2011 06:49 PM PDT

by Glenn Chapman Glenn Chapman – 2 hrs 10 mins ago

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Chinese computer colossus Lenovo is infusing its leading business laptops with more fun features as Internet Age lifestyles blur lines between work and play.

Lenovo was at the San Francisco headquarters of Dolby Laboratories this week to show off theater quality sound, rich viewing and quick graphics handling in a ThinkPad laptop computer line that has become a top choice for businesses.

"We are adding elements that are more relevant and interesting to consumers," ThinkPad marketing director Tom Butler said while demonstrating new features that included audio enhanced with Dolby Home Theater 4.

Long popular with big corporations, Lenovo recently launched ThinkPad models aimed at small businesses whose operators tend to shop for gear at retail shops and whose employees increasingly make work computers part of home lives.

"We see a clear merger of consumer and business in the small business space," Butler said.

"At the same time workers are using systems 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he continued. "They are taking them home and checking personal email, searching the Web, playing music videos and other multi-media."

Dolby software added to freshly released ThinkPad laptop models dramatically ramps up the quality of any audio from film soundtracks or music to Internet conference calls.

"Even though you are listening over stereo speakers we are able to create a virtual surround-sound experience," said Kevin Brennan of Dolby.

"We are trying to re-create the immersive, cinematic experience that you enjoy at the movies, but on your personal computer," he continued.

Lenovo is the first to put Dolby Home Theater 4 on a business computer, according to Brennan.

"Lenovo is walking the walk and talking the talk by incorporating new features," he said.

Digital lifestyle enhancements included game-speed graphics, vivid screens, and HDMI ports for routing films or other data-rich digital content to high-definition television screens or muscular speakers.

ThinkPad laptops had keys devoted to quickly launching multimedia and slot-loading for DVDs.

"There is going to be a coolness factor to Lenovo's brand," said Lenovo 'ambassador' Stephen Miller.

"Like houses and phones, a computer says something about who you are," he continued. "We understand there has to be this consumerization feel."

Lenovo is the world's top seller of business laptops and the fourth largest computer company overall, according to Miller.

Lenovo's Bill Dominici provided an early look at an Edge 91Z all-in-one desktop computer hitting the market.

All the computing hardware was built into a sleek 2.5-inch (6.4 centimeter) thick black monitor with a 21.5-inch (54.6 centimeter) screen boasting high-definition imagery.

The starting price will be $699 with a "rich configuration" to be sold for $1,100.

"It competes quite nicely against an Apple (computer)," Dominici said while showing a 91Z to AFP.

"The business employee is really starting to drive the decision around what they are going to have on their desktop or what notebook they are going to carry, whereas IT managers used to rule the roost," he added.

The Lenovo team was mum about any plans to field a tablet computer in a market dominated by Apple's coveted iPads. Butler said his company was tuned into the trend of tablets being woven into home and work life.

"The tablet is absolutely going to be part of the experience and the market," Butler said.

FCC Urged to Investigate Internet Providers' Netflix Tax--er, Broadband Caps (PC World)

Posted: 06 May 2011 04:15 PM PDT

Jeff Bertolucci Jeff Bertolucci – Fri May 6, 7:15 pm ET

More than half of U.S. broadband subscribers' connections are limited by a data cap, and two digital- policy public interest groups in Washington DC are asking the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the matter.

A May 6 letter to the FCC from Public Knowledge and New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative urges Sharon Gillett, chief of the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau, to "exercise its statutory authority to fully investigate the nature, purpose, and impact of those caps upon consumers."

[Read: When Unlimited Is Limited ]

The strongly-worded letter accuses AT&T of breaking past industry practice by attempting to "convert its data cap into a revenue source."

Just this week, AT&T slapped data caps on its home broadband customers. The ISP's DSL users now have a monthly cap of 150 gigabytes a month, while its U-Verse subscribers get 250GB. A user who exceeds the new usage caps three times will pay an additional $10 for every 50GB of data. By comparison, Comcast limits monthly data usage to 250GB.

Focus on AT&T

Broadband caps may undermine the FCC's own Net neutrality goals, the letter suggests, and could ultimately lead to "anticompetitive and monopolistic" practices. The two groups are particularly critical of AT&T's new data limits.

"Unlike competitors whose caps appear to be at least nominally linked to congestions during peak-use periods, AT&T seeks to convert caps into a profit center by charging additional fees to customers who exceed the cap," the letter states. And since AT&T will profit from users who exceed its cap, it has a "perverse incentive" to avoid raising the cap, even as its network capacity increases.

