Sony's PlayStation Vita hits stores in Japan (AP) : Technet

Sony's PlayStation Vita hits stores in Japan (AP)
AP IMPACT: When your criminal past isn't yours (AP)
Jurors deadlock in $1B lawsuit against Microsoft (AP)
Iran may have captured U.S. stealth drone by hacking its GPS (Yahoo! News)
Patio that transforms into a pool will make a splash with your guests (Yahoo! News)
HBO GO Coming to Time Warner Cable (Mashable)
British sprinter raises 2012 sponsorship on eBay (Reuters)
Silver Lake, Microsoft working on new Yahoo stake offer: source (Reuters)
Research in Motion Needs a Top Level Management Change (ContributorNetwork)
Coby to debut five Android tablets at CES 2012 (Appolicious)
The Week's Top Twenty in Social Media (The Atlantic Wire)
Time Warner Cable customers are getting HBO Go soon (Digital Trends)
Facebook for Android gets new Timeline feature (Appolicious)
RIM's Stock Dives as BlackBerry 10 Launch Is Delayed (NewsFactor)
How the NFL Plans to Go High Tech (Mashable)
Apple launches iPhone 4S in 21 more countries, but pricey in Brazil (Digital Trends)
Automatic Updates Coming To Internet Explorer (NewsFactor)
AP Enterprise: Russia oil spills wreak devastation (AP)

Sony's PlayStation Vita hits stores in Japan (AP)

Posted: 16 Dec 2011 11:01 PM PST

By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press – Sat Dec 17, 2:01 am ET

TOKYO – Sony's long-awaited PlayStation Vita portable game machine hit stores in Japan on Saturday as thousands of game enthusiasts lined up early in the morning to be among the first to buy it.

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. is predicting brisk sales, even though the launch may have missed some holiday shoppers. A successful debut would help the company offset the rest of its struggling business. Sony projects a loss of more than $1 billion for the fiscal year through March 2012, which would be its fourth straight annual loss.

In Tokyo's Ikebukuro shopping district, some 300 game enthusiasts lined up outside a major electronics chain that opened a few hours earlier than usual for the event. Many of the purchasers had made advance orders on the Internet so they could start playing immediately.

The device is a touch-interface and motion-sensitive handheld seen as a successor to the PlayStation Portable. Gamers can connect over cellphone networks and Wi-Fi hotspots, and use GPS location-tracking technology.

Television footage showed some shoppers unwrapping their new purchases and starting to try them out at the store.

"I'm so happy to see so many people lining up for PS Vita so early in the morning," Sony Computer Entertainment Japan President Hiroshi Kono wrote in his official blog after touring several Tokyo stores. "I can tell they had anxiously waited for today's launch."

For the Tokyo-based electronics and entertainment giant, the Vita is the biggest product launch since the PlayStation 3 console five years ago. It's also accompanied by two dozen software products — the largest number of launch titles in PlayStation history.

The Vita has front and back cameras, a touchscreen in front, a touch pad on the back and two knob-like joysticks. It will enable gamers to play against each other using PlayStation 3 consoles over the Internet-based PlayStation Network, a system that was hit with a massive hacking attack earlier this year.

Vita's launch will heat up competition with rival Nintendo Co.'s 3DS. Nintendo Co.'s 3DS had a disappointing start despite the company's efforts to market its 3-D technology, with critics complaining about a lack of interesting games. Nintendo ended up slashing prices on the 3DS within six months.

The companies are challenged by the rise of smartphones and tablets, through which casual gamers play inexpensive and simple games like the mega-hit "Angry Birds."

The PS Vita goes on sale in North America and Europe on Feb. 22.

AP IMPACT: When your criminal past isn't yours (AP)

Posted: 16 Dec 2011 12:38 PM PST

By JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Technology Writer Jordan Robertson, Ap Technology Writer – Fri Dec 16, 3:38 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – A clerical error landed Kathleen Casey on the streets.

Out of work two years, her unemployment benefits exhausted, in danger of losing her apartment, Casey applied for a job in the pharmacy of a Boston drugstore. She was offered $11 an hour. All she had to do was pass a background check.

It turned up a 14-count criminal indictment. Kathleen Casey had been charged with larceny in a scam against an elderly man and woman that involved forged checks and fake credit cards.

