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LivingSocial goes national with Black Friday deals (AP) : Technet |
- LivingSocial goes national with Black Friday deals (AP)
- More police departments look to tune public out (AP)
- Research firm: Amazon sells $199 tablet at a loss (AP)
- Watch a stunning video of Jupiter rotate on its axis, as captured by a telescope (Yahoo! News)
- Scientists launch international competition to create the heaviest element ever (Yahoo! News)
- YouTube Video Prompts Calls for UC Davis Chancellor's Resignation (Mashable)
- LivingSocial seeks to raise $200 million: NYT (Reuters)
- 16 Online Resources for Preparing the Perfect Thanksgiving (Mashable)
- Kindle Fire's App Problems: Google and Apple (The Atlantic Wire)
- China Mobile says total subscribers rose to 638.89 million in October (Reuters)
- The 'Freaky Line' And Where Facebook Is Headed (The Atlantic Wire)
- Is Windows Phone the Best Mobile Platform You're Not Using? (Mashable)
- Android App Tablet Review: JamBase (Appolicious)
- Secretive North Korea opens up to cellphones (Reuters)
- Mila Kunis keeps her date with Afghanistan vet (Reuters)
- Shape of iPhones, iPads to come? (Appolicious)
- Samsung Galaxy Nexus provides first lick of Ice Cream Sandwich (Appolicious)
- Salesforce.com Acquires Model Metrics in Social-Mobile Play (NewsFactor)
| LivingSocial goes national with Black Friday deals (AP) Posted: 20 Nov 2011 09:10 PM PST NEW YORK – Here's one way to avoid getting trampled by bargain-hunting hordes knocking down store doors on Black Friday: Online deals service LivingSocial is unveiling a slew of bargains for the holidays that are just a couple of mouse clicks away. LivingSocial is announcing Monday that it will offer discounts from national businesses such as Verizon Wireless, Electronic Arts Inc. and the sneaker brand Sketchers USA Inc., a contrast to the local deals for spas, restaurants and weekend escapes that it's known for. Such offers will give national brands access to social media-savvy customers who might not otherwise think to visit their stores. It's also good, cheap marketing, as the deals are often widely shared on Facebook and Twitter. LivingSocial, meanwhile, gets to sign up new subscribers and take a cut from the money they spend on the coupons. It also gets to participate in a day-after-Thanksgiving shopping bonanza that's normally reserved for brick-and-mortar retail stores. One set of deals, available for three days starting on Black Friday, includes $5 for magazine subscriptions that normally cost $12. Customers won't be able to redeem those coupons until Monday, so stores already offering monster sales on Black Friday won't have to cut their profit margins even thinner. On Cyber Monday, the online shopping day that follows Thanksgiving weekend, LivingSocial will unveil another set of deals. Nearly all of the discounts are 50 percent off — such as paying $40 to be able to spend $80 at wine retailer Wine.com. These coupons will go on sale Monday, Nov. 28, and can be redeemed starting the next day. OfficeMax Inc. isn't known for attracting big holiday crowds, but Chris Duncan, a vice president of direct and loyalty marketing, said the company decided to offer a LivingSocial deal to reach new customers looking for e-readers, tablets and other gadgets. Mitch Spolan, senior vice president of national sales at LivingSocial, said the service isn't changing its local-business focus, but gets the opportunity to offer something special nationally from time to time. LivingSocial, which is based in Washington, D.C., has more than 46 million subscribers, who typically get deals through emails and other alerts sent at least daily. LivingSocial's larger competitor, Chicago-based Groupon Inc., is not doing Black Friday promotions this year. Instead, it's promoting discounts on big, expensive experiences dubbed "once in a lifetime," such as $5,000 for a three-day trip to studio tours and tapings of the Ellen DeGeneres Show. |
| More police departments look to tune public out (AP) Posted: 20 Nov 2011 10:20 AM PST WASHINGTON – Police departments around the country are working to shield their radio communications from the public as cheap, user-friendly technology has made it easy for anyone to use handheld devices to keep tabs on officers responding to crimes. The practice of encryption has grown more common from Florida to New York and west to California, with law enforcement officials saying they want to keep criminals from using officers' internal chatter to evade them. But journalists and neighborhood watchdogs say open communications ensure that the public receives information that can be vital to their safety as quickly as possible. D.C. police moved to join the trend this fall after what Chief Cathy Lanier said were several incidents involving criminals and smartphones. Carjackers operating on Capitol Hill were believed to have been listening to emergency communications because they were only captured once police stopped broadcasting over the radio, she said. And drug dealers at a laundromat fled the building after a sergeant used open airwaves to direct other units there — suggesting, she said, that they too were listening in. "Whereas listeners used to be tied to stationary scanners, new technology has allowed people — and especially criminals — to listen to police communications on a smartphone from anywhere," Lanier testified at a D.C. Council committee hearing this month. "When a potential