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LinkedIn's 4Q revenue doubles, stock soars 8 pct (AP) : Technet |
- LinkedIn's 4Q revenue doubles, stock soars 8 pct (AP)
- Brazil files injunction against Twitter (AP)
- Kodak to stop making cameras, digital frames (AP)
- Just Show Me: 3 great photo apps for the iPhone (Yahoo! News)
- Origami Bots: Paper robots running on air slither and slide their way to missions (Yahoo! News)
- 'Bachelor' Contestant Courtney Gets Auto-Tuned [VIDEO] (Mashable)
- Sony's Hirai to extend PlayStation strategy (Reuters)
- Catholic leaders to use Internet against pedophiles (Reuters)
- Washington Footing the Cell Phone Bill for Millions of Low Income Americans (Time.com)
- Keep track of your social life with the Eventbrite Android app (Appolicious)
- Hasbro Zynga partnership sees virtual and real worlds combine (Digital Trends)
- US government agency ditches BlackBerry in favor of iPhone (Digital Trends)
- Rebuild tops iPhone Games of the Week (Appolicious)
- How the iPhone is raising your phone bill (Digital Trends)
- Cynthia Rowley collection inspired by craftsmen (AP)
- Cinemagram brings animated GIFS to the iPhone and makes us wonder what's going on over at Instagram (Digital Trends)
- Oracle to pay $1.9B for Taleo, extends SAP rivalry (AP)
- The U.S. and China: A Duel to the Debt (The Motley Fool)
| LinkedIn's 4Q revenue doubles, stock soars 8 pct (AP) Posted: 09 Feb 2012 03:39 PM PST SAN FRANCISCO – LinkedIn provided further evidence of online networking's popularity and moneymaking potential with a fourth-quarter performance that got a glowing review on Wall Street. The results announced Thursday indicate LinkedIn Corp. is playing an increasingly influential role in the employment market as millions more people post their resumes there. The professional-networking service has been turning into a digital rolodex for headhunters and job seekers alike. LinkedIn added another 14 million profiles during the final three months of last year to bring its total membership to 145 million. Meanwhile, more companies have been paying to get additional access to LinkedIn's membership as the U.S. economy has been steadily adding jobs in recent months. LinkedIn gets more than two-thirds of its revenue from fees it charges companies, recruiting services and other people who want broader access to the profiles and other data on the company's website. The rest comes from advertising. The trends helped LinkedIn fare far better than the company's own management and analysts had predicted. The pleasant surprise came a day after online coupon distributor Groupon Inc. raised investor doubts about young, rapidly growing Internet companies by announcing an unexpected fourth-quarter loss. LinkedIn's numbers seemed to lift spirits; the company's stock surged more than 8 percent late Thursday. The ebullient reaction may bode well for an upcoming IPO from Facebook Inc., which has built an online network of 845 million users by focusing on family and friendships instead of career advancement. Facebook filed papers last week for an initial public offering of stock. It's expected to be completed in May or June. The IPO is expected to value Facebook at $75 billion to $100 billion. LinkedIn, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., has emerged as one of the stars from last year's crop of Internet IPOs. During the first nine months of trading, its stock has remained well above its IPO price of $45 and is moving upward again. The stock rose $6.44, or 8.4 percent, to $82.83 in extended trading Thursday after the release of results. LinkedIn earned $6.9 million, or 6 cents per share, during the final three months of last year. In 2010, the company had income of $1.6 million, or 3 cents per share. It's not directly comparable because LinkedIn's outstanding shares have ballooned since its IPO in May. Before figuring the net income credited to shareholders, LinkedIn's net income for the latest quarter increased 30 percent from $5.3 million If not for certain accounting items unrelated to its ongoing business, LinkedIn said it would have earned 12 cents in the fourth quarter. That figure topped the average estimate of 7 cents per share among analysts polled by FactSet. Revenue more than doubled from the previous year to nearly $168 million — about $8 million above analyst estimates. Management's projections for the first quarter and full year also called for revenue above analyst forecasts. |
| Brazil files injunction against Twitter (AP) Posted: 09 Feb 2012 03:24 PM PST |
| Kodak to stop making cameras, digital frames (AP) Posted: 09 Feb 2012 03:16 PM PST ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Picture it: Save for a few disposable point-and-shoots, Kodak is exiting the camera business. Eastman Kodak Co. said Thursday that it will stop making digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames in a move that marks the end of an era for the beleaguered 132-year-old company. Founded by George Eastman in 1880, Kodak was known all over the world for iconic cameras such as the Brownie and the Instamatic. For the last few decades, however, the Rochester, New York-based company has struggled. It was battered by Japanese competition in the 1980s, and failed to keep pace with the shift from film to digital technology. The company sought bankruptcy protection from creditors last month in a case that covers $6.7 billion in debt. It has a year to devise a restructuring plan. Citigroup