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Newspapers see big demand from bin Laden news (AP) : Technet |
- Newspapers see big demand from bin Laden news (AP)
- Man unknowingly liveblogs bin Laden operation (AP)
- Saved by smartphones? Sites stay up despite spike (AP)
- Sony Online Entertainment loses account details of 24.6 million customers (Yahoo! News)
- AT&T caps broadband data for download-hungry subscribers (Yahoo! News)
- The Hangover Sequel Launches SCVNGR Hunt at 7-Eleven (Mashable)
- S. Korea police raid Google over data collection (AFP)
- South Korea police say probing Google over private data (Reuters)
- Bank card numbers stolen in PlayStation breach: Sony (AFP)
- Tech blog says Twitter bought TweetDeck (AFP)
- Twitter users ignore ban on posting Canada results (Reuters)
- Sony says 25 million more accounts hacked (AP)
- Apple’s new app design creates a no excuses approach to working out (Appolicious)
- Laptop Users Still Prefer USB Modems (PC World)
- Bin Laden story shows changing media nature (AP)
- How Apple Can Make iCloud Business-Friendly (PC World)
- Twitter seeks to buy TweetDeck for up to $50 million (Reuters)
- SAP Hopes Software Test-drives Lead to ERP Success (PC World)
| Newspapers see big demand from bin Laden news (AP) Posted: 02 May 2011 05:48 PM PDT WASHINGTON – When big news breaks, newspapers are in demand despite the immediacy of online news. Newspaper across the country including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The News & Advance in Lynchburg, Va., printed extra copies in anticipation of higher demand Monday, when headlines heralded the death of Osama bin Laden. Some newspapers stopped their presses to update their front pages with late Sunday's developments. The Washington Examiner, a free daily newspaper, ran a special edition Monday afternoon under the headline, "We Got Him!" The website for the Newseum, a museum in Washington devoted to journalism, was inaccessible for many visitors Monday as thousands of people flocked to it to see how newspapers around the world handled coverage of the terrorist leader's death. The website posts digital replicas of front pages of hundreds of newspapers every day. Paul Sparrow, senior vice president of broadcasting at the Newseum, said the museum often sees demand for newspapers' front pages spike when there are major stories in sports, entertainment or politics. Some of the biggest news events recently were the 2008 presidential elections and the New Orleans Saints' Super Bowl victory in 2009. The site was processing more than 2,800 requests per second when it became overloaded, he said. Traffic started to peak at 3 a.m. Eastern time when Europeans woke to the news. It grew again at about 6 a.m. Newseum even became one of the 10 most-talked about topics on Twitter for a while. Sparrow said Monday would likely be one of the busiest days, if not the busiest, for Newseum.org. Although websites allow people to get up-to-the-minute news, readers turn to newspapers because they offer a snapshot in time, Sparrow said. "It reflects an emotional moment in time versus an ongoing story that's constantly changing," he said. Stephen G. Smith, editor of The Washington Examiner, said readers like to relive major events, and newspapers offer a chance to stop and digest news, rather than chase the latest developments. Several newspapers promoted Monday's editions as keepsakes, just as many did the day after President Barack Obama's election and inauguration. Some newspapers, such as the Chicago Tribune, plan to make Monday's edition available for sale on Tuesday for people who missed it. A newsstand at the National Press Building in Washington sold out nearly every newspaper with the bin Laden story by noon Monday. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post were sold out on some newsstands, according to those newspapers. The New York Times doubled or tripled the number of newsstand copies it printed for several markets, including New York, Washington, Boston and San Francisco. The Washington Post said it printed an additional 70,000 copies, which is about double its normal print run, excluding home subscribers. USA Today added roughly 200,000. The Los Angeles Times printed 100,000 extra copies and kept printing plates in place "if we need to run more," said spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan. The News & Advance in Lynchburg added about 2,000 copies to its daily run of 28,000. The newspapers did not say how many were actually sold Monday. Newspaper websites were also seeing increased traffic. Visitors to The New York Times' website who were not already logged in could not access articles for about 30 minutes, as the site coped with an unprecedented surge in volume. At the Newseum on Washington's Pennsylvania Avenue, a newspaper from Pakistan joined the daily displays of newspapers from every state and Canada. Many visitors pulled out their cell phones to take pictures of the screaming headlines, especially the New York Post's: "Got Him: Vengeance at last! US nails the bastard." "It's exactly how New York feels," said Jamie Jablonowski, 24, of East Brunswick, N.J., who was visiting a friend in Washington. The two had joined hundreds of others at the White House when news broke Sunday night. She and her friend, Rachel Nomberg, 24, remember 9/11 from their junior high years. It's the first huge moment of history they can remember. "People talk about newspapers going out of style and the Internet taking over, but I do think it's really cool to have something tangible," Nomberg said. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser stood out for having one of the biggest pictures. Bin Laden's image filled nearly the entire page with the big headline, "Dead." Some newspapers were noteworthy for not having the bin Laden news at all, with news apparently coming too late for their deadlines. Some including The New York Times and USA Today had to redo their front pages after their press runs had already begun. Others delayed their printing; The Washington Post said its final edition wasn't finished until 2 a.m., hours past its normal deadline. Time magazine plans to publish a special edition Thursday to mark the occasion. The cover image of the new, 68-page issue will be the fourth in the magazine's history to feature a red "X" over a historical figure's face. The first time was on May 7, 1945, following the death of Adolf Hitler. The Newseum will save Monday's front pages and post them in the museum's permanent 9/11 exhibit, which also features the broadcast tower that once stood atop the World Trade Center. The Newseum also plans to set up a video booth over Memorial Day weekend for visitors to record their remembrances. Curators will create a special exhibit for the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks this year. Tyson Tuttle, 43, of Austin, Texas, was visiting Washington with his wife for their daughter's school trip. They plan to save copies of several newspapers and hope to snag a copy of the New York Post. "In 2001, when you woke up and you saw the buildings on fire and everything we've been through from then until now, it's a good end point," he said. "I hope that we can move on and start solving some of our other problems. But it's a good day to celebrate." ___ Barbara Ortutay reported from New York. |
