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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

AT&T, T-Mobile pledge to bring 5,000 jobs to US (AP) : Technet

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AT&T, T-Mobile pledge to bring 5,000 jobs to US (AP) : Technet

AT&T, T-Mobile pledge to bring 5,000 jobs to US (AP)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 09:09 PM PDT

By JOELLE TESSLER, AP Technology Writer Joelle Tessler, Ap Technology Writer – 47 mins ago

WASHINGTON – AT&T Inc. is pledging to bring 5,000 wireless call center jobs, currently based abroad, back to the U.S. if it is allowed to proceed with its proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA.

The company is also promising that the merger would not result in any job losses for AT&T and T-Mobile USA wireless call center employees who are on the payroll in the U.S. when the deal closes.

AT&T's commitment to repatriate jobs comes as antitrust regulators at the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department ramp up their reviews of a combination that is certain to reshape the wireless industry's landscape.

AT&T, the nation's second-largest wireless carrier, is seeking government approval to buy T-Mobile USA, the fourth-largest, from Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG. The cash-and-stock transaction would catapult AT&T past Verizon Wireless to become the nation's largest wireless provider, and leave Sprint Nextel Corp. as a distant number three.

Although AT&T said it has not yet determined where the new U.S.-based jobs would be located, it promised they would offer "highly competitive wages and benefits." The company hopes this message will carry weight in Washington, where job creation is a top priority for the Obama administration as the nation faces the possibility of a recession heading into the 2012 election.

"At a time when many Americans are struggling and our economy faces significant challenges, we're pleased that the T-Mobile merger allows us to bring 5,000 jobs back to the United States and significantly increase our investment here," AT&T Chairman and Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said in a statement.

Beyond the call center operations, AT&T has said it does anticipate some workforce duplication after the deal closes, but expects to make reductions largely through natural attrition.

Opponents of the proposed merger, including public interest groups and Sprint, insist it will lead to fewer choices and higher prices for consumers by eliminating a carrier that offers lower rates and less expensive plans than competitors. They also fear the deal could jeopardize Sprint's future as an independent company and ultimately lead to a wireless industry duopoly.

AT&T and T-Mobile argue that the acquisition would benefit consumers. They say it would lead to fewer dropped and blocked calls and faster mobile Internet connections for subscribers by allowing the companies to combine their limited wireless spectrum holdings at a time when both are running out of airwaves to handle mobile apps, online video and other bandwidth-hungry services.

They also say the transaction would position AT&T to cover more than 97 percent of the U.S. population with its new high-speed, fourth-generation wireless service.

Finding more airwaves to keep up with the explosive growth of wireless broadband services and ensuring that all Americans have access to high-speed Internet connections are both top priorities of the FCC and the Obama administration.

WikiLeaks site comes under attack (AP)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 06:38 PM PDT

By CASSANDRA VINOGRAD and MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Cassandra Vinograd And Matthew Lee, Associated Press – Tue Aug 30, 9:38 pm ET

LONDON – The WikiLeaks website crashed Tuesday in an apparent cyberattack after the accelerated publication of tens of thousands of once-secret State Department cables by the anti-secrecy organization raised new concerns about the exposure of confidential U.S. embassy sources.

"WikiLeaks.org is presently under attack," the group said on Twitter late Tuesday. One hour later, the site and the cables posted there were inaccessible.

WikiLeaks updated its Twitter account to say that it was "still under a cyberattack" and directed followers to search for cables on a mirror site or a separate search system, cablegatesearch.net.

The apparent cyberattack comes after current and former American officials said the recently released cables — and concerns over the protection of sources — are creating a fresh source of diplomatic setbacks and embarrassment for the Obama administration. It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.

The Associated Press reviewed more than 2,000 of the cables recently released by WikiLeaks. They contained the identities of more than 90 sources who had sought protection and whose names the cable authors had asked to protect.

Officials said the disclosure in the past week of more than 125,000 sensitive documents by WikiLeaks, far more than it had earlier published, further endangered informants and jeopardized U.S. foreign policy goals. The officials would not comment on the authenticity of the leaked documents but said the rate and method of the new releases, including about 50,000 in one day alone, presented new complications.

"The United States strongly condemns any illegal disclosure of classified information," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. "In addition to damaging our diplomatic efforts, it puts individuals' security at risk, threatens our national security and undermines our effort to work with countries to solve shared problems. We remain concerned about these illegal disclosures and about concerns and risks to individuals.

"We continue to carefully monitor what becomes public and to take steps to mitigate the damage to national security and to assist those who may be harmed by these illegal disclosures to the extent that we can," she told reporters.

Neither Nuland nor other current officials would comment on specific information contained in the compromised documents or speculate as to whether any harm caused by the new releases would exceed that caused by the first series of leaks, which began in November and sent the administration into a damage-control frenzy.