Inc. was approved to lend the company $650 million to continue operating. Exiting the digital camera business is especially poignant for Kodak. In 1975, using an electronic sensor invented six years earlier at Bell Labs, a Kodak engineer named Steven Sasson created the world's first digital camera. It was an eight-pound, toaster-size device that captured low-resolution black-and-white images. Reached at home Thursday, Sasson told The Associated Press that seeing Kodak exit the business is "a bit sad" but part of a transition facing all companies that use evolving technology. "The average person probably owns more digital cameras than they realize," he said. "It's just the reality that digital imaging is a part of our lives and you can capture images in a lot of different ways. There's a lot of choices people have, cellphones being one of them." Through the 1990s, Kodak spent some $4 billion developing the photo technology inside most of today's cellphones and digital devices. But fearing that it might cannibalize its celluloid film business, Kodak waited until 2001 to bring its own digital cameras to the consumer market. By then, it faced strong competitors like Sony Corp. and Canon. These days, digital camera sales are suffering as consumers increasingly take photos on smartphones such as the iPhone. Certain smartphone makers such as LG, Nokia, Motorola and Samsung have agreed to pay Kodak to license its digital camera technology, while companies like Apple are fighting its patent claims. Before Thursday's announcement, Kodak had already been trying to shrink its product line and sell in fewer retail venues, but as sales declines worsened, the company saw no way to make the business profitable. "We made the logical conclusion that there was no clear path to profitability and we have to focus on generating profits at this point," said Kodak spokesman Chris Veronda. Kodak said getting out the digital camera business by June should help cut losses by about $100 million a year as it struggles to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company's digital camera line was part of a rapidly shrinking division that accounted for about a quarter of Kodak's revenue in the three-month period through September. For the nine months through September, total company sales plunged 18 percent to $4.3 billion and it lost $647 million. Kodak sees home photo printers, high-speed commercial inkjet presses, workflow software and packaging as the core of its future business. Since 2005, the company has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into new lines of inkjet printers. Once the digital camera business is phased out, Kodak said its consumer business will focus on printing. It will seek a company to license its EasyShare digital camera brand. Kodak said it's working with retailers to ensure an orderly transition. The company will continue to honor product warranties and provide technical support for the discontinued products. The company didn't say how many jobs would be eliminated as a result of the decision, but did say that it expects to take a charge of $30 million related to separation costs. Kodak owns patents that cover a number of basic functions in many smartphone cameras, and the bankruptcy judge has given the company until June 30 to come up with a procedure to sell them. The company picked up $27 million in patent-licensing fees in the first half of 2011. It made about $1.9 billion from those fees in the previous three years combined. But no buyers have emerged since Kodak started shopping them around in July. ___ AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima in Los Angeles contributed to this report. |
| Just Show Me: 3 great photo apps for the iPhone (Yahoo! News) Posted: 09 Feb 2012 07:05 PM PST |
| Origami Bots: Paper robots running on air slither and slide their way to missions (Yahoo! News) Posted: 09 Feb 2012 06:58 PM PST |
| 'Bachelor' Contestant Courtney Gets Auto-Tuned [VIDEO] (Mashable) Posted: 08 Feb 2012 04:19 PM PST Fans of The Bachelor are all too familiar with this season's over-the-top contestant Courtney, who makes snide comments at the camera and likes to take off her bikini top. [More from Mashable: Apple's Siri Has a Grudge in This Special Effects-Filled Short Film] Now, a video has popped up on YouTube that has turned some of her signature phrases -- from "Winning!" to "I do modeling" -- into a catchy Auto-Tune clip. The contestants are vying for a rose from winemaker Ben, and Courtney has rubbed many of them the wrong way, and this video shows why. [More from Mashable: Earthquake Strikes Philippines: The Rapid Social Media Response [VIDEO]] This is not the first time YouTube users have turned pop culture moments into Auto-Tuned videos. The best example of which is Antoine Dodson, whose "Bed Intruder" news interview was turned into a video by Auto-Tune The News and went viral. He was later given the opportunity to shoot a reality television show pilot. What's your favorite Auto-Tuned video? Let us know in the comments. This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| Sony's Hirai to extend PlayStation strategy (Reuters) Posted: 09 Feb 2012 07:19 PM PST TOKYO (Reuters) – Incoming CEO Kazuo Hirai aims to re-shape Sony Corp by linking hardware and software through online networks -- a model he used at its PlayStation unit -- dismissing any suggestion the battered brand would revert to a gadget-centered strategy under his management. In the meantime, he