criminal can evade capture and learn, `There's an app for that,' it's time to change our practices." The transition has put police departments at odds with the news media, who say their newsgathering is impeded when they can't use scanners to monitor developing crimes and disasters. Journalists and scanner hobbyists argue that police departments already have the capability to communicate securely and should be able to adjust to the times without reverting to full encryption. And they say alert scanner listeners have even helped police solve crimes. "If the police need to share sensitive information among themselves, they know how to do it," Phil Metlin, news director of WTTG-TV, in Washington, said at the council hearing. "Special encrypted channels have been around for a long time; so have cellphones." It's impossible to quantify the scope of the problem or to determine if the threat from scanners is as legitimate as police maintain — or merely a speculative fear. It's certainly not a new concern — after all, hobbyists have for years used scanners to track the activities of their local police department from their kitchen table. David Schoenberger, a stay-at-home dad from Fredericksburg, Va., and scanner hobbyist, said he understands Lanier's concerns — to a point. "I think they do need to encrypt the sensitive talk groups, like the vice and narcotics, but I disagree strongly with encrypting the routine dispatch and patrol talk groups. I don't think that's right," he said. "I think the public has a right to monitor them and find out what's going on around them. They pay the salaries and everything." There's no doubt that it's increasingly easy to listen in on police radios. One iPhone app, Scanner 911, offers on its website the chance to "listen in while police, fire and EMS crews work day & night." Apple's iTunes' store advertises several similar apps. One promises to keep users abreast of crime in their communities. Though iPhones don't directly pick up police signals, users can listen to nearly real-time audio from police dispatch channels through streaming services, said Matthew Blaze, director of the Distributed Systems Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania and a researcher of security and privacy in computing and communications systems. The shift to encryption has occurred as departments replace old-fashioned analog radios with digital equipment that sends the voice signal over the air as a stream of bits and then reconstructs it into high-quality audio. Encrypted communication is generally only heard by listeners with an encryption key. Others might hear silence or garbled talk, depending on the receiver's technology. The cost of encryption varies. The Nassau County, N.Y., police department is in the final stages of a roughly $50 million emergency communications upgrade that includes encryption and interoperability with other law enforcement agencies in the region, said Inspector Edmund Horace. Once the old system is taken down, Horace said, "You would not be able to discern what's being said on the air unless you had the proper equipment." The Orange County, Fla., sheriff's office expects to be encrypted within months. Several police departments in the county are already encrypted, and more will follow suit to keep officers safe, said Bryan Rintoul, director of emergency communications for the sheriff's office. In California, the Santa Monica police has been fully encrypted for the past two years and, before that, used a digital radio system that could be monitored with expensive equipment, said spokesman Sgt. Richard Lewis. Still, full encryption is cumbersome, difficult to manage and relatively rare, especially among big-city police departments who'd naturally have a harder time keeping track of who has access to the encryption key, Blaze said. The more individuals or neighboring police agencies with access, the greater the risk that the secrecy of the system could be compromised and the harder it becomes to ensure that everyone who needs access has it, Blaze said. Relatively few local police departments are actually encrypted, Blaze said, though some cities have modern radio systems for dispatch that are difficult to monitor on inexpensive equipment. The systems can, however, be intercepted with higher-end scanners. "I would not be surprised if a lot of departments that do it would switch back to non-encryption. The practical difficulties of trying to maintain an encrypted system at scale start to become apparent," he said. Some departments have studied full encryption but decided against it, including police in Greenwich, Conn. "Because we've always retained the ability to encrypt traffic on a case-by-case basis when we need to, in a community like Greenwich, I think the transparency we achieve by allowing people to listen to our radio communications certainly outweighs any security concern we have," said Capt. Mark Kordick. And some departments have tried to compromise. The Jacksonville, Fla., sheriff's office leased radios to the media, allowing them to listen to encrypted patrol channels. That practice ended last summer out of concern about maintaining the confidentiality of radio transmissions, said spokeswoman Lauri-Ellen Smith. In D.C., Lanier says the department is stepping up efforts to advise the public of developing crimes through Facebook, Twitter and an email alert system. Officers will use an unencrypted channel starting next month to alert the public to traffic delays, said spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump. But the chief has refused to give radios to media organizations, which continue to assail the encryption. "What about the truly terrifying crimes?" Metlin, the news director, asked at the hearing. "What if, God forbid, there is another act of terrorism here? It is our jobs to inform the public in times of emergency." Rick Hansen says he's been listening to police communications since he was an adolescent and says efforts to shut them make government less transparent. The Silver Spring, Md., man says sensitive information could be kept off the airwaves on a selective basis. "Yes, it's a concern — and it's something that can be addressed through proper procedures and processes as opposed to turning out the lights on everybody," he said |