There was one technicality: The company that ran the background check, First Advantage, had the wrong woman. The rap sheet belonged to Kathleen A. Casey, who lived in another town nearby and was 18 years younger.

Kathleen Ann Casey, would-be pharmacy technician, was clean.

"It knocked my legs out from under me," she says.

The business of background checks is booming. Employers spend at least $2 billion a year to look into the pasts of their prospective employees. They want to make sure they're not hiring a thief, or worse.

But it is a system weakened by the conversion to digital files and compromised by the welter of private companies that profit by amassing public records and selling them to employers. These flaws have devastating consequences.

It is a system in which the most sensitive information from people's pasts is bought and sold as a commodity.

A system in which computers scrape the public files of court systems around the country to retrieve personal data. But a system in which what they retrieve isn't checked for errors that would be obvious to human eyes.

A system that can damage reputations and, in a time of precious few job opportunities, rob honest workers of a chance at a new start. And a system that can leave the Kathleen Caseys of the world — the innocent ones — living in a car.

Those are the results of an investigation by The Associated Press that included a review of thousands of pages of court filings and interviews with dozens of court officials, data providers, lawyers, victims and regulators.

"It's an entirely new frontier," says Leonard Bennett, a Virginia lawyer who has represented hundreds of plaintiffs alleging they were the victims of inaccurate background checks. "They're making it up as they go along."

Two decades ago, if a county wanted to update someone's criminal record, a clerk had to put a piece of paper in a file. And if you wanted to read about someone's criminal past, you had to walk into a courthouse and thumb through it. Today, half the courts in the United States put criminal records on their public websites.

Digitization was supposed to make criminal records easier to access and easier to update. To protect privacy, laws were passed requiring courts to redact some information, such as birth dates and Social Security numbers, before they put records online. But digitization perpetuates errors.

"There's very little human judgment," says Sharon Dietrich, an attorney with Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, a law firm focused on poorer clients. Dietrich represents victims of inaccurate background checks. "They don't seem to have much incentive to get it right."

Dietrich says her firm fields about twice as many complaints about inaccurate background checks as it did five years ago.

The mix-ups can start with a mistake entered into the logs of a law enforcement agency or a court file. The biggest culprits, though, are companies that compile databases using public information.

In some instances, their automated formulas misinterpret the information provided them. Other times, as Casey discovered, records wind up assigned to the wrong people with a common name.

Another common problem: When a government agency erases a criminal conviction after a designated period of good behavior, many of the commercial databases don't perform the updates required to purge offenses that have been wiped out from public record.

It hasn't helped that dozens of databases are now run by mom-and-pop businesses with limited resources to monitor the accuracy of the records.

The industry of providing background checks has been growing to meet the rising demand for the service. In the 1990s, about half of employers said they checked backgrounds. In the decade since Sept. 11, that figure has grown to more than 90 percent, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

To take advantage of the growing number of businesses willing to pay for background checks, hundreds of companies have dispatched computer programs to scour the Internet for free court data.

But those data do not always tell the full story.

Gina Marie Haynes had just moved from Philadelphia to Texas with her boyfriend in August 2010 and lined up a job managing apartments. A background check found fraud charges, and Haynes lost the offer.

A year earlier, she had bought a used Saab, and the day she drove it off the lot, smoke started pouring from the hood. The dealer charged $291.48 for repairs. When Haynes refused to pay, the dealer filed fraud charges.

Haynes relented and paid after six months. Anyone looking at Haynes' physical file at the courthouse in Montgomery County, Pa., would have seen that the fraud charge had been removed. But it was still listed in the limited information on the court's website.

The website has since been updated, but Haynes, 40, has no idea how many companies downloaded the outdated data. She has spent hours calling background check companies to see whether she is in their databases. Getting the information removed and corrected from so many different databases can be a daunting mission. Even if it's right in one place, it can be wrong in another database unknown to an individual until a prospective employer requests information from it. By then, the damage is done.

"I want my life back," Haynes says.

Haynes has since found work as a customer service manager, but she says that is only because her latest employer didn't run a background check.

Hard data on errors in background checks are not public. Most leading background check companies contacted by the AP would not disclose how many of their records need to be corrected each year.