said, he would focus on paring costs at its TV unit and look to squeeze expenses elsewhere to return Sony to profit. The Sony Computer Entertainment model "is a bigger concept we can grow into a bigger space," Hirai, 51, said in a group interview at the company's Tokyo headquarters. "Hardware drives software and software drives hardware," he added, referring to online sales of games and other content PlayStation owners. Hirai oversaw the phenomenal rise of the PlayStation gaming system in the United States and since last March headed Sony's consumer products and services business. He didn't say what changes the wider application of that strategy would have on Sony, which unlike its consumer electronics rivals such as Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc, owns significant content in movies, music and games software. A more immediate task for Hirai, however, is to stem losses with cost savings that will add to cuts made by outgoing boss, Howard Stringer. Hirai formally succeeds Stringer as CEO on April 1, with the once-stellar consumer electronics brand heading for what it warned last week would be a much bigger-than-expected $2.9 billion annual loss, its fourth in a row. The surge of red ink has put Hirai under intense pressure from investors and ratings agencies to quickly staunch losses at the sprawling electronics group. Hirai pledged not to flinch from tough decisions to trim costs and renewed a promise to return the TV business to profit in two years. "We have to make some hard decisions on where there are some redundancies and reduce the fixed costs in a variety of different areas," he said, pointing to sales units in Japan, Europe and the United States, supply chains and Tokyo headquarters functions as areas where cuts could be made. Credit rating agency Standard and Poor's on Wednesday cut its long-term debt rating on Sony and warned it may drop it another notch within a year if Hirai fails to stem TV losses and deliver a significant boost to profitability. [ID:nL4E8D861P] Sony was also downgraded by Moody's last month. BIG BLEED The TV division has lost more than $11 billion over eight fiscal years. Together, Sony, Panasonic and Sharp expect to lose $17 billion this year alone, highlighting the savaging of Japan's electronics industry by foreign rivals led by Samsung, weak demand and a strong yen. A goal for Sony to end that bleeding in two years was "tracking where we said it would be at the end of the year, or a little ahead of that," Hirai said. Better products would, he said, add as much as 40 billion yen ($520 million) in profit, with cost improvements adding another 50 billion yen, as part of a strategy he described as "defense and offense." As well as weak global TV demand, Sony has been hammered by last year's flooding in Thailand that ruptured supply chains, a big one-off charge for exiting a flat-panel joint venture with Samsung, and smart competition from Apple and Samsung that has squeezed market share in TVs, smartphones and other gadgets. Hirai predicted that LCD technology would remain the main battlefield in TVs for at least three years, before next generation technology takes hold. STRATEGY ROLE Hirai has yet to reveal his management line-up, naming only Tadashi Saito, a former Sony chief financial officer at Sony Electronics in the United States, as the company's first chief strategy officer since 2005. Saito will work with senior managers "to formulate strategies for group companies overall, as well as giving us a lot of input and advice on M&A activity," Hirai said. Hiroshi Yoshioka, previously identified by Stringer as one of "Four Musketeers" who could succeed him, along with Hirai, will take Sony into the medical imaging business and head up the group's innovation center, "seeking out new business opportunities," Hirai said. As of Thursday's close, Sony shares had gained 13 percent to a 14-week high of 1,544 yen since Hirai was named as the next CEO, outperforming a 2.1 percent gain on the benchmark Nikkei average. The stock, which slumped more than 60 percent during Stringer's seven-year reign, was down 0.4 percent in early trading Friday. A Sony veteran of 28 years, Hirai was credited with reviving the PlayStation gaming operations through aggressive cost-cutting, in competition with Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox. A year ago, Hirai, a fluent English speaker, was promoted to head the consumer products and services business, overseeing Sony's network operations. He was also at the forefront of efforts to counter hackers who accessed Sony customers' personal details. He takes over after a period of cost-cutting by Stringer, a rare foreign CEO in Japan who sold off TV factories in Spain, Slovakia and Mexico and outsourced more than half of the group's production to outside companies, including Hon Hai Precision Industry, a Taiwanese contract electronics maker whose key customer is Apple. ($1 = 76.8950 Japanese yen) (Editing by Jeremy Wagstaff) This story update corrects the share movement since Hirai's appointment |