| Research firm: Amazon sells $199 tablet at a loss (AP) Posted: 18 Nov 2011 02:08 PM PST NEW YORK – Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire tablet, which started shipping this week, costs $201.70 to make, a research firm said Friday. That's $2.70 more than Amazon charges for it. The analysis by IHS indicates that Amazon is, at least initially, selling the tablet at a loss that it hopes to cover through sales of books and movies for the device. The manufacturing cost of a new gadget usually comes down over time as chips become cheaper. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told The Associated Press in September that the company's goal was to make a small profit from the hardware, but as a retail company, Amazon was willing to live with a smaller margin than most electronics companies would. "We want the hardware device to be profitable and the content to be profitable. We really don't want to subsidize one with the other," Bezos said. IHS's estimate includes the cost of components and assembly, but not the costs of development, marketing or packaging. The most expensive part of the Kindle Fire is the 7-inch color touch screen, which costs $87. Amazon kept the cost of the tablet low compared to Apple Inc.'s iPad and similar tablets by making it smaller — the screen is half the size of that for the iPad — keeping the amount of memory low and excluding a camera and microphone. But the difference in manufacturing cost is much smaller than the difference in retail price: IHS puts the cost of the basic iPad 2 model at just under $300, while Apple sells it for $499. |
| Watch a stunning video of Jupiter rotate on its axis, as captured by a telescope (Yahoo! News) Posted: 18 Nov 2011 07:00 PM PST |
| Scientists launch international competition to create the heaviest element ever (Yahoo! News) Posted: 18 Nov 2011 06:50 PM PST |
| YouTube Video Prompts Calls for UC Davis Chancellor's Resignation (Mashable) Posted: 19 Nov 2011 09:40 AM PST |
| LivingSocial seeks to raise $200 million: NYT (Reuters) Posted: 19 Nov 2011 10:30 AM PST (Reuters) – LivingSocial, the online deal provider, is looking to raise nearly $200 million from new and old investors, the New York Times reported on Friday. The company is also considering a credit facility worth about $100 million, the paper said, quoting two unnamed sources who said they had been briefed on the transaction. The injection of cash, which is expected to close next week, would give the company a value of more than $5 billion, the paper said, quoting one unnamed source. That would give the online deals company more flexibility as it attempts to take on chief rival Groupon, which went public earlier this month. (Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, Editing by Sandra Maler) |
| 16 Online Resources for Preparing the Perfect Thanksgiving (Mashable) Posted: 19 Nov 2011 07:44 AM PST Whether you plan to whip up a lavish feast for your in-laws or stick with the kids table, there are always ways to prepare for Thanksgiving. The tips below can help absorb some of the holiday stress, even if all you plan to do is stuff your face and watch football. [More from Mashable: Google Music: Everything You Need to Know] Read on to discover 16 online resources that can help plan a successful and fulfilling Thanksgiving holiday. 1. Invites: Before you even start planning the menu, make sure to send out a memorable invite or reminder card. Try exploring Someecards if you're up for something witty and bold. If not, an interactive card is sure to keep guests on their toes for the big reunion. [More from Mashable: Guys Scream Like Girls in New Justin Bieber Commercial [VIDEO]] 2. Food Prep: Practice your cooking skills in advance by viewing the Food Network's Thanksgiving Live! show on Nov. 20. Experts will offer tips, solutions and recipes for cooking the best meals. Act quickly to add your own questions or to tune in live via Skype. 3. Travel: Whether you're traveling 10 or 3,000 miles for turkey day, it's important that you make travel cheap and efficient. Use the GasBuddy mobile app to discover the cheapest gasoline prices in your vicinity. 4. Décor: As the leaves begin to fall and the weather chills outside, you're concerned with making sure it's warm and cozy inside. If you don't have a fireplace, there's an app for that. Then spice it up with a variety of DIY centerpieces that feature mother nature's finest elements. Finally, make sure each person is accounted for by personalizing your table's place settings. 