| Man unknowingly liveblogs bin Laden operation (AP) Posted: 02 May 2011 01:51 PM PDT CAIRO – A computer programmer, startled by a helicopter clattering above his quiet Pakistani town in the early hours of the morning Monday, did what any social-media addict would do: he began sending messages to the social networking site Twitter. With his tweets, 33-year-old Sohaib Athar, who moved to the sleepy town of Abbottabad to escape the big city, became in his own words "the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it." Soon the sole helicopter multiplied into several and gunfire and explosions rocked the air above the town, and Athar's tweets quickly garnered tens of thousands of followers as he apparently became the first in the world to describe the U.S. operation to kill one of the world's most wanted militants. Athar did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment — he explained in another tweet that a filter he set up to stop his email box from flooding could be culling out requests for interviews. He was up to more 70,000 followers by Monday evening. "I apologize for reporting the operation 'unwittingly/unknowingly' — had I known about it, I would have tweeted about it 'wittingly' I swear," he tweeted after realizing what he had witnessed. Later, he gave an interview to Al-Jazeera's English-language news network via Skype as he sat in a cafe. When asked if he was scared, he said that he's from Lahore, "so I've had my share of bomb blasts." His first tweet Monday was innocuous: "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)." The noise alarmed Athar, who had moved to the upscale area of Abbottabad to get away from city life after his wife and child were badly injured in a car accident in the sprawling city of Lahore, according to his blog in July. Nestled in the mountains around 60 miles (95 kilometers) northeast of the capital, Abbottabad is a quiet, leafy town featuring a military academy, the barracks for three army regiments and even its own golf course. As the operation to kill Osama Bin Laden unfolded, Athar "liveblogged" what he was hearing in real time, describing windows rattling as bombs exploded. He questioned whose helicopters might be flying overhead. "The few people online at this time of the night are saying one of the copters was not Pakistani," he tweeted. Athar then said one of the aircraft appeared to have been shot down. Two more helicopters rushed in, he reported. Throughout the battle, he related the rumors swirling through town: it was a training accident. Somebody was killed. The aircraft might be a drone. The army was conducting door-to-door searches in the surrounding area. The sound of an airplane could be heard overhead. Soon, however, the rumbling of international events far beyond the confines of this quiet upscale suburb began to dawn on Athar, and he realized what he might be witnessing. "I think the helicopter crash in Abbottabad, Pakistan and the President Obama breaking news address are connected," he tweeted. Eight hours and about 35 tweets later, the confirmation came: "Osama Bin Laden killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan," Athar reported. "There goes the neighborhood." ___ Associated Press writer Eric Carvin contributed to this report from New York. ___ On the web |
| Saved by smartphones? Sites stay up despite spike (AP) Posted: 02 May 2011 03:59 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO – News of Osama bin Laden's death caused traffic to increase at popular U.S. news sites. Yet outages and slowdowns were less severe than during major news events in the past, meaning fewer people were stuck staring at error messages. Two likely reasons? Smartphones and the royal wedding in Britain. Dave Karow, a manager with Keynote Systems Inc., a San Mateo, Calif.-based company that monitors Internet traffic, said that smartphones helped spread the pain of throngs of people trying to view the same news sites at once. Smartphones typically deliver slimmed-down versions of the regular Web pages, which reduces the load on the sites. Last week's wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton may have also helped because many news organizations upgraded their Internet infrastructure, anticipating huge page views. Some of the extra capacity, which often can be increased or decreased based on a site's needs, may still have been in place. Karow said that of the largest news outlets tracked by Keynote, only about a third experienced significant delays. But those delays were resolved quickly, a change from earlier news events that caused an immediate spike in traffic, such as Michael Jackson's death in 2009. The average slowdown for regular Web sites was about five seconds, while for mobile sites it was less than three seconds, Keynote said. "It wasn't like sites were completely cratered for hours," Karow said. "Within an hour, most sites were in pretty darn good condition and were serving pages pretty darn well. But it was within that first hour when they were seeing the most stress." The crush of online traffic did cause some problems. Visitors to The New York Times site who were not already logged in could not access articles for about 30 minutes, as the site coped with an unprecedented surge in volume. CNN.com reported 88 million page views between the time the news broke late Sunday and 1 p.m. Monday. That's more than three times what it normally gets during that time. MSNBC.com said its page views were 38 percent higher than on an average Sunday. ABC News said its website and wireless applications had its largest hour of traffic in history from 11 p.m. to midnight Sunday. ___ AP Technology Writer Joelle Tessler contributed from Washington. |