| Catholic leaders to use Internet against pedophiles (Reuters) Posted: 09 Feb 2012 05:41 PM PST ROME (Reuters) – Roman Catholic Church leaders unveiled an Internet teaching project on Thursday to help clergy around the world root out pedophiles in their ranks and protect children from potential abusers. Ending a four-day conference on child abuse in Rome, Father Francois-Xavier Dumortier said the 1.2 million euro ($1.60 million) project would provide multilingual advice and access to research on pedophilia and how to respond to the problem. "It will help to develop a culture of listening...a different face to the culture of silence," said Dumortier, who is rector at the Pontifical Gregorian University where the conference was held. An association for victims of abuse, while not commenting directly on the Internet project, has dismissed the conference as "window dressing" and said the Vatican should publish its documentation on abuse and hand it over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. Victims' groups for years have accused some bishops in the Church of preferring silence and cover-up to coming clean on the scandal, which has darkened the image of the Church around the world. But on Wednesday the Vatican's top official for dealing with sexual abuse of minors, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, said hiding behind a culture of "omerta" - the Italian word for the Mafia's code of silence - would be deadly for the Church. The symposium brought together some 200 people including bishops, leaders of religious orders, victims of abuse and psychologists, and some participants saw it as a turning point in the Church's approach to the crisis. "The Church now has a baseline about where we are starting from," Brendan Geary from the Marist Brothers religious order said. "We start by listening to victims and hearing their experience. We make sure the Church has the highest standards for protecting children." The Internet-based "Centre for Child Protection" will work with medical institutions and universities to develop what the Church hopes will be a constant response to the problems of sexual abuse. It will be posted in German, English, French, Spanish and Italian and help bishops and other church workers put into place Vatican guidelines to protect children. The message from Vatican officials who have addressed the symposium is that local Church officials must cooperate with civil authorities according to local law in cases of suspected pedophilia. The scandals have led to costly legal action, are blamed for an exodus of believers in some European nations, including Pope Benedict's native Germany, and have damaged the Church's moral standing in hitherto staunchly Catholic states. ($1 = 0.7517 euros) (Editing by Michael Roddy) |
| Washington Footing the Cell Phone Bill for Millions of Low Income Americans (Time.com) Posted: 09 Feb 2012 08:40 PM PST Last year, a federal program paid out $1.6 billion to cover free cell phones and the monthly bills of 12.5 million wireless accounts. The program, overseen by the FCC and intended to help low-income Americans, is popular for obvious reasons, with participation rising steeply since 2008, when the government paid $772 million for phones and monthly bills. But observers complain that the program suffers from poor oversight, in which phones go to people who don't qualify, and hundreds of thousands of those who do qualify have more than one phone. Last summer, a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story shed some light on a government program that relatively few Americans knew existed. (Read more about it here.) The Lifeline program provides low-income Americans with free cell phones (basic ones such as those made by Tracfone, not smartphones) and covers up to 250 free minutes each month. As many as 5.5 million residents in Pennsylvania alone could qualify for the program, which is funded primarily by the Universal Service Fund fee added to the bills of land-line and wireless customers. The program came to be after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed, and the FCC created the Universal Service Fund to help "to promote the availability of quality services at just, reasonable, and affordable rates," among other things. All telecommunications carriers must pay into the fund, and many do so by tacking on a fee to each of their customers' bills. It's probably added into your monthly wireless bill and your landline bill, if you still have one. The Universal Service Fund provides discounts on phone services, or in some cases, entirely free services to low-income Americans. The fund helps pay for landlines or cell phones, whichever the recipient prefers. There's also a one-time discount of up to $30 to cover an installation fee or a cell phone. Considering how cheap some cell phones are nowadays, the money more than covers the costs of a basic phone. Then, the fund covers phone bills to the tune of $10 a month, which typically translates as 250 minutes for wireless plans of the types of phones we're talking about. Americans who receive food stamps, Medicaid, or other federal aid, or who earn up to 135% of the federal poverty guidelines, qualify for the program. Now, Bloomberg Businessweek reports, we have a pretty good idea of how much the program pays out -- and how quickly it's growing as more and more people find out about it. In 2011, Lifeline paid out $1.6 billion, more than double the amount paid in 2008 ($772 million). (MORE: Is Cell Phone 'Bill Shock' Going Away?) What's more, an FCC audit of the program last year showed that many participants in the program were taking more than their fair share. According to Businessweek: 269,000 wireless Lifeline subscribers were receiving free phones and monthly service from two or more carriers. