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Thursday, September 29, 2011

With Kindle Fire, Amazon's digital ambitions burn (AP) : Technet

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With Kindle Fire, Amazon's digital ambitions burn (AP) : Technet

With Kindle Fire, Amazon's digital ambitions burn (AP)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 02:52 PM PDT

By RACHEL METZ, AP Technology Writer Rachel Metz, Ap Technology Writer – Thu Sep 29, 5:52 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – Amazon's unveiling of the Kindle Fire tablet computer sends a bright-hot message: The online retailer is ready to rival iPad maker Apple in an effort to be the world's top digital content provider.

It may sound odd coming from a company that pioneered online sales of physical products, selling its first book, Douglas Hofstadter's "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought," in 1995. But since it first entered the digital market in 2006 with its video download store, Amazon has bet consumers will pay for high-quality digital content.

In addition to the millions of actual items it sells, which range from toys to toothbrushes, Amazon's trove of digital content now includes more than 1 million e-books, 100,000 movies and TV shows and 17 million songs. This is about 1 million fewer songs than iPad maker Apple Inc. sells, but more than twice as many e-books and many thousands more TV shows and movies.

Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos is confident that its content is what will help the Kindle Fire do better than others who have trotted out tablets.

"The reason they haven't been successful is because they made tablets. They didn't make services," Bezos said in an interview after his company unveiled the tablet at a New York media event Wednesday.

Bezos, a 47-year-old former Wall Street money manager, built Amazon on exactly this sort of confidence. He started the company on the theory that a Web-based book store would resonate with consumers, since it seemed like the easiest way to browse millions of titles at once.

He was right. The company grew rapidly and Amazon began trading publicly in May 1997, despite never having turned a profit. It took five more years — and the addition of product categories like CDs, DVDs and consumer electronics — before the online retailer reported any net income. These days, Amazon consistently reports strong growth: In the most recent quarter, it earned $191 million on $9.91 billion in revenue.

It was Apple that moved into digital content first, however. With the arrival of Apple's iPod digital music player, which first came out in 2001, Apple figured consumers would be willing to pay for legal, high-quality digital music they could download to the devices. Apple became a major player early on, making deals with major record labels to sell digital tunes through its iTunes Store in 2003. Soon the iPod became more multimedia-savvy: Apple added TV shows in 2005 and movie downloads a year later.

Amazon soon entered the market itself, rolling out its own digital video downloading service in 2006 and music downloading service a year later.

It was in 2007, though, that things really heated up. That's when Amazon rolled out its first Kindle e-reader, upending the book market once again by turning the focus from costly paper books to electronic ones that could be delivered quickly and cheaply to customers on a reading device.

The Kindle rapidly grew the company's e-book business, and Amazon said in May that it was selling more e-books than physical copies of books. But the Kindle Fire's ability to show e-books, surf the Web, stream movies and TV shows and support apps positions it as an even better catalyst for Amazon's digital goods sales.

The price will probably help, too: When it goes on sale Nov. 15, it will cost $199, which is less than half of the $499 you'll pay for Apple Inc.'s cheapest iPad and $50 less than book seller Barnes & Noble Inc.'s Nook Color e-reader. This leaves buyers with plenty of money left over to spend on content.

"It's important to remember at the end of the day that Amazon's core business is retailing and this is a way to sell more digital media on a sort of 7-inch vending machine," NPD Group analyst Ross Rubin said.

The Kindle Fire, which runs Google Inc.'s Android software, is clearly meant for gobbling up Amazon's digital media in particular. While most Android tablets include access to Google's Android Market for downloading games and apps, the Fire will eschew that in favor of Amazon's own app store. And while the tablet doesn't have much storage space — 8 gigabytes, compared with 16 GB on the cheapest iPad — Amazon is offering users free Web-based storage for any digital content they buy from Amazon.