WikiLeaks fired back at the criticism even as its website came under cyberattack.

"Dear governments, if you don't want your filth exposed, then stop acting like pigs. Simple," the group posted on Twitter.

Some officials noted that the first releases had been vetted by media organizations who scrubbed them to remove the names of contacts that could be endangered. The latest documents have not been vetted in the same way.

"It's picking at an existing wound. There is the potential for further injury," said P.J. Crowley, the former assistant secretary of state for public affairs who resigned this year after criticizing the military's treatment of the man suspected of leaking the cables to WikiLeaks. "It does have the potential to create further risk for those individuals who have talked to U.S. diplomats. It has the potential to hurt our diplomatic efforts and it once again puts careers at risk."

Crowley set up a crisis management team at the State Department to deal with the matter and said officials at the time went through the entire collection of documents they believed had been leaked and warned as many named sources as possible, particularly in authoritarian countries, that their identities could be revealed. A handful of them were relocated, but Crowley said others may have been missed and some could not be contacted because the effort would have increased the potential for exposure.

The new releases "could be used to intimidate activists in some of these autocratic countries," he said. He said he believed that "any autocratic security service worth its salt" probably already would have the complete unredacted archive of cables but added that the new WikiLeaks releases meant that any intelligence agency that did not "will have it in short order."

WikiLeaks insisted it was "totally false" that any WikiLeaks sources have been exposed and appeared to suggest the group itself was not even responsible for releasing unredacted cables.

The group seemed to taunt U.S. officials and detractors in yet another Twitter message late Tuesday, asking what they will do "when it is revealed which mainstream news organization disclosed all 251k unredacted cables."

The AP review included all cables classified as "confidential" or "secret," among the more than 50,000 recently released by WikiLeaks. In them, the AP found the names of at least 94 sources whose identities the cable authors asked higher-ups to "protect" or "strictly protect." Several thousand other of the recently published cables were not classified and did not appear to put sources in jeopardy.

The accelerated flood of publishing partly reflects the collapse of the unusual relationships between WikiLeaks and news organizations that previously were cooperating with it in exchange for being given copies of all the uncensored State Department messages.

Initially, WikiLeaks released only a trickle of documents at a time from a trove of a quarter-million, and only after considering advice from five news organizations with which it chose to share all of the material. The news organizations advised WikiLeaks on which documents to release publicly and what redactions to make to those documents. The Associated Press was not among those news organizations.

In recent months, those relationships have soured noticeably. WikiLeaks complained Tuesday that a reporter who wrote about the group's efforts for The New York Times, one of the news organizations it was working with closely, was a "sleazy hack job." It also said a reporter for Guardian in Britain, another of its former partners in the release of documents, had exhibited a "tawdry vendetta" against WikiLeaks.

___

Associated Press Matthew Lee reported from Washington.

Startup tries to put sociability back into movies (AP)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 11:53 AM PDT

By JAKE COYLE, AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle, Ap Entertainment Writer – Tue Aug 30, 2:53 pm ET

NEW YORK – Streaming movies might not yet have the equivalent of a theater experience, with roaring crowds crunching on popcorn, but they are getting more social.

Hollywood studios have increasingly looked to social media and Facebook, in particular, as a distribution platform. The early inroads have been experimental, but turning social media users into audiences is a bright new hope for a Hollywood looking to counter sagging DVD sales.

On Tuesday, the social streaming startup flickme will launch a library of more than 1,000 movies for rent or purchase with Facebook and Twitter integration. It already has some notable backers: Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. are participating and noted venture capital firm Sequoia capital has provided funding.

Founded by Mitch Galbraith and Mark Smallcombe, flickme marries the communal element of movies with the social element of the Web. It began with an observation that the movie streaming experiences currently available to users, such as the popular subscription service Netflix, aren't dynamic.

"We sort of had this epiphany where we said, `This is really transactional and impersonal,'" says Galbraith, CEO of flickme. "You sort of have this environment where you find a movie and watch it and go about your business, but there wasn't much that was very social or fun about the process.

"With all of these inherent social elements of movies as an entertainment form, it was amazing that digital movies had lost that personal, social element."

Though studios have long utilized Facebook as a promotional tool, they only earlier this year began using it to offer movies for rent. In just the last few months, it's been a veritable land rush into the social network.

In August, Miramax's eXperience went live, offering 20 titles to rent on Facebook. Universal Pictures recently launched its Social Theater application with "The Big Lebowski." Paramount Pictures stepped into the space, making its "Jackass" films available for rental through Facebook. Warner Bros. made the first entry, making a handful of films including "The Dark Knight" available to watch for 30 Facebook credits, or $3.