5. Cooking: It's turkey time! Are you sure you know what you're doing? If not, Butterball has the best tips, like how to pick and cook a turkey, complete with videos and step-by-step guides -- as well as a telephone helpline for last-minute kitchen emergencies. Still lost? This interactive quiz from Bon Appetit helps plan your meal depending on timeframe and number of guests. 6. Vegetarian: There are plenty of healthy and meatless alternatives for those PETA or calorie-conscious guests. Or try a non-traditional protein option, like pork or roast beef. 7. Entertainment: Instead of zoning out in front of a football game or answering the same old questions from Aunt Kathy, try a playing a game that involves everyone. Go on a scavenger hunt, or play a game like Fictionary – which bring out the competition in my family. 8. Leftovers: Rather than waste that half-eaten turkey, prepare it for a variety of meals over the following week. Share your own tried and true holiday resources in the comments below! Images courtesy of Flickr, QuintanaRoo, intersubjectiv This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| Kindle Fire's App Problems: Google and Apple (The Atlantic Wire) Posted: 19 Nov 2011 08:55 AM PST Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet doesn't have native Google apps, angering some would-be users. And Apple doesn't want them to use a certain marketing term. Related: iPhone Location Tracking Gets Worse: Apple Saves the Data First, the Google problem: While Amazon allows third-party apps on the new Fire, it doesn't allow Google apps requiring a login, writes Greg Knieriemen for The Register. In an open letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Knieriemen says it just doesn't make sense (and claims enough buyer's remorse to trade the tablet back in for a gift card!). Maybe there are strategic business reasons to block Google apps but if I could side-load and run the Nook app on the Kindle Fire, surely I’d be able to run an app like Gmail that was not competitive to Amazon. Other competitive services like Netflix and Hulu are directly available on the Amazon App Store. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| China Mobile says total subscribers rose to 638.89 million in October (Reuters) Posted: 20 Nov 2011 05:40 PM PST HONG KONG (Reuters) – China Mobile Ltd, China's largest mobile carrier, said on Monday that its total mobile subscribers increased to 638.89 million in October, including 45.33 million 3G subscribers. China Mobile said on its website that 3G subscribers rose by 2.17 million in October, while total users increased by 5.37 million. (Reporting by Christina Lo; Editing by Chris Lewis) |
| The 'Freaky Line' And Where Facebook Is Headed (The Atlantic Wire) Posted: 20 Nov 2011 03:28 PM PST Robert Scoble kicked up a vigorous discussion with a long blog post about what he calls "the freaky line" — the limit beyond which people just don't like sharing information with others on the Internet. The line's moving. Related: The Winklevoss Twins Racked Up $13 Million in Legal Fees Because sharing is the topic, Mark Zuckerberg, of course, is a primary subject. Scoble is "all-in," he says. He's one of those people who's not freaked out but energized by the way applications like Spotify and the Washington Post Social Reader are linked to Facebook. Frictionless sharing sounds creepy and disorienting to some, one more way the nefarious Zuckerberg is gathering a dossier on people moving across the web, watching what they do. So what's he doing this for? He’s building a new media company. One where the media comes TO US. Compare to boring old Yahoo. There we have to visit the media by going to http://sports.yahoo.com/ or http://finance.yahoo.com/ |
| Is Windows Phone the Best Mobile Platform You're Not Using? (Mashable) Posted: 19 Nov 2011 08:32 AM PST In the world of smartphones, Windows Phone 7 is barely a blip. It has, by some estimates less than 6% market share. Android now owns half the market and iOS about 26%. This isn't right. You see, the Windows Phone 7 is a good -- possibly great -- mobile platform. It's better, in my opinion, than Android and nibbling at the heels of my favorite, iOS and the iPhone. To understand why things are so out of whack and why I believe they could change, we need to take a closer look at a Windows Phone—which I did. [More from Mashable: Windows Phone Marketplace Hits 40,000 Apps] It's now been a couple of weeks since I started using the HTC Radar 4G from T-Mobile. It's one of the new Windows Phone 7.5 or "Mango" phones. As a phone, it's good; calls come through loud and clear and the 4G is nice when I can get it. It's not a beautiful or particularly striking handle like the iPhone 4S or Motorola Razr. Yet the somewhat dull combination of pearl, bushed aluminum and one-too-many rounded corners quickly fade into the background as soon I start using the phone. Microsoft's Windows Phone Metro interface is a malleable tower of hubs that brings more sense to your mobile world than virtually any other platform. Yes, it looks good. Windows Phone 7 features one of my favorite mobile interface color palettes--second only to the iPhone's gray, rain drop speckled backdrop and consistent, brightly colored app icons. [More from Mashable: Inside the Making of Nokia Lumia 800 [VIDEO]] Like the best smartphones, Windows Phone can use what you tell it to organize your friends, family, e-mail, appointments and more. It does a lot of what I like to call "connecting the dots" and creates a variety of serendipitous connections to your disparate world. The "Me" hub is one of my favorite