Another weapon in Amazon's arsenal: In hopes of keeping Kindle Fire users purchasing both digital and actual items, the tablet includes a free month of Amazon's premium shipping service, Amazon Prime. Prime, which costs $79 per year, gives users unlimited two-day shipping on any items they buy from Amazon, as well as free access to a library of 11,000 streaming movies and TV shows. This is about half of what Netflix Inc.'s streaming library has.

Amazon has never said precisely how many Kindle e-readers it has sold, but its higher sales of e-books than print books indicates it's a strong performer. Given this, and the general popularity of tablets, expectations are high for the Fire.

Rubin thinks consumers will become fans of the tablet, saying it offers a more complete media consumption experience than what Barnes & Noble has provided with the Nook Color, which came out last year.

Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps thinks Amazon could sell as many as 5 million Fires by the end of the year, but thinks it will probably be closer to 3 million since it's coming out so late. Apple, by comparison, has sold nearly 29 million iPads since it released the first one in April 2010, and over 9 million in the June quarter alone.

Of course, in addition to being the new tablet on the block, the Kindle Fire faces other challenges. On the content side, the Amazon Appstore currently includes more than 16,000 apps, but this is just a small fraction of the 425,000 apps in Apple's App Store, over 100,000 of which are tailored specifically for the iPad. On the tablet side, the device's screen is on the small side, which means less space for watching movies and more panning around when surfing the Web. And it will only be able to access the Internet over Wi-Fi, not over wireless carriers' high-speed data networks.

Still, Epps believes Amazon's decision to lead with content and services, rather than hardware, will help it prosper with the Kindle Fire.

"Apple will still be the clear market leader, but Amazon will still be a clear number two because of that strategy," she said.

___

AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson in New York contributed to this report.

Review: Software for recording now, playing later (AP)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 04:45 PM PDT

By RACHEL METZ, AP Technology Writer Rachel Metz, Ap Technology Writer – Thu Sep 29, 7:45 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – If the idea of being stuck on a plane for hours without access to the movies in your Netflix queue fills you with dread, software that lets you record streaming videos from the Web and watch them later on your laptop may be an appealing solution.

That's the idea behind PlayLater, which bills itself as "the DVR for online videos." It can record content from a number of different online sources — including Hulu, YouTube and Netflix — and save it to your computer. It costs $5 per month, or $50 per year. New users can try it free for two weeks before paying.

If you buy or rent more than a couple of digital videos from Amazon.com Inc. or Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store every month, PlayLater could sound like a money-saver. And while it's a potentially useful product, it needs a lot of improvement before I'd be willing to shell out for it.

There's also a possibility that websites like Netflix will find a way to block PlayLater. They'd probably want to, since it doesn't jibe with the way they do business. In general, streaming movies are sold for less than ones available for download, so both websites and studios stand to lose from PlayLater. Websites don't want you to skip their commercials, either.

It's unlikely that websites and studios would have legal recourse against PlayLater and its parent company MediaMall Technologies Inc., since it's been established that digital video recorders (like TiVos) are legal, but you never know. A spokeswoman for MediaMall said PlayLater is affiliated with some companies whose content it streams.

Basically, the software works like this: When you click on a video within the PlayLater application to save it onto your computer, it plays the video in a hidden Internet browser window and copies it from there.

This means it copies streaming video in real time, so you'll have to allow a full 93 minutes to record the pilot of David Lynch's early `90s TV drama "Twin Peaks." If you're saving a video that includes commercials, they'll be in there, too, but you'll be able to skip past them when viewing.

The software, which for now only works on PCs running Microsoft's Windows, is simple to download from the PlayLater.tv website and install. It works with 30 sites, or "channels," ranging from the aforementioned Netflix, YouTube and Hulu to Cartoon Network, ESPN, Comedy Central and Internet radio service Pandora. For password-protected sites like Netflix, you'll have to enter your login info.