Thomas Gewecke, president of Warner Bros. digital distribution, said he's been encouraged by the experiment.

"We're very excited and interested in Facebook as a potential distribution channel for our content," says Gewecke. "(flickme) leverages the strength of the social network and it's also economically interesting to the movie studios. We feel as though there's lots of room for experimentation."

The most notable distinction to flickme is its "sharable discount" feature, which encourages recommendations among friends. Though new releases are offered for $3.99 and older films for $2.99, users can rent a film for $1.49 if a friend recommends it. The discount works for up to 10 friends via Facebook and Twitter, provided the original viewer pays regular price. About a third of the films on flickme have this offer.

"We feel like a lot of users have the perspective that if they spend tons of time trying to find a movie, they struggle to find what they want, and they may end up watching one that they didn't love, that waste of time is worth way more than a couple of bucks," says Galbraith.

For studios, social media recommendations offer an appealing way to crowd-source the marketing of their catalog.

"After we've released a title and the heat has died down on it some and it's otherwise just sort of out there in the ether, social networks are great opportunities, we think, for consumers to market our titles to one another," says John Calkins, executive vice president of global digital and commercial innovation at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Facebook said in a statement: "Several movie studios and other content providers have chosen to build streaming moving applications on Facebook. We're intrigued and enthusiastic about companies building social experiences that help people connect through entertainment content."

Based in San Mateo, Calif., flickme has a staff of 15. Galbraith and Smallcombe have previously collaborated on two startups and both come from the comedy website Funny or Die. From its founding until January, Galbraith was chief operating officer and Smallcombe was vice president of product and engineering.

The two hope to mirror Funny or Die's combination of Hollywood and Internet culture. Galbraith is working to make more studios and content holders partners and hopes to add more movies to its library. Flickme, Warner Bros. and Sony declined to give financial details of their arrangement.

"It remains to be seen how much people think about movies through social media," says Calkins. "But at least now we're starting to see potentially a proposition that's multistudio, multibrand with a model that's designed to leverage the power of the social network in a way that brings something fresh."

___

Online:

http://flickme.com

Buy your own Batmobile on eBay for $640,000 (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 06:11 PM PDT

Ferrofluid races amidst soap bubbles in astounding time-lapse video (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 06:05 PM PDT

Social TV by the Numbers: VMAs Edition [INFOGRAPHIC] (Mashable)

Posted: 29 Aug 2011 06:21 PM PDT

Christina Warren Christina Warren – Mon Aug 29, 9:21 pm ET

The 2011 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) broke records on both MTV and Twitter. At 10:35pm ET, Beyonce's live performance and baby bump reveal generated 8,868 tweets per second. The guys at Trendrr put together this infographic that breaks down the social TV aspect of the award show. The 2011 VMAs generated more than 5.5 million social media mentions on Sunday, August 28, 2011. The majority of those mentions were from Twitter.

[More from Mashable: MTV Video Music Awards 2011: 5 Captivating Moments [VIDEOS]]

The overwhelming amount of mobile device usage indicates that MTV's second-screen approach with the VMAs really worked. Trendrr also tells us that the fact that "Beyonce" didn't even register as one of the most popular hashtags shows that the #VMA branding was working successfully. According to Trendrr, this "shows the real maturity of hashtags as vehicle to drive connected TV conversations."

It's interesting to see the breakdown across networks Facebook and GetGlue and to see what times activity was at its peak.

[More from Mashable: How Speech Recognition Is Changing Our World [INFOGRAPHIC]]

This story originally published on Mashable here.

eBay pins China hopes (Reuters)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 08:36 PM PDT

By Lee Chyen Yee and Argin Chang Lee Chyen Yee And Argin Chang – 1 hr 21 mins ago

HONG KONG (Reuters) – eBay Inc expects sales from large exporters in China to maintain growth at 30-40 percent annually, with the e-commerce giant seeking acquisition opportunities as part of efforts to expand its footprint in the fast-growing market.

While open to acquisition opportunities in China, eBay finds the overall market frothy.

"We continue to look but only the right opportunity at the right price will make us pull the trigger. As you know, in China, it's overheated right now," eBay's Asia-Pacific Managing Director Jay Lee told Reuters.

With total internet users at 470 million -- exceeding the population of the United States -- China's internet marketplace is dominated by domestic players such as Alibaba Group and E-Commerce China Dangdang Inc.

However, foreign operators have had a tough time gaining a dominant foothold in China, where a growing number of people are going online to trade merchandise such as handbags, shoes, cell phones and computers.

"We're at the stage where we have a very large pocket of strong wealthy consumers in China and they are outside to buy, not just sell, from the eBay platform from around the world," Lee, who is based in Singapore, said.