The groups also point out that AT&T's new caps seem suspiciously low: "It remains unclear why AT&T's recently announced caps are, at best, equal to those imposed by Comcast over two years ago. The caps for residential DSL customers are a full 100GB lower than those Comcast saw fit to offer in mid-2008."

Is It A Netflix Tax?

Let's call the broadband caps what they are: A Netflix tax. More accurately, they're a streaming tax designed to penalize users of third-party video services. Consider the evidence:

· A recent study by The NPD Group shows that Netflix's share of streamed or downloaded digital movies was a whopping 61 percent between January and February 2011. Comcast was a distant second with 8 percent of the market, while Apple, DirecTV, and Time Warner, all tied for third at 4 percent.

· An October 2010 report by Canadian broadband equipment supplier Sandvine showed that Netflix streaming accounts for more than 20 percent of downstream traffic during peak hours, and is most active between 8 to 10 p.m.

· Netflix is growing like gangbusters, and its nearly 24 million subscribers are less likely to rent movies and TV shows from the cable and satellite providers' on-demand services.

Well, if you're AT&T and Comcast, what would you do? The ISPs are probably miffed that Netflix, as they see it, is getting a free ride on their networks.

The solution: Data caps with overage fees. Since a high-definition Netflix video stream uses about 2GB of data per hour, it's not hard for AT&T DSL subscribers who watch a lot of online movies and TV shows to hit the 150GB monthly cap.

Data caps, particularly AT&T's, do look suspiciously like a video-streaming tax. And since most home broadband customers have few ISP providers to choose from, it's time for the FCC to investigate the situation more closely.

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

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Sony defends time it took to notify users of data loss (Digital Trends)

Posted: 06 May 2011 05:57 PM PDT

Trevor Mogg Trevor Mogg – Fri May 6, 8:57 pm ET

Sony logoAmid stories of a plan by hackers to infiltrate Sony servers for a third time, Reuters has obtained a letter from the electronics company's computer  entertainment president, Kazuo Hirai. The letter, dated May 5, was sent to Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, who had accused Sony of acting too slowly in response to last month's massive data breach when millions of users of the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services had their details stolen by hackers.

According to Reuters, Hirai wrote in the letter that the company had responded as quickly as possible in notifying users of the breach. Sony had sent out half a million e-mails an hour to more than 100 million affected users â€" but Blumenthal claimed this was too slow.

Defending their actions, Hirai wrote that the sending of the notifications took time because "these emails are not 'batch' emails. The emails are individually tailored to our consumers' accounts." The letter also stated that the company had made sure it complied with state laws by notifying customers about the problem through posts on its PlayStation blog.

Upon noticing that their had been suspicious activity on its network on April 19, the electronics giant contacted the FBI three days later. The first blog post relating to the outage and data theft came on April 26.

In the letter, written on the same day that Sony CEO Howard Stringer posted a letter of apology to affected users on the PlayStation blog, Hirai tried to put the incident into perspective. "What happened to us, though more vast in scope, has happened to many others before," he wrote.

According to Reuters, Blumenthal said on Friday that Sony had taken a "strong first step." Those PlayStation Network and Qriocity users who haven't deserted Sony and are waiting anxiously in their comfy armchairs for the return of services shouldn't have much longer to wait. In his letter on the PlayStation blog, Stringer stated that the service will resume "in the coming days."

Android smartphones widen lead in US market (AFP)

Posted: 06 May 2011 03:03 PM PDT

– Fri May 6, 6:03 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Smartphones powered by Google software widened their lead on BlackBerry handsets in the US market during the first three months of the year, industry tracker comScore reported on Friday.

Android smartphones dethroned BlackBerry in January by capturing 31.2 percent of the US market and that share grew to 34.7 percent by the end of March, according to comScore.

BlackBerry handsets made by Canada-based Research In Motion (RIM) lost ground in the quarter, ending March with 27.1 percent of the US market.

Apple was close behind RIM with iPhone running on the California company's mobile platform commanding 25.5 percent of the market, according to comScore.

Samsung was the top handset manufacturer overall with a 24.5-percent share of the US market, comScore said, followed by LG with 20.9 percent, Motorola with 15.8 percent, RIM with 8.4 percent and Apple with 7.9 percent.

