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Twitter CEO says blocking policy over-distilled (AP) : Technet |
- Twitter CEO says blocking policy over-distilled (AP)
- Tech companies team up to combat email scams (AP)
- Teens migrating to Twitter — sometimes for privacy (AP)
- New Sundance film lets a computer shuffle the plot every time (Yahoo! News)
- Facebook IPO could create the world’s largest internet company (Yahoo! News)
- How Evi Compares to Siri: Evi's Clever, Too, But Slow [VIDEO] (Mashable)
- Mexicans overcharged billions for phone, web: study (Reuters)
- NJ woman accused of streaming kid sex abuse cries (AP)
- RIM committee stresses importance of independent chair (Reuters)
- Just Show Me: 3 great football apps for your Android phone (Yahoo! News)
- Brit pair stopped from entering US over Twitter jokes (Digital Trends)
- New RIM CEO Can't Save the BlackBerry (ContributorNetwork)
- Oscars tops iOS Apps of the Week (Appolicious)
- AT&T reorganizes management positions (Reuters)
- Review: Odd experimentation reveals muddled result (AP)
- Tablet boom makes Apple No 1 PC maker: research firm (Reuters)
- Symantec says pcAnywhere safe, offers free upgrade (Reuters)
- Upload at your own risk: Most cloud storage services offer no data guarantee (Digital Trends)
| Twitter CEO says blocking policy over-distilled (AP) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 08:47 PM PST DANA POINT, Calif. – Twitter CEO Dick Costolo sought to calm the global outrage over the company's new country-by-country censorship policy on Monday, complaining in part that the issue is being treated with the same kind of shorthand that has made Twitter popular. Speaking at the All Things D conference, Costolo repeated the company's justification for the policy change it announced last week: By taking down tweets only in the country where Twitter believes they may have violated local laws, it is making sure the maximum 140-character-long messages are still available to the rest of the world. Twitter's reasoning has been mostly lost in a barrage of comments — many from Twitter users themselves — that the company is caving into attacks on free speech, especially in countries with repressive regimes. "It's a super complex issue," Costolo said. "When the news came out, people tried to distill it down to, `What did they just say?' It's easy to distill it down to `Twitter is endorsing XYZ.'" "It takes a while for the scholars and the people who study these matters to weigh in and start to say, `Wait, this is actually a thoughtful and honest approach to doing this and it's in fact being done in a way that's forward-looking.' So we wait for that to happen," he added. The complaint about knee-jerk responses to complex issues is somewhat ironic given that the company's meteoric growth has been fueled often by buzz-worthy but flippant comments. Costolo also emphasized that if Twitter reacts to take-down requests, it will make public the reasons a tweet is being removed. The company already has 45 people who respond to such requests, including those from copyright holders of music or movies in the United States. He said the policy wouldn't affect its stance toward China or Iran, where the service is already blocked completely. "I don't think the current environment in China is one in which we think we could operate," he said. Costolo spoke just days before Facebook is expected to file the paperwork necessary for an initial public offering of stock, a move that is likely to make initial investors and employees in the company rich. San Francisco-based Twitter also faces the same securities regulations that are forcing Facebook to go public — a rule that says companies with more than $10 million in assets and more than 500 shareholders of a certain class of stock must disclose their financial results and other details. Twitter, which was founded in 2006, will bump up against the rule "at some point," Costolo said. But he added he would rather spend time building value at the company than dealing with such issues. |
| Tech companies team up to combat email scams (AP) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 10:41 AM PST NEW YORK – Google, Facebook and other big tech companies are jointly designing a system for combating email scams known as phishing. Such scams try to trick people into giving away passwords and other personal information by sending emails that look as if they come from a legitimate bank, retailer or other business. When Bank of America customers see emails that appear to come from the bank, they might click on a link that takes them to a fake site mimicking the real Bank of America's. There, they might enter personal details, which scam artists can capture and use for fraud. To combat that, 15 major technology and financial companies have formed an organization to design a system for authenticating emails from legitimate senders and weeding out fakes. The new system is called DMARC — short for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance. DMARC builds upon existing techniques used to combat spam. Those techniques are designed to verify that an email actually came from the sender in question. The problem is there are multiple approaches for doing that and no standard way of dealing with emails believed to be fake. The new system addresses that by asking email senders and the companies that provide email services to share information about the email messages they send and receive. In addition to authenticating their legitimate emails using the existing systems, companies can receive alerts from email providers every time their