The software is not hard to navigate, but it's ugly and cumbersome with lots of text and few images. You typically have to click through several levels of tabs to find the video clip, movie or TV show you want. Fortunately, some of the channels have a search bar, and when available I found it was usually easier to just use this to find what I wanted.

The resulting videos, which I played back through the Windows Media Player, were somewhat fuzzy and colors are noticeably bland — probably a result of the software copying already-compressed streaming video and then compressing it again. The recordings looked decent when viewed in a smaller window, but weren't sharp in full-screen mode. The recording technology is only a tad better than pointing a video camera at a TV screen, and it shows.

And don't expect to watch these videos on a tablet computer or smartphone just yet; they're saved in a proprietary file format that can only be played on a computer running the software. This is intentional — the company doesn't want you to spread your recorded videos around. But later this year the company hopes to allow playback on the iPad.

And while MediaMall also offers software called PlayOn that can be used to view your recordings elsewhere, such as on a smartphone or tablet computer, it requires an Internet connection and costs several dollars more per month (MediaMall is offering the two for $8 per month or $70 per year).

Watching PlayLater videos my PC, I had a number of issues, perhaps indicating my laptop was too taxed to handle playing, recording and using other programs simultaneously. Several times when I tried to watch a video while recording another one I could hear the audio but only saw a bright pink screen. And my computer crashed three times while using the program and others at the same time. Installation failed on one Windows 7 computer, and on another, Netflix recording failed.

There were problems with recording, too. Several times PlayLater indicated it recorded an entire TV show when it actually hadn't. In one instance, it recorded just a portion of an episode of the teen drama "Awkward." from MTV. Another time the software acted as though it had recorded a whole episode of "Glee" from Hulu, but it couldn't have because the show was only available to paid subscribers to Hulu's premium Hulu Plus service.

As much as I like being able to watch movies offline and fast-forward through commercials, PlayLater isn't the right tool in its current state. For things I can't watch now, I'll stick to paid downloads for playing later.

Recently fired HP CEO departs with more than $13M (AP)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 06:57 PM PDT

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke, Ap Technology Writer – 2 hrs 45 mins ago

SAN FRANCISCO – Recently fired Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker is walking away with more than $13 million in cash and stock as shareholders stew over a rocky reign that saw the technology company's market value plunge by nearly $40 billion in just 11 months.

The parting package spelled out Thursday in a regulatory filing wasn't surprising. Most major companies guarantee generous payments to ousted executives as long as they aren't dumped for unethical or criminal conduct.

Nevertheless, the details of Apotheker's jackpot probably won't soothe the hard feelings still lingering over Hewlett-Packard Co.'s decision to hire him in the first place.

Apotheker replaced Mark Hurd, who was ushered out in August 2010 in a scandal triggered by unproven allegations of sexual harassment. Hurd's severance included a $12.2 million cash payment and $30 million worth of stock that he got by exercising options after his resignation. HP's stock price more than doubled during Hurd's five-year stint as CEO, adding about $50 billion to the company's market value.

HP's shares fell by 46 percent during Apotheker's tenure, which ended Sept. 22. The shares closed Thursday at $23.78.

Despite the missteps that got him fired, Apotheker still will get a $2.4 million bonus later this year under HP's "pay-for-results" plan, according to a company filing Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Apotheker also will receive $7.2 million in severance payments over the next 18 months and the vesting rights to 156,000 shares of restricted stock currently worth about $3.7 million.

The value of Apotheker's other stock awards will depend on how the company fares in the next few years. Apotheker, who moved from Europe to work at HP's Palo Calif. headquarters, apparently will be watching how the company does without him from abroad. HP also is paying his relocation expenses to France or Belgium, and will cover up to $300,000 on any loss that he suffers from the sale of his California home.

The second guessing about Apotheker began almost as soon as HP announced his hiring a year ago because his previous employer, business software maker SAP, had dumped him as CEO.

