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Monday, October 17, 2011

BlackBerry maker tries to soothe angry customers (AP) : Technet

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BlackBerry maker tries to soothe angry customers (AP) : Technet

BlackBerry maker tries to soothe angry customers (AP)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 02:44 PM PDT

By ROB GILLIES, Associated Press Rob Gillies, Associated Press – Mon Oct 17, 5:44 pm ET

TORONTO – The maker of the struggling BlackBerry tried to soothe tens of millions of frustrated customers Monday, offering more than $100 worth of free software to each one and giving some a month of technical support as compensation for last week's massive outage.

But some BlackBerry users and experts cast doubt on whether the freebies from Research In Motion would be enough to keep people from abandoning the tarnished brand in favor of more popular smartphones.

"Most of the people that use BlackBerrys are business people and all they care about is: `Does it work?'" said Chris Allen, a cable technician in Fall River, Mass.

The free software will be made available over the coming weeks on BlackBerry App World. The premium apps, which typically cost $5 to $15 each, include programs such as iSpeech Translator and the games "Bejeweled" and "Texas Hold'em Poker 2."

The offer runs until the end of the year. The free technical support will be available to corporate customers.

The blackout began when a crucial traffic-routing computer failed in Europe. A backup also failed, causing a cascade of problems all over the world that interrupted email and Internet services for many, if not most, of the company's 70 million users for three days.

The disruption could not have come at a worse time for RIM as it struggles to compete with Apple's iPhone and with smartphones running the Android system from Google Inc.

Apple Inc. released a new iPhone model Friday, quickly selling 4 million of the devices — more than the average number of BlackBerrys RIM sells per month.

RIM is also in the process of transitioning to a new operating system, a major undertaking that introduces even more uncertainty.

Jim Balsillie, one of the company's co-CEOs, acknowledged Monday that the manufacturer is under intense pressure. But he defended the handling of its worst-ever outage and noted that RIM has survived rough times before.

"This is something we would like to offer as our form of thanks," Balsillie said.

Balsillie and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis did not comment publicly until Thursday morning, four days after the interruption began.

John Crean, national managing partner of Nation Public Relations, the largest public-relations firm in Canada, said RIM was too slow to react.

"They should have had their CEOs out earlier and more visible," Crean said.

In the first days of the crisis, Balsillie said, he was busy trying to find the root of the problem and didn't have time to comment. He said he was in the Middle East and spent day and night on the phone with customers and carriers.

"The most important thing is staying connected to the ecosystem and making sure you're on what's the root cause. If you spend more time on PR, it's less time finding the root cause," Balsillie said.

Crean said the latest crisis only adds to the woes of a company that has steadily lost the cachet of having the must-have smartphone.

"The brand has diminished significantly in the last year, and this is not helping at all," Crean said.

The app offer is a good tactic, Crean said, but by no means a strategy to repair the brand. He said he still has not heard what sort of action, if any, is being taken to prevent another blackout.

When service went out Wednesday in the United States, Allen worked around it by using a third-party Web browser that wasn't tied to BlackBerry's network.

Still, he's pretty sure he will get another BlackBerry when his phone contract is up next year.

"There's nothing that can beat a BlackBerry for productivity," Allen said.

Vandana Mehra, who works for the World Bank in the Indian capital of New Delhi, thought the free apps were "kind of ludicrous." Her apps tend to crash, and she doesn't use them much.

The outage was just the latest in a string of problems for RIM, which has faced product delays, poor reviews and disappointing sales. The company's stock is more than 80 percent off its high three years ago.

Shares of Research in Motion Ltd. slumped Monday more than 6 percent, or $1.57, to $22.40. Earlier this year, shares traded around $70 each.

Although BlackBerrys have dominated the corporate smartphone market, their popularity among consumers has been short-lived. Many U.S. users have moved on to phones with big touchscreens like the iPhone and various competing models that run Android.

RIM's Playbook tablet computer has also been a major disappointment. RIM said about 200,000 of them sold last quarter — far short of what analysts had expected. And that number paled in comparison to the top-selling iPad, of which Apple shipped 9.3 million units during its most recent quarter.

Peter Misek, an analyst at Jefferies & Co. in New York, said much of RIM's future depends on releasing new BlackBerrys with the company's new QNX operating system, designed to compete with iPhones and Android phones.

RIM has delayed the launch of new QNX phones for months, but Balsillie suggested there could be an announcement on Tuesday, when Larazidis is due to talk at a big apps-development conference in San Francisco.

Balsillie said the new software "leap-frogs the mobile industry" and helps position RIM for the next decade.

This is not the first time the company has stumbled with its future at stake. RIM overcame doubts when it went public 14 years ago and then again during the tech crash 11 years ago. At one point, a patent dispute threatened to shut down BlackBerry service in the U.S. until the company settled in 2006.

___

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

Cellphone cos. to warn as plans approach limit (AP)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 03:14 PM PDT

By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson, Ap Technology Writer – Mon Oct 17, 6:14 pm ET

NEW YORK – Cellphone companies pledged Monday to warn subscribers before they go over their monthly limits for calling minutes, text messages and data use.

The pledge comes in response to a threat of regulation by the Federal Communications Commission, which wants to curb nasty surprises in the monthly bills of wireless subscribers.