According to comScore, 234 million Americans owned mobile devices at the end of March and the number of smartphones owned climbed 15 percent to 72.5 million.

Tech experts hold conference to discuss USPS reboot (Digital Trends)

Posted: 06 May 2011 08:21 PM PDT

Jeff Hughes Jeff Hughes – 38 mins ago

usps logoFormer Google VP Vint Cerf along with a handful of social media/e-commerce gurus are extending a helping hand to the snail mail service they've helped make obsolete. Together with some U.S. Postal Service decision makers, they'll be discussing the future of the USPS institution at a conference in June.

John Callan, a private and public sector mailing consultant, is organizing the PostalVision 2020 conference. He says, "The Postal Service is suffering dramatic losses due primarily to electronic substitution for conventional mail…The traditional postal business operating model is clearly not sustainable. We must ask, 'How should the Postal Service serve the future needs of the nation, if frankly, at all?'"

The United States Postal Service is currently in the process of cutting 7.500 administrative and postmaster positions in anticipation of the $7 billion it expects to lose come September, the end of the fiscal year. The Postal Service also plans to close a few thousand post offices in the near future in order to cut costs. The Postal Regulatory Commission says it is concerned that the Postal Service hasn't taken into account the impact and cost of closing these offices down.

Callan wants the conference to focus on long-term solutions rather than just solving the problems they have currently. Some of the topics that will be covered are: how digital communication alternatives have transformed the commerce and communication ecosystem, national information and security issues and transformative programs the Postal Service can explore solo or along with the Private Sector.

There's no exact word on which USPS executives will be attending but the confirmed guests include Vint Cerf as the keynote speaker, associate journalism professor and blogger at BuzzMachine.com Jeff Jarvis, Larry Weber and Chairman of the PRC Ruth Goldway.

Skype to Fix Wormable Bug in Mac Software (PC World)

Posted: 06 May 2011 04:40 PM PDT

Robert McMillan Robert Mcmillan – Fri May 6, 7:40 pm ET

Skype plans to push out an important update to its Skype for Mac software next week that will fix a big that could be leveraged by hackers looking to build a self-copying worm program.

Details of the flaw haven't been made public, so it's unlikely that anyone is going to write a worm any time soon. But the bug is serious, according to Gordon Maddern, the Australian security researcher who reported the issue to Skype.

"The long and the short of it is that an attacker needs only to send a victim a message and they can gain remote control of the victims Mac," Maddern wrote in a blog post. "It is extremely wormable and dangerous."

According to Skype, any attack that exploited it would involve sending a maliciously crafted message to someone on the attacker's Skype Contact List. The flaw does not affect Windows or Linux users, Skype Chief Information Security Officer Adrian Asher wrote in a blog post on the issue.

Skype will push out an update to its Skype for Mac software early next week, which means that all Mac OS users should be offered the fix within days.

But security-conscious people can already download a "hotfix" that Skype released on April 14. However, to date, Skype hasn't pushed this patch out to its users. Because "there were no reports of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild, we did not prompt our users to install this update," Asher said.

Mac users who want the fix now can click on Skype --> Check for Updates, or they can download the latest update from Skype's website. Otherwise they'll be prompted to upload the fix early next week.

Robert McMillan covers computer security and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Robert on Twitter at @bobmcmillan. Robert's e-mail address is robert_mcmillan@idg.com

Huge smartphone market growth isn’t helping T-Mobile (Appolicious)

Posted: 06 May 2011 12:55 PM PDT

Paddling for the next wave: Intel’s rush to crush ARM (Digital Trends)

Posted: 06 May 2011 06:35 PM PDT

Rob Enderle Rob Enderle – 2 hrs 24 mins ago

Intel 3D Tri-Gate transistors

Intel this week wheeled out its biggest weapon in the fight to take the mobile battle to ARM: "3D" transistors that use less electricity to produce more computing power for its next generation of processors. The technology is impressive, but if any company should understand how difficult it is to displace an entrenched vendor, it should be Intel. Historically, the advantages of being entrenched have historically worked for the Santa Clara company, not against it, making its planned upheaval a little ironic. Intel's approach to this smart device market would mirror what a competing company would have to do to displace Intel on PCs. This means Intel needs to create a strategy that could beat Intel if Intel were the entrenched vendor rather than ARM. The stakes are high because ARM is positioning against Intel at the moment, and this move is backed by Microsoft.