The initial befuddlement quickly turned into outrage as HP repeatedly missed its financial targets under Apotheker. Things reached a boiling point last month after Apotheker announced HP's plan to kill a computer tablet in its infancy, spend $10 billion to buy business software maker Autonomy and consider selling or spinning off its personal computer division

HP is resting its turnaround hopes on Apotheker's successor, former eBay Inc. CEO and unsuccessful California gubernatorial candidate, Meg Whitman. HP set Whitman's salary at $1 annually, but she could earn a bonus of up to $6 million, according to the company's SEC filing.

Whitman can afford a small salary because she became a billionaire during her time at eBay. She is worth about $1.3 billion, according to Forbes magazine's latest rankings. Several other of Silicon Valley's current and past billionaire CEOs, including Google Inc.'s Larry Page and Apple Inc.'s Steve Jobs, have insisted on capping their salaries at $1.

HP also will grant Whitman 1.9 million stock options. The exercise price of those options will be set on the day they are issued to her. The value of those options will hinge how much HP's stock price rises, or falls, during her tenure.

The company also granted 1 million stock options to its executive chairman, Ray Lane, who joined HP's board when Apotheker was hired. Lane is taking on more active role in steering HP now that Apotheker is gone.

You may travel faster in this elevator than on your car ride to work (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 06:41 PM PDT

A third of stars like our sun may have Earth-like planets (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 06:35 PM PDT

Ponzi scheme accused Full Tilt Poker's license revoked (Reuters)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 06:37 PM PDT

– Thu Sep 29, 9:37 pm ET

(Reuters) – Online poker site, Full Tilt Poker, which U.S. federal prosecutors have accused of running a Ponzi scheme, had its gambling license revoked by Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC), the gambling regulator said on Thursday.

In a statement released on Thursday, the AGCC revoked Full Tilt Poker's license accusing it of seriously breaching AGCC regulations which included false reporting, unauthorized provision of credit and failing to report material events.

The commission said the license is revoked with immediate effect and follows the earlier suspension of the licenses in June.

Last week, U.S. federal prosecutors had accused Full Tilt of running a Ponzi scheme and said the company paid its directors more than $440 million while defrauding players, even after charges were filed against it in April.

Internet poker companies, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker and PokerStars and 11 people, including Full Tilt director Raymond Bitar, earlier had been accused of bank fraud, illegal gambling and money laundering offenses.

Full Tilt later rejected the charges.

However, the commission said that the revocation of the licenses does not mean that the business can't be reactivated under new ownership and management.

(Reporting by Arpita Mukherjee in Bangalore, editing by Bernard Orr)

Conrad Murry trial stream app hits No. 1 on iTunes (Reuters)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 03:13 PM PDT

By Kimberly Potts Kimberly Potts – Thu Sep 29, 6:13 pm ET

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The latest high-profile celebrity trial has celeb watchers everywhere tuned in on TV and the Interwebs, and now, of course, there's a cell phone app to make sure people don't miss a minute of coverage of the Conrad Murray trial.

The "Michael Jackson Doctor Trial" app is already No. 1 in iTunes' news app store, with the live video provided by KTTV, the Fox TV station in Los Angeles.

The app, also available for Android phones, has been downloaded all around the world, the New York Post reports. Fox TV exec Jose Rios told the newspaper the idea for the app came after a "Casey Anthony Trial" app proved to be a big seller in June.

"I thought that was a smart thing that they had done," Rios said. "When Michael Jackson died, there was a huge outpouring (in Los Angeles), and we thought that a lot of his fans and other people would want to watch (the trial), so we decided to go ahead."

Rios added he's not worried about any charges that KTTV is trying to profit from the trial and its tragic subject matter.

"If you're saying that, then you probably believe that about all the coverage of (the trial)."

Zune Pass gets a $9.99 price tag and heads to Canada Oct. 3 (Digital Trends)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 07:41 PM PDT

Jeff Hughes Jeff Hughes – 2 hrs 1 min ago

zune-music-stream via engadgetThere have been a good number of streaming music announcements lately, and not to be outdone, today Microsoft chimed in about some changes being made to its Zune service. The software giant will be lowering the price of its Zune Music Pass and taking the Zune Music Marketplace up north to our Canadian neighbors.