With market capitalization ranking behind Google Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Baidu Inc and Tencent Holdings Ltd, eBay recorded $4 billion in cross-border sales in Asia-Pacific from its eBay and PayPal platforms in 2010.

The company hopes to leverage its 97 million active users and about 100 million users on its PayPal online payment system worldwide to attract Chinese Internet users.

China's e-commerce transactions grew 65 percent to 192.9 billion yuan ($30 billion) in the second quarter, with the business-to-consumer space up 173 percent to 54.3 billion yuan, data from Beijing-based Analysys International showed.

In 2003, eBay bought Chinese online auction site EachNet for $180 million but failed to dominate that marketplace.

eBay has also been on the e-commerce acquisition trail elsewhere this year, with deals including GSI Commerce Inc, Zong, Magneto and Where, as consumers and companies increasingly trade online.

Alibaba unit Taobao, China's largest e-commerce website, was a relative latecomer to the game, but rapidly gained ground on eBay by offering its services for free, in sharp contrast to the U.S. company, which charges fees for transactions, listings and other services.

The pair engaged in a war on the net and in the media that ended in 2006 when eBay folded its eBay EachNet business into a joint venture run by Hong Kong-listed media company Tom Group Ltd, a move that most considered a withdrawal from the market.

No decision had been made on what would happen after its deal with Tom Group expired later this year, Lee said.

Shares of eBay have risen nearly 10 percent this year, outperforming the Dow's 0.3 percent fall.

(Additional reporting by Melanie Lee in Shanghai; Editing by Chris Lewis)

(Company corrects headline and lead paragraph to show 30-40 percent projected sales growth is from large exporters in China, and paragraph 7 to show $4 billion in 2010 sales is from Asia-Pacific, not Greater China)

Harvard is most discussed university on Web: survey (Reuters)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 06:05 PM PDT

By Piya Sinha-Roy Piya Sinha-roy – Tue Aug 30, 9:05 pm ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Harvard regained its top spot on a list of most talked-about U.S. universities on the Internet, beating its rivals just in time for a return to fall studies, according to a survey released on Tuesday.

Harvard conquered stiff competition from runners-up Northwestern University and the University of California, Berkeley based on the number of mentions it receives on the Web, according to the Global Language Monitor, which tracks usage of words and phrases on blogs, social media and the top 75,000 print and electronic media sites.

The resulting rankings are used by education institutions to track their reputation among students, according to Paul Payack, who heads Global Language Monitor.

Harvard last topped the list of Internet media buzz in 2008, but has struggled to regain the top spot after suffering an endowment crisis in the recent recession.

"We think Harvard went through a difficult period," said Payack. "But (President) Dean Drew Faust seems to have righted the ship. She brought some adult supervision back to it."

Harvard's increasing usage on the Web also was spurred by the 2010 film "The Social Network."

"The Social Network" definitely had major impact, and also, the President of the United States having attended the Harvard law school definitely helps," said Payack.

Payack touts his list, which measures brand equity, as an alternative to the widely-watched U.S. News & World Report college rankings, which is based on data collected from educational institutions gathered from an annual survey.

One trend to emerge from the Global Language Monitor list was the growing influence of public institutions versus private schools, with almost half of the top 30 in the public domain.

Payack sees public education systems being featured more heavily in the future because the definition of what makes an elite school is changing quickly and not only confined to Ivy League universities like Harvard.

"We are seeing the so-called Public Ivies coming up very strong and the technology institutes are really doing well, they can win the top spot," Payack said.

The Top 10 schools on the Internet media buzz list follow:

1) Harvard University

2) Northwestern University

3) University of California, Berkeley

4) Columbia University

5) California Institute of Technology

6) Massachusetts Institute of Technology

7) Stanford University

8) University of Chicago

9) University of Texas, Austin

10) Cornell University

(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

RIM rises on new BlackBerrys, changing landscape (Reuters)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 03:15 PM PDT

– Tue Aug 30, 6:15 pm ET

TORONTO (Reuters) – The launch of a string of well-received BlackBerry smartphones helped Research In Motion stock gain 6 percent on Tuesday and almost 50 percent since hitting a five-year low on August 8.

The smartphone maker has also been aided by Google's $12.5 billion move to buy Motorola Mobility, which analysts say could sow dissent within Android ranks and push wireless companies to more eagerly embrace alternatives to the Google software, which is used widely.

"It's all on the heels of Google/Motorola and what that means for the changing landscape, and there's also a little bit of what I consider excess patent fever going on," said Colin Gillis, a tech analyst at BGC Partners in New York.

Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM also holds a solid share of mobile patents, particularly in data compression, encryption and synchronization.

"It's a value name right now, it's a deep value name," Gillis said.

RIM's stock had been skidding since February, hurt by a drumbeat of negative news. The company's earnings have missed expectations and it sharply cut forecasts, while its PlayBook rival to Apple's iPad launched to dismal reviews.