Intel effectively has two paths. One: out-invest and pound down the ARM vendors through a resource advantage, kind of like how Oracle beat PeopleSoft. Two: Redefine the battlefield, kind of like how Google beat Microsoft, and how Facebook appears to be beating Google. There are three approaches to attacking an entrenched foe that work, we'll look at these two legal ones.

The siege approach

Think of an entrenched vendor as you would an enemy inside a substantial castle, on high ground, with fortifications. Over the years, IBM and DEC, which were larger than Intel, made a run at that company and lost (Alpha and PowerPC). Sun, which was about the same size lost (SPARC). Transmeta which was much smaller, but arguably had a significant technology lead, lost. AMD has never been able to beat Intel decisively despite over a decade of trying, and substantial support from PC and server vendors.

AMD came the closest because it initially started out being plug compatible, which meant they were the closest of all the vendors to fighting Intel on a level playing field. That makes AMD's move away from plug compatibility likely that company's biggest historic mistake and Intel's best strategic insurance against AMD.

To go against an entrenched vendor, you need to come to the battle with significantly superior resources. The rule of thumb is a 10 times the magnitude of what your fortified foes have. This is because you have to be able to not only displace their forces but overcome their defenses, or in this case the entrenched eco-system. In a castle under siege, that means either outlasting the folks inside or finding a way to get over or through the defended walls.

With products, that means getting people to buy what you make, so you have to fund marketing as is well. If buyers don't see better results in a new product, they are likely to continue to buy what they know. In the mobile space, that means buying ARM-based products. No one has beaten Intel because no one has adequately resourced the effort. They have displaced Intel in products, but they've never displaced Intel in the minds of the majority of PC buyers. You have to do both.

Against Intel, you'd need a battle chest 10 times the combined budgets of Intel and its partners for the targeted product set. (You are allowed to use the budgets from partners to assure success.) No one has ever come close, and no one has been successful. Intel needs to come with the same level of battle chest, or 10 times the resources of the combined ARM vendors and partners, though it could also use its partners to get there. It is interesting to note that both ARM and Intel have many of the same partners.

Even with all of the money and resources, Intel would have to execute at an equal or better level to assure success. One advantage here is that ARM vendors aren't organized. Though I wonder if announcements like this one might, unfortunately for Intel, fix that.

The flanking approach

The first smartphone was the IBM Simon, which came to market in 1992, and failed. Palm was the first to be successful with a smartphone (the Kyocera 6035) nearly a decade later, and it doesn't exist as a separate company anymore. That was displaced by the Handspring Treo, and Handspring doesn't exist anymore either. In fact, a decade ago none of the successful companies today had successful smartphones. Two years ago, the hot product was a netbook, not an iPad, and tablets where generally thought to be a failed early 2000s initiative by Microsoft (even though they too were started in the early 90s by companies that mostly don't exist anymore). Apple beat the netbook not by building a better netbook, but by building something that folks saw as distinctly different. It built an iPod, iPhone, and iPad, all of which skirted right around Microsoft.

Right now, a significant and growing number of people want to buy iPads more than they want to buy new PCs. In a role reversal, Microsoft is chasing Apple in this space, much like Intel has become the underdog at the same time with ARM.

In short, the vastly less expensive path for Intel is not to displace ARM, but to replace the smartphone and tablet with something people see as superior. Given neither product is perfect (no product is) and that both products will eventually be replaced regardless, this path simply requires a better roadmap, and the ability to get the buyers on it.

Brute force, or thinking ahead?

Intel has announced significant technology advancement with its 3D chip, which really has nothing to do with 3D by the way (hello Intel messaging). But given ARM's entrenched status on mobile devices, Intel either needs to significantly outspend its enemy, or figure out where the market will be going next, and ride that wave like it rode the PC wave.

If Intel gets this right, it could see success and growth that rivals or even exceeds its success in the 90s. If it gets this wrong, it will likely become the Palm or Treo at some point, as the currently building technology wave passes it by. In the end, for Intel to be successful against ARM, it has to do what no Intel competitor has ever done, and roll over or around an entrenched chip technology. If Intel can make this happen, the company will get near historic bragging rights. If it doesn't, it will at least be in good company with a lot of brands it historically defeated. If that doesn't define irony, I don't know what does.

Oh, by the way, the illegal third approach is sabotage, which I think some folks may be using but I don't advocate.