domain name is used in a fake message. They can then ask the email providers to move such messages to spam folder or block them outright. According to Google, about 15 percent of non-spam messages in Gmail come from domains that are protected by DMARC. This means Gmail users "don't need to worry about spoofed messages from these senders," Adam Dawes, a product manager at Google, said in a blog post. "With DMARC, large email senders can ensure that the email they send is being recognized by mail providers like Gmail as legitimate, as well as set policies so that mail providers can reject messages that try to spoof the senders' addresses," Dawes wrote. Work on DMARC started about 18 months ago. Beginning Monday, other companies can sign up with the organization, whether they send emails or provide email services. For email users, the group hopes DMARC will mean fewer fraudulent messages and scams reaching their inbox. The group's founders are email providers Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc., AOL Inc. and Google Inc.; financial service providers Bank of America Corp., Fidelity Investments and eBay Inc.'s PayPal; online service companies Facebook, LinkedIn Corp. and American Greetings Corp. and security companies Agari, Cloudmark, eCert, Return Path and the Trusted Domain Project. Google uses it already, both in its email sender and email provider capacities. The heft of the companies that have already signed on to the project certainly helps, and its founders are hoping it will be more broadly adopted to become an industry standard. |
| Teens migrating to Twitter — sometimes for privacy (AP) Posted: 29 Jan 2012 09:19 AM PST CHICAGO – Teens don't tweet, will never tweet - too public, too many older users. Not cool. That's been the prediction for a while now, born of numbers showing that fewer than one in 10 teens were using Twitter early on. But then their parents, grandparents, neighbors, parents' friends and anyone in-between started friending them on Facebook, the social networking site of choice for many — and a curious thing began to happen. Suddenly, their space wasn't just theirs anymore. So more young people have started shifting to Twitter, almost hiding in plain sight. "I love twitter, it's the only thing I have to myself ... cause my parents don't have one," Britteny Praznik, a 17-year-old who lives outside Milwaukee, gleefully tweeted recently. While she still has a Facebook account, she joined Twitter last summer, after more people at her high school did the same. "It just sort of caught on," she says. Teens tout the ease of use and the ability to send the equivalent of a text message to a circle of friends, often a smaller one than they have on crowded Facebook accounts. They can have multiple accounts and don't have to use their real names. They also can follow their favorite celebrities and, for those interested in doing so, use Twitter as a soapbox. The growing popularity teens report fits with findings from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit organization that monitors people's tech-based habits. The migration has been slow, but steady. A Pew survey last July found that 16 percent of young people, ages 12 to 17, said they used Twitter. Two years earlier, that percentage was just 8 percent. "That doubling is definitely a significant increase," says Mary Madden, a senior research specialist at Pew. And she suspects it's even higher now. Meanwhile, a Pew survey found that nearly one in five 18- to 29-year-olds have taken a liking to the micro-blogging service, which allows them to tweet, or post, their thoughts 140 characters at a time. Early on, Twitter had a reputation that many didn't think fit the online habits of teens — well over half of whom were already using Facebook or other social networking services in 2006, when Twitter launched. "The first group to colonize Twitter were people in the technology industry — consummate self-promoters," says Alice Marwick, a post-doctoral researcher at Microsoft Research, who tracks young people's online habits. For teens, self-promotion isn't usually the goal. At least until they go to college and start thinking about careers, social networking is, well, ... social. But as Twitter has grown, so have the ways people, and communities, use it. For one, though some don't realize it, tweets don't have to be public. A lot of teens like using locked, private accounts. And whether they lock them or not, many also use pseudonyms, so that only their friends know who they are. "Facebook is like shouting into a crowd. Twitter is like speaking into a room" — that's what one teen said when he was participating in a focus group at Microsoft Research, Marwick says. Other teens have told Pew researchers that they feel "social pressure," to friend people on Facebook — "for instance, friending everyone in your school or that friend of a friend you met at a football game," Pew researcher Madden says. Twitter's more fluid and anonymous setup, teens say, gives them more freedom to avoid friends of friends of friends — not that they're saying anything particularly earth-shattering. They just don't want everyone to see it. Praznik, for instance, tweets anything from complaints and random thoughts to angst and longing. "i hate snow i hate winter.Moving to California as soon as i can," one recent post from the Wisconsin teen read. "Dont add me as a friend for a day just to check up on me and then delete me again and then you wonder why im mad at you.duhhh," read another. And one more: "I wish you were mine but you don't know wht you want. Till you figure out what you want