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) has been taking a closer look at the program since she personally received an invitation to apply for a free, government-subsidized cell phone in the mail. McCaskill has asked the FCC to investigate Lifeline. As a result, the FCC is building a database to see if a subscriber has more than one subsidized phone. In other words, until recently, such a database didn't exist. (MORE: How Apple's iPhone and Google's Android Left Blackberry in the Dust) The FCC, which announced the changes by using the euphemism that it is "modernizing" Lifeline, has set a goal of saving $200 million on the program in 2012. After eliminating nearly 270,000 of the duplicate subscriptions discovered in the audit last year, the FCC said it has already "saved" $33 million. Brad Tuttle is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @bradrtuttle. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME. View this article on Time.com Most Popular on Time.com: |
| Keep track of your social life with the Eventbrite Android app (Appolicious) Posted: 09 Feb 2012 02:30 PM PST |
| Hasbro Zynga partnership sees virtual and real worlds combine (Digital Trends) Posted: 09 Feb 2012 08:03 PM PST
In a statement released by the two companies on Thursday, Hasbro's president and CEO Brian Goldner said he was "thrilled" with the arrangement. "Zynga is bringing more games to mainstream culture and is redefining how people play," he said. "At Hasbro, we're proud to help bring their games to even more people around the world." Zynga's founder and CEO, Mark Pincus, was equally effusive about the deal, saying, "It's exciting to partner with Hasbro as we share a common vision for play and a mission to connect the world through games." He continued, "This partnership is so special because it represents an exciting leap forward in enabling people to connect their virtual and real worlds. Hasbro has inspired play through their famous toys, games and action figures and we look forward to working with a company that continually creates meaningful and fun brands." You could also add "potentially lucrative" to Pincus's "special" and "exciting". Zynga is the world's largest social game developer boasting more than 227 million monthly active users. The four-year-old company is responsible for hits such as FarmVille, CityVille and Words With Friends. With a toy giant like Hasbro behind it, there's no telling what riches await the two companies. Zynga has grown fast in its short history, with its string of hit games played on smartphones and tablets, as well as on Facebook. Last month it announced that it had recently bought four mobile game companies in an effort to further increase its presence in the smartphone and tablet games market. Another mobile game developer to shift its games from screens and into stores is Angry Birds maker Rovio. It sells a line of plush toys, branded baby merchandise and even a cookbook. The company even plans to open stores in China, a country where the bird-based game has a huge following. As for the global partnership between Zynga and Hasbro, expect to see its products hit stores in the fall of this year. This article was originally posted on Digital Trends More from Digital Trends Zynga expands with acquisition of four mobile game companies Kiip: Revolutionizing mobile game advertising with ‘real-life’ rewards Pay for play: Are marketers manipulating Apple’s App Store rankings? |
| US government agency ditches BlackBerry in favor of iPhone (Digital Trends) Posted: 09 Feb 2012 07:41 PM PST
According to a Bloomberg report, the government agency, which carries out research into weather, oceans and fisheries, currently has about 3,000 of its 20,000 full-time workers and contractors using RIM devices. It's not yet clear how many workers would be receiving Apple devices. Speaking to Bloomberg, NOAA's chief information officer Joe Klimavicz said that it would cost the agency less to securely integrate Apple devices into its information systems than RIM's products. "Times are changing and technology is changing and we have to look at our technologies and see how we can do things more efficiently," he said. RIM will be dearly hoping other organizations that use its products won't be having the same thoughts, though the switchover already appears to be part of a worrying trend for the Waterloo, Ontario-based company. Only a few days ago oil giant Halliburton announced it would be turning its back on the BlackBerry in favor of the iPhone. Credit Suisse, Barclays Capital and Standard Chartered are three other companies that have made moves towards the iPhone and Android devices at the expense of BlackBerry handsets. The BlackBerry was once the phone of choice for business professionals, thanks in part to its popular native email system and effective security system. But in recent years the mobile phone market has been turned on its head with the launch of Apple's iPhone and smartphones running Google's mobile operating system, Android, leaving RIM playing catch-up. Last year was a particularly rotten one for the Canadian company, which included a four-day service outage in October and the postponement of the launch of its BlackBerry 10 mobile operating system, an OS which the company is hoping will turn its fortunes around. Last month the company installed a new CEO in an attempt to re-energize the company. For Research In Motion, much rests on the launch of phones with the new operating system, which is expected to happen some time this year. In the meantime, it needs to work on persuading businesses to stick with its products, though it looks like it has a tough battle on its hands. This article was originally posted on Digital Trends More from Digital Trends iPhone overtakes BlackBerry to become top phone for business users Pay for play: Are marketers manipulating Apple’s App Store rankings? BlackBerry devices rejected by Halliburton in favor of the iPhone iPhone outselling other smartphones in UK in run up to Christmas |