Warner Music sold for $1.3 bil (Investor's Business Daily)

Posted: 06 May 2011 03:41 PM PDT

– Fri May 6, 6:41 pm ET

The world's No. 3 recording company is being acquired by Access Industries, which agreed to pay $8.25 a share and take on $2 bil in debt as well as $320 mil in cash. The deal comes as CD sales continue to drop and digital sales have flattened. Warner Music Group (NYSE:WMG - News), known for artists like Eric Clapton and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is now seen making steep cuts, after trimming its workforce to 3,700 from 5,100 in 2003. Shares rose 3.5% to 8.18.

Artists switch from easels to touch-screens (AFP)

Posted: 06 May 2011 06:46 PM PDT

– 2 hrs 13 mins ago

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Autodesk released a major update to SketchBook Pro software that has artists switching from pencils and paints to virtual canvasses on iPhones or iPad tablet computers.

SketchBook Pro software upgrades were crafted to take advantage of improved features in second-generation iPads recently unleashed on the world by California-based Apple.

"This is the biggest release we've had since last year when the iPad launched," SketchBook product line manager Chris Cheung on Friday said at a Digital Canvas exhibit of art made using the application.

"It is more productive and, as a by-product, it is more fun as well."

The software lets people blend and texture colors as they would with oil paints or other mediums. Movements of fingers on gadget touch-screens are converted into virtual brush strokes.

"This way, I have my whole art studio in my pocket," said San Francisco artists Julia Kay, whose works were among those in the exhibit.

"If I get bored I can lean against a wall and make drawings in full color, every texture, and I don't have to clean-up afterward."

Works by 82 artists were featured in the Digital Canvas exhibit in the Autodesk Gallery in downtown San Francisco.

Along with professional artists there were SketchBook users whose day jobs ranged from grade school student and farmer to surgeon and aerospace technician.

Matthew Hall of Britain described studied at Winchester School of Art and Chichester University but veered away from painting for a decade while he focused on video. The he saw artists working on iPads.

"Now I take my iPad everywhere, using the SketchBook Pro app to capture what's happening around me or what's banging around in my head at the time," Hall said in a description of his work on display at Digital Canvas.

"Like the primal cave painters we are just creating lines on a surface with our finger," he continued. "I haven't enjoyed doodling this much since I was a child."

Jay Shuster, art director for the "Cars" film sequel about to be released by Pixar Animation Studios, said he did almost all the character design using Sketchbook Pro and credited the software with enabling him to work fast.

"Every day, ever hour counted," Shuster said. "I think, in a way, going digital allowed us to finish 'Cars 2' in the time we did."

He worked with SketchBook software on a Pixar-supplied tablet made by Fujitsu. California-based Autodesk specilizes in 2-D and 3-D design software.

SketchBook Pro versions tailored for iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch devices were priced at $5 at Apple's online App Store.

Autodesk also upgraded a version of the software tailored for gadgets powered by Google-backed Android software, according to Cheung.

Mozilla resists request to remove Firefox tool (AP)

Posted: 06 May 2011 02:51 PM PDT

– Fri May 6, 5:51 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Mozilla, the non-profit developer of the Firefox Web browser, is holding off on complying with a government request to remove a software tool meant to circumvent federal efforts at curbing Internet piracy.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security, has been seizing the Internet addresses of sites accused of piracy, so that visitors can't reach them by typing in those domain names. The sites, however, still exist under other addresses.

The MafiaaFire tool for Firefox, developed by an outside party but available through Mozilla, seeks to automatically match seized names with the alternate addresses, similar to a mail-forwarding service, so that visitors can reach the sites.

Mozilla General Counsel Harvey Anderson said the DHS asked Mozilla to remove MafiaaFire from a site where Firefox users can add functions to the browser.

Anderson said the group is awaiting more information from the government before taking action. It wants to know whether the tool is illegal, and whether it is legally obligated to take it down.

Anderson said Mozilla complies with legal mandates, but hasn't received any court order, and the DHS hasn't responded to Mozilla's questions. The order raises questions about when companies should agree to government censorship requests, Anderson said in a blog post Thursday.

Anderson said that the government is alleging that the MafiaaFire tool circumvents a court order to disable sites that distribute copyright-protected content, including live sporting and pay-per-view events.

In a statement, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it "does not comment publicly on our interaction with Internet intermediaries on intellectual property theft enforcement issues."

Tablets and enterprise are focal points for Android (Appolicious)

Posted: 06 May 2011 08:16 AM PDT
at 9:41 PM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

My Blog List