innovations not only because it's all about me, but because it brings together everything that matters and relates directly to me in one place. Windows Phone is full of sensible touches and navigation that should make sense to the both smartphone veterans and neophytes. You can swipe up and down to see all of your tiles (or hubs), and once you're inside a hub, you're usually scrolling left to right you see different facets of information for that hub. Yes, you can add and remove tiles. I added Gmail and Twitter. Things don't disappear on the phone because they often bubble up to one of the hubs. The ever-present picture tile means my photos are one tap away, my always updating e-mail box (which automatically groups emails by sender) means I can find new messages in a tap. The People hub is an ever-rotating patchwork of smaller pictures of the people who are active in my social/digital world. In other words, I can learn a lot with very little effort. That kind of one-click-away M.O. is evident throughout the phone and it points to Microsoft's larger strategy: to simplify the smartphone experience. All Window Phones have a Windows Phone home button, a Bing search button and the ability to bring up the camera simply by holding down a physical camera button for a second or two. If I want to share a photo, I simply tap on the eclipses that appear at the bottom of each, picture, I can then share it on Facebook or Twitter, both smoothly integrated into the Windows Phone system. For the most part, this simplicity matches much of what you can find on the Apple iPhone—which is my main phone, by the way. iOS 5, for example, integrates Twitter, just as smartly as Windows Phone does and the act of capturing—double tap the home button—and sharing out an image feels not dissimilar across platforms. It is notable, though, that the Windows Phone places your pictures not on Twitter's photo sharing service, but on SkyDrive—the Microsoft's cloud-based storage and file-sharing service (Apple now uses iCloud and photo stream). And this points to another important, growing similarity between Apple and Microsoft's mobile platform. The ecosystem. Yes, with Microsoft Windows Phone 7 you enter what appears to be an impressively well thought out ecosystem, driven largely by your Windows Live or Hotmail account. Once you use this, the Windows phone will bring in whatever contacts, calendar and more it can from your account and then weave it all together with other phone services (like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). Windows Phone is also, naturally, a perfect companion for anyone who lives in Microsoft Office. Office files you save on the phone are automatically saved to your SkyDrive account. From there you can share them via e-mail or directly from your SkyDrive account. It smart, and well integrated with the broader Windows Phone and Microsoft cloud ecosystem. This ecosystem, however, is not a perfect circle yet. Windows Phones will still, for example, default to funneling your App purchases through the wireless carrier, unless you proactively add a credit card to your Windows Live account and then choose to use it. With the iPhone, my iTunes account is set-up offline and once I log in with my phone, it knows who I am and who to charge—the carrier never comes into play. I'm certain, though. Microsoft, will eventually match Apple on ecosystem simplicity. Windows Phone 7.5 is not an iOS 5 doppelganger. The screen metaphors are all different. The keyboard, for instance, has a much sharper, almost sterner look. I'm just as poor a typist on it as I am on the iPhone's virtual keyboard. The way each phone handles typos differs as well: instead of autocorrect, Windows Phones suggest words in a bar above what you're typing (I prefer this). Text selection is different and, in some ways, more precise than on the iPhone—no magnifying bubble, just a cursor that sits above where you're pointing. However, nothing in Windows Phone 7.5 should confuse any current iPhone or Android user. Microsoft would be happy, I think, being a solid number three in the smartphone marketplace -- behind Android and iOS -- but why settle for #3? I actually prefer Windows Phone to most any Android device I've used and I think the Microsoft Windows Phone ecosystem, though still clunky at times, offers a better, smoother, more extensible experience than anything found on the multitude of inconsistent Android devices on the market today. It's true, Microsoft and its partners did a terrible job positioning and promoting Windows Phone over the last 12 months, and it still makes dumb moves. My biggest peeve is the lack of screen capture. Microsoft figures only developers and media folks like me care about it. That may be true, but how do you think we're going to spread the word on those gorgeous Windows Phone screens if we can't grab a good copy and post it online? I'm sure this is something Apple considered when including the feature in the iPhone. Despite this, Microsoft's approach to marketing Windows Phones is clearly changing. It's undertaken and aggressive campaign (they threw a huge, day-long-bash in Herald Square New York) and I think the carrier partners may finally be getting behind the platform. Plus, there are now a number of excellent, lust-worthy and super affordable Windows Phone 7.5 devices on the market. The time is ripe for Windows Phone 7.5 to grab the spotlight. Now, are you ready to grab a Windows Phone? Let me know in the comments.