I'm going to do my own thing." Different teenagers use Twitter for different reasons. Some monitor celebrities. "Twitter is like a backstage pass to a concert," says Jason Hennessey, CEO of Everspark Interactive, a tech-based marketing agency in Atlanta. "You could send a tweet to Justin Bieber 10 minutes before the concert, and there's a chance he might tweet you back." A few teens use it as a platform to share opinions, keeping their accounts public for all the world to see, as many adults do. Taylor Smith, a 14-year-old in St. Louis, is one who uses Twitter to monitor the news and to get her own "small points across." Recently, that has included her dislike for strawberry Pop Tarts and her admiration for a video that features the accomplishments of young female scientists. She started tweeting 18 months ago after her dad opened his own account. He gave her his blessing, though he watches her account closely. "Once or twice I used bad language and he never let me hear the end of it," Smith says. Even so, she appreciates the chance to vent and to be heard and thinks it's only a matter of time before her friends realize that Twitter is the cool place to be — always an important factor with teens. They need to "realize it's time to get in the game," Smith say, though she notes that some don't have smart phones or their own laptops — or their parents don't want them to tweet, feeling they're too young. Pam Praznik, Britteny's mother, keeps track of her daughter's Facebook accounts. But Britteny asked that she not follow her on Twitter — and her mom is fine with that, as long as the tweets remain between friends. "She could text her friends anyway, without me knowing," mom says. Marwick at Microsoft thinks that's a good call. "Parents should kind of chill and give them that space," she says. Still, teens and parents shouldn't assume that even locked accounts are completely private, says Ananda Mitra, a professor of communication at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Online privacy, he says, is "mythical privacy." Certainly, parents are always concerned about online predators — and experts say they should use the same common sense online as they do in the outside world when it comes to dealing with strangers and providing too much personal information. But there are other privacy issues to consider, Mitra says. Someone with a public Twitter account might, for instance, retweet a posting made on a friend's locked account, allowing anyone to see it. It happens all the time. And on a deeper level, he says those who use Twitter and Facebook — publicly or privately — leave a trail of "digital DNA" that could be mined by universities or employers, law enforcement or advertisers because it is provided voluntarily. Mitra has coined the term "narb" to describe the narrative bits people reveal about themselves online — age, gender, location and opinions, based on interactions with their friends. So true privacy, he says, would "literally means withdrawing" from textual communication online or on phones — in essence, using this technology in very limited ways. He realizes that's not very likely, the way things are going — but he says it is something to think about when interacting with friends, expressing opinions or even "liking" or following a corporation or public figure. But Marwick at Microsoft still thinks private accounts pose little risk when you consider the content of the average teenager's Twitter account. "They just want someplace they can express themselves and talk with their friends without everyone watching," she says. Much like teens always have. ___ Online: Microsoft Research: http://research.microsoft.com/ Pew: http://www.pewinternet.org ___ Martha Irvine can be reached at mirvine(at)ap.org or via http://twitter.com/irvineap |
| New Sundance film lets a computer shuffle the plot every time (Yahoo! News) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 06:43 PM PST |
| Facebook IPO could create the world’s largest internet company (Yahoo! News) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 06:37 PM PST |
| How Evi Compares to Siri: Evi's Clever, Too, But Slow [VIDEO] (Mashable) Posted: 29 Jan 2012 11:17 AM PST Getting Siri's voice-recognition capabilities on your phone just became a possibility for Android users and a bit less expensive for iPhone users. Meet Evi -- a $.99 app for iPhones and free for Android. For such a nominal price, don't expect Evi to be on par with Siri. There are some major differences with Evi as opposed to the quick and integrated Siri. Evi will not schedule meetings on your calendar or let you dictate text messages. But for functions like finding local shops, restaurants and general information, it's pretty helpful. [More from Mashable: 7 Big Privacy Concerns for New Facebook and the Open Graph] I asked Evi: "What time is it, Evi?" and it thought I said, "What time is it TV?". Messages such as "Just a mo'" appeared on the screen to let me know it was thinking and then it said, "I'm having trouble getting a response from my servers." Yes, it was noticeably slower than Siri. Other times it would say, "I don't know right now -- try asking again next week." I asked, "Can you set my alarm for 9 p.m.?" even though Evi is not synced with the other apps like Siri is, it said it hasn't learned to do that yet. [More from Mashable: Facebook Apps: Highlights of the 60 New Integrated Applications] Could it be possible that True Knowledge, the company behind Evi, will integrate the app with its operating system's other functions in the future? Check out the company's video below introducing Evi.