CTIA — The Wireless Association, a trade group representing the major cellphone companies, said they're also promising to warn subscribers that they're paying roaming fees if they travel abroad.

The warnings will arrive as text messages, and subscribers won't need to sign up for them — they'll arrive automatically. CTIA said its member will have warnings in place on at least half their plans in a year and all of them in two years.

AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, the two largest carriers, already provide text-message warnings on their data plans, but not on text messaging or calls. Instead, subscribers have to look up their usage data.

The announcement was made jointly by the CTIA and the FCC, which credited Consumer's Union, the publisher of Consumer Report, for raising awareness of the issue. The magazine had found that many of its subscribers had been startled by high monthly bills.

Curbing occasional high bills is unlikely to have much of a financial effect at phone companies. Analyst Michael McCormack at Nomura Securities noted that the companies say that only a few percent of their subscribers exceed their allotments in a month. The trend over the past few years of making calls to other cellphones "free," or not counting toward the plan limits, has reduced the number of people who go over on calling minutes, he said.

Phone companies are also moving away from charging for each text message or selling "buckets" of 500 messages per month. Rather, they have moved toward offering unlimited text messaging.

The biggest remaining "bill shock" problem for consumers may be in international data roaming, McCormack said. Someone who travels abroad with a smartphone might use it sparingly for calls, but be unaware that apps are using data in the background, racking up big fees that only become apparent when the bill arrives.

The alerts are voluntary for the phone companies, but FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski made it clear that the agency would step in if companies fail to police themselves.

Kathleen Grillo, senior vice president for federal regulatory affairs at Verizon Communication Inc., said the voluntary approach was preferable because things change quickly in the wireless world and regulations don't always keep up.

"The result is an industry code that will serve consumers better than rules that would soon be outdated," she said.

Asked at the press conference why it would take two years to fully implement the warnings, CTIA President Steve Largent said phone companies have to reconfigure their systems.

IBM bumps guidance again, but revenue falls short (AP)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 03:38 PM PDT

By JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Technology Writer Jordan Robertson, Ap Technology Writer – Mon Oct 17, 6:38 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – IBM again demonstrated its skill at wringing profit from its software and services juggernauts.

The success of those divisions has made IBM Corp. one of the most-copied technology companies. It was a key reason that IBM beat analysts' net income forecasts for the third quarter and raised its earnings outlook for the full year. Neither was surprising for a company that rarely lets down its Wall Street constituents.

But some investors were left with a more unflattering impression from a different and unexpected part of IBM's report Monday.

IBM's revenue narrowly missed the average forecast, reviving questions about the company's ability to bring in enough new business to fuel its expected growth.

Global companies such as IBM face dangers on multiple fronts as the American economy struggles, debt fears threaten Europe and even some hot emerging markets show signs of cooling off. Sales to corporations and government agencies are at the heart of IBM's business model. But some fear that they may spend less on IBM products and services if demand for their products stays depressed and government budget woes continue.

The revenue miss apparently fed those fears and helped drive down IBM's stock price $7.32, or 3.9 percent, to $179.27 after the results came out. The shares had ended regular trading Monday down $3.94, or 2.1 percent, at $186.59 on a weak day for the market overall.

Most of the questions on IBM's conference call with analysts covered macroeconomic concerns. But some of the share price decline likely was caused by investors cashing in on recent gains. IBM's stock hit its 52-week high on Friday on expectations about the results.

IBM executives insist the company's focus on long-term contracts insulates it from economic swings. The company said it is ahead of its own aggressive forecasts. IBM has disclosed a goal of hitting $20 per share in adjusted earnings by 2015, a rare example of a long-term earnings target made public by a major company.

For the three months that ended Sept. 30, IBM said net income was $3.84 billion, or $3.19 per share, up 7 percent from $3.59 billion, or $2.82 per share, a year ago. Excluding one-time items, it earned $3.28 per share, 6 cents per share more than analysts surveyed by FactSet forecast on average.

Revenue rose 8 percent to $26.16 billion, slightly less than the $26.26 billion that analysts had expected.

Revenue rose in each of IBM's three biggest divisions, but more slowly than in the previous quarter.

Services revenue rose 8 percent, software revenue rose 13 percent, and hardware revenue rose 4 percent. In the second quarter, services revenue rose 10 percent, software revenue rose 17 percent, and hardware revenue grew 17 percent.

The company now expects adjusted earnings of at least $13.35 per share for the year. The previous forecast was for at least $13.25 per share. Investors have come to expect regular forecast bumps. IBM, which is based in Armonk, N.Y., has raised its full-year profit forecast in each of the last 10 quarters.

Just Show Me: How to upload photos to Facebook (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 06:25 PM PDT

We get silly with Siri, the new iPhone voice assistant (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 06:16 PM PDT

iPhone 4S: Siri is Impressive, But Still a Work in Progress [REVIEW] (Mashable)

Posted: 16 Oct 2011 12:00 PM PDT

Charlie White Charlie White – Sun Oct 16, 3:00 pm ET

Apple is bringing speech recognition to the masses with its new iPhone 4S, equipped with an intelligent assistant named Siri. It's a major differentiator for the new iPhone, setting it apart from its predecessors. I've been using speech recognition software for the past 8 years, so I was eager to take this enhanced version of Siri for a spin. Here's my review. Siri is not new. It started its life as an experiment funded by DARPA, said to be the largest artificial intelligence project to date. Next, Siri, with the same Nuance speech recognition tech built in that also powers the application I've been using for years, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, was first available as a free app on the iPhone in February, 2010. Then Apple bought Siri in April of 2010 and decided to incorporate it into its new iPhone 4S, breaking the old Siri app on other iPhones (unless you want to perform a crude hack).