| Sony Online Entertainment loses account details of 24.6 million customers (Yahoo! News) Posted: 02 May 2011 07:27 PM PDT
The credit card information was linked to European and Japanese accounts, with no U.S. card info confirmed to have been stolen. However, the 24.6 million SOE customer accounts covers the entire globe. Information obtained by this breach includes names, addresses, birthdays, phone numbers, usernames, and passwords. Along with notification of the breach, Sony outlined part of their compensation plan for those affected. MMO subscribers will receive 30 additional days added to their subscriptions, and an additional day for each day the network is down. The company also plans of offering assistance to anyone who wishes to enroll in identity protection monitoring, but has not revealed the details on how that program will work. For now, anyone affected by this new development should start protecting their identities by following the same links we outlined in our original guide to protecting yourself from the PlayStation Network debacle. [Via: Joystiq]
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| AT&T caps broadband data for download-hungry subscribers (Yahoo! News) Posted: 02 May 2011 03:29 PM PDT
Under AT&T's new plan — which imposes a 150GB cap on DSL accounts and a 250GB cap on U-verse accounts — subscribers will be notified if they approach the monthly data allowance. The policy, while unpleasant for customers who aren't happy to be watching their web usage, is fairly lenient. AT&T will only begin leveraging overage fees after a customer has exceeded the data cap 3 times and the company only expect its new limitations to affect 2% of its subscribers who gobble up a disproportionately large chunk of network data. Most "unlimited" mobile data plans offered by the major U.S. carriers have a data cap in the fine print. With bandwidth-heavy activities like streaming video through Hulu and Netflix sharply on the rise, it was only a matter of time before internet service providers started following suit with their mobile counterparts. While users do gulp down increasing amounts of online media, the vast majority of users don't use enough data to bump up against such provider-imposed data ceilings. Still, monitoring your own mobile or home internet usage is the safest way to be sure you don't get slammed with overage charges with your monthly bill. According to AT&T, you'll be able to monitor your own habits at MyUsage.att.com when the data cap officially kicks in for your area. More from Tecca: |
| The Hangover Sequel Launches SCVNGR Hunt at 7-Eleven (Mashable) Posted: 02 May 2011 04:39 PM PDT The Hangover Part II doesn't hit theaters until May 26, but consumers can start playing along Monday in a SCVNGR promotion at 7-Eleven. The convenience store chain is hosting a mobile scavenger hunt based on the application. To play, consumers download the app and then amass points by checking in to stores and completing tasks for points, like taking a picture with a Super Big Gulp featuring a character from the movie. Fans can cash in points for prizes including temporary tattoos, T-shirts, 7-Eleven gift cards, movie tickets and a chance to win a Las Vegas trip. [More from Mashable: Blast Ice With User-Controlled Water Cannon in Dunkin' Donuts Facebook Game] Another component of the 7-Eleven tie-in includes a Get Well Card app on 7-Eleven's Facebook Page where fans can make and send a card by choosing a message and still from the movie. The original Hangover, released in 2009, grossed more than $467 million, and there's a lot of interest in the sequel. The trailer for the film has gotten more than 3 million views on YouTube. [More from Mashable: 5 Tips for Closing a Sale on Facebook] SCVNGR, which just completed a promotion with Reebok, helped publicize a movie opening before. It ran challenges based on Eat Pray Love last year. Meanwhile, a brand that didn't tie in with The Hangover or The Hangover Part II is attempting to get in on the action as well. Hotels.com has launched an online promotion called Trip Your Face that lets you superimpose your Facebook profile picture and those of up to three friends into a game that, like the movie, challenges you to piece together the events of the previous night. This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| S. Korea police raid Google over data collection (AFP) Posted: 02 May 2011 08:16 PM PDT SEOUL (AFP) – South Korean police Tuesday raided Google's local office to investigate whether the global search company used its mobile phone advertising platform to illegally collect private data. Investigators were sent to Google's Seoul office to secure hard drives and other computer data related to its "AdMob" platform, a police cyber crime unit spokesman told AFP. "The raid followed allegations that Google's mobile advertising agency, AdMob, had illegally collected private data," he said. Google officials were unavailable for comment. In January police probed Google for collecting personal data while producing its Street View mapping service, which allows users to see panoramic street scenes on the Google Maps site. Google admitted its Street View cars, which have been cruising and taking photographs of cities in over 30 countries, inadvertently gathered fragments of personal data from unsecured WiFi systems. But it said it did nothing illegal in South Korea and state prosecutors have yet to press charges. The latest raid came a week after South Korea's telecoms regulator launched an inquiry into Apple to see whether the US giant's collection of location data from its iPhone and iPad users violates privacy rules. |