Microsoft Zune Music Pass will be cut from $14.99 to $9.99, a price which mirrors many of the music streaming competitors such as Rdio, Spotify, Mog, Napster, and all the others. This will be the case for both US and Canadian subscribers come October 3.

That $10 price gives you unlimited access to the service, which means 14 million songs all at your beck and call. However, there is a downside to the price cut. The Zune Pass will be dropping one of its distinguishing characteristics—the ten music downloads users are allowed each month. We've point out in the past that the 10 free tracks a month was like a $10 discount on the subscription price.

Though there's been some criticism that new subscribers will have only have the $10 option, those already subscribing at the $14.99 monthly rate will be allowed to continue paying that amount and will also continue to receive the 10 free download credits.

Zune still allows subscribers to view thousands of music videos and also allows for the Zune Pass to work with the PC, Windows Phone, Zune device and the Xbox 360. Microsoft is also giving a nice little deal where you'll only be charged for 10 months if you pay for the year at once.

How do you think the Zune service compares to the massive number of 'others' in the competitive music streaming market?

Via Zune Insider

Android App Tablet Review: DroidIris (Appolicious)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 05:00 PM PDT

Twitter study reveals people's mood swings (Digital Trends)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 06:51 PM PDT

Trevor Mogg Trevor Mogg – 2 hrs 51 mins ago

A study that analysed millions of tweets over a period of two years has revealed that people are most cheerful soon after waking up. Their mood then worsens as the day continues, before lifting again last thing at night.

Sure, most of us probably could've guessed this would be the case, but here's a study that appears to confirm it.

Researchers at Cornell University in New York state looked at more than half a billion tweets by 2.54 million individuals in 84 countries and discovered that people generally wake up in a good mood (well, after that initial bleary-eyed phase passes) but as the day goes on their mood gradually worsens.

The results of the study, which was carried out by Cornell graduate student Scott Golder, were published in the journal Science on Thursday.

Together with another graduate student, Golder came up with a computer program that pulled information from all Twitter accounts which were set up between February 2008 and April 2009. Four hundred messages were analysed from each of these accounts.

They then used a text analysis program to look at the type of language used and the time of day that the tweets were written and posted.

Out of the all the data they collected, the researchers concluded that people the world over were in the best mood early in the morning and again close to midnight. On the weekend, the good-mood peak was a little later in the morning, presumably because people were sleeping late.

The authors noted that the mood cycle on weekdays (when most people are working or studying) was very similar to that of weekends (when most people are relaxing), indicating that sleep patterns and circadian rhythms had a big influence on mood regardless of the stresses of the day.

From behavior-oriented words in the tweets, they also discovered that bacon is more popular than sausage and that it takes an average of seven hours to become drunk (that seems rather long, doesn't it?). This finding was based on the time between tweets about "beer" and later tweets about being "drunk."

A medical sociologist at Harvard University, Dr. Nicholas Christakis, said that while the results of the study may not seem so astonishing, what it does show is how web users' "little digital breadcrumbs" can be used for research.

But as psychologist Martin Seligman from the University of Pennsylvania pointed out, using social media for research also throws up the problem of ensuring you have a representative sample. "Young, educated, rich people use social media. Rural Indian farmers do not," he said.

[Source: LA Times]

[Image courtesy of Supri Suharjoto / Shutterstock]

Amazon's $199 Fire sparks supply, margin questions (Reuters)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 06:06 PM PDT

By Alistair Barr Alistair Barr – Thu Sep 29, 9:06 pm ET

(Reuters) – The rock-bottom price of the new Kindle Fire tablet computer is raising questions about Amazon.com Inc's ability to keep up with demand and the device's effect on the company's already razor-thin profit margins.