This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| Android App Tablet Review: JamBase (Appolicious) Posted: 20 Nov 2011 03:00 PM PST |
| Secretive North Korea opens up to cellphones (Reuters) Posted: 20 Nov 2011 10:05 AM PST SEOUL (Reuters) – Secretive North Korea is expected to register the 1 millionth cellphone user on its new 3G network by the end of the year, barely four years after people were thrown into prison camps, or possibly even executed, for owning one. Most of the users are in the capital of Pyongyang, home to the impoverished country's elite and powerful who have the cash to splash out for a device and the calling fees. "There has been an astronomical increase since even two years ago," said Michael Hay, a lawyer and business consultant based in the capital for the past seven years. Two years ago, there were fewer than 70,000 users. "All the waitresses in coffee shops have them, as one example, and use them. Let's not even talk about businessmen. The are never off them, and conversations are frequently interrupted by mobile calls." The authoritarian government ended a ban on cellphones in 2008, signing a four-year deal with Egyptian company Orascom to build the 3G network in partnership with the government. A report this month by the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability said 60 percent of people ages 20 to 50 use cellphones in Pyongyang, a city of around 3 million people who are strictly vetted by the state for residency permits. "Especially for the younger generation in their 20s and 30s, as well as the merchant community, a cellphone is seen as a must, and many youngsters can no longer see their lives without it," Alexandre Mansourov wrote in the report. Calling fees have fallen this year, driving the surge in demand, reports say. And the introduction of the "Euro pack" bundle provides the isolated government with some much-needed hard foreign currency. But you can't dial into or out of the country, and there's no Internet. The government still keeps a stranglehold on all news flows into the destitute state. While the 3G network covers 94 percent of the population, it still only covers 14 percent of the territory, according to Orascom, involved in a joint venture with the government. North Koreans who have defected to the South say the cost of buying a cellphone and the operating fees, mean owning such a 3G device is out of question for most. Phones cost about $350 in the country where the average monthly income is about $15. "The possession of cellphones was not limited by class, but not many people have cellphones because they are just too expensive," said Kim Seong-hu, 40, who defected to South in April. "Most commoners are satisfied with landlines we have." Cheap illegal cellphones tapping into Chinese networks are not uncommon, but their range is limited to just the border fringe. NO THREAT, YET Analysts say the 3G network does not pose a threat to the government in the way cellphones have fueled uprisings around the Arab world this year. Cellphones and the Internet have been used to rally a revolutionary wave of protests and civil wars that have brought down iron rulers from Hosni Mubarak to Muammar Gaddafi. But analysts say this is unlikely to happen in North Korea because strict state media controls limit what the poor know about the outside world and there is no immediate sense of revolt. "In the long run, the growth of interaction between people is a problem for the regime, but it might take years, or even decades, before the situation will be ripe for an outbreak of internal discontent," said Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul. The North banned the use of cellphones in 2004 after an explosion at the Ryongchon railway just a few hours after train carrying leader Kim Jong-il passed through it. Security officials suspect a cellphone was used to ignite the bomb. Pyongyang's lifting of the ban paved the way for Orascom's entry into the market. It threw some $400 million into developing the North's first and only 3G network. Last week, Orascom reported there were more than 800,000 users on its network, compared with 300,000 at the same time last year. Despite its obsession with secrecy and control, North Korea's authoritarian leadership is opening up its telecommunication services and encouraging IT development. Ironically, its isolationist policy of Juche has made its drive to catch up a lot easier than for other countries that have traveled the path of IT development. "As a laggard in the global digital revolution, Pyongyang enjoys key advantages of backwardness -- dramatic savings on initial R&D costs in the IT sector, the opportunity to leap frog from exclusive reliance on obsolete and scarce landlines to world class 3G mobile communications," says Mansourov. "The DPRK (North Korea) mobile communications industry has crossed the Rubicon and the North Korean government can no longer roll it back without paying a severe political price." (Additional reporting by Iktae Park) |