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So now Siri is baked into every iPhone 4S, and not available elsewhere. Siri has come a long way since it was first introduced as a less-accurate and somewhat incomplete iPhone app. Now it's better integrated into iOS 5, and my immediate impression is that it's more accurate than it's ever been. Even in a noisy environment inside a car going 60 miles an hour, it can still understand most of what you're saying if you hold the iPhone up to your ear. Its speech recognition isn't perfect, and some of its errors are laughable, but in a quiet environment its accuracy is nearly equal to that of the desktop version of NaturallySpeaking running on extremely powerful processors.

Its integration into the iPhone 4S's iOS 5 software makes it convenient to use. You press and hold the iPhone 4S's Home button, and it springs to life, sounding a short beep to signal for you to begin speaking. You can use it in this speakerphone mode, or if the iPhone 4S is turned on, you can simply raise the handset to your ear (a necessity when riding in a noisy vehicle) and the phone's proximity sensor activates Siri, usually prompting you to begin speaking (inexplicably, sometimes it doesn't respond).

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"Only a company with the chutzpah of Apple would have the courage to try something like this. But Siri works just barely well enough for Apple to pull it off, bolstered by the iPhone 4S's faster processor and better camera."
That odd non-working tendency must be why Apple is still calling Siri "beta." The company reassures users that Siri will be continuously improved, adding that the software learns how you speak as you go and will perform more accurate recognition as it learns your way of speaking. Still, loading beta software into a new piece of iPhone hardware is a thin thread on which to differentiate this new product. Only a company with the chutzpah of Apple would have the courage to try something like this. But Siri works just barely well enough for Apple to pull it off, bolstered by the iPhone 4S's faster processor and better camera (among what Apple boasts as 197 other incremental improvements), all doing their part to strengthen the lure of this updated iPhone.

Over the 48 hours I've been using Siri, it's hard to tell if it's actually improving its speech recognition, but as it stands, it's just good enough to be fun to use. I especially like the way you can almost carry on a conversation with it. For example, you can ask it, "How's the weather in New York today?" It will answer by showing you the iPhone's weather app with New York's data displayed. Then, if you ask it, "Where are the good Italian restaurants there?," Siri responds by finding 24 Italian restaurants in New York, sorted by rating. It knows you're still talking about New York. Clever.

As you can read in our posts about Siri, it does bring a slight attitude along with it, which I find refreshing. Other times, it has hilarious misunderstandings, such as when I asked it yesterday to "Call me an ambulance," and it responded, "From now on, I'll call you 'an ambulance'. Okay?" I was disappointed to hear Siri's voice, which still sounds way too robotic for my taste. I was thinking that somehow, now that Apple owns the app, it would gussy it up to sound more like GPS units do, or like the mellifluous yet mutinous HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. But I suspect that's still way off in the future. Instead, there are some oddities in its stilted pronunciation, such as the way Siri says the word "restaurant," speaking with a drawl that sounds like it's straight out of my native Southern U.S.: "Resta-runt." Grandma, is that you?

Among its myriad capabilities, of course Siri can help you place phone calls with aplomb, where all you have to do is speak the name of anyone in your Contacts app, and it quickly connects you (something that's been possible for years with much lesser cellphones). Beyond that, it can also help you speak an email and turn it into text, where it walks you through by asking who you're sending it to, the subject line and so forth. However, it's not too adept at breaking out separate paragraphs of text, even if I spoke to it the way I do with NaturallySpeaking, specifying things such as "new paragraph." Although the email function could be useful for creating short emails while driving (not recommended), it still has some polishing to do before it's truly useful for sending emails solely by speech.

Some of its capabilities go deeply into science fiction territory, such as pushing and holding the Home button, and then telling it to set a timer for 15 minutes. I especially like telling it to set an alarm, asking it directions, or asking it to launch a playlist in iTunes. I was disappointed to see that it wasn't able to interact with Twitter, but I found a workaround for that, so that problem is solved already. Still, Apple should have made that capability available from the beginning, and if the company follows through on its promise, we will soon see a lot more interaction with various iOS apps.

Siri on the iPhone 4S still feels like a work in progress. I think it could have used another few months of development before it was released to push it well beyond gimmick territory. But Apple was already later than usual in its product cycle with this iPhone 4S, so might have been compelled to release it early. Even so, Siri as it stands now gives us a hint at what's to come, and the future looks bright.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

From a single hashtag, a protest circled the world (Reuters)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 07:10 PM PDT

By Ben Berkowitz Ben Berkowitz – 2 hrs 44 mins ago

NEW YORK (Reuters) – It all started innocuously enough with a July 13 blog post urging people to #OccupyWallStreet, as though such a thing (Twitter hashtag and all) were possible.

It turns out, with enough momentum and a keen sense of how to use social media, it actually is.

The Occupy movement, decentralized and leaderless, has mobilized thousands of people around the world almost exclusively via the Internet. To a large degree through Twitter, and also with platforms like Facebook and Meetup, crowds have connected and gathered.