Amazon's billionaire Chief Executive Jeff Bezos unveiled the Fire on Wednesday at a lower-than-expected price of $199.

Bezos said Amazon is making "millions" of the tablets, without being more specific. However, he urged customers to pre-order the device early.

"When Bezos quipped that people should get their pre-orders in quick, that wasn't just a sales pitch," said Brian Blair, an analyst at Wedge Partners. "That was him warning this will sell out."

When the first Kindle came out in 2007, Amazon hadn't made enough and the e-reader sold out in less than a week. That meant the company missed out on sales and got the device into fewer customers' hands, limiting quick adoption.

"I hope they learned their lesson from the last time," said Vinita Jakhanwal, an analyst at IHS iSuppli, which tracks electronic component supply chains.

Amazon spokeswomen didn't respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Amazon has lined up about four to five million screens for the Fire in the fourth quarter, which is a "fairly significant" amount, Jakhanwal added.

However, the technology that is being used for the Fire's screen has been around for at least a year and already has been produced in high volume, reducing the chances of supply shortages, Jakhanwal said.

One of the components that was in shorter supply in the first half of 2011 was the 10-inch screen, mostly because of the iPad, according to Bradley Gastwirth of technology research firm ABR Investment Strategy.

"This is probably one of the main reasons why Amazon started off at the 7-inch form factor," he said.

Still, other specialized components may be in short supply and that could limit how many Kindle Fire's can be made quickly, Jakhanwal said.

Other components aren't known yet, according to Wedge's Blair. But he expects a re-run of 2007, with the Fire selling out quickly.

Colin Sebastian, an analyst at RW Baird, kept his Amazon tablet sales forecasts the same on Wednesday on concern about potential supply issues. He expects two million to three million units to be sold this year and four to six million next year.

Amazon has better data on consumer demand and supply chains than it did in 2007, said Scott Devitt, an analyst at Morgan Stanley.

"But the $199 price point could drive heavy demand, so supply issues are possible and something to consider," he added.

Part of Apple Inc's success with the iPad and other products was driven by the company's tight control of its supply chain, which ensured it got enough parts before rivals.

"Apple's supply chain, production and distribution capabilities provide a competitive advantage over Amazon, which may find it difficult to produce more than a few million Kindle Fires for the holiday season," said Gene Munster, an analyst at PiperJaffray.

MARGINS

The Fire's $199 price has Munster and others concerned about profit margins at Amazon too.

Amazon always competes aggressively on price, often sucking up losses when it enters new markets. The company is currently branching out in several new areas and its profit margins have suffered.

Apple enjoys gross profit margins over 30 percent on the iPad. That's partly because the company offers digital content cheaply to promote purchases of such devices. In contrast, Munster estimated that Amazon will probably lose about $50 on each Kindle Fire it sells.

Anthony DiClemente, an analyst at Barclays Capital, expects Amazon's pro-forma operating profit margin to be 3.2 percent in the fourth quarter, down 160 basis points from a year earlier.

Still, Amazon hopes to make up any losses on the Kindle Fire through extra purchases of the company's other products and services made by users of the device.

Morgan Stanley's Devitt cites the example of ebooks. The Kindle Fire may increase purchases of digital books, hastening the demise of physical bookstores, he explained.

That would "lead to an industry with fewer merchants and thus higher long-term margins," Devitt said.

(Reporting by Alistair Barr; editing by Carol Bishopric)

Android App Tablet Review: PicSay Pro - Photo Editor (Appolicious)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 03:00 PM PDT

Document shows how phone cos. treat private data (AP)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 03:36 PM PDT

By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson, Ap Technology Writer – Thu Sep 29, 6:36 pm ET

NEW YORK – A document obtained by the ACLU shows for the first time how the four largest cellphone companies in the U.S. treat data about their subscribers' calls, text messages, Web surfing and approximate locations.