A recent class-action settlement with one major database company, HireRight Solutions Inc., provides a glimpse at the magnitude of the problems.

The settlement, which received tentative approval from a federal judge in Virginia last month, requires HireRight to pay $28.4 million to settle allegations that it didn't properly notify people about background checks and didn't properly respond to complaints about inaccurate files. After covering attorney fees of up to $9.4 million, the fund will be dispersed among nearly 700,000 people for alleged violations that occurred from 2004 to 2010. Individual payments will range from $15 to $20,000.

In an effort to prevent bad information from being spread, some courts are trying to block the computer programs that background check companies deploy to scrape data off court websites. The programs not only can misrepresent the official court record but can also hog network resources, bringing websites to a halt.

Virginia, Arizona and New Mexico have installed security software to block automated programs from getting to their courts' sites. New Mexico's site was once slowed so much by automated data-mining programs that it took minutes for anyone else to complete a basic search. Since New Mexico blocked the data miners, it now takes seconds.

In the digital age, some states have seen an opportunity to cash in by selling their data to companies. Arizona charges $3,000 per year for a bundle of discs containing all its criminal files. The data includes personal identifiers that aren't on the website, including driver's license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.

Other states, exasperated by mounting errors in the data, have stopped offering wholesale subscriptions to their records.

North Carolina, a pioneer in marketing electronic criminal records, made $4 million selling the data last year. But officials discovered that some background check companies were refusing to fix errors pointed out by the state or to update stale information.

State officials say some companies paid $5,105 for the database but refused to pay a mandatory $370 monthly fee for daily updates to the files — or they would pay the fee but fail to run the update. The updates provided critical fixes, such as correcting misspelled names or deleting expunged cases.

North Carolina, which has been among the most aggressive in ferreting out errors in its customers' files, stopped selling its criminal records in bulk. It has moved to a system of selling records one at a time. By switching to a more methodical approach, North Carolina hopes to eliminate the sloppy record-keeping practices that has emerged as more companies have been allowed to vacuum up massive amounts of data in a single sweep.

Virginia ended its subscription program. To get full court files now, you have to go to the courthouse in person. You can get abstracts online, but they lack Social Security numbers and birth dates, and are basically useless for a serious search.

North Carolina told the AP that taxpayers have been "absorbing the expense and ill will generated by the members of the commercial data industry who continue to provide bad information while falsely attributing it to our courts' records."

North Carolina identified some companies misusing the records, but other culprits have gone undetected because the data was resold multiple times.

Some of the biggest data providers were accused of perpetuating errors. North Carolina revoked the licenses of CoreLogic SafeRent, Thomson West, CourtTrax and five others for repeatedly disseminating bad information or failing to download updates.

Thomson West says it was punished for two instances of failing to delete outdated criminal records in a timely manner. Such instances are "extremely rare" and led to improvements in Thomson West's computer systems, the company said.

CoreLogic says its accuracy standards meet the law, and it seemed to blame North Carolina, saying that the state's actions "directly contributed to the conditions which resulted in the alleged contract violations," but it would not elaborate. CourtTrax did not respond to requests for comment.

Other background check companies say the errors aren't always their fault.

LexisNexis, a major provider of background checks and criminal data, said in a statement that any errors in its records "stem from inaccuracies in original source material — typically public records such as courthouse documents."

But other problems have arisen with the shift to digital criminal records. Even technical glitches can cause mistakes.

Companies that run background checks sometimes blame weather. Ann Lane says her investigations firm, Carolina Investigative Research, in North Carolina, has endured hurricanes and ice storms that knocked out power to her computers and took them out of sync with court computers.

While computers are offline, critical updates to files can be missed. That can cause one person's records to fall into another person's file, Lane says. She says glitches show up in her database at least once a year.

Lane says she double-checks the physical court filings, a step she says many other companies do not take. She calls her competitors' actions shortsighted.

"A lot of these database companies think it's `ka-ching ka-ching ka-ching,'" she says.

Data providers defend their accuracy. LexisNexis does more than 12 million background checks a year. It is one of the world's biggest data providers, with more than 22 billion public records on its own computers.