| Rebuild tops iPhone Games of the Week (Appolicious) Posted: 09 Feb 2012 04:00 PM PST |
| How the iPhone is raising your phone bill (Digital Trends) Posted: 09 Feb 2012 03:12 PM PST
All four major U.S. cell phone carriers have now released their financial results for the fourth quarter of 2011, and all three of iPhone carriers tout their success during the quarter, bolstered by new subscribers to their wireless voice and data services. No surprise for a phone more popular than all Android smartphones combined, right? But with it comes a heavy toll. The Apple iPhone carries a higher subsidy than any other phone the carriers offer, which means it takes longer for the carriers to make a profit from iPhone users compared to Android users or those preferring BlackBerry, Windows Phone, or other platforms. In the meantime, innovations like Apple's Siri voice-based search capability (as well as the ubiquity of streaming music, video, games, and other interactive content) mean providers' networks are struggling harder than ever to keep up with data demands. The result? Mobile operators are seeing their profits shrinking at the same time they're sending trucks full of money to Cupertino. How are carriers likely to respond? That's right: by raising your rates. We opened the ledgers to see why how the heavy cost of the iPhone makes its way to your wallet.
Verizon Wireless was the first out the door with its quarterly results, touting a 7.7 percent increase in revenue during the fourth quarter of 2011 compared to 2010. Sounds good, right? It gets better: Verizon Wireless revenues grew by 13 percent during the quarter to $18.3 billion — that's a record. Part of that success came from the sale of some 2.3 million 4G LTE devices to customers who just have to be on the leading edge of mobile broadband. Overall, the company sold 7.7 million smartphones during the quarter: A whopping 4.2 million of them were Apple iPhones. |
| Cynthia Rowley collection inspired by craftsmen (AP) Posted: 09 Feb 2012 07:53 PM PST NEW YORK – Well, now we know how she does it: With lots of YouTube breaks and double-brewed coffee. In this so-much-information era, designer Cynthia Rowley spilled her work habits to the audience gathered Thursday night for the runway preview of her fall collection during New York Fashion Week. Rowley lined the bleachers set up in the lobby of a Meatpacking district building with notes that also included Twitter handles for her top hair, makeup and jewelry people so that the editors, buyers, stylists and a few celebrity pals, including Rebecca Romijn, would know just what they were seeing. "What inspired the collection: Mechanics, cobblers and leathermen. Welding, oil slicks. Women artists making big, strong work," Rowley wrote. Showing her own craftsman skills, Rowley somehow turned that into a lovely blouson dress in a blue-flame print, a soft buttery leather shift, and a tweed denim shirtdress. She paired skinny pants covered in a tortoise-shell print with a leather jacket and a jersey jumper with mixed print sleeves. There were a few gimmicks, including jewel-encrusted coveralls, which was more jumpsuit than uniform, but still perhaps a little too literal. The jeweled collars, however, which created a turtleneck effect, seem like something that could really catch on. Rowley likes to push limits on her catwalks — once even having the models walk on a path covered in candy — and that makes her show a real "show." For this go-around, she had the crowd sit opposite a wall covered in screens that simulcast from different spots what was happening in the runway, but all the outfits were stripped of color. |
| Posted: 09 Feb 2012 04:17 PM PST
But photography is going to the masses, and now this includes animated GIFs (which technically are cinemagraphs — they are published as animated GIF files, but for all intents and purposes you can still call them animated GIFs). Cinemagram is available for $1.99 for iOS and makes the creation process altogether very simple, plus it throws in a few filters to boot. It's not the only option out there either: Kinotopic is fairly similar, and there are trade-offs between the two. Cinemagram has filters but not as many options for simplifying the "map drawing" process. Kinotopic also has the ability to pull from your current video library, whereas Cinemagram does not. Of course, the quality isn't that of those made with photo editors, not to mention better cameras. But it's obvious that the digital imaging evolution is lending itself toward speed, convenience, and the lowest common denominator. This isn't to say that advanced, professional cameras and photographers with the requisite skill levels will go the way of the analog camera – if just means that there's a wider audience who wants in and applications like Cinemagram are making that possible by continuing to open up access to more effects and features. And it's a good week for users that are a fan of this trend. Viddy, a filter app for videos also launched. It's not the first of its kind, but it's the