The voice sounds a lot like Siri, although some reviewers have said the voice sounds annoying. Yes, it thinks too long and sometimes right after you state your query it says it is not getting a response from the servers, but then, your answer appears. But even as I write this, I keep wanting to call this app Siri because it's quite similar. However, Apple's assistant still comes out in the lead compared to Evi [Link to app store]. For as many people who use Siri for making appointments and scheduling calls, there are also many who enjoy the depth of knowledge and wit Siri contains. Ask Siri to "tell me about the Civil War" and it directs me to a related link. Ask Evi the same question and you get a brief encyclopedia response including the dates and a small photo. Siri also has built-in cleverness. Just to play around with Evi and find out if any sassy answers were built into this app, I asked, "What's my name?" and it responded, "Who are you? Surely you know the answer to that one already." I asked Evi other absurd questions like, What should I eat for dinner?" and it pointed me to a website for an olive tapenade recipe. If you want a bare-bones Siri with some frequent hiccups -- but a .99 cent or free price tag -- Evi is a good option for now. What do you think about Evi? Have you used it? How does it compare to Siri? Tell us in the comments. This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| Mexicans overcharged billions for phone, web: study (Reuters) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 07:11 PM PST MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexicans have been overcharged $13.4 billion a year for phone and internet services as the industry dominated by billionaire Carlos Slim gouges customers and keeps the economy from growing, a study released on Monday said. Mexico, the second-largest economy in Latin America, cannot reach its growth potential until the cost of phone and internet access comes down and more people have easy access to telecom services, the report from the Organization for Co-operation and Development said. From 2005 to 2009, Mexican consumers paid $13.4 billion a year excess for phone and internet services, with high fees disproportionately hitting the poor, according to the report. In total, overcharging cost the economy $129 billion over the five-year period, the report found, nearly 2 percent of the country's economic output. "Inefficient telecommunication markets impose a significant cost on the Mexican economy and the welfare of its population," according to the report that reviewed the country's telecom sector. Mexican home phone service is dominated by Slim's Telefonos de Mexico, or Telmex, which provides about 80 percent of services while the billionaire controls about 70 percent of the cellphone market through his America Movil. "This is a critical study...that exposes the weakness of the telecommunications sector in Mexico," Dionisio Perez-Jacome, minister of Communications and Transport, said at a press event accepting the report. The report found Mexico had the lowest per capita public investment in telecommunications in the 34-member OECD, while Slim's Telmex had very high profit margins compared to other countries. In 2008, Telmex had a profit margin of 47 percent, while the average for countries including Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States was 28 percent. A Slim spokesman declined to comment on the findings of customers being overcharged, but pointed to other reports that Mexico enjoys a relatively-affordable broadband base. The report found broadband internet speeds are low compared to the OECD average and comparatively expensive, while a three-minute call from a cellphone to a local phone would cost a Mexican travelling in another OECD country $8.65, compared to the OECD average of $6.76. It suggested that Mexico eliminate restrictions on foreign investment in the telecom sector and cut judicial red tape that lets the telecom industry stall new rules, fines and restrictions. Mexico's President Felipe Calderon, at a separate event, said that his government planned to auction strands of fiber optic cable that would increase broadband service across the country. Mexico's cable giant, Megacable, is in a partnership with cellphone company Telefonica and television giant Televisa to share one fiber optic project that should deliver more high-speed internet and telecom services. (Reporting by Patrick Rucker and Krista Hughes; Editing by Gary Hill and Matt Driskill) |
| NJ woman accused of streaming kid sex abuse cries (AP) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 04:44 PM PST TRENTON, N.J. – A New Jersey waitress cried in court Monday as she heard a prosecutor accuse her of "extreme sexual assault" on a 5-year-old girl she was baby-sitting and of streaming video of the abuse online. Authorities say Jennifer Mahoney, 32, of Manalapan, laughed while she sexually assaulted the child, and again as she streamed the video to at least two other people. They say she confessed twice to different sets of investigators. Mahoney has been charged with two counts of sexual exploitation of a child. At a federal court hearing in Trenton, she had requested to wear a global positioning device, stay away from the victim and post her parents' home as collateral for bail. The judge denied bail on the federal charges; Mahoney is being held on $500,000 bail on state charges stemming from the same assault. "Law enforcement has recovered a video capture of extreme sexual assault," Assistant U.S. Attorney John Clabby said. "There is danger to the public, and the risk of flight." During the hearing in U.S. District Court, Mahoney wiped away tears, buried her face in her hands and cried softly as