RIM has launched new versions of its BlackBerry Bold, Torch and Curve smartphones this month, which have fared better than the PlayBook did with reviewers, while investors are also picking up RIM stock because of its low cost.

"One of the biggest factors is a general sentiment for beaten down stocks," said Elvis Picardo, strategist and vice-president of research at Global Securities in Vancouver.

"Investors are in the mood for bargain-hunting."

RIM's Nasdaq-listed stock closed 5.9 percent higher at $32.55 on Tuesday, after jumping 5.3 percent on Monday and 3.4 percent on Friday. On Aug 8 the stock closed at $21.87, its lowest level since September 2006 on a stock-split adjusted basis.

Its Toronto-listed shares rose 6.4 percent to C$31.91 on Tuesday, adding to a 4.6 percent gain on Monday and 2.8 percent rise on Friday.

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp; editing by Rob Wilson)

The iPhone 5 might be thinner than the iPhone 4, and have it's volume buttons moved (Digital Trends)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 05:14 PM PDT

Mike Dunn Mike Dunn – Tue Aug 30, 8:14 pm ET

Tis the season for iPhone rumors and leaks, and today's rumor is coming all the way from Greece. The website Greek-iPhone has what it believes to be the iPhone 5's camera sensor. The new sensor flirts with a few of our preexisting rumors so even though it seems odd that Apple would lose a camera from a phone the story seems to check out.

We heard just yesterday that the iPhone 5, or whatever it might be called, might have a 3.7inch screen and a metal back. Today we can add a few more physical features to the latest idevice. The leaked camera is thinner than the iPhone 4's sensor which leads us to believe that the next device will also be thinner seeing as the camera is typically one of the thicker components in a phone. With the iPad 2 being 30 percent thinner than the original iPad it has been a pretty safe bet that the iPhone 5 will be thinner than the iPhone 4.

Another interesting thing about the part in question is that it has the volume buttons on the other side of the phone. While this might seem like an odd change seeing how all four of the previous iPhones had the volume buttons on the left side of the screen. One of the new iOS 5 features is the ability to take pictures with the camera buttons. Having the volume buttons on the right side of the screen should made taking pictures easier when holding the phone in a landscape orientation.

It also looks as though the lingering rumor about the next iPhone having an 8megapixal camera would be confirmed if this part is in fact real. The information that we are able to gain from isn't groundbreaking, but it helps us piece together a final device. The question here is how believable is it that a Greek tech site got its hands on a new iPhone part when the phone is made in China?

 

Syrian Hackers Target Columbia University's Facebook, but Miss (The Atlantic Wire)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 02:35 PM PDT

Adam Martin Adam Martin – Tue Aug 30, 5:35 pm ET

If you were to check out this Columbia University Facebook page on Tuesday afternoon, you would find not the expected chattering of students and alums, but hundreds and hundreds of messages staunchly in support of embattled Syrian President Bashar al Assad. As a Columbia spokeswoman pointed out, the page isn't the official Columbia University page (that's here), but it sure looks like it, it has more than half the fans of the official one, and it turns up first in a search (at least it did for us). So a spammer aiming to attack the university's page could easily target this one by mistake. 

Related: Britain Disinvites Syrian Ambassador to Royal Wedding

That's what appears to have happened with the Syrian Electronic Army, a pro-government online force that Assad has praised as "a real army in virtual reality." As The Atlantic Wire's Uri Friedman pointed out in July, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency says the group "monitor[s] what is being published on Arab and foreign web pages and then leaving hundreds of thousands of messages on these pages," what Friedman called "comments commandos." Googling some of the comments has them showing up verbatim elsewhere, which suggests they're part of a spam attack. But Columbia University seems like a weird target choice, especially given that the group's past targets have included Facebook pages of President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and ABC News.

Related: As Citizens Flee, Syria Draws U.N. Attention Over Alleged Reactor

The Washington Post's Elizabeth Flock suggested targeting Columbia could have to do with a professor's comments in this Wall Street Journal story about the Arab Spring's threat to Iran. "This whole arrangement between Syria and Iran is in deep trouble because of the Arab Spring. The geopolitics and the Arab street are changing and it's leaving them exposed," Iranian Studies professor Hamid Dabashi told the Journal. One apologetic poster on the Columbia page suggested it was a misunderstanding regarding the difference between the nation of Colombia and the university. 

Related: Attention Foreign Media: The Syrian E-Army Is Marching Your Way

Related: UN Rights Body's Actions Against Syria Seem Pretty Toothless

A Google translation of the call to action on the Syrian E-Army's Facebook page does have some language that could support that:

Related: Deadly Crackdown in Syria

But the Colombian government hasn't done much involving Syria in recent days and weeks that could incur the wrath of the E-Army. More likely, the Syrian E-Army was shooting for the Columbia University page, and missed.