latest to capitalize on Instagram's lack of a video feature – which hasn't gone unnoticed. In fact, there's a lot of ground here Instagram is missing out on and we can't help but feel like it's falling a little behind. The long-rumored Android app has yet to make an appearance and might be delayed in favor of Windows Phones (although CEO Kevin Systrom seemingly killed that rumor in a recent interview with Gizmodo), and since Systrom mentioned integrating video some four months ago we haven't heard another word. And there hasn't been a significant update since the 2.0 upgrade – which many users suggest was really a downgrade. We get it: Instagram is still an incredibly small company and is working to scale its platform's performance capabilities to its skyrocketing user base, and it's being incredibly careful about this (maybe too careful?). There's also the fact they've done so much without – namely without Android users or a Web app. So imagine what it would be with these, or with animated GIF or video support? It just makes us wonder what the holdup is and anxious for the next big thing (even if it's just new filters or a selective color tool) from everybody's favorite photo sharing platform. This article was originally posted on Digital Trends More from Digital Trends Pixable adds Twitter, videos to its photo-curator application If Facebook won’t bring filters to you, these apps will bring filters to Facebook |
| Oracle to pay $1.9B for Taleo, extends SAP rivalry (AP) Posted: 09 Feb 2012 12:05 PM PST NEW YORK – Oracle Corp. is escalating its rivalry with German business-software maker SAP AG with a $1.9 billion purchase of Taleo Corp., a company that helps businesses hire and manage their employees. The proposed purchase announced Thursday extends Oracle's offerings in a growing arena of computing known as the cloud. With such an approach, businesses don't run software and services in-house. Instead, those tasks are dispatched over the Internet to remote locations operated by companies such as Oracle, SAP and IBM Corp. Oracle, which is based in Redwood Shores, Calif., pounced on Taleo just two months after SAP struck a deal to buy a similar Silicon Valley software service, SuccessFactors, for $3.4 billion. It also comes as another rapidly growing company called Workday is emerging as a cloud-computing threat in human-resources software. "It's a defensive measure to some extent," Forrester Research analyst Paul Hamerman said. Oracle said Taleo's portfolio of products would complement Oracle's existing offerings. "Human capital management has become a strategic initiative for organizations," Thomas Kurian, an executive vice president at Oracle, said in a statement. Taleo, which has about 1,400 employees, said it has more than 5,000 customers, including nearly half of the Fortune 100. Through its software, people can apply for jobs and companies can manage the careers of their hires. The company, which is based in Dublin, Calif., lost $14.5 million on revenue of $309 million last year. Although Oracle has moved into the hardware business with its 2010 purchase of Sun Microsystems, software remains the company's core and accounts for two-thirds of its revenue. Oracle has been steadily expanding into different software niches by buying more than 75 companies during the past eight years. It completed a $1.5 billion acquisition of RightNow Technologies two weeks ago. The Taleo deal is expected to be completed in the middle of this year, if Oracle can gain the necessary regulatory approvals. Many of Oracle's recent acquisitions are of companies that specialize in delivering software and services over the Internet. Oracle and other advocates of cloud-based computing are trying to convince customers that they can save money that way by avoiding costs associated with installing and maintaining products on individual machines. Until recently, Oracle had resisted such an approach, partly because it makes so much money from maintaining and upgrading software installed on individual computers within its customers' office. Oracle's outspoken CEO, Larry Ellison, had cast doubts about whether cloud computing would produce enough profits to justify heavy investments needed. At a shareholders meeting in 2008, Ellison called it "ludicrous ... that cloud computing is taking over the world." Hamerman said the acquisition of Taleo puts Oracle "back in the game" for cloud-based recruiting and talent-management software. Oracle is paying $46 a share for Taleo stock, 18 percent above Wednesday's closing price of $38.94. Taleo's stock rose $6.70, or 17 percent, to $45.64 in afternoon trading Thursday, after the announcement came out. Oracle's rose 11 cents to $28.84, while SAP's gained 67 cents, or 1 percent, to $64.20. Taleo will give Oracle another weapon in its duel with SAP as their long-running battle spills into cloud computing. Their respective purchases of Taleo and SuccessFactors underscore the growing importance technology companies see in delivering software over the Internet. Rick Sherlund, an analyst at Nomura Securities, said the planned acquisitions of smaller companies by Oracle and SAP underscore their strategies of "moving to the cloud to address faster growth market opportunities." He said the industry should expect further consolidation. SAP's specialty is business applications, such as those used for payroll and managing relationships with customers and suppliers. In recent years, Oracle has spent billions of