As with any movement, a spark is needed to start word spreading. SocialFlow, a social media marketing company, did an analysis for Reuters of the history of the Occupy hashtag on Twitter and the ways it spread and took root.

The first apparent mention was that July 13 blog post by activist group Adbusters (http://r.reuters.com/suc54s) but the idea was slow to get traction.

The next Twitter mention was on July 20 (http://r.reuters.com/tuc54s) from a Costa Rican film producer named Francisco Guerrero, linking to a blog post on a site called Wake Up from Your Slumber that reiterated the Adbusters call to action (http://r.reuters.com/vuc54s).

The site, founded in 2006 "to expose America's fraudulent monetary system and the evil of charging interest on money loaned," is a reference to the biblical verse Romans 13:11 that reads in part: "The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed."

Guerrero's post was retweeted once and then there was silence until two July 23 tweets -- one from the Spanish user Gurzbo (http://r.reuters.com/wuc54s) and one from a retired high school chemistry teacher in Long Island, New York named Cindy tweeting as gemswinc. (http://r.reuters.com/xuc54s)

Gurzbo's post was not passed along by anyone but Cindy's was, by eight people, including a Delaware-based opponent of the Federal Reserve, a vegan information rights supporter, a Washington-based environmentalist and an Alabama-based progressive blogger.

Again, there was relative silence for nearly two weeks, until LazyBookworm tweeted the Occupy hashtag again on August 5. (http://r.reuters.com/zuc54s) That got seven retweets, largely from a crowd of organic food supporters and poets.

HASHTAG REVOLT

The notion of Occupy Wall Street was out there but it was not gaining much attention -- until, of course, it did, suddenly and with force.

Social media experts trace the expansion to hyper-local tweeters, people who cover the pulse of communities at a level of detail not even local papers can match.

In New York, credit goes to the Twitter account of Newyorkist, whose more than 11,000 tweets chronicle the city in block-by-block detail. His was one of the first well-followed accounts to mention the protests in mid-September.

Trendistic, which tracks hashtag trends on Twitter, shows that OccupyWallStreet first showed up in any volume around 11 p.m. on September 16, the evening before the occupation of lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park began. Within 24 hours, the tag represented nearly 1 of every 500 uses of a hashtag.

The first two weeks of the movement were slow, media coverage was slim and little happened beyond the taking of the concrete park itself. But then a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge prompted hundreds of arrests and the spark was ignited.

On October 1, #OccupyBoston started to show up on Twitter. Within a couple of weeks, #OccupyDenver and #OccupySD and others appeared.

The Occupy Wall Street page on Facebook started on September 19 with a YouTube video of the early protests. By September 22, it reached critical mass.

"Newcomers today, welcome! Feel free to post. Advertise your own pages of resistance. Network until it works," read one posting meant to inspire protests elsewhere.

For young activists around the world, who grew up with the Internet and the smartphone, Facebook and Twitter have become crucial in expanding the movement.

They are pioneering platforms like Vibe that lets people anonymously share text, photos and video over short distances for brief periods of time -- perfect for use at rallies.

"No one owns a (Twitter) hashtag, it has no leadership, it has no organization, it has no creed but it's quite appropriate to the architecture of the net. This is a distributed revolt," said Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor at City University of New York and author of the well-known blog BuzzMachine.

Some reports say the protesters have raised as much as $300,000 in donations to cover everything from pizza to video equipment but others put the figure much lower.

The Alliance for Global Justice, which calls itself "the fiscal sponsor for Occupy Wall Street," has raised $23,200 via WePay.com.

OCCUPY EVERYWHERE

As of Monday afternoon, Facebook listed no fewer than 125 Occupy-related pages, from New York to Tulsa and all points in between. Roughly 1 in every 500 hashtags used on Twitter on Monday, all around the world, was the movement's own #OWS.

The websites keep proliferating -- We Are the 99 Percent, Parents for Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Together, even the parody Occupy Sesame Street (concerned mostly with the plight of monsters living in garbage cans).

Online streaming video has also been a huge resource for the protesters, using cheap cameras and high-speed wireless Internet access.

Supporters, opponents and the merely curious got the chance last Saturday to watch the Occupy Wall Street protesters decide whether to occupy a major public park, Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village area.

They saw warnings the police were about to arrive in riot gear and with horses, vans and buses to take away protesters if there were mass arrests. Local media reported about 10 arrests among the 3,000 or so people in the park.

As the seconds to a possible confrontation ticked down, the tension led to various reactions from those watching online.

"Anyone arrested is a political prisoner," said one.

"Here comes Czar Bloomberg's Cossacks," said another, in reference to New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and the appearance of the mounted police.

There were "we are watching" messages of support from cities across the United States and some who found it the best entertainment going on a Saturday night.

"So much more exciting than a TV show" was one comment.

(Reporting by Ben Berkowitz; Additional reporting by Martin Howell and Anthony DeRosa in New York; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

Yahoo ad exec deflects talk about becoming CEO (AP)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 05:40 PM PDT

– Mon Oct 17, 8:40 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – The head of Yahoo's online advertising business in North America said Monday he has been too busy trying to bring in more revenue to consider whether he would be willing to become the struggling Internet company's next CEO.

Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo Inc.'s executive vice president of Americas, made his remarks during the kick-off of the Web 2.0 Summit. That's a three-day Internet conference that annually attracts prominent technology executives.