It says fewer than 1 percent of its background checks are disputed. That still amounts to 120,000 people — more than the population of Topeka, Kan.

But there are problems with those assertions. People rarely know when they are victims of data errors. Employers are required by law to tell job applicants when they've been rejected because of negative information in a background check. But many do not.

Even the vaunted FBI criminal records database has problems. The FBI database has information on sentencings and other case results for only half its arrest records. Many people in the database have been cleared of charges. The Justice Department says the records are incomplete because states are inconsistent in reporting the conclusions of their cases. The FBI restricts access to its records, locking out the commercial database providers that regularly buy information from state and county government agencies.

Data providers are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission and required by federal law to have "reasonable procedures" to keep accurate records. Few cases are filed against them, though, mostly because building a case is difficult.

A series of breaches in the mid-2000s put the spotlight on data providers' accuracy and security. The fallout was supposed to put the industry on a path to reform, and many companies tightened security. But the latest problems show that some accuracy practices are broken.

The industry says it polices itself and believes the approach is working. Mike Cool, a vice president with Acxiom Corp., a data wholesaler, praised an accreditation system developed by an industry group, the National Association of Professional Background Screeners. Fear of litigation keeps the number of errors in check, he says.

"The system works well if everyone stays compliant," Cool says.

But when the system breaks down, it does so spectacularly.

Dennis Teague was disappointed when he was rejected for a job at the Wisconsin state fair. He was horrified to learn why: A background check showed a 13-page rap sheet loaded with gun and drug crimes and lengthy prison lockups. But it wasn't his record. A cousin had apparently given Teague's name as his own during an arrest.

What galled Teague was that the police knew the cousin's true identity. It was even written on the background check. Yet below Teague's name, there was an unmistakable message, in bold letters: "Convicted Felon."

Teague sued Wisconsin's Department of Justice, which furnished the data and prepared the report. He blamed a faulty algorithm that the state uses to match people to crimes in its electronic database of criminal records. The state says it was appropriate to include the cousin's record, because that kind of information is useful to employers the same way it is useful to law enforcement.

Teague argued that the computers should have been programmed to keep the records separate.

"I feel powerless," he says. "I feel like I have the worst luck ever. It's basically like I'm being punished for living right."

One of Teague's lawyers, Jeff Myer of Legal Action of Wisconsin, an advocacy law firm for poorer clients, says the state is protecting the sale of its lucrative databases.

"It's a big moneymaker, and that's what it's all about," Myer says. "The convenience of online information is so seductive that the record-keepers have stopped thinking about its inaccuracy. As valuable as I find public information that's available over the Internet, I don't think people have a full appreciation of the dark side."

In court papers, Wisconsin defended its inclusion of Teague's name in its database because his cousin has used it as an alias.

"We've already refuted Mr. Teague's claims in our court documents," said Dana Brueck, a spokeswoman for Wisconsin's Department of Justice. "We're not going to quibble with him in the press."

A Wisconsin state judge plans to issue his decision in Teague's case by March 11.

The number of people pulling physical court files for background checks is shrinking as more courts put information online. With fewer people to control quality, accuracy suffers.

Some states are pushing ahead with electronic records programs anyway. Arizona says it hasn't had problems with companies failing to implement updates.

Others are more cautious. New Mexico had considered selling its data in bulk but decided against it because officials felt they didn't have an effective way to enforce updates.

Meanwhile, the victims of data inaccuracies try to build careers with flawed reputations.

Kathleen Casey scraped by on temporary work until she settled her lawsuit against First Advantage, the background check company. It corrected her record. But the bad data has come up in background checks conducted by other companies.

She has found work, but she says the experience has left her scarred.

"It's like Jurassic Park. They come at you from all angles, and God knows what's going to jump out of a tree at you or attack you from the front or from the side," she says. "This could rear its ugly head again — and what am I going to do then?"

___

AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report.

Jurors deadlock in $1B lawsuit against Microsoft (AP)

Posted: 17 Dec 2011 01:46 AM PST

By PAUL FOY, Associated Press Paul Foy, Associated Press – Sat Dec 17, 4:46 am ET

SALT LAKE CITY – Attorneys for a Utah company that brought a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. said it will seek to retry the case with a new jury after a federal jury failed to reach a verdict.