| South Korea police say probing Google over private data (Reuters) Posted: 02 May 2011 07:42 PM PDT SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean police said on Tuesday they had raided Google Inc's Seoul office on suspicions the Internet search firm's mobile advertising unit AdMob had illegally collected data, the latest setback to its operations in the country. The probe comes as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is considering a broad investigation into Google and reportedly alerting high-tech firms to gather data ahead of a probe of Google's dominance of the Internet search industry. A police official said on Tuesday it had raided Google's Korean office over illegal data collection by AdMob. "We suspect Admob collected personal location information without consent or approval from the Korean Communication Commission," the official said. A Google spokesman confirmed that the police had visited its Seoul office and told Reuters the company was cooperating with their investigation. Google has already been the target of a series of probes in Korea and the United States over data collected by its controversial fleet of "Street View" cars since last year. South Korea's top Internet portals filed a complaint with anti-trust regulators last month claiming Google was unfairly stifling competition in the mobile Internet search market of one of the world's most wired countries. (Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Additional reporting by Miyoung Kim and Jonathan Hopfner) |
| Bank card numbers stolen in PlayStation breach: Sony (AFP) Posted: 02 May 2011 07:02 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Sony on Monday reported that cyber assaults on its online videogame network were broader than first thought, with intruders getting away with credit and debit card data. Hackers breached Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) network as well as PlayStation Network and Qriocity streaming music service, according to the Japanese consumer electronics giant. "We had previously believed that Sony Online Entertainment customer data had not been obtained in the cyber-attacks on the company," the company said in an online update. "But, on May 1st we concluded that SOE account information may have been stolen and we are notifying you as soon as possible." Engineers and security consultants investigating the PlayStation Network breach discovered evidence that information was stolen from 24.6 million SOE accounts and from an outdated database containing people's financial data. About 12,700 credit or debit card numbers, along with expiration dates, belonging to people outside the United States may have been stolen along with 10,700 direct debit records of customers in Austria, Germany, Netherlands, and Spain, according to Sony. "We will be notifying each of these customers promptly," the Japanese consumer electronics giant promised. SOE is based in the Southern California city of San Diego. SOE is a network for people to take part in massive multi-player games such as "EverQuest" or "Star Wars Galaxies" online using personal computers. The SOE network was shut down after the data breach was discovered. Sony originally thought that SOE was not violated during a cyber assault on its PlayStation Network and Qriocity online music-streaming service. In an unusual Sunday press conference, Sony executives bowed in apology and said the company would begin restoring its shut-down PlayStation Network and Qriocity online services in the next week. "This criminal act against our network had a significant impact not only on our consumers, but our entire industry," Sony executive deputy president Kazuo Hirai said on Sunday. "These illegal attacks obviously highlight the widespread problem with cyber security. We take the security of our consumers' information very seriously and are committed to helping our consumers protect their personal data." PlayStation Network and Qriocity streaming music service were turned off April 20 in the wake of an "external intrusion," according to Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold. Sony believed that PlayStation Network, SOE, and Qriocity service users' names, addresses, birthdates, passwords, and email addresses were swiped. PlayStation Network connected PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles to online games, films and more. Players were still able to take part in games offline on consoles, but lost the ability to challenge others on the Internet, stream movies, or get other services. PlayStation Network launched in November of 2006 and boasts about 77 million registered users worldwide. Sony did not indicate whether it identified a culprit in the intrusion. |
| Tech blog says Twitter bought TweetDeck (AFP) Posted: 02 May 2011 04:11 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Twitter on Monday declined to comment on a renewed report that the microblogging service has bought a TweetDeck service used to "tweet" from mobile phones and tablet computers. "We don't comment on rumors," Twitter said in response to an AFP inquiry about the report, which first surfaced earlier this year. "We don't provide off-the-record background on rumors," Twitter's email statement continued. "We don't wink twice or release puffs of smoke about rumors." TechCrunch cited an anonymous source as telling the influential technology news website that Twitter bought TweetDeck from UberMedia in a stock-and-cash deal valued between $40 million and $50 million. California-based UberMedia is an Idealab company that has been gobbling up applications people use to synch Twitter messages to various devices. UberMedia early in February added popular Twitter "client" TweetDeck to Echofon, Twidroyd, and UberTwitter in a stable of applications said to control 20 percent of "tweets" fired off on any given day. UberMedia chief executive Bill Gross has described his operation as the leading independent provider of applications for reading and posting to Twitter and other social Internet platforms. |
| Twitter users ignore ban on posting Canada results (Reuters) Posted: 02 May 2011 07:43 PM PDT OTTAWA (Reuters) – Using a mixture of humor and bravado, Twitter users flouted a ban on reporting early Canadian election results on Monday, running the risk of a C$25,000 fine ($26,300) and mocking an outdated law. Canada has six time zones and voting is staggered, which means polls in the west are still open when results in the east starting coming in. To prevent the west from being influenced by earlier voting, the law bans any results being announced until the final poll has closed. The prohibition dates back to the 1930s, when radio was the medium to broadcast results. Critics say it makes no sense in the age of the Internet and social media. As the initial results started coming in soon after 7:00 p.m. eastern time, some users were decidedly cautious, using code words to describe the rise of the left-leaning New Democrats -- whose party color is orange. "My orange soda is fizzy," said one user, adding the hashtag "#notaresult". "If I used to have three oranges, and someone gave me four more oranges, would I go to jail?" asked another. Within half an hour