| Mila Kunis keeps her date with Afghanistan vet (Reuters) Posted: 20 Nov 2011 05:53 PM PST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Mila Kunis made a Marine's YouTube wish come true on Friday night, when the actress kept her promise to be his date at the Marine Corps Ball in Greenville, North Carolina. Kunis attended the event at the Greenville Convention Center with Sergeant Scott Moore, Access Hollywood reported. The event was closed to media. Moore invited Kunis to the soiree in a YouTube video posted in July, from a base in Afghanistan. "Hey, Mila. It's Sergeant Moore, but you can call me Scott," he said in the video. "I just wanted to take a moment out of my day to invite you to the Marine Corps Ball on November 18 in Greenville, North Carolina, with yours truly. So take a second, think about it and get back to me." A message left with Kunis's publicist in New York was not returned on Sunday. Their date took place less than a week after Kunis' "Friends with Benefits" co-star, Justin Timberlake, escorted a Marine Corps combat instructor to a ball in Richmond, Virginia. Timberlake, who publicly encouraged Kunis to accept Moore's invitation, received a similar proposal soon afterward from Corporal Kelsey De Santis. On his website, the singer-turned actor called the November 12 Marine Corps Ball he attended with De Santis "one of the most moving evenings" of his life. (Reporting by Sheri Linden; Editing by David Bailey) |
| Shape of iPhones, iPads to come? (Appolicious) Posted: 20 Nov 2011 11:30 AM PST |
| Samsung Galaxy Nexus provides first lick of Ice Cream Sandwich (Appolicious) Posted: 18 Nov 2011 09:39 AM PST |
| Salesforce.com Acquires Model Metrics in Social-Mobile Play (NewsFactor) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 04:00 PM PST Salesforce.com is set to acquire a mobile and social cloud consulting services company. Terms of the deal to purchase Model Metrics were undisclosed. Adding Model Metrics to the salesforce.com mix gives the enterprise cloud company more mobile and social expertise to serve enterprise customers. Founded in 2003, Model Metrics was an early mover in developing business process and technologies that companies need to accelerate cloud computing adoption. Model Metrics bet on the importance of mobile and social technologies to enterprise cloud computing nearly a decade ago, and started focusing on strategic app development and deployment. "Our core services strategy has always been to create a thriving partner ecosystem, and this acquisition enables us to double down on that strategy in the world of the social enterprise," said Maria Martinez, executive vice president of Customers for Life at salesforce.com. "With Model Metrics, our strategic services team will have more of the mobile and social capabilities required to enable and accelerate the success of our partner ecosystem." Serving Fortune 100s Model Metrics could be a significant acquisition for salesforce.com. The Model Metrics team has led some of the largest mobile and social cloud deployments. The firm has also developed a mobility practice that delivers enterprise apps with a user-friendly experience. Model Metrics has more than 500 customers, including Blue Shield of California, Heidrick & Struggles, and Standard Register. The firm has already completed more than 1,000 salesforce deployments for companies of all sizes, including some of the Fortune 100. Model Metrics has also partnered with Amazon Web Services, Adobe, Apple and Google. "Salesforce.com and Model Metrics share a vision for the social enterprise," said, Adam Caplan, founder and CEO of Model Metrics. "By joining salesforce.com, we can help more companies unlock the value of cloud computing with disruptive mobile and social technologies." Social Consolidation Salesforce.com has been blowing the social enterprise trumpet by showing companies how they can leverage social, mobile and open cloud technologies. The salesforce.com partner ecosystem can now leverage Model Metrics' strengths in mobile and social design conception, user experience, business process alignment, and frameworks for building employee and customer facing apps. "Mobile and social are two of the biggest trends out there today. Companies are looking for ways to make their product more mobile and what the innovation plan for social media is," said Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research. "The cloud software vendors consolidated a few years ago, but there are lots of niche companies in the social space. That is the next big market companies are going to go after." |
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