Novell Inc. sued the software giant in 2004, claiming Microsoft duped it into developing the once-popular WordPerfect writing program for Windows 95 only to pull the plug so Microsoft could gain market share with its own product. Novell says it was later forced to sell WordPerfect for a $1.2 billion loss.

The trial began two months ago and included two days of testimony from Bill Gates last month. Jurors got the case on Wednesday. After much confusion, and some perplexing questions from the panel, they told U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz they were deadlocked by early Friday evening.

Motz repeatedly asked them if they could keep trying.

"This has been a very long and expensive case," the judge told the panel.

Novell attorneys pleaded with Motz to give the panel just one more day. In the end, however, the 12 jurors told the judge they were "hopelessly" deadlocked, and they later told lawyers a single holdout refused to vote in Novell's favor.

"He had strongly held views about the technical evidence and refused to budge," Novell attorney Jeffrey Johnson said. Jurors offered no comment after the trial.

Novell was left with little to show for a decade of effort.

"Although it's a technically complicated case, we're hoping to convince another jury that our claims have merit," Novell's corporate counsel Jim Lundberg said.

Microsoft said it would file a motion asking the judge to dismiss Novell's complaint for good and avoid a second trial.

"We remain confident that Novell's claims don't have any merit and look forward to the next steps in the process," said Steven Aeschbacher, Microsoft's associate general counsel.

Novell waited until 10 years after Microsoft left WordPerfect behind to file the lawsuit. The company said it was waiting for the U.S. government's antitrust enforcement against Microsoft to wrap up. At first Novell's case was dismissed, but it was later reinstated on appeal.

Microsoft lawyers have argued that Novell's loss of market share was its own doing because the company didn't develop a compatible WordPerfect program until long after the rollout of Windows 95. WordPerfect once had nearly 50 percent of the market for word processing, but its share quickly plummeted to less than 10 percent as Microsoft's own Office programs took hold.

Gates testified last month that he had no idea his decision to drop a tool for outside developers would sidetrack Novell. Gates said he was acting to protect Windows 95 and future versions from crashing.

He said that the company's preferred Word software was superior to WordPerfect, which was a "bulky, slow, buggy product" that did not integrate well with Windows 95.

Novell could have worked around the problem but failed to react quickly, he said.

Novell has argued that Gates ordered Microsoft engineers to reject WordPerfect as a Windows 95 word processing application because he feared it was too good.

Novell's lawsuit is the last major private antitrust case to follow the settlement of a federal antitrust enforcement action against Microsoft more than eight years ago.

Novell is now a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group, the result of a merger that was completed earlier this year.

Iran may have captured U.S. stealth drone by hacking its GPS (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 16 Dec 2011 07:04 PM PST

Patio that transforms into a pool will make a splash with your guests (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 16 Dec 2011 06:49 PM PST

HBO GO Coming to Time Warner Cable (Mashable)

Posted: 16 Dec 2011 03:15 PM PST

Brian Anthony Hernandez Brian Anthony Hernandez – Fri Dec 16, 6:15 pm ET

Time Warner Cable customers who subscribe to HBO or Cinemax will soon get to use HBO GO and MAX GO, the premium cable networks' instant-streaming services. TWC announced the deal Friday night, saying subscribers will be able to access movies, documentaries, original series and more on any computer, iPad or other mobile devices.

[More from Mashable: Apple Products' History in Film [INFOGRAPHIC]]

On HBO GO, viewers will have access to 1,400 titles such as Game of Thrones, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos Sex and the City and Deadwood. They'll also get to watch HBO original films, miniseries, sports, documentaries, specials and blockbuster theatricals. MAX GO offers 400 titles including movies, indies, cult favorites, the MAX After Dark series and primetime series.

Most new content uploads to both services as the content premieres on the networks. Viewers also will get the "Watchlist" that keeps track of bookmarked content for later viewing; bonus content including interviews, recaps and behind-the-scenes extras; and customizable views showing titles in slideshow, grid or list format.

[More from Mashable: 'Men in Black 3′ Trailer Reveals Time Travel Plot]

Once the services launch, Time Warner Cable customers can access them at HBOGO.com or MAXGO.com using their TWC usernames and passwords.