several bolder souls had lost all sense of hesitation and were tweeting the results from the 32 seats in Atlantic Canada, some using the hashtag #tweettheresults. User nikadixon said "#tweettheresults is making me laugh. Stopping the flow is like plugging a broken damn with paper towel. Good luck with that." As results spread, user DustypupVI tweeted "Results from the east are online in so many places. Canadians have given Elections Canada the middle finger". Elections Canada, which has only ever prosecuted one person for breaking the law, only acts if it receives a complaint about premature release of data. "We're not monitoring it," said a spokesman when asked about the posting of results. But Elections Canada might pay more attention to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp, which mistakenly broadcast several minutes of results at 9:00 p.m., an hour before the final polls close out west. The screen suddenly froze and was replaced by a sign reading "Sorry, we're experiencing technical difficulties. Please stay tuned." "If our state broadcaster (CBC) can't even get election rules straight, doesn't it suggest time for a rethink?" asked Twitter user CFIB DanKelly. ($1=$0.95 Canadian) (Editing by Eric Walsh) |
| Sony says 25 million more accounts hacked (AP) Posted: 02 May 2011 06:36 PM PDT NEW YORK – Sony Corp. said Monday that hackers may have taken personal information from an additional 24.6 million user accounts after a review of the recent PlayStation Network breach found an intrusion at a division that makes multiplayer online games. The data breach comes on top of the 77 million PlayStation accounts it has already said were jeopardized by a malicious intrusion. The latest incident occurred April 16 and 17 — earlier than the PlayStation break-in, which occurred from April 17 to 19, Sony said. About 23,400 financial records from an outdated 2007 database involving people outside the U.S. may have been stolen in the newly discovered breach, including 10,700 direct debit records of customers in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, it said. The outdated information contained credit card numbers, debit card numbers and expiration dates, but not the 3-digit security code on the back of credit cards. The direct debit records included bank account numbers, customer names, account names and customer addresses. Company spokeswoman Taina Rodriguez said Sony had no evidence the information taken from Sony Online Entertainment, or SOE, was used illicitly for financial gain. "We had previously believed that SOE customer data had not been obtained in the cyber-attacks on the company, but on May 1 we concluded that SOE account information may have been stolen and we are notifying you as soon as possible," Sony said in a message to customers. Sony said that it shut service Monday morning to Sony Online Entertainment games, which are available on personal computers, Facebook and the PlayStation 3 console. Its most popular games include "EverQuest," "Free Realms" and "DC Universe Online." The company said it will grant players 30 days of additional time on their subscriptions, along with one day for each day the system is down. It is also creating a "make good" plan for its multiplayer online games. On Sunday, Sony executives bowed in apology and said they would beef up security measures after an earlier breach caused it to shut down its PlayStation network on April 20. The company is working with the FBI and other authorities to investigate what it called "a criminal cyber attack" on Sony's data center in San Diego, Calif. The company said it would offer "welcome back" freebies such as complimentary downloads and 30 days of free service to PlayStation customers around the world to show remorse and appreciation. PlayStation spokesman Patrick Seybold, in a blog post Monday, denied a report that said a group tried to sell millions of credit card numbers back to Sony. He also said that while user passwords had not been encrypted, they were transformed using a simpler function called a hash that did not leave them exposed as clear text. |
| Apple’s new app design creates a no excuses approach to working out (Appolicious) Posted: 02 May 2011 03:00 PM PDT |
| Laptop Users Still Prefer USB Modems (PC World) Posted: 02 May 2011 05:40 PM PDT Mobile data users still overwhelmingly prefer USB modems for keeping PCs and other devices connected on the go, but they may turn more to built-in cellular radios and portable Wi-Fi hotspots over the next five years, according to ABI Research. Despite the growing market for connected tablets and the availability of laptops and netbooks with high-speed cellular modules built in, worldwide shipments of USB modems still surpass embedded 3G and 4G modules by three to one, ABI said in a report Monday. But by 2016, that ratio may change to near parity, said ABI analyst Jeff Orr. Mobile operators including AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Clearwire give shoppers the option of buying a laptop or netbook with an integrated cellular module. Those computers let subscribers go online almost anywhere without using up a USB port or carrying around a separate piece of hardware that sticks out of the side of the system. Built-in modems lock buyers into one carrier or network technology for the life of the device, which most consumers and enterprises don't want, Orr said. They buy USB modems because they can be easily discarded when a better network comes along, he said. Prices are low and often there is no early termination fee for getting out of the carrier data contract. "That device becomes almost disposable," he said. One problem with built-in modems is that wireless technology changes faster than most users want to change computers. For example, the past three years -- a typical PC lifetime -- have seen the construction of both a WiMax and an LTE network in many cities around the U.S., offering 10 times or more the speed of 3G networks. The market for embedded modems is still fairly small, according to ABI. In 2010, only about 5 percent of laptops worldwide shipped with built-in cellular modems, Orr said. Among netbooks, 17 percent came with modems, but overall shipments were much smaller for netbooks than for laptops. Meanwhile, 40 percent of tablets came with such modems, but the overall tablet market was smaller still. But embedded modems could start to gain popularity as tablet sales grow and as the incremental cost of the modems shrinks, Orr said. One thing that could cut that price is shifting some of the cost to an activation fee paid only if the customer decides to sign up for service, he said. There are already laptops available from U.S. electronics retailer Best Buy with WiMax built in, with no requirement for the buyer to sign up for Clearwire service. Meanwhile, portable Wi-Fi hotspots that use cellular data networks may dwarf both embedded and USB modems by 2016, Orr said. These allow users to connect several devices to the 3G or 4G network simultaneously and pay only for one data plan. All that's needed on each device is Wi-Fi. Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com |