her attorney, Herbert Ellis, rubbed her back. Later, she rocked quickly back and forth in her chair, not speaking except to reply, "Yes, your honor," when asked whether she understood her rights. Ellis, her lawyer, said he needs to speak to Mahoney in detail before deciding how to proceed. He said he wants to see her videotaped confession to authorities to determine how it was given and under what circumstances. Mahoney has been in custody since Dec. 14, the day after three pornographic videos showing assaults on the girl were found on the computer of a 32-year-old Texas man to whom she had streamed them, prosecutors said. That man, Robert Ramos Jr. of Austin, was charged with possession of child pornography and sexual exploitation of minors. Prosecutors in Texas say he set up seven fake Facebook accounts to solicit teenage girls to send him nude photos and videos of themselves engaged in sexual acts. When the FBI questioned her, she acknowledged performing a sex act on the child while she was baby-sitting her, court documents say. She also told investigators she streamed live video of one of the sexual assaults to two men using a chat service and acknowledged filming another assault with her cellphone and sending video of it to two other people, court documents say. No other mention of a second recipient is included in court documents. Later on the day of her arrest, she gave a separate videotaped confession to New Jersey authorities, Clabby said. Two of the videos appeared to have been made in Mahoney's bedroom, the third in the bathtub of her home, the affidavit says. The affidavit describes the sexual assaults in graphic terms. On one, the FBI agent notes, there is no audio. But, the agent notes, "it appears that the adult female is talking and laughing during the video, and it appears that the adult female is talking to another person over the Internet via a webcam." Ramos remains in custody in Texas. Court documents include a transcript of a handwritten statement Ramos gave to the FBI in which he acknowledges soliciting underage girls to send him nude photos but insists he never had sexual contact with a minor. "What I have done was stupid and not worth anything," he wrote. "I am very sorry and have made some terrible mistakes." His lawyer did not immediately return a message seeking comment Monday. ___ Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC. |
| RIM committee stresses importance of independent chair (Reuters) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 07:32 PM PST (Reuters) – A review of Research In Motions' leadership structure by a committee of independent directors has concluded that no future chief executive or other employee can be chairperson of the BlackBerry maker. The panel's findings were published on RIM's website late on Monday, a day before a Jan 31 deadline. The committee said in its report that it had recommended that RIM should separate the roles of Chair and CEO and amend the board mandate accordingly. On January 22, the company appointed Barbara Stymiest, who formerly served as a member of Royal Bank of Canada's Group Executive, as independent board chair. Company investors led by Northwest & Ethical Investments LP had demanded that RIM name an independent chairman, a role previously shared by co-Chief Executive Officers Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, to ensure the board acted independently of management. Lazaridis and Balsillie stepped down just over a week ago but will remain on the board. (Reporting By Nicola Leske; Editing by Carol Bishopirc and Muralikumar Anantharaman) |
| Just Show Me: 3 great football apps for your Android phone (Yahoo! News) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 02:22 PM PST |
| Brit pair stopped from entering US over Twitter jokes (Digital Trends) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 07:35 PM PST
The offending tweet read, "Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?" Even though Leigh explained to officials at Los Angeles international airport that the word "destroy" in this case was British slang for "party", they were having none of it and threw him and his friend, Emily Bunting, 24, in a cell for 12 hours before sending them back to Europe the following day. Further complicating matters was another tweet—a quote from the hit comedy Family Guy—which suggested he might "dig up Marilyn Monroe". According to Leigh, that tweet had officials looking through his baggage for a shovel and asking his friend whether she was going to act as a lookout while Leigh dug up Monroe. "I almost burst out laughing when they asked me if I was going to be Leigh's lookout while he dug up Marilyn Monroe," Emily told the Daily Mail on her return to the UK. "We just wanted to have a good time on holiday. That was all Leigh meant in his tweet. He would not hurt anyone." Leigh said he tried to explain to officials that they’d got the wrong meaning from his tweet, but they were having none of it. Prior to their flight back to the UK, the pair were handed charge sheets relating to their ordeal. Emily’s read: “It is believed that you are traveling with Leigh Van Bryan who possibly has the intentions of coming to the United States to commit crimes.†The incident has echoes of a case in the UK in 2010 when a man by the name of Paul Chambers joked on Twitter that he was going to blow up an airport. He was subsequently convicted and fined for sending a menacing electronic communication. Both stories highlight the fact that, depending on the words they use, some of our tweets are being flagged up and looked at by the authorities, and that if we're not careful, even innocent throw-away lines might end up being misconstrued, leading to problems we couldn't have envisaged when we tapped out the tweet. This article was originally posted on Digital Trends More from Digital Trends Facebook, Twitter ‘more important’ than 9/11, says Foreign Policy Two UK men given jail terms for inciting violence through Facebook The Vatican gets serious about social media with new online portal |