SEE ALSO: 5 Major Trends That Changed Digital Entertainment in 2011

Earlier this year, HBO released HBO GO apps for Android and iOS. HBO GO launched in February 2010 and already is available to HBO subscribers of AT&T U-verse, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, DirecTV, Dish Network, Google TV, Suddenlink Communications and Verizon FIOS.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

British sprinter raises 2012 sponsorship on eBay (Reuters)

Posted: 17 Dec 2011 12:30 PM PST

– Sat Dec 17, 3:30 pm ET

LONDON (Reuters) – A top British sprinter desperate to run in his home London Olympics next year has raised 32,550 pounds ($50,500) in sponsorship by auctioning himself on eBay.

James Ellington told the BBC he "couldn't be happier' after his effort to raise cash to train closed on Saturday with 71 bids from 45 bidders over a 10-day period.

"I didn't think that many people would bid," added the 100 and 200 meter runner who competed in this year's world championships in Daegu.

Ellington, 26, lost out on funding after enduring four years of injury problems, making him the country's top sprinter without a sponsor ahead of his home Games.

He had set a reserve of 30,000 pounds, which he said would provide him with enough to train and pay for travel, accommodation, kit and nutritional support.

In return for the cash, he had promised to wear the sponsor's branded kit "at every possible opportunity where appropriate, including at training and press events, until after the 2012 Games."

(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Dave Thompson)

Silver Lake, Microsoft working on new Yahoo stake offer: source (Reuters)

Posted: 16 Dec 2011 08:06 PM PST

– Fri Dec 16, 11:06 pm ET

(Reuters) – A consortium of private equity group Silver Lake, software giant Microsoft Corp and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz are reworking their bid for a minority stake in Internet company Yahoo Inc, a source familiar with the matter said on Friday.

Silver Lake's consortium is working on a new offer for a stake of 10 to 15 percent in Yahoo after the company asked for improved terms, the source said.

The new offer would be predicated on Yahoo finding a new, world-class chief executive that the consortium would support, the source added. Yahoo's board fired CEO Carol Bartz in September and has yet to hire a permanent replacement.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter, that private equity firms seeking to acquire just under 20 percent of Yahoo were working on new offers for a smaller stake at a higher per-share valuation.

TPG Capital, which sources previously told Reuters had also bid for a minority stake, did not respond to a request for comment. Representatives of Silver Lake and Microsoft declined to comment while an Andreessen Horowitz spokeswoman could not immediately be reached for comment.

"As previously announced, the board is evaluating various alternatives as part of its comprehensive strategic review process, all of which are designed to enhance shareholder value and promote growth and innovation at Yahoo," a Yahoo spokesman said.

"The board's process is open to all alternatives and has not restricted the range of various options or proposals in any way," he added.

The first offer by Silver Lake's consortium valued Yahoo at $16.6 per share, about $1 per share less than what TPG proposed, people familiar the matter had previously told Reuters. Yahoo shares closed down 1.3 percent at $14.96 on Friday.

Yahoo has several available options. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, in which Yahoo has a 40 percent stake, is preparing a $4 billion bank loan to buy back that stake, Thomson Reuters publication Basis Point reported on Thursday, citing sources.

But Alibaba could choose to partner with buyout groups Blackstone Group LP and Bain Capital and Japan's Softbank Corp for a full-out bid for Yahoo, sources familiar with the matter have previously told Reuters.

Private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners is interested in buying the U.S. operations of Yahoo, people familiar with the matter have also told Reuters previously.

Yahoo's difficulty in competing with Internet heavyweights such as Google and Facebook have forced it to explore proposals to revamp its business. Yahoo has a market capitalization of $18.5 billion.

(Reporting By Greg Roumeliotis in New York, Alexei Oreskovic in San Fransisco and Bill Rigby in Seattle; Editing by Gary Hill)

Research in Motion Needs a Top Level Management Change (ContributorNetwork)

Posted: 17 Dec 2011 11:36 AM PST

Jason Gallagher Jason Gallagher – Sat Dec 17, 2:36 pm ET

Contribute content like this. Start here.