The conference got off to a rocky start with the cancellation of two of Monday's scheduled speakers.

Mark Pincus, CEO and founder of Web Zynga Inc., didn't show up because he didn't want to risk saying anything that might rile government regulators and complicate the company's efforts to raise $1 billion in an initial public offering of stock that has been in the works for nearly four months. Intel Corp. CEO Paul Otellini cancelled because he wasn't feeling well.

Levinsohn's appearance held intrigue because of the drama swirling around Yahoo since its board fired Carol Bartz as CEO last month. Tim Morse, Yahoo's chief financial officer, is temporarily running the company while the board undergoes a strategic review. The directors are evaluating whether it makes sense to hire a permanent CEO or sell Yahoo in parts or in its entirety.

If Yahoo decides to hire from within, Levinsohn will likely be a leading candidate. After making his mark running News Corp.'s online operations under media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Levinson spent several years running a digital media investment fund. Bartz lured Levinsohn to Yahoo 11 months ago.

In response to a question in his Monday appearance, Levinsohn said he is focusing more on reviving Yahoo's revenue growth than a possible promotion.

"I have an incredible job now," he said. "This is the best job I've ever had."

Levinsohn deflected a question about the possibility of Yahoo being sold. In recent weeks, there has been repeated speculation that the company might be sold to an assortment of buyout firms that prey upon troubled companies. Alibaba Group, a Chinese Internet company of which Yahoo owns a 43 percent stake, has expressed interest if it can line up the financing for a deal that would likely require a bid of more than $20 billion. Microsoft Corp., which offered to buy Yahoo for $47.5 billion in 2008 before withdrawing the bid, also has been mentioned as a possible suitor.

The takeover talk will hang over Yahoo's schedule release of its third-quarter earnings Tuesday afternoon. The results are expected to show Yahoo's revenue is still declining as online advertisers spend more money with Internet search leader Google Inc. and Facebook's steadily growing social network.

Despite the challenges facing Yahoo, Levinsohn said he remains "incredibly bullish" on the company.

Factory closure in China could affect Mac notebook shipments (Digital Trends)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 08:10 PM PDT

Trevor Mogg Trevor Mogg – 1 hr 44 mins ago

macbook-air-13-3-display-angleThe partial closure of a factory in China due to environmental concerns could have an impact on the supply of Apple's notebook computers.

According to an FT report on Monday, the facility was closed by local officials following complaints by people living nearby of a strange odour, apparently coming from the factory.

The production plant, located in Suzhou province in eastern China, is operated by Taiwan-based Catcher Technology, one of the world's leading manufacturers of metal computer casings. The company is a big supplier of the unibody aluminum cases used for Apple's MacBook Air and MacBook Pro notebooks.

Speaking at a news conference, Catcher Technology's president Allen Horng said, "Shipments to our customers will inevitably be affected. We already asked them to make adjustments to their (casings) procurement."

The Wall Street Journal reported that Horng was unable to say how long the closure would last for, but that the company's total shipments would fall by 20 percent in October and, if the situation continued, by around 40 percent in November.

Analysts have suggested that the other major supplier of metal computer casings, Foxconn, could receive an increase in orders as a result of the problem at Catcher Technology's Suzhou factory, although it's not clear by how much this would ease any strain on the supply chain.

On Tuesday Apple will release its third quarter financial results. Some analysts expect record figures to be announced, helped partly by healthy sales of the MacBook Air, which received a refresh in July.

Samsung, HTC patent fights fail to gain traction on Apple (Digital Trends)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 06:23 PM PDT

Geoff Duncan Geoff Duncan – Mon Oct 17, 9:23 pm ET

HTC-Sensation-XE

The fights are far from over, but so far two of the epic intellectual property battles targeting Apple's wildly successful iPhone and iPod lines are failing to cause much damage. First, the U.S. International Trade Commission has issued a initial judgment that Apple's iPhone, iPad, and iPod product lines do not violate four HTC patents related to phone dialing and power management. Second, a Dutch court has turned down Samsung's bid to ban sales of Apple products that use 3G technology in the Netherlands, finding that Samsung's patents are covered by standards agreements that make them open to licensing on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.

In the HTC case, the ITC judge found HTC's patents are valid, but that Apple's products contain "no violation." The decision is preliminary, with the full ITC scheduled to rule on the case in February. HTC has indicated it plans to vigorously appeal the decision. The text of the decision (as well as analysis) is available from Florian Mueller's FOSS Patents blog; the announcement hasn't been posted yet by the ITC.

The HTC case goes back to early 2010, when Apple first sued HTC arguing the company was infringing on some 20 patents related to the iPhone. A few months later, HTC countersued, arguing iPhone, iPad, and iPod products violated HTC patents and should be barred from sale in the United States. That suit was HTC's first retaliation against Apple; it has since added on additional complaints, claiming Apple also violates three additional patents, as well as patents HTC recently acquired from Google. Apple has, in turn, filed new infringement suits over the HTC Flyer table and Droid phones, and in July the ITC issued a ruling that HTC does infringe on two Apple patents. The battle between Apple and HTC is largely viewed as a proxy fight over Android: if Apple wins critical victories against HTC, it will likely be able to impose them against large portions of the Android ecosystem. Hence, HTC has been getting support from Google in the battle.