| New RIM CEO Can't Save the BlackBerry (ContributorNetwork) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 05:24 PM PST Contribute content like this. Start here. COMMENTARY | Investors at RIM -- the company that makes the BlackBerry smartphone and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet -- have been pushing the company for awhile now to get rid of its two co-ceos, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, on acount of their complete failure to adapt to the changing market. In a nutshell, Apple's iPhone caught them off-guard; and not only did they fail to respond appropriately, they failed to even realize that there was a problem until it was too late. Well, RIM's replaced its CEOs now, on account of the last two resigned. And according to Reuters, it's got a new one now, former Seimens AG exec Thorsten Heins. He's been given a year and a half by investors to shake things up, and turn the company around from having to write off $485 million in unsold BlackBerry PlayBooks to being able to write off its former competitors. The problem with this plan? It's still too late for RIM. The company's ... Not in the game anymore "At the very core of RIM ... is the innovation," says Heins, in a video interview posted to YouTube. "We always think ahead." But as the graphs posted by Nielsen show, RIM's customers are the ones thinking ahead, by switching to non-BlackBerry smartphones. Almost 15 percent of all current smartphone owners that Nielsen surveyed own a BlackBerry, but only 6 percent of smartphone buyers last quarter chose one. The BlackBerry Torch was poorly thought-out and panned by reviewers, and the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet has seen multiple huge sales as RIM's tried to unload its inventory. It still doesn't even let you check email without owning a BlackBerry smartphone, and the long-awaited Android App Player is still missing. And the reason RIM's so far behind is because ... Its corporate culture is dysfunctional Maybe you're skeptical of the tell-all letter an anonymous RIM exec sent to Boy Genius Report, or of the two other letters it got from RIM insiders. Maybe you think they're just upset about something, or the problems are exaggerated, or it's no worse than at the company that you work for. That's okay. A company's performance in the marketplace isn't determined by how many frustrated letters its employees write, to people they feel will actually listen to them. On the other hand, when outsiders like Jamie Murai run up against RIM's corporate culture, they get a bad impression of it too. And when RIM can't attract app developers like him to write for its gadgets, it might be time for the company to ... Consider its audience I don't just mean "developers, developers, developers, developers." I mean actual people, and not corporate IT departments. (Even if Mitt Romney thinks that corporations are people too.) It didn't take much to wow people in 2005. And the same features that made BlackBerry smartphones attractive to individual buyers, like instant email and great hardware keyboards, made them attractive to corporate buyers as well. Much of RIM's growth has been driven by the corporate market. But people are starting to use their own gadgets at work now, or even choose iPads for deployment at their companies. The corporate world's starting to realize that by pretending it can make decisions without having any emotions about them, it's missing out on the most powerful, most useful hardware and apps. Those aren't made by RIM anymore. And it's too late for RIM to realize that. |
| Oscars tops iOS Apps of the Week (Appolicious) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 02:30 PM PST |
| AT&T reorganizes management positions (Reuters) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 06:16 PM PST (Reuters) – Wireless provider AT&T has put company veteran John Stankey in charge of strategy amid a management reshuffle after its failed attempt to take over Deutsche Telekom's U.S. mobile unit. "Stankey, who has led nearly every major AT&T business unit during his 27-year career, will be responsible for developing the roadmap to maximize future growth opportunities," AT&T said in a statement on Monday. AT&T also said Forrest Miller, its head of corporate strategy and mergers and acquisitions, was retiring. Miller had worked at AT&T for more than 30 years. The company said Andy Geisse, who has been with AT&T for 32 years, will be responsible for the business segment and John Donovan will be responsible for AT&T's technology and network operations. Ralph de la Vega was named president and CEO of AT&T Mobility, the company said. AT&T had planned to buy T-Mobile USA for $39 billion but failed to close the deal in light of regulatory opposition and had to pay a $4 billion break-up fee to Deutsche Telekom. (Reporting by Nicola Leske; Editing by Gary Hill) |