| Bin Laden story shows changing media nature (AP) Posted: 02 May 2011 06:14 PM PDT NEW YORK – A soldier in Afghanistan learned about the death of Osama bin Laden on Facebook. A TV producer in South Carolina got a tip from comedian Kathy Griffin on Twitter. A blues musician in Denver received an email alert from The New York Times. And a Kansas woman found out as she absently scrolled through the Internet on her smartphone while walking her dog. In an illustration of how the information world has changed, many people learned through media formats or devices that weren't available a decade ago that the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks had been killed. "It just kind of spread like wildfire online," said Stephen Vujevich, a student at Immaculata University in Pennsylvania. "It's amazing to see how social media played a part in it." Vujevich was at his girlfriend's house and both were on their laptops, when she said that many of her friends had updated their Facebook status to note bin Laden's death in Pakistan. He went to Google News to find out that President Barack Obama had scheduled an address to the nation. He searched other sites to get news and credited Twitter with giving him the most immediate information. Jaime Aguilar, a Denver musician, was at a friend's house watching HBO when he saw the news alert on his smartphone. A soldier who identified himself only as Carlos from Queens called New York sports radio station WFAN Monday to note that he and his buddies in Afghanistan learned the news not from commanding officers, but from Facebook. Angie Scharnhorst of Overland Park, Kan., had an early morning plane flight and if she wasn't carrying her smartphone while walking her dog Ruby at 2 a.m. CDT, said she probably wouldn't have heard the news until later in the day Monday. Ashlee Edwards, a content producer for the CBS affiliate WBTW-TV in Myrtle Beach, S.C., was watching "The Tudors" with a friend when she saw Griffin's tweet urging her to "turn on CNN now" because the president was about to make an announcement. It was before 10 p.m. EDT Sunday that many Washington-based reporters were told to get to work because the president would speak. They were not told why. At 10:25, Keith Urbahn, the chief of staff for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tweeted: "So I'm told by a reputable person that they have killed Osama bin Laden. Hot damn." The word spread quickly, even as Urbahn subsequently tweeted that he "didn't know if it's true, but let's pray it is." Mainstream news organizations began reporting that bin Laden was dead about 15 or 20 minutes later. Some, such as CNN and NBC, were tentative at first. Others, including ABC, were more definitive. Fox News Channel was joyful. "This is the greatest night of my career," said Fox's Geraldo Rivera. "The bum is dead, the savage who hurt us so grievously. I am so blessed, so privileged to be at my desk at this moment." The speed of social media struck some as an epochal moment in news coverage. "If anyone isn't a believer in Twitter as an amazingly powerful news vehicle, last night should convert you," tweeted Chris Cillizza of the political website The Fix. Twitter said that it saw its highest sustained rate of tweets. There was an average of 3,440 tweets-per-second from 10:45 p.m. - 12:30 a.m. EST, according to the site. At 11 p.m. EST, there were 5,106 tweets-per-second. Parody outraced news. Even before CBS had reported bin Laden's death, a tweet came from Eric Stangel, co-head writer on David Letterman's "Late Show": "Report: President Obama to announce Osama bin Laden is dead. I won't believe it until I see the death certificate." Internet traffic surged above normal Sunday night usage. Akamail Technologies Inc., which delivers about 20 percent of the world's Internet traffic, said that global page views for the roughly 100 news portals for which it delivers content peaked at more than 4.1 million page views around 11 p.m. EDT. CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC had nearly 15 million viewers between 11 p.m. and midnight Sunday when Obama spoke, led by CNN's 7.8 million. That time on a typical Sunday, the three networks are pulling in 1.7 million viewers, according to the Nielsen Co. At CNN, which reported at 10 p.m. that Obama would speak, it was another 45 minutes until the speech was connected to bin Laden, even as Wolf Blitzer provided some cryptic teases: "I have my suspicion on what the president is going to announce. Probably something we've been looking forward to, at least from a U.S. perspective, for quite a while." CNN's John King eventually reported the news. Blitzer conceded Monday that he had a pretty good idea what the news would be when sources assured him that the president's news was not about Libya. "I didn't report it because you don't report something like that based on a suspicion, based on a hunch, based on your journalistic gut instinct," Blitzer said. "You've got to get confirmation. And you can't just confirm from one source. You need at least two really excellent sources." It's no longer unusual these days for social media to reflect the first stirrings of a story, said Mark Kraham, chairman of the Radio Television Digital News Association and news director for WHAG-TV in Hagerstown, Md. Yet Kraham said that conventional media showed care and proper caution in reporting the story through. People would have been offended or hurt if news organizations had reported a story of this magnitude and it turned out to be false, he said. If social media outlets were quick on the story, many posts were quick to point followers to mainstream news organizations, or to pass on links — such as Griffin's advice to turn on CNN. Even Urbahn put the brake lights on a rapidly spreading trend: "Stories about 'the death