U.S. Soldiers Take Laptops and BlackBerrys to Afghanistan (Time.com)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 03:15 PM PDT

By JOHN WENDLE / ARGHANDAB John Wendle / Arghandab – Tue Aug 30, 6:15 pm ET

There are almost as many laptops as there are rifles scattered around the 2nd Squad's sleeping quarters in the old school at Combat Outpost (COP) Kowall. Mixed in with dust, sand, helmets and 40-mm grenades are Dells and MacBooks. The men who started out in 2001 as Generation Kill have transformed into Generation iPod. As technology has become miniaturized and more portable, U.S. soldiers have increasingly taken laptops, terabytes of movies and video-game systems into war zones to kill downtime.

Private First Class Andrew Napoli, 21, took a BlackBerry, a MacBook, an iPad, a PlayStation Portable video-game system, a terabyte external hard drive and a cell phone to Kandahar province's Arghandab River Valley when he was deployed in August 2010 with the 3rd Platoon of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division. Napoli says he spends a majority of his time on guard duty or foot patrol. Now there is less fighting, he says, he sometimes watches two or three movies a day.

It was a different situation last summer. For three months, from August to October last year, the newly arrived soldiers of the 3rd Platoon at COP Kowall were hit by Taliban fighters multiple times per day; foot patrols had frequent contact with the enemy. "There was no sleep, no nothing besides patrols, firefights and guard duty," Napoli says. Now, fighting has given way to boredom and routine as the troop surge has brought more stability to the valley. Surrounded by high walls and barbwire in a battle zone that was once one of the most violent in Afghanistan means there is not a lot to do besides guard, patrol and sleep. But that is the old Army. Now soldiers can watch movies on laptops and chat with friends online. (See photos of R&R at Kandahar Airfield.)

"All there is to do here is watch movies and play video games in your free time. It's nice for a couple hours to just take your mind out of here. No matter what else you do: you're working out, you're still at the gym at this COP; you play video games, you're still playing video games at the COP. But a movie is nice because you can just kind of sit there. There have been times when I'd hang a sheet over my bunk bed and sit there and watch a movie. Sometimes you'd forget where you are and you'd pull back the sheet and be like, 's--t, I'm still here,'" Napoli tells TIME.

A majority of the soldiers in the platoon brought laptops - anticipating the monotony of counterinsurgency warfare. "I kind of bought this laptop special for the tour because I knew it'd get destroyed. I didn't want to buy a nice one, so just got a $300 one," says Private First Class Sheldon Henry as he watches a crime drama between patrols. "If they didn't have their laptops?" says Sergeant Byren Gerber, the 2nd Squad's leader, "they'd probably get in fights." The eyes of Private First Class Greg Diette, who watches around 20 movies a week, open wide when he contemplates the question of what he would do without a laptop. "If I didn't have it?" he says, pausing. "No idea."

But laptops, movies, video games and iPods are not the only escapes. BlackBerrys have made an appearance in the combat zone as well. Of the roughly 30 soldiers in the platoon, five of them have the devices (the soldiers pay the monthly charges themselves). Napoli says he uses his "everyday. All day." Napoli's wife sent the device to him so they could stay in touch. "My wife updates me on her life. I listen mostly because my daily life doesn't change basically. But we'll send each other pictures once in a while so that we see each other in some sort of way," he says. (See photos of making movies in Afghanistan.)

But, even with all of the communications devices and ways to keep in touch, Napoli says that during the heavy fighting last year he did not tell his family what was happening. "My wife knows stuff happens. They're following the news, but if they would hear about it from me, they would think, 'O.K., that's really bad.'" The view that less information about the fighting is better is shared by most of the other soldiers. "I've never posted anything like, 'Oh, another firefight,' on Facebook," Private First Class Juan Lopez, 20, tells TIME.

Even if they do not do a live update on firefights, with all of the communications options out there - from Skype to Google Talk to AIM - it has become easier and easier to stay in constant touch. But this can present drawbacks - and dangers - in a war zone. "I'm really attached to my family. At one point, I would call home just about every other day. I started getting homesick, and I felt like it was interfering with my work. I'd be on patrol, and then I'd catch myself thinking about my mother and my father or my sisters, my nieces and nephews - just not paying attention to what's in front of me. So, I just quit calling home as much," says Lopez. Now, Lopez's family follows him on Facebook, reading his status updates - a way to stay in touch with less emotional commitment.