| Review: Odd experimentation reveals muddled result (AP) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 07:16 AM PST "Purple Naked Ladies," The Internet (Odd Future) The producer duo of Matt Martians and Syd Tha Kyd, of the group OFWGKTA, misses the mark with their new album "Purple Naked Ladies," a spacey foray into digital sounds that results in more confusion than clarity. Since it was recorded on Odd Future's own label, the two artists, known together as The Internet, have obviously been given a wide berth to play around with sounds and schemes. And they do. To a fault. The digital soundscape quickly becomes muddy and the musical purpose lost. Some songs like "Fastlane" offer a more traditional R&B approach. "Ode To A Dream" also promises something cohesive, with nice vocal features from Kilo Kish and Coco O. But the latter half of the song devolves into a swirl of reverse-played beats and tinny electronic drum hits. It's hard to image this as a radio staple, or even a playlist favorite. On "Violet Nude Women," it often sounds like there are no fewer than six instrumental sounds vying for attention, each attempting to elbow the others out of the way and take prominence. The melody is light and playful, but it soon gets lost as disparate noises collide. The Internet is essentially a proof of concept group. They are decent producers, but they'll need a star up front to truly shine. CHECK THIS TRACK OUT: "She Dgaf," is the lone plausible track for repeated play, curse words aside. It's got a nice hook and some semblance of a beat, something most other tracks on this album lack. |
| Tablet boom makes Apple No 1 PC maker: research firm (Reuters) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 01:38 PM PST (Reuters) – Apple Inc overtook Hewlett-Packard Co as the world's largest vendor of personal computers in the fourth quarter, helped by booming demand for its iPads, research firm Canalys said on Monday. In the fourth quarter, tablet demand helped drive the global PC market 16 percent higher than a year ago to 120 million computers, Canalys said. Excluding tablets, the market fell 0.4 percent from a year ago, said Canalys, one of the first research firms to include tablets in PC forecasts. Other firms have said they will likely follow. (Reporting By Tarmo Virki; editing by Andre Grenon) |
| Symantec says pcAnywhere safe, offers free upgrade (Reuters) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 01:25 PM PST BOSTON (Reuters) – Symantec Corp said it is safe to use its pcAnywhere software for accessing remote PCs after it asked customers last week to disable the product because it put them at greater risk of being hacked. The software maker took the unusual step of urging customers to temporarily stop using the product after an investigation determined that the blueprints, or source code, to pcAnywhere were stolen in 2006. Symantec said on January 25 that the theft put users of all versions of the product at greater risk of losing data to hackers. The company has since determined that it was safe to use the current version of the product, pcAnywhere 12.5, as long as it was updated with a security patch released on January 23, company spokesman Brian Modena said on Monday. Symantec is offering free upgrades to pcAnywhere 12.5 at no charge to all customers, even those using old editions that would not typically qualify for support, he said. The company warned customers earlier this month about the theft of the source code to pcAnywhere and several other titles such as Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Internet Security, Norton Utilities and Norton GoBack. It made the announcement after a hacker who goes by the name YamaTough released the source code to its Norton Utilities PC software and threatened to publish its widely used anti-virus programs. Authorities have yet to apprehend the hacker. The company initially said the theft of the code posed no threat as long as customers were using the most recent versions of Symantec's software, with one exception - users of pcAnywhere might face "a slightly increased security risk." While Symantec is advising all customers to upgrade, they can safely continue using versions 12.0 and 12.1 if they download a second software patch released on January 27, Modena said. Customers can contact the company via email for more information: pcanywhere@symantec.com. (Reporting By Jim Finkle; editing by Andre Grenon) |
| Upload at your own risk: Most cloud storage services offer no data guarantee (Digital Trends) Posted: 30 Jan 2012 03:01 PM PST
It's become increasingly clear that users who lost files due to the US government's seizure of Megaupload will, most likely, never get their files back. First of all, Megaupload's hosting company, Carpathia Hosting, will allegedly begin deleting files on Thursday due to non-payment by Megaupload. Second — and here's the stickler — Megaupload never guaranteed that files stored on its servers would remain accessible to users in the first place. "To the extent there are users that do have copies stored on Megaupload.com, it is important to note that Mega clearly warned users not to keep a sole copy of material on the site," a Department of Justice spokesperson told Digital Trends last week, via email. "In fact, Megaupload.com expressly informed users through its Frequently Asked Questions ('FAQs') and its Terms of Service that users have no proprietary interest in any of the files on Megaupload's servers, they assume the full risk of complete loss or unavailability of their data, and that Megaupload can terminate site operations without prior notice." Of course, Mega was primarily used for sharing files, not storing them long-term. (Though it's obvious now that many people used it for the latter purpose.) Still, this got us thinking: Do any cloud storage services guarantee your files will be safe and sound? We took a look at the Terms of Service of a number of popular cloud storage and file-sharing companies. And what we found was, well, not good. Take a look:
DropboxYou, and not Dropbox, are responsible for maintaining and protecting all of your stuff. Dropbox will not be liable for any loss or corruption of your stuff, or for any costs or expenses associated with backing up or restoring any of your stuff.