COMMENTARY | Research In Motion is experiencing the kind of trouble that many companies, particularly, those in the technology field have a lot of trouble recovering from: product delays. The Reuters report that specifically states months-long delays in new BlackBerrys and a dreadful quarterly report have sent the stock sinking to new levels. Of course, analysts are jumping at the chance to make suggestions on how the company can reverse course, but a change of leadership should be at the top of the list.

A report from IBN suggests Research In Motion should ditch the popular Blackberry handset that made the company into the giant it is today. The report goes onto highlight that the only hope for the company's survival is to sell of the handset portion of the business and monetize any patents belonging to it. Those steps would likely inject a sum of cash into the company, but without a change at the top level of management, RIM would probably still not have the confidence of investors.

The smartphone market is loaded with great products, and Research In Motion is stuck competing against a flurry of devices. Even the heralded RIM Playbook is hurting the company. As CNNMoney, reports, too many of the tablets are sitting in company inventory and not in the hands of consumers, which is never good for any company. Products that are unsold are a liability, and nobody has likely forgotten the days-long service outage that occurred earlier this year.

The Montreal Gazette has it right in an article that suggests RIM should follow the Apple overhaul plan in the mid-1990s, which involved a change at the highest level of management and brought back CEO Steve Jobs. While visionaries like Jobs are hard to come by, a dramatic overhaul is needed if the BlackBerry maker is to make any headway in the crowded world of technology companies. Without that move, the company will continue to have trouble drawing investors, and more importantly customers.

Coby to debut five Android tablets at CES 2012 (Appolicious)

Posted: 17 Dec 2011 12:00 PM PST

The Week's Top Twenty in Social Media (The Atlantic Wire)

Posted: 17 Dec 2011 08:56 PM PST

Adam Clark Estes Adam Clark Estes – 53 mins ago

The social media sphere is an increasingly noisy place, especially for brands. But hiding somewhere in the static, some companies are sending strong signals that reaches their customers in innovative ways. The Dachis Group has recently begun a real-time ranking of which companies have the most effective social strategies with their Social Business Index. Every week we're taking a tally of who's getting heard, what they're saying, and why it matters.

Related: The Week's Top 20 in Social Media

Once again, the top 20 brands in social media didn't shuffle around too much with National Amusements holding on to the No. 1 spot on the index, while News Corp. and Google held fast at No. 2 and No. 3. With the exception of Volkswagen AG, the rest of the companies on the top of the chart remained exactly the same as last week. (Fun fact: "AG" looks like it would stand for "Auto Group," but in fact serves as an abbreviation for a specific type of German corporation: Aktiengesellschaft, which literally means "share club" in English.) In general, the holiday season has proved to be an interesting time of year for some companies like the Dunkin' Brands Group to set themselves apart with creative campaigns, as others like the GQ-publisher Advanced Publications to drop the ball.

Related: The Week's Top 20 in Social Media

People really like their cars -- especially Volkswagen people -- so it's not terribly surprising to see an automaker climb into the top 20 on the Social Business Index this week. Our use of the word "like" is obviously a double entendre. A surge Facebook Likes boosted up onto the leader board thanks to some smart engagement from the folks at the Volkswagen-owned Audi brand, and with one of the most media-rich Facebook brand pages we've come across lately, it's not hard to understand how Volkswagen AG will probably continue to climb. According to Doug Kern with the Dachis Group, Audi's formula for success is pretty simple. "The brand shared interesting content about their cars and was rewarded by having their company signal echoed by advocates," Kern told The Atlantic Wire. "One particular post about the Audi A7 drove more than 11,000 Likes and 300 comments." Since we spoke to Kern that post, a fun-to-flip-through collection of photos of the automaker's newest model, the A7 post has attracted hundreds more, and we'd bet Audi's very clever strategy of tagging Facebook fans in the photos of the car certainly helped bring people into the comments section to respond. What do people talk about? Well, how great they think the car looks. One user summed up the general tone of the super positive feedback pretty concisely, "What's not to like....."