The one-page document from the Justice Department's cybercrime division shows, for instance, that Verizon Wireless keeps, for a year, information about which cell towers subscriber phones connect to. That data that can be used to figure out where the phone has been, down to the level of a neighborhood. AT&T has kept the same data continuously since July 2008.

The sheet is a guide for law enforcement, which can request the information from the carriers through legal channels. The North Carolina section of the American Civil Liberties Union obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act request, the ACLU said. Wired.com reported earlier about the document, which is dated Aug. 2010.

The document was released by the ACLU Wednesday, but has been hiding in plain sight on the website of the Vermont public defender's office. It can be found there through a Google search, but only if the searcher knows the exact title of the document.

A few data points from the sheet were known outside law enforcement circles, but wireless carriers have not been open about their policies. They aren't required to keep the data, and they keep the same information for varying lengths of time. Some don't keep data at all that other companies store. For instance, it says T-Mobile USA doesn't keep any information on Web browsing activity. Verizon, on the other hand, keeps some information for up to a year that can be used to ascertain if a particular phone visited a particular Web site.

According to the sheet, Sprint Nextel Corp.'s Virgin Mobile brand keeps the text content of text messages for three months. Verizon keeps it for three to five days. None of the other carriers keep texts at all, but they keep records of who texted whom for more than a year.

The document says AT&T keeps for five to seven years a record of who text messages whom _and when, but not the content of the messages. Virgin Mobile only keeps that data for two to three months.

The carriers don't have recordings of calls, but keep information about calls that are made and received for at least a year.

The ACLU said it believes people have a right to know how long phone companies keep records of their activities.

Although the sheet is dated August 2010, Tom Slovenski, a private investigator specializing in cellphone data, said it is still accurate.

Sprint spokesman Jason Gertzen said he couldn't comment on the specific figures in the sheet. Normally, he said, a subpoena, court order, or customer consent form from a recognized law enforcement agency is necessary for the carrier to hand out data. However, Sprint also responds to emergency requests, as in missing persons cases, if the police can document their need, he said.

Department of Justice spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said cellphone records can be crucial for all kinds of criminal and national security investigations. For example, they can be used to figure out with whom a known violent criminal is conspiring.

A bill in Congress would force wired Internet service providers to keep records of the network addresses assigned to each subscriber for 18 months. That would help investigators link online activity to specific homes. But the bill doesn't apply to wireless links. A series of such bills have been proposed over the years, but haven't passed.

___

Online:

ACLU's posting of the sheet: http://bit.ly/q6g9Xu

Mobile app offers free unlimited tagging (Reuters)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 11:57 AM PDT

By Lucas Shaw Lucas Shaw – Thu Sep 29, 2:57 pm ET

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Shazam, a mobile app that helps users identify music, has removed limits on the numbers of songs one can tag in its free version for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Shazam already had removed the limit on Android devices, and on Thursday extended the new strategy to the Apple devotees. Previously, users with the free version could only tag five songs a month.

While Shazam began as an app known exclusively for tagging music, it recently expanded its mission to include tagging TV shows and TV ads, and has also added a great deal of new content.

When you tag a song, he or she may see merchandise available for that artist or a tour date. If you tag a TV ads, you can go to the website for that product.

"Shazam is essentially becoming a media company, a mobile media discovery company," said David Jones, Shazam's EVP of Marketing. "This might seem like a subtle change, but we want people to be free to do all these things use all these features with any music they hear whether they know it or not."

A surge in other revenue streams has enabled this shift. Shazam does charge for a premium version of its app -- Shazam Encore -- but one of the perks of that service was the unlimited tagging.

Though other distinctions between the two apps remain, the premium service is less critical to the company's bottom line.

Shazam has started to lure in more advertising dollars and sponsorships. The company also profits from some of the content it offers with the tagging. For example, it can secure revenue from other companies for linking to music stores or other product sales.

"Free unlimited usage will make money through various forms of advertising around high usage and a daily experience," Jones said.