Meanwhile, the epic battle between Samsung and Apple—which now spans at least four continents and two dozen lawsuits—took another turn against Samsung last week: a Dutch court ruled against Samsung's request that Apple products with 3G technology be banned from import into the Netherlands. Samsung had argued Apple did not have valid licenses to 3G technologies in the devices, but the court ruled that the Samsung patents in question are subject to fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing terms as part of technology standards and, essentially, that Samsung isn't able to yank the patents out from under Apple just because they have a successful product using the technology. The ruling could be important for similar cases Samsung has lodged against Apple in France and Italy.

Samsung has also taken a hit in its litigation against Apple in the United States, where a judge ruled last week Samsung tablets infringe on Apple patents. However, that judge stopped short of banning Samsung Galaxy Tab sales in the U.S., saying Apple must first demonstrate its patents are valid before a sales ban can be considered. That defeat came on the heels of the same Samsung tablets being barred from sale in Australia—again, for violating Apple patents.

Both patent battles are likely to continue for some time, with the companies elbowing for position before they're finally forced to go to court—or actually agree to a settlement. Overall, despite a series of setbacks Samsung seems to be in the best position to wrangle a settlement out of Apple: the company has a much deeper patent portfolio of its own, and remains a key supplier to Apple. HTC, on the other hand, doesn't have much it can use as leverage against Apple, despite having its position bolstered with patent acquisitions from S3 Graphics and Google itself. And the preliminary ITC ruling just makes HTC's negotiating position against Apple that much weaker.

Nearly 80 percent of people can't last 24 hours without checking Facebook (Digital Trends)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 09:22 PM PDT

Mike Flacy Mike Flacy – 31 mins ago

Facebook-browsing

Based on a survey of 2,500 people conducted by Busted Coverage, Coed magazine and College Candy, 79 percent of people cannot go an entire day without logging into Facebook on a computer or mobile device. In addition, nearly 50 percent of the respondents were very concerned by their growing dependence on the social network for news and updates on the lives of friends. Over 40 percent of the group even checks Facebook before brushing their teeth after waking up in the morning. Reinforcing the addictive nature of the service, 20 percent of the people that deleted their Facebook profile due to frustration with the service ended up creating a new Facebook profile.

facebook friend listsHowever, 70 percent of the respondents claimed that they would delete their Facebook profile permanently if the social network ever starts charging for the service. Ninety-two percent admitted that Facebook status updates are not helpful. The most annoying updates chosen by the group included emo song lyrics, status updates and fan page updates. Political status updates were also found quite annoying followed by baby photos posted by friends and Facebook check-in location updates. 

Over 50 percent of the respondents claim to have been angered by Facebook 's privacy settings when attempting to check out information on the new significant other of an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend. However, 65 percent would be embarrassed if other people could see which friends they check out the most frequently. Six percent of the group claimed to have dumped a significant other through a private message or public wall post on Facebook. Over 45 percent of the people in the survey admitted to having photos in their albums that have been tagged while they were intoxicated. Finally, over 66 percent of the group says they do not judge other Facebook users based on the amount of Facebook friends on the user's profile.

Rumor: Ice Cream Sandwich will include built-in photo editing tools and filters (Digital Trends)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 04:29 PM PDT

Molly McHugh Molly Mchugh – Mon Oct 17, 7:29 pm ET

android cameraTo hear Eric Schmidt tell it, Google should be announcing its new Android OS update Ice Cream Sandwich any day now. An extremely tenuous launch date and a name is nearly all we know about the upgrade, but rumors suggest Google might be packing some creative tools into the new firmware.

tools It looks as if the camera features in Android phones will now include a host of image editing abilities. Android Police is showing off a hefty set of icons that reveal everything from cropping and straightening photos to flipping, sharpening, and even adding filters.

And the filter don't disappoint. There are nearly two dozen different effects, all packing Instagram-like elements that continue to be so popular with smartphone photogs.

filters

If Ice Cream Sandwich will implement this feature, we say smart move on Android's part. Filter apps have been a hit with consumers since day one, but iPhone users have gotten the upper hand by either getting applications sooner or exclusively. So if the platform isn't going to bring filters to your users, do it yourself (although Instagram did recently offer a vague timeline for its Android app).

Apple has halfway addressed this with HDR effects and mild editing abilities (crop, rotate, enhance, and red-eye removal). But a smartphone's camera is becoming more and more of a selling feature for consumers, and while Android might not have the sensor the iPhone does we're willing to bet that more than a few buyers out there could be convinced by a built-in Instagram.

Mobile players aren't the only ones looking to capitalize on this trend. Facebook is rumored to be implementing built-in editors, a step Google+ already took. It's possible that mainstream platforms could stifle the momentum photo-focused social networks that built their services around filters have been gaining. 

Overcome continental divides with these Android translation apps (Appolicious)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 02:30 PM PDT

EBay CEO lifts PayPal mobile payment forecast (Reuters)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 04:08 PM PDT

By Alistair Barr Alistair Barr – Mon Oct 17, 7:08 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – eBay Inc Chief Executive John Donahoe increased a key forecast for the company's PayPal payments business during an Internet industry conference on Monday.

Donahoe said total payment volume, or TPV, transmitted by mobile devices through PayPal's system will be more than $3.5 billion in 2011, during a discussion on stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

The CEO's previous forecast was for $3 billion in mobile TPV at PayPal this year.