Other soldiers feel similar about all the methods they can now use to communicate with home. "For me - all this talk while I'm here - I hate it," says Napoli about his BlackBerry. "All the talking I do while I'm here, I don't like it. I'd rather be here the entire year and every once in a while just be like, 'Hey, I'm O.K.' If I didn't have this stuff, I'd be fine with that because I like to focus on my work here and pretend like the life back home doesn't even exist." (See if the U.S. can make amends after blowing up an Afghan town.)

The older guys in the platoon remember the Army before all of the entertainment and communications options were available - before all of the distractions and news from home. "The only thing we'd get was one 10-minute phone call a week," says Staff Sergeant John Fox, 32, of his deployment to Iraq in 2003. There were no public computer terminals available to the soldiers. Fox, who had his wife set up a Yahoo! Messenger account for him just days before this deployment, says there were "probably about three or four guys who brought out laptops" to Iraq in 2003. "It was just a bunch of guys all huddled around one laptop watching pirated DVDs."

Yet, even with all of the changes that have taken place in the past decade - the vast increase in interconnectedness, communications options and social-networking sites - troops, young and old alike, still agree that the traditional letter to a soldier still carries the most weight. "To me, a letter goes a long way. Nowadays it'll mean a lot more because somebody actually took the time out of their day to sit down and write," says Lopez, who has an ammo can full of saved letters. "A letter takes more time out of your day. E-mails and messages on Facebook, or anything like that, you do it on your phone. You know, you're sitting there while you're driving and you can send a text or whatever. But a letter, you have to write it, you have to wait for it."

See pictures of President Obama in Afghanistan.

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Analyst predicts Amazon tablet could outshine iPad in the fourth quarter (Appolicious)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 03:30 PM PDT

AT&T vows to bring back 5,000 U.S. jobs if merger approved (Reuters)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 09:32 PM PDT

– 25 mins ago

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Telecommunications giant AT&T Inc, whose proposed buy of T-Mobile USA is under scrutiny by U.S. regulators, promised to bring 5,000 wireless call-center jobs back to the United States if the deal wins approval.

The company has not decided where in the United States the positions will be located, AT&T said in a statement. The jobs are currently outsourced to other countries. The new U.S. employees will be eligible to join the company's unionized workforce.

AT&T also said the merger will not cause any job losses for U.S.-based wireless call-center employees of T-Mobile USA or AT&T who are on the payroll when the merger closes.

Currently, AT&T and T-Mobile have a combined total of 25,000 U.S.-based wireless call-center employees. The company would not comment on how many employees would remain overseas after the 5,000 jobs move back to the United States.

The Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department are reviewing the proposed $39 billion purchase by AT&T of smaller rival T-Mobile USA, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG.

If approved as proposed, the merger would concentrate 80 percent of the U.S. wireless market in AT&T/T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc.

AT&T has said the deal would allow it to quickly add capacity to meet growing demand for high-speed wireless service. Rivals such as Sprint Nextel Corp say the combination would hurt competition, while public interest groups have argued it would lead to higher prices.

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Gary Hill)

Ford announces the cloud-connected Evos Concept car (Digital Trends)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 09:23 PM PDT

Mike Flacy Mike Flacy – 33 mins ago

Ford-EVOS-Concept

In advance of the Frankfurt Auto Show in September, Ford announced the Evos Concept, an automobile that communicates with the cloud many consumer friendly uses. By integrating a driver's daily schedule into the car, the Ford Evos Concept can automatically choose driving routes that are best suited for making a meeting on time. When integrated into home automation, it can communicate with lighting in a home and a garage door opener to trigger when arriving or leaving. The Ford Evos Concept can also continue playing specific music or news when a driver leaves or arrives at the house, if integrated into a home sound system.  

Ford-EVOS-Concept2Designed to help people with problematic allergies, the Ford Evos Concept uses filtration systems and advanced air filters to reduce the amount of allergens in the air. It also has the ability to suggest a course correction for a route with higher quality air. The Ford Evos Concept also uses heart-rate monitors built into the seat to measure the physical state of the driver and has the ability to turn off a driver's smartphone to keep attention on the road.

The car uses a lithium-ion plug-in hybrid powertrain, meaning the car runs on electricity until switching over to a gasoline-powered engine to recharge the battery while driving. By tapping into information within the cloud, the car self-adjusts usage of the gasoline engine based on current weather conditions, emission restrictions and the predicted route. This cloud integration would allow Ford's PHEV technology to stretch beyond the current range of 500 miles per trip. The Ford Evos Concept also has the ability to modify the suspension and throttle response to adjust to more strenuous driving conditions.

While the Ford Evos Concept will never see full production, the technologies from this test will likely trickle down into Ford's lineup of vehicles over the next several years.

UK supermarket trials iPad shopping cart, sports fans targeted (Digital Trends)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 07:28 PM PDT

Trevor Mogg Trevor Mogg – 2 hrs 29 mins ago

When we heard that British supermarket giant Sainsbury's was trialing the use of iPads on its shopping carts, we thought perhaps it was so that food shoppers could gain quick and easy access to more information about products they were interested in, or to help keep track of the total cost of the cart's contents.