We were scratching our heads a bit when we saw Dunkin' Donuts' parent company surging on Twitter. (Pro-tip: People hate it when you tweet about your breakfast. Never do it.) But then we found out why. They hosted an amazing-sounding holiday sweater contest! The rules were pretty simple: tweet a photo of your ~~ugliest~~ sweetest holiday sweater for the chance to win a $50 gift certificate. That's not all the company's been doing to take advantage of the season of greetings. Dunkin' promoted the launch of a new Holiday Star donut -- like the name suggests it's a Christmasy snack shaped like a star -- as well the Mint Chocolate and a Texas Toast Grilled Cheese sandwich to its 117,000 Twitter followers. "By combining a product launch with a low-barrier-to-join social contest and feel-good emotional appeals, Dunkin’ stayed true to their brand and captivated their social audience," Kern explained, adding that a chance to win free JetBlue tickets by including the hashtag #DDMoMint in tweets was particularly successful. The strategy seems simple enough, but the impressive execution lifted Dunkin' from number 61 as high as number 50 before the brand settled into the mid-50s. Inevitably, we're mostly impressed by the simple fact that Dunkin' has managed to get people excited about tweeting what they're eating. We also want to see some sweaters.

It's not often we flag companies that are slipping in the ranks but Advance Publications, the magazine house that puts out GQ and Glamour, seemed blogworthy as it presents a good teaching moment. Long story short, never slack off. Having slipped three spots and landing on the wrong side of the top 40, Advance missed out on some good opportunities to get their readers talking to each other more. "The largest contributing factor for the decline was due to a significant drop in signal from brand subscribers -- meaning that engaged subscribers did not @reply, retweet or echo company mentions to their individual social networks during the week," Kern said and flagged the lackluster response of their Matt Damon cover on the latest issue of GQ. Sure, ladies like Damon, but GQ is short for "Gentlemen's Quarterly." The generally bro-ey group that usually keeps the company's Facebook page populated with comments didn't show up. To boot, it doesn't look like the company tried very hard to start conversations. Kern concluded, "Moral of the story: if GQ wants to increase social engagement, they should stick to their proven approach of engaging their largely male audience with a recipe of fast cars and fast women."

Methodology: A project of the Dachis Group, a social business professional services group, the Social Business Index analyzes the conversations on social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and othrs. The index, which currently covers approximately 25,0000 companies and 27,000 brands, detects behaviors and activities exhibited by these companies, analyzes their execution and effectiveness at driving outcomes such as brand awareness, brand love, mind share, and advocacy. The Atlantic Wire takes a snapshot of the rankings at the close of business on Thursdays.

Time Warner Cable customers are getting HBO Go soon (Digital Trends)

Posted: 17 Dec 2011 11:36 AM PST

Mike Flacy Mike Flacy – Sat Dec 17, 2:36 pm ET

Announced on Friday night on a blog post by Time Warner spokesman Jeff Simmermon, Time Warner Cable has finally struck a deal with HBO in regards to bringing the HBO Go streaming application as well as the Max Go app to subscribers. The cable company will run a short trial to test out the streaming app on the Time Warner Cable network and roll out the app to all 12 million subscribers during January 2012. Just like implementations on other cable networks, Time Warner Cable customers will have to subscribe to HBO or Cinemax to gain access to content through the streaming application. Customers can use the streaming app on laptops, desktop computers, Android and Apple smartphones, the iPad, gaming consoles as well as set-top boxes like the Roku.

HBO Go offers access to approximately 1,400 titles, both theatrical movies and recent television programs such as Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones, Curb Your Enthusiasm and True Blood in addition to completed series such at The Sopranos, Deadwood and Sex in the City. The MAX Go application offers access to about 400 titles including original programming, blockbuster movies and the MAX After Dark section. HBO has already signed agreements with other cable companies such as Comcast, Charter Communications, AT&T U-verse, DirecTV, Dish Network and Verizon FIOS. The largest holdout at this point is Cablevision with approximately three million subscribers.

While many subscribers have grown somewhat impatient with Time Warner Cable and the slow adoption of the HBO Go platform, the reasoning behind the lengthy delays are likely due to Time Warner's internal discussion about structuring a direct subscription price to the service rather than positioning it as an added bonus for subscribers of other cable networks. Once access is enabled for subscribers, they will simply download the application on their device or access the content through the HBO Go site.

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

Technet

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Sony's PlayStation Vita hits stores in Japan (AP) : Technet

Sony's PlayStation Vita hits stores in Japan (AP) : Technet

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