dollars pushing into that field, though it remains behind SAP. One of Oracle's biggest coups in its expansion came in 2005 when it closed an $11.1 billion takeover of PeopleSoft, which had fought to remain independent. After Oracle prevailed, PeopleSoft co-founder Dave Duffield left to start Workday, which is expected to pursue an initial public offering of stock this year. Hamerman believes It would be a good timing for a Workday IPO, given the prices that Oracle and SAP have paid for companies in the same market as Workday. Oracle is paying about six times Taleo's annual revenue while SAP is buying SuccessFactors for about 10 times its annual revenue. The feud between Oracle and SAP has gotten personal. Oracle won a $1.3 billion jury verdict against SAP in 2010 over the widespread theft by a now-shuttered SAP subsidiary of documents from password-protected Oracle customer websites. Oracle alleged the information was used to steal business. A judge later threw out the award, calling it "grossly excessive." This week, Oracle turned down a smaller award of $272 million, paving the way for a retrial with a different jury. Oracle landed a publicity jackpot from the trial. Ellison used it to repeatedly shame SAP publicly. SAP admitted the theft and agreed to pay $20 million to settle criminal charges filed by the Department of Justice over the practices at the former subsidiary, TomorrowNow. __ AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report. |
| The U.S. and China: A Duel to the Debt (The Motley Fool) Posted: 08 Feb 2012 12:22 PM PST In this period of "exceptional uncertainty" (to quote Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke), where can investors turn for a considered perspective on the current environment? Produced to feed the beast of the 24-hour news cycle, the bulk of financial journalism and commentary today isn't worth the servers it is stored on. One notable exception to that rule is Buttonwood, the financial markets column of The Economist. Philip Coggan is the columnist -- arguably the most influential position in financial journalism (along with the head of Lex at the Financial Times). Deciphering the headlines "The thesis of the book is that economic history is a battle between creditors and debtors, with the nature of money the territory over which they fight. Money has two core functions; as a means of exchange (paying for your daily Starbucks) and as a store of value (making sure you can still afford a Starbucks in old age). Historically, those two functions have been in conflict; some groups have wanted to expand the supply to encourage economic activity; others have wanted to restrict the supply of money to protect the value of savings. Broadly speaking, the money expanders have been debtors and the money restricters have been creditors." Debtors and creditors: a historical struggle "Over history, creditors have tended to impose systems that control the supply of money -- the gold standard, the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, the euro -- that prevent borrowers from repaying their debts in debased currencies. The strain of keeping up this discipline is intense in democracies where more people are debtors. The gold standard broke down in the 1930s, Bretton Woods in the 1970s and the euro is struggling today, as is what might be called the post-Bretton Woods system of independent central banks and inflation targets. A new world order will emerge from the ashes." Today, the struggle between debtor and creditor pits the United States -- the world's largest debtor nation -- against rising superpower China. With more than $15 trillion in outstanding public debt, Uncle Sam is in hock to China to the tune of a cool $1.1 trillion. In light of these numbers and China's growing confidence, it's not hard to imagine that the relationship between the two nations will be instrumental in shaping a new monetary order. How fast will it emerge and how far will it go? Could we witness the renminbi (China's currency) replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency? I asked Buttonwood. A long way behind Nevertheless, the future stability of the dollar is at risk, as projected increases in unfunded liabilities related to Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid threaten to upend a delicate equilibrium that is based on trust and confidence. That problem -- serious as it is -- is compounded by a fractious political class that is unable (or unwilling) to address the problem in a mature manner. Since optimism is a trait of the American character, let's take a "glass half-full" approach. What are the reasons to believe that the U.S. can tackle its debt problem effectively? I asked Buttonwood. Three hopeful signs The old continent: No question about it, Europe is in a real jam right now. In our concluding article, Buttonwood lays out one way in which the European sovereign debt crisis may play out and discusses whether a new gold standard would make a good replacement to the current regime of floating fiat currencies. Finally, he highlights the extraordinary shift by which orthodox thinking in the U.S. regarding the currency has been turned on its head -- stay tuned. China may overtake the U.S., but three American companies are set to dominate the world. Fool contributor Click here to see his holdings and a short bio. You can follow him considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. |
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