But according to a Telegraph report, it seems as though that's not the case. They're actually intended for sports fans, so they can keep up-to-date with the latest news, or even watch live broadcasts of events. Sainsbury's hopes that this will encourage sport-obsessed shoppers tied to the sports channels at home to actually climb out of the sofa and make their way to the local supermarket instead.

The custom-made carts are the idea of broadcaster Sky to promote its Sky Go service – a service which enables iPad owners to watch live sports events on their tablets.

For cart-pushers who become too involved in a sports game and so aren't looking where they're going, sensors on the front of the cart will sound a warning beep if the cart is about to roll into something. The special carts are also fitted with batteries with solar panels ensuring the iPads never run out of juice (even if the supermarket does).

Setwo Designs' Ian Burgess, who designed the unique cart, said: "Being able to create a gadget that is practical yet innovative is often a challenge but I think with the trolley we've cracked it."

He added, “The trolley can be used in the traditional way for shopping yet streams the latest sports news easily.â€

One wonders if some shoppers will become so engrossed in a sports game that they end up just wandering mesmerized through the supermarket, eyes fixed on the screen, before arriving at the checkout with an empty cart.

At the moment, only one Sainsbury's branch, in Kensington, London is testing out the cart. If the trial proves popular (ie. if the company discovers it's getting more people through its doors), then Sainsbury's shopping carts across the whole of the UK will likely come with an iPad attached.

 

[Images: Sky/Jack Barnes, via Silicon]

Fresh iPhone Apps for Aug. 30: Campout, Madden NFL 12, Zeppelin Air, SPY mouse (Appolicious)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 05:06 AM PDT

Dreamforce 2011 Under Way in Post-PC Era (NewsFactor)

Posted: 30 Aug 2011 02:51 PM PDT

Jennifer LeClaire, newsfactor.com Jennifer Leclaire, newsfactor.com – Tue Aug 30, 5:51 pm ET

Enterprise cloud-computing company Salesforce.com is kicking off its Dreamforce 2011 event with a keynote address from Chairman and CEO Mark Benioff. Benioff's keynote will outline the company's vision for the social enterprise.

An annual event, this year's Dreamforce is being held at Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. Salesforce.com expects more than 40,000 people to register and attend some of the 475 sessions featuring more than 700 experts.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is also on deck for the event. Going along with its "social" theme, Metallica will perform at the Dreamforce 2011 Global Gala, followed by an after-party with will.i.am.

The Post-PC Era

This year's Dreamforce will focus on the post-PC revolution. As Salesforce sees it, the post-PC revolution will further accelerate the social enterprise.

There clearly is a rise in companies working to improve the way they collaborate, communicate and share information with customers and employees in the cloud. That rise, Salesforce said, is transforming companies into social enterprises, which it defined as those that build social profiles of customers, create internal social networks, and listen to and engage with customers over the Internet.

"If anyone is positioned to talk about the cloud and the end of the PC era and what is essentially granting access to all your data no matter what device you are working with, Salesforce is," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

"Salesforce has the experience. They've worked through the bugs. They have succeeded well beyond what many people have either intimated or assumed. As this era of cloud computing continues to grow, I expect them to profit from it."

Social Enterprise in Action

Vala Afshar, chief customer officer at Enterasys Networks, said transforming into a social enterprise has fueled his company's growth, allowing it to operate with agility and deliver the level of engagement that its customers expect.

"We've partnered with Salesforce.com to leverage the cloud, developing customer and product social networks that have redefined the customer experience and our product development process," said Afshar, noting that his company plans to share best practices and hear from experts on how the cloud can continue to change the way the firm operates and deliver business value.

Partners Speak

The Cloud Expo features nearly 300 exhibitors and partners that make up the cloud-computing ecosystem, including Diamond sponsor Accenture and Titanium sponsors Bluewolf, Deloitte, Eloqua and Marketo. Platinum sponsors at Dreamforce include Astadia, BMC Software, Dell, HubSpot, Model Metrics, Pardot, Silverpop, and Wipro Technologies.

Kevin Campbell, group chief executive of technology at Accenture, said the company's participation at Dreamforce is just one component of its commitment to further strengthen its alliance with Salesforce.com and sharpen its focus on delivering innovative uses of cloud computing that drive business value for the enterprise.

"With the largest team of Salesforce.com-trained and certified professionals of any global integrator," Campbell said, "Accenture has worked hand-in-hand with Salesforce.com for more than six years, delivering agile, enterprise-scale, cloud-computing solutions to help our joint clients make the shift to become a social enterprise."
at 10:07 PM

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