BoxBox is in no way liable for loss of customer data. Under no circumstances will Box be held accountable for any loss of customer data. By becoming a Box user you, the customer, acknowledge that you forfeit the right to hold Box accountable for any and all technical errors, including loss of user files (customer data).
RapidshareThe user is responsible for the backing up (to his own computer or other devices) of the files that he stores or accesses on RapidShare's servers. RapidShare does not guarantee or warrant that any content that the user saves, stores or accesses through the service will not be subject to inadvertent damage, corruption or loss.
Google Docs…YOU EXPRESSLY UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT GOOGLE, ITS SUBSIDIARIES AND AFFILIATES, AND ITS LICENSORS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR:
A) ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL CONSEQUENTIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES WHICH MAY BE INCURRED BY YOU, HOWEVER CAUSED AND UNDER ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY.. THIS SHALL INCLUDE, BUT NOT BE LIMITED TO, ANY LOSS OF PROFIT (WHETHER INCURRED DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY), ANY LOSS OF GOODWILL OR BUSINESS REPUTATION, ANY LOSS OF DATA SUFFERED, COST OF PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSS;
(B) ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE WHICH MAY BE INCURRED BY YOU, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OR DAMAGE AS A RESULT OF:
…THE LIMITATIONS ON GOOGLE'S LIABILITY TO YOU IN PARAGRAPH 15.1 ABOVE SHALL APPLY WHETHER OR NOT GOOGLE HAS BEEN ADVISED OF OR SHOULD HAVE BEEN AWARE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF ANY SUCH LOSSES ARISING.
Amazon Cloud DriveWe do not guarantee that Your Files will not be subject to misappropriation, loss or damage and we will not be liable if they are. You're responsible for maintaining appropriate security, protection and backup of Your Files.
Microsoft SkyDriveYou're responsible for backing up the data that you store on the service. If your service is suspended or canceled, we may permanently delete your data from our servers. We have no obligation to return data to you after the service is suspended or canceled. If data is stored with an expiration date, we may also delete the data as of that date. Data that is deleted may be irretrievable. You get the point: If you fail to back-up your data, it's your fault if it's lost forever, full stop. These companies protect themselves from lawsuits by removing all responsibility to keep user files accessible. Therefore, storing your files exclusively on a cloud service is a terrible idea. Out of the cloud storage companies we investigated (and by no means did we look at all of them), there were a few exceptions. The first is Carbonite. While its Terms of Service were significantly more jumbled with legalese than the rest (save Google), their policy appears slightly better for the end user than the rest. And by that, we mean that Carbonite may, in some instances, refund you the $60 it charges for a year's subscription to its service. But not necessarily. The second is Nasuni, which is the only company we found that offers a 100 percent guarantee on 24/7 uptime, and 100 percent access to your data. Unfortunately, Nasuni is exclusively geared toward businesses, so it's not really a viable option for most casual cloud-storage users. In the end, storing your files in a single location — be that on your home computer, an external drive, or a cloud storage service — it's not wise computing. We recommend keeping important files in a minimum of three locations; all of the above would be a good place to start. Too bad someone didn't tell Megaupload users that before they lost their files. [Image via O.Bellini/Shutterstock] This article was originally posted on Digital Trends More from Digital Trends 14 free Megaupload alternatives [Update: Make that 13] The 5 best cloud storage services compared Microsoft launches SkyDrive for iPhone: 25GB free cloud storage Google about to launch cloud storage service through Google Docs |
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