EBay is making a big push into mobile commerce, through smartphone apps like Red Laser, which lets shoppers scan bar codes to check prices online and at other retailers nearby.

PayPal is trying to transform itself from an online payments business into a mobile payments service that works in the offline world too.

Investors are watching for signs of progress in these areas because they increase the size of eBay's potential market hugely.

Last week, Donahoe said eBay's main Marketplaces business will process almost $5 billion of gross merchandise volume via mobile devices this year. That was up from a previous estimate of roughly $4 billion.

(Reporting by Alistair Barr, editing by Bernard Orr)

Bill Clinton, celebrities star in new Web video (AP)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 03:25 PM PDT

– Mon Oct 17, 6:25 pm ET

NEW YORK – Bill Clinton is happy to have celebrities call attention to his Clinton Foundation, but he's not above spoofing them, either.

In a new Web video for the 10th anniversary of the Clinton Foundation, a coterie of stars performs as the foundation's airheaded "Celebrity Division." Ben Stiller leads an unproductive fundraising brainstorming session with Matt Damon, Sean Penn, Kristen Wiig (wihg), Jack Black, Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen.

The former president makes a cameo.

The video was produced by Funny Or Die and will be posted on the site early Tuesday.

The William J. Clinton Foundation held a star-studded anniversary concert over the weekend in Los Angeles. The foundation has sought to improve global health, strengthen economies worldwide, promote healthier childhoods and protect the environment.

___

Online:

http://www.clintonfoundation.org

http://www.funnyordie.com

Apple earnings to showcase iPhone strength (Reuters)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 09:08 PM PDT

By Poornima Gupta Poornima Gupta – 46 mins ago

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc once more faces lofty expectations after smashing iPhone sales records, but Wall Street remains confident the world's largest technology company will deliver another bumper quarter.

Investors worried about crumbling consumer spending, a darkening economic outlook and the rapid expansion of Google Inc's Android mobile software got some assurance after the company moved 4 million iPhone 4S units in three days -- more than double its predecessor -- despite lukewarm reviews.

Apple's shareholders have had plenty to fret about since August, when Steve Jobs handed the reins to Tim Cook.

The company then lost its leading visionary and co-founder when he died October 5. Some analysts say the short-term disruption offered a brief window for rivals like Google and its foremost Android partner, Samsung, to swoop in.

But the world's largest technology company by market value is expected to present a positive short-term picture -- sparked by roaring sales of its iPhone and iPad -- when it reports results for the July-September period Tuesday.

The iPhone 4S sales numbers catapulted Apple's shares to a record high last week, even though some of that rally rested on the iPhone 4S being available in two additional countries and more telecoms carriers from launch day.

The record sales have heightened expectations for the current quarter, which many investors expect will be enormous for Apple.

"The quarter we are focusing on is the holiday quarter," said Channing Smith, co-manager of the Capital Advisors Growth Fund, which owns Apple shares.

"We expect Apple to absolutely blow the doors off during Christmas."

Still, Apple has encountered a few uncharacteristic glitches or hiccups since Jobs exited in August. While the iPhone 4S rode pent-up demand and wider availability to record numbers, the initial response was disappointment over a lack of design changes.

And while the woes of rivals such as Research in Motion -- which experienced its severest outage last week -- appear to benefit Apple, the impending re-launch of Microsoft Corp and Nokia into the mobile arena and the increasing footprint of Android could hit Apple's sales.

Others worry that Apple's shares have gone too far, too fast.

On Monday, BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis lowered his recommendation on Apple to hold, citing a steep run-up in price and some short-term turbulence such as some risk to profit margin from education pricing discounts offered on some Apple products and competition to the iPad from low-cost manufacturers.

"The company has to constantly set records just to meet expectations," Gillis said. "There is nothing wrong with Apple's business model or execution, but we do see that sentiment is overwhelmingly positive."

"It is possible shares pull back below $400, possibly even this week after the earnings report," he added.

For Cook and his executive bench, quarterly results offer what some analysts say is a welcome opportunity to focus on business, after headlines were dominated for a fortnight by Jobs' passing, which ignited a spontaneous outpouring of grief and sympathy from heads of state, Silicon Valley royalty and across the Internet.

Apple's iPhone delivers more than 40 percent of its revenue and provides much of the growth momentum. Wall Street has begun building in projections for up to 30 million of the smartphones sold in the December quarter, the crucial holiday period.

As with previous quarters, Apple -- which provides current-quarter estimates that Wall Street says are typically conservative -- needs to truly surpass expectations to drive a share rally, analysts said.

Current average projections put fiscal fourth-quarter revenue at $29.6 billion and earnings per share at $7.38.

But according to StarMine SmartEstimates, which places more emphasis on the timeliest forecasts by the most historically accurate analysts, Apple is expected to post earnings of $7.47 per share -- about 2.4 percent above the average estimate.

Revenue could come in at $29.8 billion -- about 1 percent above the average expectation.

BEYOND IPHONES

Some investors recommend looking beyond merely iPhones and looking at Apple's other main devices: the two-year-old iPad, and the stalwart Macintosh line of desktop and laptop computers.

Wall Street in general expects sales somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million to 22 million iPhones in the September quarter, north of 4 million Macs, and about 10 million iPads.