of (mainstream media)' because of my first 'tweet' are greatly exaggerated," he tweeted on Monday. The Newseum, the Washington-based museum devoted to journalism, saw its website crash on Monday because of the crush of people who went to the site to see digital replicas of the front pages from newspapers around the world, a service it has offered since 2002. The site was processing more than 2,800 requests per seconds when it crashed, said Paul Sparrow, senior vice president for broadcasting. In New York, where nearly 3,000 people died at the World Trade Center, some of those front pages were blunt: "Rot in Hell" was the message on the New York Daily News front page. "U.S. nails the bastard," the New York Post said on its cover. There was a rush for information on mainstream online news sites, and sometimes it caused problems; The New York Times website was inaccessible for about 30 minutes shortly after the news broke due to the volume of traffic. ABC News said its digital properties had their busiest hour in their history Sunday night. MSNBC said its site had delivered 1.73 million streams of Obama's speech on Sunday night. Broadcast networks readied special reports on Monday, expanding their evening news broadcasts to an hour to cover the story. ABC News touted exclusive video of the blood-soaked scene at bin Laden's compound, obtained through a Pakistani-based producer for the network; ABC would not say how the producer got the footage. On Sunday night, the network had to backtrack from an initial Brian Ross report that bin Laden had been killed several days earlier along with about two dozen other al-Qaida operatives. Ten years ago, Aaron Brown worked all day at CNN, broadcasting from a rooftop with the smoke from the World Trade Center in the background. Many Americans got the terrible news from him that day; now he typifies how news delivery is changing in explaining how he first heard bin Laden was dead. "I was at dinner here and my phone beeped," said Brown, who now teaches journalism at Arizona State University in Tempe. ___ AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle and Associated Press writers Lauren McCullough in New York, and Brett Zongker and Joelle Tessler in Washington contributed to this report. (This version CORRECTS that Arizona State University is in Tempe, not Phoenix.) |
| How Apple Can Make iCloud Business-Friendly (PC World) Posted: 02 May 2011 05:00 PM PDT Apple's acquisition of the iCloud.com domain name may be for more than just its long-rumored cloud-based iTunes storage--and the discovery of the "Castle" codename in the latest beta release of Apple Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion"--point to an upgrade of its MobileMe cloud suite. MobileMe has been largely a consumer service since its initial launch as iTools. But with the Mac growing in the business world in general and the small business world in particular, Apple would be well advised to introduce features that would make it more attractive to business users. Go Freemium The term "freemium" probably sounds like the opening of "A Modest Proposal" for Apple, which generally does everything it can to protect and enhance its margins, already the envy of most computer-makers. But the "free for basic features, pay for more capacity or features" model has proven wildly successful when it comes to online businesses, from "social gaming" to collaboration and communications tools. How many small businesses today use Dropbox or Evernote for storing and sharing files among co-workers? And how many of those users pay for the upgraded edition? Evernote, for one, frequently says that the longer a user is with its service, the more likely it is to convert to the paid edition. Even Apple users, notorious for their willingness to pay a premium for a perceived value, have not flocked to MobileMe in massive numbers. If Apple lowers the barriers of entry back to "free,"--as iTools was in its early days-- and delights its users with a great experience, it will no doubt end up making more from iCloud than with the current "pay before you get in" model for MobileMe. Integrate iWork.co Remember when Apple launched its iWork.com site, designed to offer online sharing of documents created with its Pages word processor, Numbers spreadsheet and Keynote presentations? Don't worry; neither does Apple, judging by the way the service has stagnated recently. But the property could be a very valuable addition to iCloud--providing an easy way for business users to share key documents, including decent support for iPhone and iPad users. And online document sharing would be a welcome addition, too. Otherwise, iWork.com remains irrelevant against a variety of online document sharing and collaboration tools, most notably Google Docs. Find My Anything-Apple Apple's "Find my iPhone" feature is a diamond in the rough within the MobileMe package for small business users. The service allows users to register their iOS-based devices and can help locate a lost or stolen device by using the on-board GPS. But the real power--especially for small businesses that can't afford extensive third-party mobile device management packages--is the capability to lock down or wipe an iOS-based device remotely. It's not a bulletproof solution, but for small businesses concerned with the proliferation of mobile devices, it's a worthwhile bit of insurance. If Apple can find a way to extend that kind of coverage to its MacBook notebooks, it will have a service that will be both valuable and worth paying for for many small business owners. Make It Seamless I am a MobileMe subscriber back to its .Mac days. In the early days, its seamless integration with the Mac OS X interface was a big part of the reason it was attractive to me as a writer (and a small business in my own right). Today, that kind of integration has been largely matched by that offered by free or freemium services such as Gmail and Dropbox, so it's not as big a differentiator as it once was. In fact, Dropbox today syncs files between my computers and the cloud much more efficiently than does the MobileMe iDisk. Apple needs to innovate here to stay competitive. iCloud has to make it drop-dead simple to share my files, contacts, calendars and e-mail between the cloud and however many Apple devices I may work with on any given day. Up The Ante Even back when Apple bumped MobileMe up to 20GB of free online storage, there was grumbling that 20GB of online storage (shared between files and e-mail, no less) was too little for $99 per year. Fast forward a few years of dropping costs for storage and MobileMe is really lagging behind. However, if Apple can raise the storage to the point where users can use their iDisk for all of the contents of their Home Directory and make iCloud into "your entire desktop on the cloud"-- especially when coupled with the kind of tight integration the company is more than capable of-- it's probably got a winner in the SOHO market. Robert Dutt is a veteran IT journalist and blogger. He covers the Canadian IT technology solution provider scene daily at ChannelBuzz.ca . You can also find him on Twitter . |