"We hope and expect Shazamers, the 115 million around the world, to work Shazam into their daily lives. It is going to be one of the first things you do if you want to discover a new piece of content and engage with it."

iPhone 5 Poised for Record Sales Ahead of Release (LiveScience.com)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 03:44 PM PDT

LiveScience.com livescience.com – Thu Sep 29, 6:44 pm ET

Although the expected unveiling of the iPhone 5 next week has not yet been officially confirmed by Apple, a new study shows that consumers are more than ready to buy the latest model when it finally hits shelves.

In fact, a whopping 41 percent of current mobile users in the U.S., Mexico and Canada plan to buy the latest iPhone model, according to a report from ad network InMobi.

Apple – which recently announced that it is holding a press event on Oct. 4 to "Let's talk iPhone" – could potentially see its most successful launch to date. If the people that plan to buy it actually go out and make the purchase, the company could see more sales around the product than ever before, the report said.

"Based on the study, the launch of a new iPhone 5 will create… an increase in market share during the critical fourth-quarter holiday period," James Lamberti, vice president of global research and marketing at InMobi, told TechNewsDaily.

The survey was conducted among 1,000 mobile phone users varying in age in North America and 1,000 in the U.K., with a margin of error of 3 percent.

The study also found that 50 percent of those that will buy the iPhone 5 plan to do so within the first six months of the iPhone 5 launch. InMobi noted that this could take Apple significantly ahead of its June 2011 market position, and increase its mobile platform market share from 27 percent in June – according to comScore – to 41 percent.

However, if Apple only unveils a product update — similar to the 3GS version of the iPhone that Apple released in 2009 — interest in the new smartphone is expected to be significantly lower.

Consumers said they are most hopeful for improved battery life, increased processing speed, higher-quality screen resolution and stronger phone service in the rumored Apple smartphone.

The report also revealed that more than half of BlackBerry users (52 percent) are planning to switch to the new Apple iPhone 5, followed by 51 percent of current iPhone users and more than one in four (27 percent) Android owners.

This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Reach TechNewsDaily senior writer Samantha Murphy at @SamMurphy_TMN

Kik Messenger returns to BlackBerry despite lawsuit (Reuters)

Posted: 29 Sep 2011 02:57 PM PDT

– Thu Sep 29, 5:57 pm ET

TORONTO (Reuters) – Kik Interactive, an instant messaging service startup against which Research In Motion launched a lawsuit last year, is testing a new version of software that can be used on RIM's BlackBerry smartphones, Kik's founder said on Thursday.

The Kik Messenger service - which has been available for Apple's iPhone and devices running Google's Android software for more than a year - was pulled from RIM's app store in November and RIM launched its suit a month later.

In its court filing, RIM said Kik founder and Chief Executive Ted Livingston used knowledge gleaned while working on development of BlackBerry Messenger to create Kik Messenger.

Livingston declined comment on the ongoing lawsuit but said the new application was not built specifically for BlackBerry phones and would also work on so-called feature phones, cheaper devices that typically use the Java coding language.

"We wanted it to be a secret so we'd get some feedback before it went to a wider audience, but we have a version that's built for Java that works on BlackBerry phones," Livingston told Reuters in a phone interview on Thursday.

"None of it is unique to BlackBerry so we don't see what the possible problem could be," he said.

The Kik service, much like RIM's BlackBerry Messenger, allows users to see when a message has been sent, delivered, read and when it is being replied to in real-time.

But unlike BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM as it is popularly known, the Kik product allows chatter across platforms.

RIM says some 45 million people use BBM and 70 percent of them use it daily. Kik boasts 4 million users. It had 2.5 million, including 1 million BlackBerry users, when RIM sued.

Livingston said the new app has not yet been submitted for inclusion in RIM's App World catalog. The beta version is available for download at Kik's website. (http://www.kik.com/jme/clickthru.php?s=shhh)

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp; editing by Peter Galloway)
at 10:13 PM

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