"Investors have plenty to look forward to from Apple as the year comes to a close, including stronger than expected demand for the new iPhone 4S, a strengthened digital ecosystem with the recent launch of the iOS 5 and iCloud, the continued momentum around the iPad 2," Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White said.

Beyond 2011, the picture is less clear. Many analysts expect Apple, sustaining its long-established product cycle, to unveil the third version of the iPad, which helped create the tablet computing market that it still dominates.

But rivals aren't sitting still. Microsoft is gearing up to launch Windows 8 for tablets, and its new phone operating software will soon debut on new partner Nokia.

Google, whose Android is already the world's most-used mobile software, continues to score partners. And Samsung, riding Android's success, may overtake Apple as the world's bestselling smartphone brand in the fourth quarter and beyond.

Still, investor enthusiasm for Apple continues for now.

"It's very hard to find any type of problem in the business," Capital Advisors Growth Fund's Smith said.

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta and Edwin Chan; Editing by Gary Hill)

Summary Box: IBM misses on 3Q revenue (AP)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 03:36 PM PDT

– Mon Oct 17, 6:36 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – PROFIT MACHINE: IBM again demonstrated its skill at wringing profit from its software and services juggernauts. The company beat analysts' net income forecasts for the third quarter and raised its earnings outlook for the full year.

THERE'S A BUT: IBM slightly missed on the revenue forecast, reviving questions about the company's ability to bring in enough new business to fuel its expected growth.

STOCK HIT: IBM's stock price fell $7.19, or 3.9 percent, to $180.96 in extended trading after the results came out.

IBM's Q3 disappoints, stock drops (Reuters)

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 04:30 PM PDT

By Noel Randewich Noel Randewich – Mon Oct 17, 7:30 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – IBM's quarterly results failed to impress investors used to a stellar showing from Big Blue, dragging its stock down more than 3 percent.

Revenue and service signings roughly met forecasts, but paled in comparison with strong results in recent weeks from Oracle Corp and Accenture Plc that had fueled an IBM stock rally to an all-time high on Friday.

The information technology hardware bellwether, with its global span and diverse clientele, said total services signings -- an indicator of future growth -- climbed to $12.3 billion in the third quarter, at the low end of expectations of $12 billion to $13 billion.

Revenue rose 8 percent to $26.2 billion, marginally softer than the average forecast of $26.26 billion.

"We're in the early stages of third-quarter earnings season and everyone's looking at top-line numbers to see any evidence of the economic slowdown working its way into financial results," said Keith Wirtz, chief investment officer for Fifth Third Asset Management.

"All the news on macro has been negative. At what point does it creep into the company numbers? We're still seeing above-average results."

Buttressed by recurring revenue that helps keep IBM's results steady in strong and weak economies, its shares have outperformed the market and hit a record high last week. They are up about 28 percent this year versus the Standard & Poor's 500 index's 4 percent dip.

International Business Machines Corp's results on Monday triggered profit-taking. The stock, which closed at an all-time high of $190.53 on Friday, fell 3.7 percent to $179.70 in extended trade after closing down 2.1 percent on the New York Stock Exchange.

"The company exceeded published expectations, but the underlying expectations were even higher," Annex Research analyst Bob Djurdjevic said. "Investors who have been very bullish on IBM are probably taking some profits now."

RISING CLOUD

U.S. economic concerns and a worsening European financial crisis have hurt consumer demand. Companies such as IBM that sell hardware and software for data centers powering the Internet have remained resilient.

IBM said revenue from cloud computing in the first nine months of this year was twice as much as in full-year 2010.

Business software maker VMware Inc, also a major player in cloud computing, on Monday posted quarterly profit above expectations but warned of uncertainty among some of its corporate customers in Europe.

"We have seen a bit more scrutiny and higher levels of approval required. Particularly with larger deals where they would go for CFO and CEO approval, where in the past we may not have seen those approvals to be necessary," said VMWare Chief Financial Officer Mark Peeking.

IBM also derives a major portion of its revenue from government spending and the financial services industry -- both hit hard by widening fiscal deficits and crumbling markets, respectively.

"There isn't much happiness with these numbers. The software number is up 13 percent, but adjusted for currency, it was up 8 percent. That's a little disappointing," said Richard Sichel, chief investment officer for Philadelphia Trust Co.

IBM has consistently beaten Wall Street forecasts. In the second quarter, it trounced expectations with signings of new business surging 16 percent. At the time, that stellar performance raised hopes that 2011 would be a good year for overall tech-spending.

On Monday, it raised its full-year diluted earnings forecast to at least $13.35 per share, from its prior estimate of at least $13.25. But that was just pennies above the Wall Street target of $13.32, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

IBM reported a third-quarter profit, excluding items, of $3.28 per share, up 15 percent year over year, just pennies above expectations for $3.22.

"Whatever IBM could control, they did a great job. But they are not immune to macro conditions. Financial conditions are tough," said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.

"People don't want to cancel projects, but projects are getting delayed. Sales cycles are getting elongated. New projects are getting smaller budgets."

Despite uncertainty in the fourth quarter and 2012, some portfolio managers remained confident in IBM's ability to weather a tougher global environment.

"IBM's business has a degree of resiliency to it. The company has maintenance agreements that generate recurring revenue, giving us more visibility on future results," Wirtz said.

(Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by Richard Chang)
at 10:12 PM

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