| Twitter seeks to buy TweetDeck for up to $50 million (Reuters) Posted: 02 May 2011 05:30 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Twitter has made an offer to acquire TweetDeck, a popular third-party software application for using Internet social networking services, for up to $50 million, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The cash and stock deal could close in less than ten days, the source said, and would represent one of five-year-old Twitter's largest acquisitions to date. The deal would give Twitter an application that has won praise among sophisticated users for its slick interface and enhanced capabilities, while closing out a potential threat to Twitter's fast-growing service. TweetDeck had been in acquisition discussions with UberMedia, a Pasadena Web company founded by entrepreneur Bill Gross, in a deal that was valued at less than what Twitter offered. UberMedia has been amassing a collection of Twitter applications which some commentators have speculated could ultimately be used to create a rival social network to Twitter. The exclusivity terms of UberMedia's offer for TweetDeck expired in mid-April, allowing TweetDeck to respond to the Twitter offer, according to the source. A Twitter spokesman said the company does not comment on rumors. TweetDeck and UberMedia did not immediately reply to requests for comment. The deal comes a little over a month after Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey returned to the company as executive chairman to oversee product development. Twitter, which allows people to send 140-character text messages, or Tweets, to groups of so-called followers, is one of the Web's most popular social networking services, along with Facebook and Zynga. The service has become a popular communications tool for celebrities, politicians and businesses, and has played a role in several geopolitical events, such as recent uprisings in the Middle East. In December Twitter was valued at $3.7 billion in a $200 million funding round led by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Subsequent auctions of Twitter shares on the secondary markets have suggested investors were valuing the shares at more than $7 billion. Twitter's offer for TweetDeck is between $40 million and $50 million, according to the source, depending on how Twitter's shares are valued. News of the Twitter deal for TweetDeck was first reported by the technology blog TechCrunch on Monday. (Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic) |
| SAP Hopes Software Test-drives Lead to ERP Success (PC World) Posted: 02 May 2011 11:20 AM PDT SAP is hoping to make customers' ERP (enterprise resource planning) projects more successful with a tool that can visualize the application's ultimate look and feel without having to write code, the company said Monday. SAP has signed a global reseller agreement with iRise and will sell its software under the name SAP Application Visualization, according to a statement. The pact builds upon the companies' existing partnership. Traditional methods of documenting business requirements for SAP projects -- such as spreadsheets, text files and flowchart diagrams -- haven't changed much in the past 20 years, and are "nearly impossible" for business users to decipher, according to iRise. Further, business users often don't know what they want out of the software until they can interact with it, the company said. The visualizations provided by iRise mean users get their hands -- albeit virtually -- on the software much earlier, according to the company. This can save customers money by cutting down on application rewrites as well as simplifying training and "change management" activities. "iRise simulations are so close to the final applications that people cannot tell the difference between the two," the company's site claims. The visualizations can be easily assembled even by non-technical employees, it adds. Visualizations can be published for viewing by various workers, as well as delivered in a password-protected file. Electric utility National Grid recently conducted a pilot program with the iRise software, and after "overwhelmingly positive" responses from users, now plans to adopt it as a standard tool for project delivery, global CIO David Lister said in a statement supplied by SAP. If visualization tools live up to their promise, over time they might help lower the number of ERP project failures, which have long been a bogeyman for SAP and many other vendors. The use of such software for ERP is definitely on the upswing, according to Forrester Research analyst China Martens. For one, there's "a stronger push to try and get implementations right from the get-go, by getting a wider group of staff within a company involved in the early stages of design and piloting," she said via e-mail. ERP software also "remains too hard to use and often opaque in terms of process flow," she added. Visualization tools can help customers work out the kinks. Tools like iRise may also come in handy throughout an ERP application's lifecycle, not just development and testing, such as when companies plan major upgrades or decide to alter the focus of their deployments, according to Martens. But SAP customers have to decide whether the iRise software, which is being marketed as a "solution extension" and thus not included with annual maintenance fees, will be worth the additional money, said Jon Reed, an independent analyst who closely tracks SAP. The benefits would probably be greatest for pure SAP shops, he said. "If you're using SAP a little more selectively, then I think this tool is a little less useful." Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris's e-mail address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com |
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